17 ms·

Most technologies aren't races

98 points by HALtheWise 4y ago

iEchoic 4y ago
> But suppose AI is “only” a normal transformative technology, no more important than electricity, automobiles, or computers. Most people who think the AI "race" is important aren't supposing this. So I don't think you can just "suppose" this away in the second sentence.
somethoughts 4y ago
I'll throw out that two additional motivations that entities have to frame things as a race: - Delay thoughtful regulation of the technology - if you can delay it long enough until the entity gets big enough to fund lobbying efforts, its much easier to reach steady state/too big to fail status - Gain access to government funding - as a consultant, if there's no existential crisis of being forever stuck in second place (no one wants to be behind), its much harder to provide thought leadership seminars/get fully paid vacations (i.e. speaking events).
- oidar 4y ago
  Also, if you goal is full employment, think of the GDP advantage of a country having access to these technologies. It's a huge workforce multiplier.
  - vkou 4y ago
    High GDP does not in itself result in high employment. It is simply a measure of wealth produced in the measured economy. If I owned a fully-robotic factory that produced all the goods this country consumed, unemployment would be at 100%, but GDP would be the same (Because the amount of wealth produced would be the same as it is today.) Capitalists aren't going to share their profit until we take it from them, either through taxes[1], or, ah, 'land reform'[2]. [1] The carrot. [2] The stick.
    - deltree7 4y ago
      Yes and No. Output always creates more work, due to second law of thermodynamics (entropy). So, the more output you have, the more work you need to fight entropy. May be the Robots can deal with entropy too, but we aren't there yet. So, AI will increase need of workforce / labor
      - danaris 4y ago
        > Output always creates more work, due to second law of thermodynamics (entropy). ...You're gonna have to explain that one, because I don't see how those things are connected at all.
        deltree7 4y ago
        every good and service created need additional maintenance/fixing/organizing. It also increases complexity
        danaris 4y ago
        If we're positing a fully robotic factory to create the products, I feel very comfortable positing that either a) the products are fully disposable, or b) there can also be fully robotic maintenance/fixing/organizing of said products.
      - earthling8118 4y ago
        That's only true if we're at 100% efficiency. Which I can say with good certainty, we are not.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Apple didn't "win" the smartphone race, but they had a five year head start and ended up becoming the most valuable (publicly traded) company in the world. Tesla didn't "win" the EV market (and will likely dwindle), but it did become the most valuable car company and made Musk the richest person in the world (for a time). OpenAI likely won't win the AI market, but they're landing multi-million deals left right and center. They've got the home advantage as well - US and EU companies don't want to deal with Chinese hard- or software. It's not so much about winning, it's about getting a head start.
- thomasahle 4y ago
  It's easy to get a "head start" effect if you pick the top companies and make a cutoff line just before those companies launched their products. If you include pre-iphone smartphones and pre-tesla EVs, you'll get the opposite conclusion: Apple and Tesla demonstrated that a head start isn't necessary to surpass competitors and achieve market dominance. By making better technology you can leapfrog companies (like Nokia) that have been around for decades.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  Apple didn't "win" the smartphone race, but they had a five year head start and ended up becoming the most valuable (publicly traded) company in the world. The iphone was in 2007. The Blackberry preceded it by many years. Same for the Palm Pilot.
  - augment001 4y ago
    I had both, and frankly it’s like comparing a TRS-80 to a Mac.
  - signatoremo 4y ago
    This photo is a good if incomplete depiction of cellphones before and after iPhone [0] Many traditional phone makers ceased to exist in the iPhone era — Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Motorola, Ericsson, etc. Many new players took their places — Google, Samsung, Xiaomi, HTC. All smartphones are similar today. In that context Apple is a pioneer, with a head start. Wasn’t for long, mind you. [0]-https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/beforeandafteriphone.jpg https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/beforea...
fvdessen 4y ago
You can think like that in the USA or China, but in the rest of the world its quite obvious we’re not winning any races and we know the consequences of not winning them
- goatlover 4y ago
  Yeah, but the context of the article is whether we should work on alignment because of the possible existential threat to humanity if a hard takeoff scenario is plausible. If it is, AI-alignment becomes paramount for everyone. If not, then winning the race matters more, for countries like the US and China.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
I think Elon is trying to delay AI because he is so far behind in his AI ambitions. Altman is getting so much press and Elon is noticeably jealous. The pause would give him time to spin up a startup and attempt to compete.
- superfrank 4y ago
  Elon's been hesitant about AI for a while now, so I don't think it's only jealous, but I do agree that I think that's part of it.
  - ltdanimal 4y ago
