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Regardless of incentives, I don’t see any particular reason to think he has a more informed view than other experts on the trajectory of AI. He’s made several i

Regardless of incentives, I don’t see any particular reason to think he has a more informed view than other experts on the trajectory of AI. He’s made several incorrect bets (capsule networks). I’m sure he’s smart and all. His contributions were valuable. But he’s not special in this particular moment.

neilk 3y ago
Your viewpoint is fascinating. So the inventor of backpropagation, Turing award winner, Google researcher, mentor to the CTO of OpenAI, doesn’t have any special insights about AI and the tech industry that’s forming around it? He might as well be some guy off the street? Who, in your opinion, _does_ have enough context to be worth our attention? Because if you’re waiting for Sam Altman or the entire OpenAI team to say “guys, I think we made a mistake here” we’re going to be knee-deep in paperclips.
- eternalban 3y ago
  Authority figures will not matter. This technology, like nuclear weapons, will be pursued to the utmost by all actors capable of marshalling the resources, in secret if necessary. (After all, the 'Hydrogen bomb' was debated pro/con by established authorities, including Oppenheimer and Teller. Did that stop their development?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dark-Sun/Richard-Rhodes/9780684824147 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dark-Sun/Richard-Rhod... Today: Germany's relevant minister has already declared at G7 that Germany can not follow Italy's example. "Banning generative AI is not an option". https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/G-7-in-Japan/Banning-generative-AI-is-not-an-option-for-Germany-minister2 https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/G-7-in-Japan/Banning-gener... US Senate has a bill drawing the line on AI launching nuclear weapons but to think US military, intelligence, and industry will sit out the AI arms race is not realistic. https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/block_nuclear_launch_by_autonomous_ai_act_-_042623pdf.pdf https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/block_nuclear_la... China's CPC's future existence (imo) depends on AI based surveillance, propaganda, and realtime behavior conditioning. (re RT conditioning: We've already experienced this outselves via interacting with the recent chatbots to some extent. I certainly modulated my interactions to avoid the AI mommy retors.) https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/using-machine-learning-to-rule-the-chinese-communist-party/ https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/using-machi...
- meh8881 3y ago
  Someone who is actually doing it would be a lot more authoritative in my opinion. Hinton has been wrong on most of his big ideas in the past decade. He hasn’t actually been involved in the important advances of anything recent. Inventing backprop is great. No discredit to him there. But that’s not a free pass to be seen as someone who is on the cutting edge. But beyond all of that, what are we really asking? Are we asking about social ramifications? Because I don’t think the OpenAI devs are particularly noteworthy in their ability to divine those either. It’s more of a business question if anything. Are we talking about where the tech goes next? Because then it’s probably the devs or at least indie folks playing with the models themselves. None of that means Hinton’s opinions are wrong. Form your own opinions. Don’t delegate your thinking.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    I'm surprised you'd consider Hinton as not being "someone who is actually doing it". Are you basically saying that you only trust warnings about AI from people who have pushed the most recent update to the latest headline-grabbing AI system at the latest AI darling unicorn? If so, aren't those people strongly self-selected to be optimistic about AI's impacts, else they might not be so keen on actively building it? And that's even setting aside they would also be financially incentivized against publicly expressing whatever doubts they do hold. Isn't this is kind of like asking for authoritative opinions on carbon emissions from the people who are actually pumping the oil?
    - meh8881 3y ago
      No, that’s the opposite of what I’m saying. Asking Hinton for his opinions on the societal impact of new AI tech is like asking the people who used to pump oil 20 years ago. It’s both out of date and not really relevant to their skill set even if it’s adjacent.
      - Mike_12345 3y ago
        LOL. Hinton won the f**ing Turing Award for his research in deep learning / neural networks, and you're telling us his knowledge is irrelevant.
esafak 3y ago
What's wrong with capsule networks?
- meh8881 3y ago
  They didn’t really go anywhere.
  - StopTheWorld 3y ago
    They did in the human brain.
    - meh8881 3y ago
      Brain does not have capsule networks
      - StopTheWorld 3y ago
        I guess that means the brain does not have cortical minicolumns.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    You could have written the same thing about NNs for many years and you'd have been right. But the reason why Hinton has a Nobel prize to his name and you don't is because he placed a very long term bet and it paid off, in spite of lots of people saying that he wasn't going anywhere and that he should drop it. Who knows, maybe a decade or two from now we'll see a resurgence of capsule networks, or maybe not. But I'd be a bit more careful about rejecting Hinton's hunches out of hand, his track record is pretty good.
    - esafak 3y ago
      ACM Turing award.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
fuzzfactor 3y ago
There's something about being first that gives a pioneer a great head start that can't be matched when it comes to considering the implications of their groundbreaking work. Even if they're too busy doing the work, they're still thinking about what it would be like if it performed successfully, and it does seem to always take more retrospection before a leader can fully raise their head and more carefully consider unintended consequences. Early success can give the impression that future efforts have difficulty being as meaningful, but also realistically after that the successful individual does not need to struggle to prove themself any more the way the less-accomplished would be expected to do. Then there's seniority itself, and maturity levels that can not be gained any other way. Beyond that when retirement is within easy reach you don't really have the same obligation to decorum itself as you would earlier, in order to actually maintain the same desired level of decorum. Dr. Hinton seems to do a pretty good job of comparing himself to Oppenheimer. I don't see how anyone else can question his standing more seriously than that.

