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Let's hope in reality it isn't available only to the billionnaire owners of software companies. In those movies everyone else wasn't designing cool suites by ta

by vasco 4y ago

Let's hope in reality it isn't available only to the billionnaire owners of software companies. In those movies everyone else wasn't designing cool suites by talking to voice assistants.

atonse 4y ago
It won’t be. Some of the biggest companies in the tech world got that way by building platforms and ecosystems that others build on top of. AWS and Azure the most obvious examples. What’s more likely is that someone like a Microsoft will make it part of their cloud offerings so devs like us can build things on top. Why try to capture every market when you can build tools and take percentages of the rest of the economy?
bko 4y ago
The marginal cost of technology is pretty close to zero (albeit slightly higher for large LLM model inference) so it would make sense that the technology gets distributed widely. Kind of like how everyone has essentially the best smart phone. And it's laughable when someone tries to create a luxury smartphone for $10k and its just a sub-par Android with leather accents. If you have a technology with practically zero marginal cost, pricing it very low and distributing it widely would maximize your profit. Not to mention that once its out of the bag, others will know that its possible and copy it. [0] https://newatlas.com/vertu-ti-luxury-10000-dollar-android-smartphone/26255/ https://newatlas.com/vertu-ti-luxury-10000-dollar-android-sm...
- afpx 4y ago
  The problem won't be the cost. It will be access. Someone's going to say it's too powerful and restrict it.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    A similar thing also applies to all arguments in favor of transhumanism, which is worth pointing out
- slg 4y ago
  >If you have a technology with practically zero marginal cost, pricing it very low and distributing it widely would maximize your profit. This is just fundamentally not true or else all software would be sold for next to nothing. If a company is choosing between selling a billion copies of its software for $1 each or two copies of its software for $1b dollars each, it will choose to set the price at $1b. The sky-high potential of AGI means that a few very rich people/companies will be willing to pay an enormous amount of money to have a monopoly on the technology. That means the profit maximizing approach might be to put a huge price tag on the product.
  - sclarisse 4y ago
    That price tag only works if the firm has pricing power. In a very competitive market, it may find its pricing power isn’t strong enough, as other firms undercut it.
    - slg 4y ago
      >In a very competitive market... Yes, that was exactly the point that vasco was worrying about earlier in the thread since we don't yet know if it will be competitive market. I was refuting the point that price is dictated by marginal cost. It is dictated by the level of competition. If there is competition, we generally wouldn't have to worry about it only being available to billionaires.
  - codewiz 4y ago
    > This is just fundamentally not true or else all software would be sold for next to nothing. How much have you spent on purchasing software this year? For the past 15 years, pretty much 100% of the code running on my personal laptop and work desktop is opensource. The few remaining non-opensource programs, such as UEFI and wifi firmware, came free of charge with the hardware. The only software I directly purchased in this decade are videogames on Steam, and that's closer to purchasing artwork than a computer program.
    - slg 4y ago
      This is actually a good example of my point. The important part is not the marginal cost to produce the software, it is the value it creates for the user. As a salaried employee, there isn't much software out there that can either increase my income or decrease my expenses, so most of my personal software purchases end up being for leisure. However, software does provide tremendous value to my employer. As a result, they are willing to spend millions on it annually. In the example of selling an AGI product, why bother selling it to me for whatever the maximum price I could afford? I'm not going to put a mortgage on the house to buy it because it won't allow me to maximize income by working 10 salaried positions or anything like that. But my employer could save millions with it and therefore they would be willing to spend millions to buy it.
ChatGTP 4y ago
I'm kind of hoping it is available only to some people, not going to be nice when everyone can have an AI design weapons, viruses etc?
IncRnd 4y ago
Tony Stark is an exception, though. He was once a slave who escaped after he fooled his captor into letting him create a minature arc reactor that he embedded into his own chest in order to fly to freedom and safety - as well as to magnetically keep shrapnel from invading his heart and killing him. He isn't the normal billionaire owner of a software company (outside of comic books).
- gs17 4y ago
  Didn't he have JARVIS before all that? I'd expect the missiles he was demoing earlier in the movie to have had AI help in design.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    Nope. I'm talking about the very youthful Tony Stark, who was a defense contractor in 1963. [1] While he was demoing some new weapons in the jungles of Vietnam, he was captured by a Viet Cong warlord and forced to create weapons for the oppposing side. And, they didn't want to pay him defense contractor wages! So Iron Man was born, and Stark flew away with his humming arc reactor in his chest. [2] He looks incredibly youthful for being around 80. I guess that hum in his chest keeps him young. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Man-comic-book-character#ref309087 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Man-comic-book-charact... [2] https://ironman.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_Suspense https://ironman.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_Suspense

by vasco 4y ago

Let's hope in reality it isn't available only to the billionnaire owners of software companies. In those movies everyone else wasn't designing cool suites by talking to voice assistants.

