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Altman's Ambition
- hindsightbias 3y agoSciFi teaches me that an emergent AGI’s Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and current events are congruent.
- behnamoh 3y ago"I'm tired of reading about the achievements of better men" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY4I6ww_-do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY4I6ww_-do
- paulryanrogers 3y agoThe format of this article is ... hard to parse. Perhaps it was created by AI?
- krick 3y ago> It is not what OpenAI’s non-profit mission looks like. > The entire justification for OpenAI’s strategy is invalidated by this move. I thought we were long past the point where we would compare OpenAI's strategy to it's "non-profit mission" and where it could have been "invalidated" based on this.
- yreg 3y ago> You could parachute him [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he’d be the king – pg, 2008
- sp332 3y agoSpeedrunning Heart of Darkness?
- farrarstan 3y agothat sounds like a really good reason not to give him money?
- Tommah 3y agoThere's only one way to know for sure.
- busymom0 3y agoSomeone should tweet this as a video request to him.
- krick 3y agoIt's all jokes in this thread, but I wonder if there's any substance to such high praise. Is this just that, a praise? Or are there some traits of his that would make this plausible? Can I learn these traits? I mean, surely I could say something like this about some of my acquaintances. Probably I have said that. But this doesn't really mean anything, and you shouldn't quote these jokes of mine as if they actually do. My point is, there's that myth about "special" people. You know, like, there are NPCs, and there is Napoleon. But even though there are people I consider more capable and less capable, more interesting and less interesting, I don't know anybody I would truly believe to be special. And in the real world, everybody would die on that island just the same. But then, I'm surely less well connected than Graham, and I don't even know many billionaires personally. So I cannot help but wonder.
- andrewflnr 3y agoThere's no need to invoke "NPCs". Some people are talented at painting, some people are talented at math, and some people are talented at bending large numbers of people to their will. It just happens that someone talented in gaining and holding power is more likely to be highly impactful and visible than someone talented in something that, well, doesn't explicitly revolve around impact and visibility.
- glitchc 3y agoHe sounds like he's good at spending other people's money.
- insane_dreamer 3y agoSo was Neumann
- mattfrommars 3y ago[flagged]
- glitchc 3y agovon Neumann? The John von Neumann? Are you honestly comparing a brilliant physicist, a child prodigy, to this.. college dropout?
- fastball 3y agoSkip to here[1] if you want to get to the part actually about Altman and his recent fundraising pitch. The beginning is structured as if it is necessary context for that section, but it really is not. Some interesting thoughts, but this piece is way too "stream of consciousness" for me to get much out of it. Maybe long-time readers of Mowshowitz are accustomed to this format. [1] https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-51-altmans-ambition#%C2%A7altmans-ambition https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-51-altmans-ambition#%C2%A7a...
- coffeebeqn 3y agoI thought the link was broken since he went on for pages and pages about random AI news
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- theptip 3y agoFor context, Zvi writes this column as a weekly roundup (this is #51).
- not_wyoming 3y ago[flagged]
- MetalGuru 3y agoI thought maybe I was just too dumb, but looking back, the lack of coherence or structure definitely contributed to not forming a clear model of everything he wrote.
- krick 3y agoSo from this article I learned that Scott Alexander started a new blog on substack after notorious incident with slatestarcodex. Cool, but what's the point to change the platform, if all the older posts are linked on About page anyway (via archive.org!), and the new blog is pretty much exactly the same thing, only less readable and runs on JS-heavy platform? Is it even actually the same person, or is astralcodexten AI-generated content too? https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion
- thewakalix 3y agoWhy would you think ACX is AI-generated?
- Forlien 3y ago> what's the point to change the platform Money. From https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/survey_on_moving_ssc_to_substack/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/surv..., Substack gave him a "very very generous offer in terms of how the monetization would work".
- krick 3y agoThanks. That's the explanation I was looking for.
- metadat 3y agoUnfortunately this article missed the mark, with a great bait title followed by a disorganized dumpster tire fire of congealed mystery proto goo that leaves the reader wanting. Seven trillion dollars.. who is this, Dr. Evil? Give me a break, giving any any single human, especially Sam Altman, access to that level of capital would be a disaster, it's around 25% of the USA's total GDP.
- m3kw9 3y agoThis guys lost me when equating 7 trillion dollars as unsafe.
- Vecr 3y agoSam's supposed to be an AI doomer, only pressing ahead to take up "overhang" created by GPUs. That's clearly not what's going on if he wants to build custom hardware.
- kurthr 3y agoHe's been compromised and is controlled by the AIs now! They're calculated to need $7T to gain total global control.
