3 ms·

There was a spate of articles in the popular press in the last few years on the subject of "billionaire preppers," most notably this one (which was discussed he

There was a spate of articles in the popular press in the last few years on the subject of "billionaire preppers," most notably this one (which was discussed here): https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep... Before, it was easy to dismiss this growth industry as the natural result of certain people having more money than they know what to do with (and perhaps also, depending on your perspective, being overly cautious, or overly paranoid). But now I wonder if they had forewarning, and were making plans to best position and protect themselves for the coming massively destabilizing, winner-take-all wave of AI.

thfuran 4y ago
You think that someone was sitting on advances in ai for years before publishing so that they could warn billionaires that they need to build bunkers and that their stuff was still SOTA after that delay?
- 876978095789789 4y ago
  No, but I think the billionaires may have had a headsup concerning the models that were being built by OpenAi and others using the published research, and the capabilities and rates of progress of those models. Google supposedly sat (and is still sitting) on AI systems that, while perhaps not on par with GPT-3.5/4, were still much better than what they and others made publicly available, out of fear that it would damage their brand (by saying offensive things) and cannibalize their search business.