>ai can help us in countless ways, from finding new cures for cancer to discovering solutions to the ecological crisis. Can it? "Storytelling AIs", i.e. LLMs,

>ai can help us in countless ways, from finding new cures for cancer to discovering solutions to the ecological crisis. Can it? "Storytelling AIs", i.e. LLMs, are not autonomous. Their goal is to predict text. They predict text. They are predictors. So, in the article, we casually drop the claim: "AI can make exponentially more powerful AI." Is it feasible for a predictor to run in a loop and exponentially improve, by itself? No. Is it potentially feasible for a predictor to run in a loop and generate outputs that may be used by a human to further improve its own outputs, or Rube Goldberg'd together by a human to steadily improve predicted outputs in general or for niche? Yes. But exponentially, and realistically, no. Hardware constraints, architectural constraints, performance constraints, monetary constraints, correct? Let's go back to fear, for a second. Nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, but a nuke can cause a "Buck" Turgidson can nudge an organization or machinery in the direction for more powerful nukes. LLMs can potentially produce the output to feed into more powerful "AI" in that way, with a "Buck" nudging it. But that's with the assumption that the predictor's outputs don't reduce performance. Can the predictor spit out a novel description of some architecture that may be used by a human that is "exponentially" more powerful? Unlikely. After re-reading the article, perhaps the joke is on me, because I detect some vague satirical wit. But when someone wants a government, the elected congressional or federal body in which elected individuals are knocking on dementia, catatonically voting on party lines, and are still figuring out email, to regulate for some vague idea of "safety" for some "AGI" entity they cannot even define, I smell bullshit. Not to mention, regulatory capture. Maybe that's the real "death of democracy." We've been through this over the past few years. Hysteria leads to regulation and government intervention, leads to large corporations to be able to plug their nose and survive via acquired capital, and/or use their resources to comply with the bureaucratic bullshit, while smaller businesses die, people lose their life savings, income inequality grows, a generation is set back for the rest of their life: we're worse off and outcomes are not improved as per the original goal of the regulation, in the end.