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Interestingly, he keeps a record of his past predictions and how they are faring. The link is at the bottom of TFA. Seems like he has been reasonably successful

by topaz0 4y ago

Interestingly, he keeps a record of his past predictions and how they are faring. The link is at the bottom of TFA. Seems like he has been reasonably successful at this kind of prediction.

oh_sigh 4y ago
Has he predicted that his future predictions will be as successful as his previous predictions?
ftxbro 4y ago
He makes nine predictions at the end which he calls 'specific'. Four of them are most directly about GPT, and of these four, three are of the type "GPT is powerful and potentially dangerous or bad and might make bad or unexpected or scary things happen." (This follows the pattern I've noticed where the term "AGI skeptic" will soon, if not already, mean "I don't trust AGIs in positions of authority or power" rather than "I don't think the technology is capable of matching our level of cognition."). So let's grant him 8/9 of his predictions, and turn our attention to the one that seems to be his 'real' prediction. This specific and direct prediction about GPT is that "There will be no viable robotics applications that harness the serious power of GPTs in any meaningful way." which I mean, maybe he's trying to use the words "viable" or "serious" or "meaningful" to weaken his claim so that it's never wrong. If we assume he's not just making a vacuously weakened prediction, then I wonder if he has seen https://palm-e.github.io/ https://palm-e.github.io/ for example. You could say the prediction is wrong already, or that it will obviously be wrong before 2030, or that his phrasing makes it impossible for the prediction to ever be wrong. Speaking of when or if his predictions can be shown to be wrong, I thought it was weird that he only says "These predictions cover the time between now and 2030." whereas for his earlier predictions he seems to have made a more formalized way of incorporating his dates into his predictions which he's not using for his GPT predictions for some reason: --- I specify dates in three different ways: NIML meaning “Not In My Lifetime, i.e., not until after January 1st, 2050 NET some date, meaning “No Earlier Than” that date. BY some date, meaning “By” that date. Sometimes I will give both a NET and a BY for a single prediction, establishing a window in which I believe it will happen.

by topaz0 4y ago

Interestingly, he keeps a record of his past predictions and how they are faring. The link is at the bottom of TFA. Seems like he has been reasonably successful at this kind of prediction.

oh_sigh 4y ago

Has he predicted that his future predictions will be as successful as his previous predictions?

ftxbro 4y ago

He makes nine predictions at the end which he calls 'specific'. Four of them are most directly about GPT, and of these four, three are of the type "GPT is powerful and potentially dangerous or bad and might make bad or unexpected or scary things happen." (This follows the pattern I've noticed where the term "AGI skeptic" will soon, if not already, mean "I don't trust AGIs in positions of authority or power" rather than "I don't think the technology is capable of matching our level of cognition."). So let's grant him 8/9 of his predictions, and turn our attention to the one that seems to be his 'real' prediction. This specific and direct prediction about GPT is that "There will be no viable robotics applications that harness the serious power of GPTs in any meaningful way." which I mean, maybe he's trying to use the words "viable" or "serious" or "meaningful" to weaken his claim so that it's never wrong. If we assume he's not just making a vacuously weakened prediction, then I wonder if he has seen https://palm-e.github.io/ https://palm-e.github.io/ for example. You could say the prediction is wrong already, or that it will obviously be wrong before 2030, or that his phrasing makes it impossible for the prediction to ever be wrong. Speaking of when or if his predictions can be shown to be wrong, I thought it was weird that he only says "These predictions cover the time between now and 2030." whereas for his earlier predictions he seems to have made a more formalized way of incorporating his dates into his predictions which he's not using for his GPT predictions for some reason: --- I specify dates in three different ways: NIML meaning “Not In My Lifetime, i.e., not until after January 1st, 2050 NET some date, meaning “No Earlier Than” that date. BY some date, meaning “By” that date. Sometimes I will give both a NET and a BY for a single prediction, establishing a window in which I believe it will happen.