Live data from Hacker News

Abundant Intelligence

blog.samaltman.com

91–100 of 136 posts

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#91
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a word or whisper about environmental impact, either. I mean at least do some hand waving or something. I feel like a habitable planet is a fundamental right.

Not to defend what Altman is saying, but is OpenAI actually using or going to use that much power? This Reuters source the US power budget will be 4,187 TWh in 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-use-reach-r...

Adding 10GW of power as they plan, is 87TWh. 2%.

That’s huge. The hope is that this can drive renewables or nuclear rollout, but not sure that hope is realistic.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#92

What's the serious counter-argument to the idea that a) AI will become more ubiquitous and inexpensive and b) economic/geopolitical success will be tied in some way to AI ability? Because I do agree with him on that front. The question is whether the AI industry will end up like airplanes: massively useful technology that somehow isn't a great business to be in. If indeed that is the case, framing OpenAI as a nation-…

I think the most compelling arguments are: LLMs aren’t AI. These are language processing tools which are highly effective and it turns out language is a large component of intelligence but they aren’t AI alone. Intelligence isn’t the solution or bottleneck to solving the world’s most pressing problems. Famines are political. We know how to deploy clean energy. Now that doesn’t quite answer your question but I think i…

Right, but if you just replace AI with LLM in my comment, I'm not sure it really changes. "Real AI" might not be necessary to the two things I wrote.

I agree that all of the predictions regarding AI are probably overblown if they're just LLMs. But that might not matter if we're just talking about geopolitics.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a word or whisper about environmental impact, either. I mean at least do some hand waving or something. I feel like a habitable planet is a fundamental right.

No worries once we have AGI we will ask it how to make up for all the emissions and solve climate change ...

AGI answer: "Individual people must change their habits"

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#94
I have stopped reading all the sam altman posts. Not because I am a hater or anything. Maybe AI is a bubble, maybe it is not but one thing is clear. Your ability to do something is enforced in neural pathways that you exercise on a regular basis. If you let LLMs and AI do your architecture, database, coding, testing and just about all the things you are dreaming, then gradually but surely, your brain will lose these pathways and you won't be able to process and IDEATE code anymore like the way you do currently. This is one reason I don't intend to use AI for anything outside file format conversions and maybe image generations.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#95
post #87

> Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Something I've never understood: why do AGI perverts think that a superintelligence is any more likely to "cure cancer" than "create unstoppable super-cancer"

Somehow it never crossed my mind, but human civilization could plausibly end in the next 10 years. Many thought if then the cause would be a nuclear war, turns out it's more like the 90's movie 12 monkeys. I would love to be proven wrong, yet there is no international regulation on AI.

>I would love to be proven wrong, yet there is no international regulation on AI.

What are the chances of advancing in AI regulation before any monumental fuck up that changes the public opinion to "yeah this thing is really dangerous". Like a Hiroshima or Chernobyl but for AI.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#96

A company is building technology more powerful than nuclear weaponry, and this comment section is thinking they're "overselling" it. Fun.

>technology more powerful than nuclear weaponry

God-like technology that you can avoid by touching grass?

Unless you're talking about a Skynet type rogue ASI, which is probably not gonna happen anytime soon.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#97

I have stopped reading all the sam altman posts. Not because I am a hater or anything. Maybe AI is a bubble, maybe it is not but one thing is clear. Your ability to do something is enforced in neural pathways that you exercise on a regular basis. If you let LLMs and AI do your architecture, database, coding, testing and just about all the things you are dreaming, then gradually but surely, your brain will lose these…

In fact, Sama talks about this too:

https://archive.is/20250109011408/https://blog.samaltman.com...

"We are already in the phase of co-evolution — the AIs affect, effect, and infect us, and then we improve the AI. We build more computing power and run the AI on it, and it figures out how to build even better chips."

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#98

Y2K errors in old COBOL code kick-started Indian IT sector, which then lead to immense economic progress and mass scale reduction in poverty. I hope LLMs pepper every thing they touch with many such errors, so that nations of Africa and poorer parts of Latin America (that can't do cheap manufacturing due to a lack of infrastructure and capital) can also begin their upwards economic journey by providing services to fi…

>(much of which was caused by colonialism)

I found the 10%

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#99

I have stopped reading all the sam altman posts. Not because I am a hater or anything. Maybe AI is a bubble, maybe it is not but one thing is clear. Your ability to do something is enforced in neural pathways that you exercise on a regular basis. If you let LLMs and AI do your architecture, database, coding, testing and just about all the things you are dreaming, then gradually but surely, your brain will lose these…

I hear you, but I don't understand the logic. If you were wealthy enough to have an executive assistant or a chief of staff who handled most of your email and admin on your behalf, is your instinct to say, "I will still write my own emails because I don't want that skill to atrophy?" No. It's simply not high-value work. I'd assume you rather do something else.

You don't see the ultra-wealthy say "Oh no! Not my ability to still do 'architecture, database, coding, testing' on my own!" They just move further and further up the stack.

And I think this is a useful frame for everyone else: just move further up the stack.

Again, I hear you. As a fellow nerd, I love all of these activities too. Computers can be really fun, endlessly fulfilling, truly. But I have the awareness to say to myself, "Ya, but seems like that may have been a temporary phenomenon ... of getting to control and master these machines, just like I don't really crave to hack away at stone tools anymore, because that's not the time period I was born in."

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#100
post #91
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to defend what Altman is saying, but is OpenAI actually using or going to use that much power? This Reuters source the US power budget will be 4,187 TWh in 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-use-reach-r...

Adding 10GW of power as they plan, is 87TWh. 2%. That’s huge. The hope is that this can drive renewables or nuclear rollout, but not sure that hope is realistic.

Altman is an investor in OKLO. I'm expecting an announcement with companies like that where they can federal dollars to speed up R&D.
Post reply on HN