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This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. Incredible. If nothing else I’m glad to be able

This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. Incredible. If nothing else I’m glad to be able to witness this absurdity live. This is the sort of thing where if it were a subplot in a book I’d say the writing is bad. Ironically they would’ve had a better outcome if they just asked GPT-4 and followed its advice.

abkolan 3y ago
> This is the sort of thing where if it were a subplot in a book I’d say the writing is bad. Absolutely, closes the book this sort of stuff doesn't happen in real life.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  That’s how you know it’s real. Too crazy for a book.
Elextric 3y ago
The last point is indeed true. It's quite mind-boggling to me.
hef19898 3y ago
A story arc like this propqbly wouldn't have made it into Silicon Valley, the show, for being to exagerated and unrealistic.
seydor 3y ago
At least can I have the movie rights?
adverbly 3y ago
> This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. Incredible. Want to know a dirty secret? Nobody knows what they're doing. Some think they do - but don't. (idiots) Some know they don't - but act like they do. (cons) And some know they don't - and are honest about it. (children) Pick your poison, but we all suck in different ways - and usually in a different way based on our background. Business people who are the best in the world tend to be cons. Technical people who are the best tend to be children. You get a culture clash between these two, and it is especially bad when you see someone from one background operate in the opposing domain using their background's cultural norm. So when Ilya runs business like a child. Or when Elon hops on an internal call with the twitter engineering team plus geohot and starts trying to confidently tell them about problems with a system that he knows nothing about. Sure makes for great entertainment though!
- asimovfan 3y ago
  Buddhas know what they are doing
- singularity2001 3y ago
  what about those who think they know but in truth they don't? "humans"?
  - civilitty 3y ago
    "Human" and "idiot" are synonyms.
  - viktree 3y ago
    See > Some think they do - but don't. (idiots)
- fl7305 3y ago
  > Want to know a dirty secret? > Nobody knows what they're doing. There is a famous quote from the 1600s: "An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur" "Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?" The context is that the son was preparing to participate in high level diplomacy and worried about being out of his league, and the quote is from his father, an elder statesman.
  - salamandersss 3y ago
    I love this quote, and suspect the lack of wisdom was referring to wisdom to be a good steward of the public resources rather than their infinite wisdom in finding cunning and deceptive ways to plunder it.
    - jrajav 3y ago
      No, even this is just a darkly comforting illusion. We like to feel that we as a species are still in control. That yes, we are gutting and destroying natural earth, complicit with modern slavery and war, and that's all terrible and we should do our best to stop it. BUT - at the very least, those bastards at the top know what they're doing when it comes to making money, so at least we'll have a stellar economy and rapid technological advancement, despite all that. The painful truth here being that no, there's no cunning. There's no brutal optimization. Any value created and technological progress made is mostly incidental, mostly down to people at the bottom working hard just to survive, and a few good ideas here and there. The ones at the top are mostly just lucky and along for the ride, just as bumbling and lost as the rest of us when it comes to global happenings or even just successfully interacting with others.
defen 3y ago
> This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. This is not an original point by me - I've seen multiple people make similar comments on here over the weekend - but these are the people who think they are best qualified to prevent an artificial superintelligence from destroying humanity, and they can't even coordinate the actions of a few intelligent humans.
- subsistence234 3y ago
  >these are the people who think they are best qualified to prevent an artificial superintelligence from destroying humanity do they believe that? they happen to be the ones who can pull the brakes in order to allow someone on earth the chance to prevent it. if they don't pull the brakes and if humankind is unlucky that superintelligence emerges quickly, then it doesn't matter whether or not anyone on earth can figure out alignment, nobody has the chance to try.
fl7305 3y ago
> Ironically they would’ve had a better outcome if they just asked GPT-4 and followed its advice. I just tried, and GPT-4 gave me a professional and neutrally worded press release like you pointed out. More realistically, this is why you have highly paid PR consultants. Right now, every tweet and statement should go through one. That doesn't look like it's happening. What's next? "I'm sorry you feel you need an apology from me"?
Towaway69 3y ago
> Ironically they would’ve had a better outcome if they just asked GPT-4 and followed its advice. Perhaps they did but it was hallucinating at the time? /s?
CSMastermind 3y ago
It's a bit scary that there are people who think they can align a super intelligence but couldn't forecast the outcome of their own actions 3 days into the future.
- subsistence234 3y ago
  they're not sure whether they can align super intelligence, they're sure that somebody needs to figure out how to align super intelligence before it emerges.
razodactyl 3y ago
I hate how reasonable this statement is.... 2 years ago you would be dismissed as an idiot.
- razodactyl 3y ago
  I still can't believe there's a computer program with more logic and restraint that the majority of humanity and even worse it can call the right shots a non-negligible percent of the time.

abkolan 3y ago

> This is the sort of thing where if it were a subplot in a book I’d say the writing is bad. Absolutely, closes the book this sort of stuff doesn't happen in real life.

