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John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

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Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#91

Post by jstummbillig »

jdlshore wrote: post #36
awestroke wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he's not taking risks anymore by doing this. He has already proven himself, he's rich, and he's paid incredible amounts to do whatever he likes.

The lesson to be learned is that it’s less risky, not more, to understand that some ideas don’t work out and to have ways to identify failures quickly.

I get and like that interpretation.

I wonder if, societally, it's true though, or if statistically the more reliable way to "succeed" in life, is getting good at selling and defending ideas, even the bad ones.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#92

Post by vanjajaja1 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #42
loveparade wrote: post #26

I'm always taken aback by this fascination and heroification with John Carmack (or similar figures) on HN. I love Doom and Quake too, but that doesn't qualify him any more than any other random senior engineer to work on something totally different. From his interviews it looks like he understands little about the technical details of ML, or about as much as anyone can learn in a few months, and is just banking on PR…

I got obsessed with his ideas after reading the Quake 3 source code. So many novel ideas, flawlessly executed, highly optimized, yet easy to understand and easy to modify and debug. My personal impression is that John Carmack has the ability to organize concepts in a way that few people can. So even if he's pretty clueless about the topic now, I would expect him to reduce some maths papers to their essence in a way t…

Can you elaborate on 'reprojection in a pixel shader'? What did he do, what was the insight etc

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#93

Post by thom »

I don't want to be an utter bore, but 60% chance of AGI by 2030, taken at face value, would have prompted me as an interviewer to more urgently ask deeper questions about safety. For a long time I have tried to comfort myself that brains are complicated, AI is hard, and maybe there's just a complexity barrier that is going to prevent any sort of hard takeoff scenario. Maybe we can have subhuman AGI that can do lots of menial jobs, but not Carmack's, and we're right to concentrate on the economic ramifications.

But lately... boy, I dunno.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#94

Post by sudosysgen »

mariusor wrote: post #75
loveparade wrote: post #26

I'm always taken aback by this fascination and heroification with John Carmack (or similar figures) on HN. I love Doom and Quake too, but that doesn't qualify him any more than any other random senior engineer to work on something totally different. From his interviews it looks like he understands little about the technical details of ML, or about as much as anyone can learn in a few months, and is just banking on PR…

I dislike the ways in which HN submitters post every little twitter thread wrote by Carmack, but this article has some value in presenting a little more in depth perspective on how he is thinking about the AI problem. Carmack has already entered two spaces of computer technology that he revolutionized: 3D gaming and VR. I trust that he's able to have a similar impact in AI, even if it's through failing at the problem…

The jury is still out on Oculus revolutionising VR or not. Technologically, Oculus has become more like Google's Daydream than anything else - inside out tracking of the device and controllers, use of a cellphone computational power for standalone operation, etc...

The original technologies that were introduced have now been abandoned by Oculus, on Carmack's advice, except for implementation details that haven't been hugely impactful, unlike with 3D gaming.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#95

Post by candiodari »

Jensson wrote: post #81
sudosysgen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I know of plenty of people in the AI field that might as well be mathematicians.

Most mathematicians aren't creative enough to invent new math methods either, they mostly just apply things they learned in school to find new results. Universities aren't good at finding nor nurturing creative individuals.

There are plenty of new scientific results that in both Math and Machine Learning that are essentially 6 months/a few years/a few decades of hard work away from discovery.

As a professor once told me: IF you're lucky, after 10 years in academia, you get to be creative and come up with 4-5 ideas once every 5 years or so (when coming up with the suggested list of research for new phd students to do). Then you get to be devastated when no-one picks up any of your more creative ideas, and everyone picks the 10 non-creative ideas on the list because they don't want to risk their phd.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#96

Post by dsign »

Unpopular idea, but I hope it's only a matter of time before we declare involving with AGI a criminal endeavor, just as it is playing with biological weapons.

Because we can't all be wrong: in almost every forecast, we see AGIs taking over our dignity as a bad thing. And we know that this is not any longer a sci-fi hypothetical scenario: the current generation of AI models is taking jobs from illustrators and copy writers.

The current argument is that "China will do it if we don't", which to me sounds like "China will keep going in whatever path they are going, but supercharged with AGI, and we must desperately follow."

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#97

Post by Herbstluft »

sudosysgen wrote: post #77
Jensson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most math wizzes only learn to apply known methods, they don't invent new methods. The AI fields isn't full of people who are creative enough to invent new math methods instead of just applying methods they learned in school.

I disagree. I know of plenty of people in the AI field that might as well be mathematicians.

What does that even mean?

Is that just your gut feeling, as in typical "bright people doing amazing things, surely they would succeed doing x" (which ultimately means nothing, that's just PR speak), or are you saying that based on your own understanding of advanced mathematics and mathematical research from which you are assessing the mathematical work those people you talk about do?

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#98

Post by HWR_14 »

foldr wrote: post #52
fxtentacle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got obsessed with his ideas after reading the Quake 3 source code. So many novel ideas, flawlessly executed, highly optimized, yet easy to understand and easy to modify and debug. My personal impression is that John Carmack has the ability to organize concepts in a way that few people can. So even if he's pretty clueless about the topic now, I would expect him to reduce some maths papers to their essence in a way t…

He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 It’s certainly possible that he will have a novel idea, but I haven’t seen anything come out of it yet. I’m sure Carmack’s mathematical ability exceeds that of the average game developer (and certainly my own), but the AI field isn’t short of math whizzes.

I assume Carmack can pick up a lot about a new technical topic in a few years, similarly to how Bill Gates could learn a lot about vaccines and healthcare in a few years. "Hi, I'm (rich and nerd famous person) calling for (expert in field)." Probably spending most of that time being tutored by that experts PhD students.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#99

Post by tkgally »

thom wrote: post #93

I don't want to be an utter bore, but 60% chance of AGI by 2030, taken at face value, would have prompted me as an interviewer to more urgently ask deeper questions about safety. For a long time I have tried to comfort myself that brains are complicated, AI is hard, and maybe there's just a complexity barrier that is going to prevent any sort of hard takeoff scenario. Maybe we can have subhuman AGI that can do lots o…

My reaction, too. For an interview as long and wide-ranging as that one, the lack of any mention of safety or ethical issues stood out. And the potential impact on employment was just waved away with “I am confident that the sum total of value and progress in humanity will accelerate extraordinarily with welcoming artificial beings into our community of working on things.”
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