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Good time to remind everyone that Sutton is a human successionist and doesn't care if humans all die. He is not to be trusted nor celebrated: https://www.youtub

Good time to remind everyone that Sutton is a human successionist and doesn't care if humans all die. He is not to be trusted nor celebrated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgHFMolXs3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgHFMolXs3U

nycticorax 2y ago
This is so silly. Do you imagine temporal difference learning is some kind of human successionist plot?
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  The video is not about his technical work but rather his view that AI will or should take over the future.
  - nycticorax 2y ago
    But the Turing Award is for his technical work.
    - kalkin 2y ago
      Sure, and his other views - in the scope of his professional expertise but also quite relevant to, uh, other humans - seem relevant in an HN thread about the Turing award. This place isn't exactly restricted to technical discussion of the details of RL algorithms, and it's pretty fair for humans to have views on whether we ought to be replaced. It's not just one Youtube video, it's a repeatedly expressed view: https://x.com/RichardSSutton/status/1575619655778983936 https://x.com/RichardSSutton/status/1575619655778983936 Valuing technological advance for its own sake "beyond good and bad" is an admirably clear statement of how a lot of researchers operate, but that's the best I can say for it.
      - nycticorax 2y ago
        The statement I take issue with is that Sutton "is not to be celebrated or trusted". Which I can only interpret to mean that the speaker does not think that Sutton should be celebrated or trusted. (And they've chosen to state it in a kind of pompous way.) Which I think is too strong on both counts. I (and apparently the ACM) think that Sutton should be celebrated for his technical accomplishments. Also, I think he probably can be trusted on a lot of technical matters. Should he be trusted on matters of whether there need to be safeguards on AI research imposed by the state? Maybe not, but those are only a subset of all the matters.
Version467 2y ago
Very disappointing. I do not understand how people earnestly defend the successionist view as a good future, but I thought he might at least give some interesting arguments. This talk isn't that. There are no substantive arguments for why we should embrace this future and his representation of the opposite side isn't in good faith either, instead he chose to present straw-man versions of them. He concludes with "A successful succession offers [...] the best hope for a long-term future for humanity. How this can possibly be true when ai succession necessarily includes replacement eludes me. He does mention transhumanism on a slide, but it seems extremely unlikely that he's actually talking about that and the whole succession spiel is just unfortunate wording.
- visarga 2y ago
  > ai succession necessarily includes replacement How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? The supply chain for AI hardware is long an fragile. AGI will have an interest in maintaining peace for this reason. And why would it replace us, our thoughts are like food for AI. Our bodies are very efficient and mobile, biology will certainly be an option for AGI at some point.
  - vonneumannstan 2y ago
    Robotics is a software problem now, see the Tesla, Figure or Unitree humanoid bots. An AI can be totally embodied and humans will have little or no value as labor at all.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    >How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? OK, so do you support laws preventing chip manufacturers and energy providers from becoming reliant on AI?
  - drcode 2y ago
    > How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? Pay naive humans take care of those things while it has to, then disassemble the atoms in their human bodies into raw materials for robots/datacenters once that is no longer necessary
visarga 2y ago
I think he is trying to take the positive side of what is probably an inetability.
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  Or we could just you know, not build the thing that will probably kill us all and at minimum will obsolete all our labor value.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    Given that strategy has never worked in the history of the world, it's probably a good time to figure out how we will put the right guardrails in place and how we will adjust to the new normal. If "we" don't build it, someone else will.
textlapse 2y ago
The ACM award is for their professional academic achievements - this fetishism to dig into another person’s personal life and find the most weird thing they said as the thing that paints over all of their life’s achievements as evil must stop. It’s silly and dangerous. Because you don’t like thing A and they said/did thing A all of their lofty accomplishments get nullified by anyone. And worst of all internet gives your opinion the same weight as someone else (or the rest of us) who knows a lot about thing B that could change the world. From a strictly professional capacity. This works me up because this is what’s dividing up people right now at a much larger scale. I wish you well.
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  >this fetishism to dig into another person’s personal life and find the most weird thing they said as the thing that paints over all of their life’s achievements as evil must stop. This has nothing to do with his professional life. He has made these comments in a professional capacity at an industry AI conference... The rest of your comment is a total non sequitur. >And worst of all internet gives your opinion the same weight as someone else (or the rest of us) who knows a lot about thing B that could change the world. From a strictly professional capacity. I've worked professionally in the ML field for 7 years so don't try some appeal to authority bs on me. Geoff Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei and countless other leaders in the field all recognize and highlight the possible dangers of this technology.
  - tsunego 2y ago
    > This has nothing to do with his professional life. you mean his personal life?
    - vonneumannstan 2y ago
      oops, yes.
  - textlapse 2y ago
    It just feels like a smear on his character: Imagine working on RL incrementally without any lofty goals or preconceived evil. I do agree that there is some level of inherent safety issues with such technologies - but look at atomic bomb vs fission reactors etc: history paves a way through positivity. Just because someone had an idea that eventually turned to have some evil branch off way further from the root idea doesn't mean they started with the evil idea in the first place or worse, someone else won't.
ks2048 2y ago
At least his Twitter profile no longer has the bitcoin-meme-red-eyes thing.
317070 2y ago
Have you ever met Sutton? He is the most heart-warming, caring and passionate hippy I have ever met. He does not want all humans to die. The talk you link also doesn't support your claim. Perhaps I missed it, in that case, do leave a timestamp. In the talk, he says it will lead to an era of prosperity for humanity, however without humanity being in sole control of their destiny. His conclusion slide (at 12:33) literally has the bullet point "the best hope for a long-term future for humanity". That is opposite to you saying he "doesn't care if humans all die". If I plan for my succession, I don't hope nor expect my daughter will murder me. I'm hoping for a long retirement in good health after which I will quietly pass in my sleep, knowing I left her as well as I could in a symbiotic relationship with the universe.
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  Here's the difference, you are not personally building the device which will cause your demise and your succession. We as humanity ARE doing that and have agency to choose NOT to do that.
smokel 2y ago
It is interesting that you bring this to the attention, but I don't see why we should not trust or celebrate someone if they have views that you don't agree with. Edit: especially since I think your implied claim that Sutton would actively want everyone to die seems very much unfounded.
zoogeny 2y ago
> doesn't care if humans all die That seems to be a harsh and misleading framing of his position. My own reading is that he believes it is inevitable that humans will be replaced by transhumans. That seems more like wild sci-fi utopianism than ill-will. It doesn't seem like a reason to avoid celebrating his academic achievements.
cowsandmilk 2y ago
> doesn't care if humans all die His last slide literally says “best hope for a long-term future for humanity”. That’s literally the opposite of what you’re claiming.