    Except he isn't hesitant about the AI that is beneficial to him and his company. It doesn't make him wrong but it does make him a bit hypocritical.
    - superfrank 4y ago
      Totally agree that he's a hypocrite, but I've always assumed that "okay for me, but not for thee" mindset came mainly from ego. "If Tesla builds an AI, I'm smart enough that I can keep it in check. If someone else builds an AI their CEO is probably not smart enough to do the same thing." Elon has a long history of thinking he's smarter than everyone else and that even people who are experts in their field aren't as capable as he is (cave submarine).
- endisneigh 4y ago
  hasn't he been saying these things even before GPT, though?
- signatoremo 4y ago
  Not sure if his latest call is to buy more time, but to say that it is his only motive is just wrong. Musk has always voiced concern about AI, even if he pushes for it at the same time. This is from 2017 when OpenAI was still in his plan: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/04/elon-musk-says-global-race-for-ai-will-be-most-likely-cause-of-ww3.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/04/elon-musk-says-global-race-f... > “Last month he co-signed a letter with other leaders in robotics including Google Deep Mind’s Mustafa Suleyman, calling on the United Nations to ban killer robots”
crazygringo 4y ago
> But suppose AI is “only” a normal transformative technology, no more important than electricity, automobiles, or computers. That's the weak point of this article. Because the article then goes on to admit: > The most consequential “races” have been for specific military technologies during wars; most famously, the US won the “race” for nuclear weapons. America’s enemies got nukes soon afterwards, but the brief moment of dominance was enough to win World War II. And basically the fear is that AI is going to be exactly like nuclear weapons in terms of delivering an overwhelmingly decisive advantage, and that this could very much be concrete reality specifically in a war where China invades Taiwan. In everything from integrating millions of information sources to determine best strategy and tactics, to controlling swarms of smart drones and bombs and missiles. If there were ever a moment to compare something to a technological race like the nuclear bomb, I'd say AI fits it to a tee.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  War in Europe was won before nukes were deployed. War in the Pacific would have been won by conventional means too - it would have taken longer, with more casualties, but there was no chance for Japan to fight the US and the USSR, which declared war on Japan in August 1945, to a stalemate. What would have looked different would be the political outcome. If USSR moved its armies to the East to fight Japan, well, entire Korea and half of Japan could have become Communist. On the other hand, with the Soviet Army engaged in the Far East, countries like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia could have plausibly wrestled themselves free from the Soviet grip.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    I think something like "what if Germany had gotten nukes before the end of the war in Europe, and before the US" is a more interesting counterfactual than the US not getting nukes before the end of the Pacific war. Or Russia or another European country, to a lesser extent.
    - Yoric 4y ago
      It is true that both Germany and the US considered it a race. However, as it turns out, by the end of the war, Germany was actually pretty far from even seeing the finish line. For some reason, murdering or driving away many of your brightest minds because they happen to come from the wrong branch of the religious tree/diverge from the mainstream sexual orientation/don't adhere to the political cult in power doesn't help come up with breakthroughs in fundamental sciences.
skwirl 4y ago
There seems to be some unfortunate social herding around AI beliefs in the 'rationalist' community that seems very un-rationalism-like to me. Some of these arguments are really poor.
ftxbro 4y ago
"when the US invented nukes, its enemies were stuck with normal bombs; there is no slightly-worse-nuke that can only destroy half a city." I'm not an expert on what happened to Dresden but I heard it was ... a lot.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  I was going to quote that exact sentence. A night of bombing Tokyo killed approximately as many people as the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
  - ToValueFunfetti 4y ago
    I feel like the fact that that was 334 planes dropping 1665 tons of mostly 500lb bombs over the course of a night is an important distinction from a single bomb that does the same damage.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Not really as even with WWII tech the bombs could target specific areas. A nuclear bomb is more destructive for a few blocks around the blast, but get a couple miles out in the city and the damage is much less than a smaller bomb hit. Modern military doctrine is hitting a whole city is bad. You want to hit specific targets and not collateral damage to other things. Discredited WWII doctrine was killing civilians would make them surrender so hitting the whole city was good. Which lens you look at military doctrine says which is better.
    - travisjungroth 4y ago
      Obviously there are huge differences and it ushered in a new era of weaponry. What I want to point out is that atomic weapons were not an immediate step-change in destructive power. They’re actually not an exception to the greater point the author was making. The destruction caused by a single military operation was in the same league. The logistics were actually harder in some ways than traditional bombing. It would be months before the US would have more atomic weapons after the first two. So the one bomb versus hundreds doesn’t make a big difference when you have zero. This would all change dramatically over the coming years. But at the time of its first use, the atomic bomb was not as much of a leap forward in capability as you’d probably think.
