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Andreeseen first says AI is the most transformative technology since fire: > If I’m right about that and that’s how this is going to play out, then this is the
by Footkerchief 3y ago
Andreeseen first says AI is the most transformative technology since fire:
> If I’m right about that and that’s how this is going to play out, then this is the most important technological advance with the most positive benefits, basically, of anything we’ve done probably since, I don’t know, something like fire, this could be the really big one.
And then, when existential risk is mentioned, saying that AIs are "math and code" and "you're completely capable of understanding what it is":
> The thing is, what we’re dealing with here is something that you’re completely capable of understanding what it is. What it is it’s math and code. You can buy many textbooks that will explain the math and code to you, they’re all being updated right now to incorporate the transformer algorithm, there’s books already out on the market.
How can a technology be as transformative as fire, and simultaneously have implications that are easy to understand in the moment?
And for someone in Andreessen's position, who is positioned to profit enormously from unrestrained AI growth, what could explain this dissonance except for motivated reasoning?
- esafak 3y agoFire is a such a fitting example, it made me chuckle.
- JohnFen 3y agoAI is going to kill us all! Unless I can make a ton of money from it, then it's going to save us all!
- disqard 3y agoThank you for stating this in black-and-white.
- cubefox 3y agoHe is also missing the point, perhaps intentionally. Of course we can understand how the learning algorithms work, since these are code written by us. But not how the models work, since these are written by the learning algorithms, as they churn through the vast training data. At billions of parameters, models are black boxes.
- bamfly 3y agoSuch a weird direction to take it, total non-sequitur. It's like responding to concern about risks of nuclear war or bio-engineered pathogens with "pft, you can understand that tech, it's all in textbooks, it's just physics and engineering". Like... OK? So? That has nothing to do with it.
- goatlover 3y agoWhy go all the way back to fire when AI is dependent on electricity and microchips? Doubt a mechanical computer could have scaled up to run machine learning models.