nycticorax 2y ago

This is so silly. Do you imagine temporal difference learning is some kind of human successionist plot?

vonneumannstan 2y ago
The video is not about his technical work but rather his view that AI will or should take over the future.
- nycticorax 2y ago
  But the Turing Award is for his technical work.
  - kalkin 2y ago
    Sure, and his other views - in the scope of his professional expertise but also quite relevant to, uh, other humans - seem relevant in an HN thread about the Turing award. This place isn't exactly restricted to technical discussion of the details of RL algorithms, and it's pretty fair for humans to have views on whether we ought to be replaced. It's not just one Youtube video, it's a repeatedly expressed view: https://x.com/RichardSSutton/status/1575619655778983936 https://x.com/RichardSSutton/status/1575619655778983936 Valuing technological advance for its own sake "beyond good and bad" is an admirably clear statement of how a lot of researchers operate, but that's the best I can say for it.
    - nycticorax 2y ago
      The statement I take issue with is that Sutton "is not to be celebrated or trusted". Which I can only interpret to mean that the speaker does not think that Sutton should be celebrated or trusted. (And they've chosen to state it in a kind of pompous way.) Which I think is too strong on both counts. I (and apparently the ACM) think that Sutton should be celebrated for his technical accomplishments. Also, I think he probably can be trusted on a lot of technical matters. Should he be trusted on matters of whether there need to be safeguards on AI research imposed by the state? Maybe not, but those are only a subset of all the matters.