neilk 3y ago

Your viewpoint is fascinating. So the inventor of backpropagation, Turing award winner, Google researcher, mentor to the CTO of OpenAI, doesn’t have any special insights about AI and the tech industry that’s forming around it? He might as well be some guy off the street? Who, in your opinion, _does_ have enough context to be worth our attention? Because if you’re waiting for Sam Altman or the entire OpenAI team to say “guys, I think we made a mistake here” we’re going to be knee-deep in paperclips.

eternalban 3y ago
Authority figures will not matter. This technology, like nuclear weapons, will be pursued to the utmost by all actors capable of marshalling the resources, in secret if necessary. (After all, the 'Hydrogen bomb' was debated pro/con by established authorities, including Oppenheimer and Teller. Did that stop their development?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dark-Sun/Richard-Rhodes/9780684824147 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dark-Sun/Richard-Rhod... Today: Germany's relevant minister has already declared at G7 that Germany can not follow Italy's example. "Banning generative AI is not an option". https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/G-7-in-Japan/Banning-generative-AI-is-not-an-option-for-Germany-minister2 https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/G-7-in-Japan/Banning-gener... US Senate has a bill drawing the line on AI launching nuclear weapons but to think US military, intelligence, and industry will sit out the AI arms race is not realistic. https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/block_nuclear_launch_by_autonomous_ai_act_-_042623pdf.pdf https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/block_nuclear_la... China's CPC's future existence (imo) depends on AI based surveillance, propaganda, and realtime behavior conditioning. (re RT conditioning: We've already experienced this outselves via interacting with the recent chatbots to some extent. I certainly modulated my interactions to avoid the AI mommy retors.) https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/using-machine-learning-to-rule-the-chinese-communist-party/ https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/using-machi...
meh8881 3y ago
Someone who is actually doing it would be a lot more authoritative in my opinion. Hinton has been wrong on most of his big ideas in the past decade. He hasn’t actually been involved in the important advances of anything recent. Inventing backprop is great. No discredit to him there. But that’s not a free pass to be seen as someone who is on the cutting edge. But beyond all of that, what are we really asking? Are we asking about social ramifications? Because I don’t think the OpenAI devs are particularly noteworthy in their ability to divine those either. It’s more of a business question if anything. Are we talking about where the tech goes next? Because then it’s probably the devs or at least indie folks playing with the models themselves. None of that means Hinton’s opinions are wrong. Form your own opinions. Don’t delegate your thinking.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  I'm surprised you'd consider Hinton as not being "someone who is actually doing it". Are you basically saying that you only trust warnings about AI from people who have pushed the most recent update to the latest headline-grabbing AI system at the latest AI darling unicorn? If so, aren't those people strongly self-selected to be optimistic about AI's impacts, else they might not be so keen on actively building it? And that's even setting aside they would also be financially incentivized against publicly expressing whatever doubts they do hold. Isn't this is kind of like asking for authoritative opinions on carbon emissions from the people who are actually pumping the oil?
  - meh8881 3y ago
    No, that’s the opposite of what I’m saying. Asking Hinton for his opinions on the societal impact of new AI tech is like asking the people who used to pump oil 20 years ago. It’s both out of date and not really relevant to their skill set even if it’s adjacent.
    - Mike_12345 3y ago
      LOL. Hinton won the f**ing Turing Award for his research in deep learning / neural networks, and you're telling us his knowledge is irrelevant.

esafak 3y ago

What's wrong with capsule networks?

meh8881 3y ago
They didn’t really go anywhere.
- StopTheWorld 3y ago
  They did in the human brain.
  - meh8881 3y ago
    Brain does not have capsule networks
    - StopTheWorld 3y ago
      I guess that means the brain does not have cortical minicolumns.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  You could have written the same thing about NNs for many years and you'd have been right. But the reason why Hinton has a Nobel prize to his name and you don't is because he placed a very long term bet and it paid off, in spite of lots of people saying that he wasn't going anywhere and that he should drop it. Who knows, maybe a decade or two from now we'll see a resurgence of capsule networks, or maybe not. But I'd be a bit more careful about rejecting Hinton's hunches out of hand, his track record is pretty good.
  - esafak 3y ago
    ACM Turing award.
    - jacquesm 3y ago

fuzzfactor 3y ago

There's something about being first that gives a pioneer a great head start that can't be matched when it comes to considering the implications of their groundbreaking work. Even if they're too busy doing the work, they're still thinking about what it would be like if it performed successfully, and it does seem to always take more retrospection before a leader can fully raise their head and more carefully consider unintended consequences. Early success can give the impression that future efforts have difficulty being as meaningful, but also realistically after that the successful individual does not need to struggle to prove themself any more the way the less-accomplished would be expected to do. Then there's seniority itself, and maturity levels that can not be gained any other way. Beyond that when retirement is within easy reach you don't really have the same obligation to decorum itself as you would earlier, in order to actually maintain the same desired level of decorum. Dr. Hinton seems to do a pretty good job of comparing himself to Oppenheimer. I don't see how anyone else can question his standing more seriously than that.