walkhour 4y ago
> If you don’t believe in crazy science fiction scenarios like these, fine. But then why are you so sure that it’s crucial to “win” the AI “race”? The whole point of the article is that either AI is not that big of a deal and like many other technologies (e.g. electricity, cars, ... ), or it's so revolutionary that's it's so hard to align that we're doomed. Well, can't it be something else? Can't it be something very safe which gives a country a 200 year head start?
- anon84873628 4y ago
  Sure. We just don't have examples in history where the head start is as big as 200 years. Well, there is a difference between the "developed" and "developing" world, but that doesn't seem to be due to access to a single specific technology...
  - walkhour 4y ago
    We also don't have examples of one of the two contemplated options, we haven't seen a technology that has destroyed the world either.
jmartrican 4y ago
I disagree whole heartedly. There are winning countries for various technologies. Yes there is tech that can be outsourced to another country, passing the winning baton to that country. Countries can also spend a lot on R&D to reach parity with established winners, hence making multiple winners. Lets use car manufacturing example. Yes North America and Germany became early winners, and eventually Japan and Korea have become part of the winning club. But many other countries are not winning here. There are countries that can only make subpar cars for the local market, or make no cars at all and must import them all. So if they are winning, what exactly are these countries winning? They are winning money and influence. US and Japan sell more cars overseas, that's more money into their country and into the government's coffers.
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  Thanks this was my immediate objection, as well. And who can say that being an early computer & Internet center didn't privilege America? The majority of big Internet companies are American, and they're now collecting rent across the globe!
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> You may have GPT-3, GPT-4, some future GPT-5, One thing that is a little different with these AIs is the ability to improve programming. I bet, GPT-4 can make it simpler for humans to build/deploy GPT-5. GPT-5, could do even more of the heavy lifting for GPT-6.
Imnimo 4y ago
>China is currently about 2 years behind the US in AI. How can this be true if AI is not a race? What does it even mean to be behind in a technology that isn't a race?
- vermilingua 4y ago
  Traffic isn’t a race either, but you can still be behind other cars.
frellus 4y ago
Two things can be true at once: * being first doesn't guarantee success (otherwise we would all own Xerox laptops right now) * hard research and development is always a race in terms of getting to a product before running out of money Basic economic theory shows there is always a scarcity of resources - money, time, market, people. The faster you are in front of the pack, the more likely you will get the lions share of money, the more people buying your product, and the more people wanting to join your venture. The secret is to never fool yourself that you have unlimited time or money. That pathology leads companies to burn cash and take too much time choosing the "perfect" over the "really good", never getting to market. That's where I believe most startups failed in the past few years, and we're seeing that now more clearly with the desert of VC investment. You can fool yourself, but you cannot pretend basic economic forces don't exist.
jongjong 4y ago
These arguments make sense. I think there isn't going to be a single dominant LLM. There will be multiple competing ones. It's difficult to see how companies will achieve lock in. Natural language is the most flexible interface. A front end app could easily switch from one LLM to a different LLM behind the scenes with very little effort. It's basically one API endpoint... How intelligent can the LLMs get and still be useful to humans? There is a point beyond which intelligence won't have any use for us. Humans may have already reached this point in some industries. Intelligence above a certain threshold doesn't have much value.
ilc 4y ago
To ignore what happens when if the "other side" wins a race, is ignorant. Imagine the Germans nuking London in 1941. Imagine the chilling effect this might have on the US public's willingness to enter WWII? To say something had no impact is very different than it could have a MAJOR impact. And nuclear weapons are clearly an example of this. AI is much the same, though I think 70% of the shift occurred with unmanned vehicles. The ability to send something with no person in it, to fight and kill a person is a HUGE game changer. When that 'something' gets better, smaller, and smarter... the edge becomes all the more decisive. Also the ability to take in much more data... Imagine having 100,000 sensors you want to understand reasonably well. You may not have enough trained humans. But an AI? Maybe... And maybe it can correlate the signals etc. AI is a game changer, and those saying it is as powerful as the bomb may not be underselling it. Mainly because of the precision and deniability the end results may offer.
boringuser2 4y ago
The first country to develop AI will either permanently rule the world or be destroyed with the rest of us. This isn't rocket science.

