The tech world’s attention right now seems to be entirely captivated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which to many people represents a qualitative jump in the capabilities of language models. At this moment, I think it’s important to take a step back and take stock of the situation, to ask on the one hand whether the current hype is justified, and to consider on the other hand whether the whole project is really as dangerous as some claim it is. There are already a good dozen factions with differing views and interpretations of AI. I'll try to cover as many of them as I can, one by one.
Right, AI will evolve by scaling up, changing its neural architecture, thinking at a thousand or a million times human speed; and humans will keep up by... doing what, exactly?
And does a time come when the AI is making use of humans, rather than vice versa? And then another moment arrives, at which it no longer even needs humans?
We know this about tsunamis due to experience as well as a clear mechanism of action that’s easily measurable. We know this about the current phase of AI due to ... ?
Experience: The human race now has ample experience of computers surpassing human ability in various areas. We have rather less experience of humans making a comeback to first place.
Mechanism of action: Algorithmic progress combined with the hardware advantages of computers.
Bars
"AI and humans can co-evolve"
Right, AI will evolve by scaling up, changing its neural architecture, thinking at a thousand or a million times human speed; and humans will keep up by... doing what, exactly?
By making use of AI.
And does a time come when the AI is making use of humans, rather than vice versa? And then another moment arrives, at which it no longer even needs humans?
https://twitter.com/yeetgenstein/status/1443685845748355072
https://www.google.com/search?q=outrun+a+tsunami
We know this about tsunamis due to experience as well as a clear mechanism of action that’s easily measurable. We know this about the current phase of AI due to ... ?
Experience: The human race now has ample experience of computers surpassing human ability in various areas. We have rather less experience of humans making a comeback to first place.
Mechanism of action: Algorithmic progress combined with the hardware advantages of computers.