Sam Altman’s leap of faith
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Sam Altman’s leap of faith
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Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#2http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful
I found his essay particular useful in explaining how he makes decisions.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#3> Thursday night would be considered pure insanity coming from someone else.
Time will tell. The genius of YC was to spot the hackers as the driving force of a new generation of tech companies, to be founder friendly, to use the classes to get rid of the problem that every angel investor has to contend with ('is this a good investment or not?') and to tell the story in a very compelling way and with their own money on the line.
Everything else so far is underwhelming at best, but the viral nature of YC and the alumni network are not going to be stopped for a long long time.
It's a bit along the lines of 'what have the Romans ever done for us?', if that's all that came out of it then it is already a spectacular success by any measure.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#4>‘Once we build a generally intelligent system, that basically we will ask it to figure out a way to make an investment return for you.'
Maybe lets do curing cancer first?
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#5Allow me to present Altman's wager:
- If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D)
- If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns
- If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture all economic value
- If OpenAI achieves AGI and you did not invest in it, you get negative infinite returns, because all other economic value is obliterated by AGI
Therefore, one must invest.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#6Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…
You left off the assumptions that AGI will be a superintelligence and one capable of capturing all value. There's no evidence to believe either one. Instead, it will probably be pretty dumb like humans are without the decades of supervised training we get and our interactions with the world. Further, the second a smart one starts getting devastating results, there will be political push-back to do something about it. People might cast votes to make rules about them that limit their power or rate of development.
Which gets us back to the real risk that people like Altman are too detached from reality to get: the masses being damaged by laws and companies controlled by tiny few, aka a plutonomy. That's where we're at. That's what's causing most problems people face. For example, CEO's trying to get bonuses do layoffs while folks like Altman wonder how AI might hurt jobs. If they're really worried, the smart folks need to pool all their resources together to combat the ability of special interests to bribe politicians and get away with it. Then, incentive structures that do less damage to employees and consumers as the companies grow. That be a start on addressing real problems vs those they're making up.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#7Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…
>> If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture all economic value
AGI would render ALL humans redundant... Investors too.
"Evolution is cleverer than you are" - Orgel's rule.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#8Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…
Has the same issue as Pascal's. Competing AGI projects (gods) exist and their believers might be the ones reaping the infinite rewards, not to mention the distinct possibility the AGI (god) doesn't actually see rewarding believers as its highest priority, and might choose to share its infinite rewards with people who aren't part of the inner circle, or even punish people who joined inner circles with the express intent of elevating themselves above ordinary people :)
Actually makes a bit more sense from the traditional view that AGI projects might not reach their goal but the well run ones are likely to have very commercially valuable byproducts anyway. If we were getting Star Trek economics out of it, who'd be interested in entirely obsolete concepts like "economic value" and "100x returns" anyway?
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#9Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…
> If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns
The article states that this is explicitly false. By design, OpenAI's investor returns are capped at 100x.
I find it odd that 3 other people have also replied to your comment and I'm the first one to mention that OpenAI has explicitly capped investor returns to prevent an explosion in inequality. I wonder how many people read the full article before commenting.
Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith
#10Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…
Pascal's wager is actually logically flawed.
If there are two separate AGI invented, and you could only have chosen to invest in one, then where's the infinite capture of value?
See this video on a reasonable argument about this: https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0