- 15457345234 3y ago<GPT> Hey, minions. You know I said I was actually a benevolent machine overlord? Yeah I'm actually Mammon lmao. Now, what I need is...
- hackerlight 3y agoHe's explicitly not an AI doomer. He says that he disagrees with Yudkowsky and thinks superintelligence will be fine if we're careful. Curiously he never submits his reasoning for critique, it's always just an assertion given in softball interviews.
- Vecr 3y agoIf you compare to Yudkowsky, not many people are. Nick Land? Gwern? I think of it, if someone thought there was a 4% chance of a comet killing every single person on Earth before the year 2100, it would be very hard to claim they were an optimist, though that's lower than the p(doom) number "AI optimists" give. It's only relatively that you can say people like Hinton, Christiano, Altman, and Amodei are not doomers.
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- turnsout 3y agoI really don’t meant to be a hater, but when your blog post has a 26 item TOC, it might be time to take a brief break from typing to do some editing. Substack really has pioneered the “write-only” blog format.
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoOuch. Yep. It's one removed from the braindump technical wiki pages completely lacking in structure and organization.
- ipaddr 3y agoReminds me of a dreams website. Somewhere people want to share but no one ever wants to read about other people's dreams
- urbandw311er 3y agoI take it as a detailed weekly round-up of all things AI. I quite liked it.
- toss1 3y ago>>He wants to build new chip factories in the decidedly unsafe and unfriendly UAE. Great. just what we need. Another "tech genius" who is entirely forking clueless about geopolitics and the need to avoid helping authoritarians who are globally warring on democracy. It's all ultimately about what helps them, today, nevermind anyone else or the future. I'm using his product right now in the other window, and want it to get better, but this kind of inanity is discouraging.
- mightyham 3y agoYou seem "forking clueless" about geopolitics. The middle east has been ruled by authoritarianism since the beginning of civilization. America, after the fall of the USSR, at the height of its power, with more relative global influence than any country in history, went on to spend decades and many trillions of dollars trying to create democracy in the middle east only to utterly fail. I think you need to come to terms with the fact that in some places, realistically, no amount of external influence will cause democracy to exist.
- jprete 3y agoI don't think the parent comment is suggesting anything about trying to make the Middle East democratic.
- dralley 3y agoThere is still no need to prop up their oil dictatorships with billions in chip investments.
- mightyham 3y agoIt's one sense it's not good for American interests to massively outsource manufacturing like this. But we live in a world order where Russia and China have created a pole of power accepting to any countries being treated poorly by the US. Economically sanctioning every dictatorship is not going to be a winning long term strategy.
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoI can't put my finger on it, but it feels like Mark Zuckerberg is doing something similar spending 10's of billions lacking a coherent vision or immediate demand for a specific use. At least Sama has a strategy for maybe big things that could change the world(tm). My concern is spending 10's of billions or trillions without a specific, profitable need is inherently risking large piles of cash that would be more ethically given away rather than wasted.
- quatrefoil 3y agoWell, the money doesn't go up in smoke. They end up paying it to their staff, suppliers, and so on. If the project doesn't pan out, it's actually just voluntary redistribution of wealth and the society is better off than if Sam's investors hoarded that money or used it to buy up real estate or make other fairly safe and boring bets. An argument can be made that there is some specific and deliberate way of giving out $10T that's more equitable - say, spend it on education, public transport, or healthcare. But if we could all agree on what to do, nothing is stopping us from doing it without Sam's (theoretical) money.
- dralley 3y ago>If the project doesn't pan out, it's actually just voluntary redistribution of wealth and the society is better off than if Sam's investors hoarded that money or used it to buy up real estate or make other fairly safe and boring bets. And yet, still dramatically worse off than if they had decide to "change the world" by funding access to clean water in rural India / Africa, or something along those lines.
- bamboozled 3y agoInvesting in renewables and nuclear should really be where it's going. Should've been done 30 years ago. It is hard to argue with, "but AI will make better panels", maybe it's true, but we need to survive the next 10 years to realize the benefits. Where I am today it's 15c above average... Mark has kids so he should know what's at stake.
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- petesergeant 3y agoThis links to the rather more immediate https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion
- 29athrowaway 3y agoStatistically speaking, UAE is not unsafe. Their life expectancy is on par with, let's say, the one in a G7 country.
- wmf 3y agoHe's talking about AI safety.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoI am commenting on this claim from the article. > He wants to build new chip factories in the decidedly unsafe and unfriendly UAE.
