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This whole thing is gross. The sycophantic worship of Sam is gross and the paranoid AI safety people are insane. The singularity cultists are also insane. What

by api 3y ago

This whole thing is gross. The sycophantic worship of Sam is gross and the paranoid AI safety people are insane. The singularity cultists are also insane. What happened? I remember when most of the people in this industry were at least okay. A little weird but okay. Of course judging by social media it’s a microcosm of the rest of society. People are utterly losing their minds everywhere. It’s both scary and amusing.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
> What happened? Money. Hype + the greedy and credulous = huge payday.
andrewfromx 3y ago
i feel the same way api but I did watch this entire thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 and now I can't stop thinking about Eliezer is so smart, smarter than me, should I listen?
- api 3y ago
  No. You shouldn’t. He’s smart, but smart is like having a big engine in the car. Says nothing about the driving. Big engine plus bad driver just means a worse accident.
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  No, you shouldn’t. When someone sounds smart, that means they are an effective communicator and have good media presence. Those are valuable skills but don’t indicate whether the underlying ideas are accurate. Eliezer is filling the traditional doomsday prophet archetype, of which there have been thousands in history. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but should immediately raise questions. A deeper analysis of his ideas shows there are fundamental problems in his reasoning. First, He’s been consistently wrong about the future development and results in AI research so his understanding of AI is proven to be superficial. Second, His doomsday scenarios are based on a fundamental fallacy; that a GAI smarter than humans would be insanely stupid, unable to self reflect or solve moral quandaries. That’s not to say AI cannot be dangerous, but the types of doomsday scenarios he presents are unlikely. For instance because of acausal trade, Rokos Basilisk is a serious risk that should be treated properly, but Elizer denies it.
- Chamix 3y ago
  Luckily Eliezer has written hundreds of approachable essays on the development of his epistemic processes over at lesswrong.com so you too can learn rationality and derive the killeveryonism conclusion yourself. (/s since this is the internet)
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Microdosing trend? :-)
- svaha1728 3y ago
  Most credible theory I have read today.
Apocryphon 3y ago
ZIRP was a crazy time. Interest rates rise and things get even crazier.
skepticATX 3y ago
Silicon Valley has a way of diminishing humans. So of course deep learning is about to eclipse human intelligence - the vast majority of humans are just stochastic parrots and NPCs, after all.
- api 3y ago
  I visit often but I am so glad I never moved there.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Doesn't matter if you're not there in person, they've colonized the whole world.
jltsiren 3y ago
This is what happens when you have people trying to change the world. Opinions make people weird. If you want to avoid weirdness, just have a boring business that tries to make money by any means necessary.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown, etc.
- wesapien 3y ago
  We are already living a modern day oligarchic feudalism. Just lords owning land and cyberspace rent seeking from everyone.
pas 3y ago
> AI safety people are insane maybe, but are they right? by definition we are already doing the Skynet. as software ate the world we kinda forgot to add QA to the mix (economic necessity just means endless dark backlogs are where the exploding complexity goes to die) and now we are doing it with even more klunky jury rigged crazy probabilistic shit. the chances of systemic ooppsiies are increasing. yes, I agree, LLMs with this small contexts are very unlikely to move the needle, but we are working day and night on amplifying whatever effects it can and will have on our future. (not to mention that the AI-powered corporate hellscape achievement is already out of Pandora's box since everyone and their dog started using "data driven" fraud detection shit.
empath75 3y ago
> The sycophantic worship of Sam I don't think the support for Altman has much to do with that. There are a lot of people building companies and investing a lot of time of money into OpenAI products. They want to work with a company that they can do business with over the long term and isn't going to rug pull them.
- api 3y ago
  If you build a product on top of someone else’s SaaS and it’s fundamentally irreplaceable you are at their mercy forever. Eventually you will get rug pulled if only because they lose their edge or die.
  - empath75 3y ago
    That ship has sailed so long ago, it's already circumnavigated the globe several times.
    - grmpok 3y ago
      You seem to be saying something along the lines of: 'Hey look people have built these houses on sand and they are fine after 2 years, so its fine to keep building more houses on sand" Just because something works for a while does not mean its a good long term situation, unless you were saying something else which I failed to decipher.
macNchz 3y ago
I’ve been in Mugatu "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills" mode for a few years now, watching events unfold in the tech world, and, as you said, the rest of society.
bsder 3y ago
> What happened? Absurd money decouples people from consequences of reality. With no negative feedback to stabilize the control loop, it eventually goes haywire.
Jedd 3y ago
> The singularity cultists are also insane. Are you dismissing everyone that has concerns about unleashing the genie, or are you specifically referring to cult-like behaviour (I'm not familiar with any, but presumably it exists) around this subject? The rest of your post included some emotive and dismissive language, so I suspect it's the former - a general disregard for the precautionary principle, which in this instance should be first and foremost given the decidedly one-way nature of that particular threshold.