Aeolun 3y ago
That’s how you know it’s real. Too crazy for a book.

Elextric 3y ago

The last point is indeed true. It's quite mind-boggling to me.

hef19898 3y ago

A story arc like this propqbly wouldn't have made it into Silicon Valley, the show, for being to exagerated and unrealistic.

seydor 3y ago

At least can I have the movie rights?

adverbly 3y ago

> This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. Incredible. Want to know a dirty secret? Nobody knows what they're doing. Some think they do - but don't. (idiots) Some know they don't - but act like they do. (cons) And some know they don't - and are honest about it. (children) Pick your poison, but we all suck in different ways - and usually in a different way based on our background. Business people who are the best in the world tend to be cons. Technical people who are the best tend to be children. You get a culture clash between these two, and it is especially bad when you see someone from one background operate in the opposing domain using their background's cultural norm. So when Ilya runs business like a child. Or when Elon hops on an internal call with the twitter engineering team plus geohot and starts trying to confidently tell them about problems with a system that he knows nothing about. Sure makes for great entertainment though!

asimovfan 3y ago
Buddhas know what they are doing
singularity2001 3y ago
what about those who think they know but in truth they don't? "humans"?
- civilitty 3y ago
  "Human" and "idiot" are synonyms.
- viktree 3y ago
  See > Some think they do - but don't. (idiots)
fl7305 3y ago
> Want to know a dirty secret? > Nobody knows what they're doing. There is a famous quote from the 1600s: "An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur" "Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?" The context is that the son was preparing to participate in high level diplomacy and worried about being out of his league, and the quote is from his father, an elder statesman.
- salamandersss 3y ago
  I love this quote, and suspect the lack of wisdom was referring to wisdom to be a good steward of the public resources rather than their infinite wisdom in finding cunning and deceptive ways to plunder it.
  - jrajav 3y ago
    No, even this is just a darkly comforting illusion. We like to feel that we as a species are still in control. That yes, we are gutting and destroying natural earth, complicit with modern slavery and war, and that's all terrible and we should do our best to stop it. BUT - at the very least, those bastards at the top know what they're doing when it comes to making money, so at least we'll have a stellar economy and rapid technological advancement, despite all that. The painful truth here being that no, there's no cunning. There's no brutal optimization. Any value created and technological progress made is mostly incidental, mostly down to people at the bottom working hard just to survive, and a few good ideas here and there. The ones at the top are mostly just lucky and along for the ride, just as bumbling and lost as the rest of us when it comes to global happenings or even just successfully interacting with others.

defen 3y ago

> This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what they’re doing. This is not an original point by me - I've seen multiple people make similar comments on here over the weekend - but these are the people who think they are best qualified to prevent an artificial superintelligence from destroying humanity, and they can't even coordinate the actions of a few intelligent humans.

subsistence234 3y ago
>these are the people who think they are best qualified to prevent an artificial superintelligence from destroying humanity do they believe that? they happen to be the ones who can pull the brakes in order to allow someone on earth the chance to prevent it. if they don't pull the brakes and if humankind is unlucky that superintelligence emerges quickly, then it doesn't matter whether or not anyone on earth can figure out alignment, nobody has the chance to try.

fl7305 3y ago

> Ironically they would’ve had a better outcome if they just asked GPT-4 and followed its advice. I just tried, and GPT-4 gave me a professional and neutrally worded press release like you pointed out. More realistically, this is why you have highly paid PR consultants. Right now, every tweet and statement should go through one. That doesn't look like it's happening. What's next? "I'm sorry you feel you need an apology from me"?

Towaway69 3y ago

> Ironically they would’ve had a better outcome if they just asked GPT-4 and followed its advice. Perhaps they did but it was hallucinating at the time? /s?

CSMastermind 3y ago

It's a bit scary that there are people who think they can align a super intelligence but couldn't forecast the outcome of their own actions 3 days into the future.

subsistence234 3y ago
they're not sure whether they can align super intelligence, they're sure that somebody needs to figure out how to align super intelligence before it emerges.

razodactyl 3y ago

I hate how reasonable this statement is.... 2 years ago you would be dismissed as an idiot.

razodactyl 3y ago
I still can't believe there's a computer program with more logic and restraint that the majority of humanity and even worse it can call the right shots a non-negligible percent of the time.