98 points by HALtheWise 4y ago

> But suppose AI is “only” a normal transformative technology, no more important than electricity, automobiles, or computers. Most people who think the AI "race" is important aren't supposing this. So I don't think you can just "suppose" this away in the second sentence.

somethoughts 4y ago

I'll throw out that two additional motivations that entities have to frame things as a race: - Delay thoughtful regulation of the technology - if you can delay it long enough until the entity gets big enough to fund lobbying efforts, its much easier to reach steady state/too big to fail status - Gain access to government funding - as a consultant, if there's no existential crisis of being forever stuck in second place (no one wants to be behind), its much harder to provide thought leadership seminars/get fully paid vacations (i.e. speaking events).

oidar 4y ago
Also, if you goal is full employment, think of the GDP advantage of a country having access to these technologies. It's a huge workforce multiplier.
- vkou 4y ago
  High GDP does not in itself result in high employment. It is simply a measure of wealth produced in the measured economy. If I owned a fully-robotic factory that produced all the goods this country consumed, unemployment would be at 100%, but GDP would be the same (Because the amount of wealth produced would be the same as it is today.) Capitalists aren't going to share their profit until we take it from them, either through taxes[1], or, ah, 'land reform'[2]. [1] The carrot. [2] The stick.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Yes and No. Output always creates more work, due to second law of thermodynamics (entropy). So, the more output you have, the more work you need to fight entropy. May be the Robots can deal with entropy too, but we aren't there yet. So, AI will increase need of workforce / labor
    - danaris 4y ago
      > Output always creates more work, due to second law of thermodynamics (entropy). ...You're gonna have to explain that one, because I don't see how those things are connected at all.
      - deltree7 4y ago
        every good and service created need additional maintenance/fixing/organizing. It also increases complexity
        danaris 4y ago
        If we're positing a fully robotic factory to create the products, I feel very comfortable positing that either a) the products are fully disposable, or b) there can also be fully robotic maintenance/fixing/organizing of said products.
    - earthling8118 4y ago
      That's only true if we're at 100% efficiency. Which I can say with good certainty, we are not.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Apple didn't "win" the smartphone race, but they had a five year head start and ended up becoming the most valuable (publicly traded) company in the world. Tesla didn't "win" the EV market (and will likely dwindle), but it did become the most valuable car company and made Musk the richest person in the world (for a time). OpenAI likely won't win the AI market, but they're landing multi-million deals left right and center. They've got the home advantage as well - US and EU companies don't want to deal with Chinese hard- or software. It's not so much about winning, it's about getting a head start.

thomasahle 4y ago
It's easy to get a "head start" effect if you pick the top companies and make a cutoff line just before those companies launched their products. If you include pre-iphone smartphones and pre-tesla EVs, you'll get the opposite conclusion: Apple and Tesla demonstrated that a head start isn't necessary to surpass competitors and achieve market dominance. By making better technology you can leapfrog companies (like Nokia) that have been around for decades.
paulpauper 4y ago
Apple didn't "win" the smartphone race, but they had a five year head start and ended up becoming the most valuable (publicly traded) company in the world. The iphone was in 2007. The Blackberry preceded it by many years. Same for the Palm Pilot.
- augment001 4y ago
  I had both, and frankly it’s like comparing a TRS-80 to a Mac.
- signatoremo 4y ago
  This photo is a good if incomplete depiction of cellphones before and after iPhone [0] Many traditional phone makers ceased to exist in the iPhone era — Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Motorola, Ericsson, etc. Many new players took their places — Google, Samsung, Xiaomi, HTC. All smartphones are similar today. In that context Apple is a pioneer, with a head start. Wasn’t for long, mind you. [0]-https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/beforeandafteriphone.jpg https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/beforea...

fvdessen 4y ago

You can think like that in the USA or China, but in the rest of the world its quite obvious we’re not winning any races and we know the consequences of not winning them

goatlover 4y ago
Yeah, but the context of the article is whether we should work on alignment because of the possible existential threat to humanity if a hard takeoff scenario is plausible. If it is, AI-alignment becomes paramount for everyone. If not, then winning the race matters more, for countries like the US and China.

cactusplant7374 4y ago

I think Elon is trying to delay AI because he is so far behind in his AI ambitions. Altman is getting so much press and Elon is noticeably jealous. The pause would give him time to spin up a startup and attempt to compete.