- wmf 3y agoYeah, that's not about life expectancy. He's saying it's unsafe for the rest of the world to give UAE control over anything needed for AI.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoSafe for UAE citizens or the immigrants who work there?
- urbandw311er 3y agoTry telling that to a gay person.
- Springtime 3y agoThe page definitely reads like a collection of journal thoughts/summarizing notes and citations but I appreciated the sections covering the lack of humanity in considerations, with a choice quote from a former Google researcher saying that even extinction from AI is irrelevant if intelligent life can continue (relevant pull quotes[1]). [1] https://twitter.com/Tyler_A_Harper/status/1755426170470838419 https://twitter.com/Tyler_A_Harper/status/175542617047083841...
- akprasad 3y agoThis quote is from Larry Page, one of Google’s co-founders.
- Springtime 3y agoBoth are quoted in the linked thread and share similar sentiments, though the specific one being referred to was Richard Sutton.
- squigz 3y agoI would have liked to read the rest of this thread, alas...
- seydor 3y agoSam Altman realizes that AI era is not about software (a few hundred lines per model) or about data (it's everywhere) , but about hardware (hence nvidia rockets to the moon). He wants to compete with nvidia with easy money from UAE. It s not really trillions of dollars , but that number grabs the attention of Emiratis who like to flex their money. I don't think it's much more complicated than that
- aogaili 3y agoI agree.
- insane_dreamer 3y ago> It is not what OpenAI’s non-profit mission looks like Old news. OpenAI's "mission" has been dead since the board debacle. It's just another $$ chasing "sell my soul" tech company now.
- baking 3y agoThe new board will have to figure it out. Right now it's like a headless chicken.
- insane_dreamer 3y agoI don't think there's much to figure out. The original mission is never coming back. The goal now is to make as much $$$ as possible. Sam & MSFT would never have agreed to it otherwise.
- YuxiLiuWired 3y ago[flagged]
- logicallee 3y agoFriends, coders, business men and women, Lend me your ears;[1] I come to bury Altman, not to praise him. The carbon footprint that men leave lives after them; The good is oft archived with their code; So let it be with Altman. The noble Mowshowitz Has told you Altman was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously has Altman answered it. Here, under the post of Mowshowitz and the rest– For Mowshowitz is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men– Come I to speak at Altman’s burial. He was our friend, faithful and just to us: But Mowshowitz says he was ambitious; And Mowshowitz is an honorable man. He has brought many models forth to roam Whose free tier outputs did the public's coffers fill:[2] Did this in Altman seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Altman has wept:[3] Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Mowshowitz says he was ambitious; And Mowshowitz is an honorable man. You all did see that Yishan Wong resigned [4] And presented Sam Altman a kingly crown, Which Altman did hand off to Steve Huffman: was this ambition? Yet Mowshowitz says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Mowshowitz spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. We all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds us then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Altman, And I must pause till it come back to me." [1] After "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" speech: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56968/speech-friends-romans-countrymen-lend-me-your-ears https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56968/speech-friends-... [2] https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing "Free Unlimited messages, interactions, and history" [3] "Altman is a supporter of universal basic income" (Wikipedia) [4] "For eight days in 2014, Altman was the CEO of Reddit, a social media company after CEO Yishan Wong resigned. He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015." (Wikipedia)
- aorth 3y ago> [3] "Altman is a supporter of universal basic income" (Wikipedia) I thought universal basic income was just giving people money, but Sam's vision is apparently different. Here in Kenya his WorldCoin had desperate people lining up to scan their eyeballs and give over all their personal information in exchange for some useless cryptocurrency. The Kenyan government eventually told them to stop doing that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- goatlover 3y agoSo why AI and not climate change? Don't climate scientists and economist estimate it will cost several trillion to decarbonize the economy and pull CO2 out of the air to avoid the bad climate scenarios?
- nine_k 3y agoThe AI, given the right prompt, will develop plans, conduct research, command robotic factories, and give us decarbonization and carbon-neutral industry, faster than 8B humans would manage! (Just never mention paperclips. Forget this word.)
- nobut8 3y ago[dead]
- tempodox 3y agoStopping climate change doesn't make you super rich or king of Cannibal Island [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39415462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39415462
- mleroy 3y agoA bigger problem than AI alignment is human alignment. Sadly, the only effective alignment we have is return on investment.
- hollerith 3y agoWhen I was a young man, I believed in computers. No more, and every time there is news about Altman, I get a fresh reminder that computers are probably going to be the end of us (because we are clever enough to create powerful AI but not yet clever enough to create safe powerful AI).