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OAI's achievements are amazing. But here's a bit of a skeptical take: cheap human-style intelligence won't have a huge impact because such intelligence isn't re

OAI's achievements are amazing. But here's a bit of a skeptical take: cheap human-style intelligence won't have a huge impact because such intelligence isn't really a bottleneck today. It's a cliche that the brightest minds of the age are dedicated to selling more ads or shuffling stock ownership around at high velocity. Anyone who's worked at a big tech company knows the enormous ratio of talent to real engineering problems at those companies. Let's say you have some amazing project that's going to require 100 Phd-years of work to carry out. In the present world that costs something like $1e7. In the post-AI world, that same amount of intelligence will cost $1e3, an enormous reduction in price. That might seem like a huge impact. BUT, if the project was so amazing, why couldn't you raise $1e7 to pursue it? Governments and VCs throw this kind of money around like corn-hole bags. So the number of actually-worthwhile projects that become feasible post-AI might actually be quite small.

benlivengood 2y ago
Capital follows the most profitable investments. It's why "green" technology took so long to develop (we probably could have had efficient solar panels in the 60s, but oil was super cheap and more importantly very profitable). Dropping the cost of a $1e7 problem to even $1e6 probably makes it very profitable.
- deciplex 2y ago
  > Capital follows the most profitable investments. I think a common error is that people forget the "most" in this sentence. It is a very important word. It's not even that only profitable investments will get funded: even profitable projects might get left on the cutting room floor if they are competing for resources with projects that will generate, or are believed to generate, higher ROI. And this maybe isn't a problem if higher ROI == better than. But to believe that, you have to also believe that enshittification is a thing that happens in spite of being less profitable (or unprofitable), which for me at least is a hard sell.
- willturman 2y ago
  Capital has also employed anti-competitive actions to stifle, prevent, and kneecap "green" technology for the last century. The death of passenger rail and the stifling of the electric car for 30 years come to mind.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
And also that is why something which is so foundational should be allowed to spread out to all humans which means running local llm models on our machines instead of paying one or two companies to use it. Anthropic, open AI should not become the ones humanity has to go to to get such a resource. We didn't have fire as a service for humanity to master fire.
spencerchubb 2y ago
To raise $1e7, you have to be able to convince VCs that you can make at least $1e9. They want 100x returns from their winners, and don't care about anything else in their portfolio. If instead you only need $1e3 to build it, it doesn't have to make as much money. I could just fund it out of pocket
- TOMDM 2y ago
  That and you can justify sinking 100PhD years into a 1/1,000,000 > cheap human-style intelligence won't have a huge impact because such intelligence isn't really a bottleneck today. What a failure of imagination.
defterGoose 2y ago
|such intelligence isn't really a bottleneck today. Yep, pretty much agree. As soon as I see LLMs start solving millennium problems one after another I might change my tune. The bottleneck is much more likely to be people unwilling to quit hoarding economic potential in the form of money.

benlivengood 2y ago

Capital follows the most profitable investments. It's why "green" technology took so long to develop (we probably could have had efficient solar panels in the 60s, but oil was super cheap and more importantly very profitable). Dropping the cost of a $1e7 problem to even $1e6 probably makes it very profitable.

deciplex 2y ago
> Capital follows the most profitable investments. I think a common error is that people forget the "most" in this sentence. It is a very important word. It's not even that only profitable investments will get funded: even profitable projects might get left on the cutting room floor if they are competing for resources with projects that will generate, or are believed to generate, higher ROI. And this maybe isn't a problem if higher ROI == better than. But to believe that, you have to also believe that enshittification is a thing that happens in spite of being less profitable (or unprofitable), which for me at least is a hard sell.
willturman 2y ago
Capital has also employed anti-competitive actions to stifle, prevent, and kneecap "green" technology for the last century. The death of passenger rail and the stifling of the electric car for 30 years come to mind.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

And also that is why something which is so foundational should be allowed to spread out to all humans which means running local llm models on our machines instead of paying one or two companies to use it. Anthropic, open AI should not become the ones humanity has to go to to get such a resource. We didn't have fire as a service for humanity to master fire.

spencerchubb 2y ago

To raise $1e7, you have to be able to convince VCs that you can make at least $1e9. They want 100x returns from their winners, and don't care about anything else in their portfolio. If instead you only need $1e3 to build it, it doesn't have to make as much money. I could just fund it out of pocket

TOMDM 2y ago
That and you can justify sinking 100PhD years into a 1/1,000,000 > cheap human-style intelligence won't have a huge impact because such intelligence isn't really a bottleneck today. What a failure of imagination.

defterGoose 2y ago

|such intelligence isn't really a bottleneck today. Yep, pretty much agree. As soon as I see LLMs start solving millennium problems one after another I might change my tune. The bottleneck is much more likely to be people unwilling to quit hoarding economic potential in the form of money.