superfrank 4y ago
Elon's been hesitant about AI for a while now, so I don't think it's only jealous, but I do agree that I think that's part of it.
- ltdanimal 4y ago
  Except he isn't hesitant about the AI that is beneficial to him and his company. It doesn't make him wrong but it does make him a bit hypocritical.
  - superfrank 4y ago
    Totally agree that he's a hypocrite, but I've always assumed that "okay for me, but not for thee" mindset came mainly from ego. "If Tesla builds an AI, I'm smart enough that I can keep it in check. If someone else builds an AI their CEO is probably not smart enough to do the same thing." Elon has a long history of thinking he's smarter than everyone else and that even people who are experts in their field aren't as capable as he is (cave submarine).
endisneigh 4y ago
hasn't he been saying these things even before GPT, though?
signatoremo 4y ago
Not sure if his latest call is to buy more time, but to say that it is his only motive is just wrong. Musk has always voiced concern about AI, even if he pushes for it at the same time. This is from 2017 when OpenAI was still in his plan: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/04/elon-musk-says-global-race-for-ai-will-be-most-likely-cause-of-ww3.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/04/elon-musk-says-global-race-f... > “Last month he co-signed a letter with other leaders in robotics including Google Deep Mind’s Mustafa Suleyman, calling on the United Nations to ban killer robots”

crazygringo 4y ago

> But suppose AI is “only” a normal transformative technology, no more important than electricity, automobiles, or computers. That's the weak point of this article. Because the article then goes on to admit: > The most consequential “races” have been for specific military technologies during wars; most famously, the US won the “race” for nuclear weapons. America’s enemies got nukes soon afterwards, but the brief moment of dominance was enough to win World War II. And basically the fear is that AI is going to be exactly like nuclear weapons in terms of delivering an overwhelmingly decisive advantage, and that this could very much be concrete reality specifically in a war where China invades Taiwan. In everything from integrating millions of information sources to determine best strategy and tactics, to controlling swarms of smart drones and bombs and missiles. If there were ever a moment to compare something to a technological race like the nuclear bomb, I'd say AI fits it to a tee.

inglor_cz 4y ago
War in Europe was won before nukes were deployed. War in the Pacific would have been won by conventional means too - it would have taken longer, with more casualties, but there was no chance for Japan to fight the US and the USSR, which declared war on Japan in August 1945, to a stalemate. What would have looked different would be the political outcome. If USSR moved its armies to the East to fight Japan, well, entire Korea and half of Japan could have become Communist. On the other hand, with the Soviet Army engaged in the Far East, countries like Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia could have plausibly wrestled themselves free from the Soviet grip.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I think something like "what if Germany had gotten nukes before the end of the war in Europe, and before the US" is a more interesting counterfactual than the US not getting nukes before the end of the Pacific war. Or Russia or another European country, to a lesser extent.
  - Yoric 4y ago
    It is true that both Germany and the US considered it a race. However, as it turns out, by the end of the war, Germany was actually pretty far from even seeing the finish line. For some reason, murdering or driving away many of your brightest minds because they happen to come from the wrong branch of the religious tree/diverge from the mainstream sexual orientation/don't adhere to the political cult in power doesn't help come up with breakthroughs in fundamental sciences.

skwirl 4y ago

There seems to be some unfortunate social herding around AI beliefs in the 'rationalist' community that seems very un-rationalism-like to me. Some of these arguments are really poor.

ftxbro 4y ago

"when the US invented nukes, its enemies were stuck with normal bombs; there is no slightly-worse-nuke that can only destroy half a city." I'm not an expert on what happened to Dresden but I heard it was ... a lot.

travisjungroth 4y ago
I was going to quote that exact sentence. A night of bombing Tokyo killed approximately as many people as the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
- ToValueFunfetti 4y ago
  I feel like the fact that that was 334 planes dropping 1665 tons of mostly 500lb bombs over the course of a night is an important distinction from a single bomb that does the same damage.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Not really as even with WWII tech the bombs could target specific areas. A nuclear bomb is more destructive for a few blocks around the blast, but get a couple miles out in the city and the damage is much less than a smaller bomb hit. Modern military doctrine is hitting a whole city is bad. You want to hit specific targets and not collateral damage to other things. Discredited WWII doctrine was killing civilians would make them surrender so hitting the whole city was good. Which lens you look at military doctrine says which is better.
  - travisjungroth 4y ago
    Obviously there are huge differences and it ushered in a new era of weaponry. What I want to point out is that atomic weapons were not an immediate step-change in destructive power. They’re actually not an exception to the greater point the author was making. The destruction caused by a single military operation was in the same league. The logistics were actually harder in some ways than traditional bombing. It would be months before the US would have more atomic weapons after the first two. So the one bomb versus hundreds doesn’t make a big difference when you have zero. This would all change dramatically over the coming years. But at the time of its first use, the atomic bomb was not as much of a leap forward in capability as you’d probably think.