by api 3y ago

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

> What happened? Money. Hype + the greedy and credulous = huge payday.

andrewfromx 3y ago

i feel the same way api but I did watch this entire thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 and now I can't stop thinking about Eliezer is so smart, smarter than me, should I listen?

api 3y ago
No. You shouldn’t. He’s smart, but smart is like having a big engine in the car. Says nothing about the driving. Big engine plus bad driver just means a worse accident.
injeolmi_love 3y ago
No, you shouldn’t. When someone sounds smart, that means they are an effective communicator and have good media presence. Those are valuable skills but don’t indicate whether the underlying ideas are accurate. Eliezer is filling the traditional doomsday prophet archetype, of which there have been thousands in history. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but should immediately raise questions. A deeper analysis of his ideas shows there are fundamental problems in his reasoning. First, He’s been consistently wrong about the future development and results in AI research so his understanding of AI is proven to be superficial. Second, His doomsday scenarios are based on a fundamental fallacy; that a GAI smarter than humans would be insanely stupid, unable to self reflect or solve moral quandaries. That’s not to say AI cannot be dangerous, but the types of doomsday scenarios he presents are unlikely. For instance because of acausal trade, Rokos Basilisk is a serious risk that should be treated properly, but Elizer denies it.
Chamix 3y ago
Luckily Eliezer has written hundreds of approachable essays on the development of his epistemic processes over at lesswrong.com so you too can learn rationality and derive the killeveryonism conclusion yourself. (/s since this is the internet)

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Microdosing trend? :-)

svaha1728 3y ago
Most credible theory I have read today.

Apocryphon 3y ago

ZIRP was a crazy time. Interest rates rise and things get even crazier.

skepticATX 3y ago

Silicon Valley has a way of diminishing humans. So of course deep learning is about to eclipse human intelligence - the vast majority of humans are just stochastic parrots and NPCs, after all.

api 3y ago
I visit often but I am so glad I never moved there.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Doesn't matter if you're not there in person, they've colonized the whole world.

jltsiren 3y ago

This is what happens when you have people trying to change the world. Opinions make people weird. If you want to avoid weirdness, just have a boring business that tries to make money by any means necessary.

Apocryphon 3y ago
They laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown, etc.
wesapien 3y ago
We are already living a modern day oligarchic feudalism. Just lords owning land and cyberspace rent seeking from everyone.

pas 3y ago

> AI safety people are insane maybe, but are they right? by definition we are already doing the Skynet. as software ate the world we kinda forgot to add QA to the mix (economic necessity just means endless dark backlogs are where the exploding complexity goes to die) and now we are doing it with even more klunky jury rigged crazy probabilistic shit. the chances of systemic ooppsiies are increasing. yes, I agree, LLMs with this small contexts are very unlikely to move the needle, but we are working day and night on amplifying whatever effects it can and will have on our future. (not to mention that the AI-powered corporate hellscape achievement is already out of Pandora's box since everyone and their dog started using "data driven" fraud detection shit.

empath75 3y ago

> The sycophantic worship of Sam I don't think the support for Altman has much to do with that. There are a lot of people building companies and investing a lot of time of money into OpenAI products. They want to work with a company that they can do business with over the long term and isn't going to rug pull them.

api 3y ago
If you build a product on top of someone else’s SaaS and it’s fundamentally irreplaceable you are at their mercy forever. Eventually you will get rug pulled if only because they lose their edge or die.
- empath75 3y ago
  That ship has sailed so long ago, it's already circumnavigated the globe several times.
  - grmpok 3y ago
    You seem to be saying something along the lines of: 'Hey look people have built these houses on sand and they are fine after 2 years, so its fine to keep building more houses on sand" Just because something works for a while does not mean its a good long term situation, unless you were saying something else which I failed to decipher.

macNchz 3y ago

I’ve been in Mugatu "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills" mode for a few years now, watching events unfold in the tech world, and, as you said, the rest of society.

bsder 3y ago

> What happened? Absurd money decouples people from consequences of reality. With no negative feedback to stabilize the control loop, it eventually goes haywire.

Jedd 3y ago

> The singularity cultists are also insane. Are you dismissing everyone that has concerns about unleashing the genie, or are you specifically referring to cult-like behaviour (I'm not familiar with any, but presumably it exists) around this subject? The rest of your post included some emotive and dismissive language, so I suspect it's the former - a general disregard for the precautionary principle, which in this instance should be first and foremost given the decidedly one-way nature of that particular threshold.