atonse 4y ago

It won’t be. Some of the biggest companies in the tech world got that way by building platforms and ecosystems that others build on top of. AWS and Azure the most obvious examples. What’s more likely is that someone like a Microsoft will make it part of their cloud offerings so devs like us can build things on top. Why try to capture every market when you can build tools and take percentages of the rest of the economy?

bko 4y ago

The marginal cost of technology is pretty close to zero (albeit slightly higher for large LLM model inference) so it would make sense that the technology gets distributed widely. Kind of like how everyone has essentially the best smart phone. And it's laughable when someone tries to create a luxury smartphone for $10k and its just a sub-par Android with leather accents. If you have a technology with practically zero marginal cost, pricing it very low and distributing it widely would maximize your profit. Not to mention that once its out of the bag, others will know that its possible and copy it. [0] https://newatlas.com/vertu-ti-luxury-10000-dollar-android-smartphone/26255/ https://newatlas.com/vertu-ti-luxury-10000-dollar-android-sm...

afpx 4y ago
The problem won't be the cost. It will be access. Someone's going to say it's too powerful and restrict it.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  A similar thing also applies to all arguments in favor of transhumanism, which is worth pointing out
slg 4y ago
>If you have a technology with practically zero marginal cost, pricing it very low and distributing it widely would maximize your profit. This is just fundamentally not true or else all software would be sold for next to nothing. If a company is choosing between selling a billion copies of its software for $1 each or two copies of its software for $1b dollars each, it will choose to set the price at $1b. The sky-high potential of AGI means that a few very rich people/companies will be willing to pay an enormous amount of money to have a monopoly on the technology. That means the profit maximizing approach might be to put a huge price tag on the product.
- sclarisse 4y ago
  That price tag only works if the firm has pricing power. In a very competitive market, it may find its pricing power isn’t strong enough, as other firms undercut it.
  - slg 4y ago
    >In a very competitive market... Yes, that was exactly the point that vasco was worrying about earlier in the thread since we don't yet know if it will be competitive market. I was refuting the point that price is dictated by marginal cost. It is dictated by the level of competition. If there is competition, we generally wouldn't have to worry about it only being available to billionaires.
- codewiz 4y ago
  > This is just fundamentally not true or else all software would be sold for next to nothing. How much have you spent on purchasing software this year? For the past 15 years, pretty much 100% of the code running on my personal laptop and work desktop is opensource. The few remaining non-opensource programs, such as UEFI and wifi firmware, came free of charge with the hardware. The only software I directly purchased in this decade are videogames on Steam, and that's closer to purchasing artwork than a computer program.
  - slg 4y ago
    This is actually a good example of my point. The important part is not the marginal cost to produce the software, it is the value it creates for the user. As a salaried employee, there isn't much software out there that can either increase my income or decrease my expenses, so most of my personal software purchases end up being for leisure. However, software does provide tremendous value to my employer. As a result, they are willing to spend millions on it annually. In the example of selling an AGI product, why bother selling it to me for whatever the maximum price I could afford? I'm not going to put a mortgage on the house to buy it because it won't allow me to maximize income by working 10 salaried positions or anything like that. But my employer could save millions with it and therefore they would be willing to spend millions to buy it.

ChatGTP 4y ago

I'm kind of hoping it is available only to some people, not going to be nice when everyone can have an AI design weapons, viruses etc?

IncRnd 4y ago

Tony Stark is an exception, though. He was once a slave who escaped after he fooled his captor into letting him create a minature arc reactor that he embedded into his own chest in order to fly to freedom and safety - as well as to magnetically keep shrapnel from invading his heart and killing him. He isn't the normal billionaire owner of a software company (outside of comic books).

gs17 4y ago
Didn't he have JARVIS before all that? I'd expect the missiles he was demoing earlier in the movie to have had AI help in design.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  Nope. I'm talking about the very youthful Tony Stark, who was a defense contractor in 1963. [1] While he was demoing some new weapons in the jungles of Vietnam, he was captured by a Viet Cong warlord and forced to create weapons for the oppposing side. And, they didn't want to pay him defense contractor wages! So Iron Man was born, and Stark flew away with his humming arc reactor in his chest. [2] He looks incredibly youthful for being around 80. I guess that hum in his chest keeps him young. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Man-comic-book-character#ref309087 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iron-Man-comic-book-charact... [2] https://ironman.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_Suspense https://ironman.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_Suspense