walkhour 4y ago

> If you don’t believe in crazy science fiction scenarios like these, fine. But then why are you so sure that it’s crucial to “win” the AI “race”? The whole point of the article is that either AI is not that big of a deal and like many other technologies (e.g. electricity, cars, ... ), or it's so revolutionary that's it's so hard to align that we're doomed. Well, can't it be something else? Can't it be something very safe which gives a country a 200 year head start?

anon84873628 4y ago
Sure. We just don't have examples in history where the head start is as big as 200 years. Well, there is a difference between the "developed" and "developing" world, but that doesn't seem to be due to access to a single specific technology...
- walkhour 4y ago
  We also don't have examples of one of the two contemplated options, we haven't seen a technology that has destroyed the world either.

jmartrican 4y ago

I disagree whole heartedly. There are winning countries for various technologies. Yes there is tech that can be outsourced to another country, passing the winning baton to that country. Countries can also spend a lot on R&D to reach parity with established winners, hence making multiple winners. Lets use car manufacturing example. Yes North America and Germany became early winners, and eventually Japan and Korea have become part of the winning club. But many other countries are not winning here. There are countries that can only make subpar cars for the local market, or make no cars at all and must import them all. So if they are winning, what exactly are these countries winning? They are winning money and influence. US and Japan sell more cars overseas, that's more money into their country and into the government's coffers.

droopyEyelids 4y ago
Thanks this was my immediate objection, as well. And who can say that being an early computer & Internet center didn't privilege America? The majority of big Internet companies are American, and they're now collecting rent across the globe!

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> You may have GPT-3, GPT-4, some future GPT-5, One thing that is a little different with these AIs is the ability to improve programming. I bet, GPT-4 can make it simpler for humans to build/deploy GPT-5. GPT-5, could do even more of the heavy lifting for GPT-6.

Imnimo 4y ago

>China is currently about 2 years behind the US in AI. How can this be true if AI is not a race? What does it even mean to be behind in a technology that isn't a race?

vermilingua 4y ago
Traffic isn’t a race either, but you can still be behind other cars.

frellus 4y ago

Two things can be true at once: * being first doesn't guarantee success (otherwise we would all own Xerox laptops right now) * hard research and development is always a race in terms of getting to a product before running out of money Basic economic theory shows there is always a scarcity of resources - money, time, market, people. The faster you are in front of the pack, the more likely you will get the lions share of money, the more people buying your product, and the more people wanting to join your venture. The secret is to never fool yourself that you have unlimited time or money. That pathology leads companies to burn cash and take too much time choosing the "perfect" over the "really good", never getting to market. That's where I believe most startups failed in the past few years, and we're seeing that now more clearly with the desert of VC investment. You can fool yourself, but you cannot pretend basic economic forces don't exist.

jongjong 4y ago

These arguments make sense. I think there isn't going to be a single dominant LLM. There will be multiple competing ones. It's difficult to see how companies will achieve lock in. Natural language is the most flexible interface. A front end app could easily switch from one LLM to a different LLM behind the scenes with very little effort. It's basically one API endpoint... How intelligent can the LLMs get and still be useful to humans? There is a point beyond which intelligence won't have any use for us. Humans may have already reached this point in some industries. Intelligence above a certain threshold doesn't have much value.

ilc 4y ago

To ignore what happens when if the "other side" wins a race, is ignorant. Imagine the Germans nuking London in 1941. Imagine the chilling effect this might have on the US public's willingness to enter WWII? To say something had no impact is very different than it could have a MAJOR impact. And nuclear weapons are clearly an example of this. AI is much the same, though I think 70% of the shift occurred with unmanned vehicles. The ability to send something with no person in it, to fight and kill a person is a HUGE game changer. When that 'something' gets better, smaller, and smarter... the edge becomes all the more decisive. Also the ability to take in much more data... Imagine having 100,000 sensors you want to understand reasonably well. You may not have enough trained humans. But an AI? Maybe... And maybe it can correlate the signals etc. AI is a game changer, and those saying it is as powerful as the bomb may not be underselling it. Mainly because of the precision and deniability the end results may offer.

boringuser2 4y ago

The first country to develop AI will either permanently rule the world or be destroyed with the rest of us. This isn't rocket science.