Version467 2y ago

Very disappointing. I do not understand how people earnestly defend the successionist view as a good future, but I thought he might at least give some interesting arguments. This talk isn't that. There are no substantive arguments for why we should embrace this future and his representation of the opposite side isn't in good faith either, instead he chose to present straw-man versions of them. He concludes with "A successful succession offers [...] the best hope for a long-term future for humanity. How this can possibly be true when ai succession necessarily includes replacement eludes me. He does mention transhumanism on a slide, but it seems extremely unlikely that he's actually talking about that and the whole succession spiel is just unfortunate wording.

visarga 2y ago
> ai succession necessarily includes replacement How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? The supply chain for AI hardware is long an fragile. AGI will have an interest in maintaining peace for this reason. And why would it replace us, our thoughts are like food for AI. Our bodies are very efficient and mobile, biology will certainly be an option for AGI at some point.
- vonneumannstan 2y ago
  Robotics is a software problem now, see the Tesla, Figure or Unitree humanoid bots. An AI can be totally embodied and humans will have little or no value as labor at all.
- hollerith 2y ago
  >How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? OK, so do you support laws preventing chip manufacturers and energy providers from becoming reliant on AI?
- drcode 2y ago
  > How is AI going to make its own chips and energy? Pay naive humans take care of those things while it has to, then disassemble the atoms in their human bodies into raw materials for robots/datacenters once that is no longer necessary

visarga 2y ago

I think he is trying to take the positive side of what is probably an inetability.

vonneumannstan 2y ago
Or we could just you know, not build the thing that will probably kill us all and at minimum will obsolete all our labor value.
- jedberg 2y ago
  Given that strategy has never worked in the history of the world, it's probably a good time to figure out how we will put the right guardrails in place and how we will adjust to the new normal. If "we" don't build it, someone else will.

textlapse 2y ago

The ACM award is for their professional academic achievements - this fetishism to dig into another person’s personal life and find the most weird thing they said as the thing that paints over all of their life’s achievements as evil must stop. It’s silly and dangerous. Because you don’t like thing A and they said/did thing A all of their lofty accomplishments get nullified by anyone. And worst of all internet gives your opinion the same weight as someone else (or the rest of us) who knows a lot about thing B that could change the world. From a strictly professional capacity. This works me up because this is what’s dividing up people right now at a much larger scale. I wish you well.

vonneumannstan 2y ago
>this fetishism to dig into another person’s personal life and find the most weird thing they said as the thing that paints over all of their life’s achievements as evil must stop. This has nothing to do with his professional life. He has made these comments in a professional capacity at an industry AI conference... The rest of your comment is a total non sequitur. >And worst of all internet gives your opinion the same weight as someone else (or the rest of us) who knows a lot about thing B that could change the world. From a strictly professional capacity. I've worked professionally in the ML field for 7 years so don't try some appeal to authority bs on me. Geoff Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei and countless other leaders in the field all recognize and highlight the possible dangers of this technology.
- tsunego 2y ago
  > This has nothing to do with his professional life. you mean his personal life?
  - vonneumannstan 2y ago
    oops, yes.
- textlapse 2y ago
  It just feels like a smear on his character: Imagine working on RL incrementally without any lofty goals or preconceived evil. I do agree that there is some level of inherent safety issues with such technologies - but look at atomic bomb vs fission reactors etc: history paves a way through positivity. Just because someone had an idea that eventually turned to have some evil branch off way further from the root idea doesn't mean they started with the evil idea in the first place or worse, someone else won't.

ks2048 2y ago

At least his Twitter profile no longer has the bitcoin-meme-red-eyes thing.

317070 2y ago

Have you ever met Sutton? He is the most heart-warming, caring and passionate hippy I have ever met. He does not want all humans to die. The talk you link also doesn't support your claim. Perhaps I missed it, in that case, do leave a timestamp. In the talk, he says it will lead to an era of prosperity for humanity, however without humanity being in sole control of their destiny. His conclusion slide (at 12:33) literally has the bullet point "the best hope for a long-term future for humanity". That is opposite to you saying he "doesn't care if humans all die". If I plan for my succession, I don't hope nor expect my daughter will murder me. I'm hoping for a long retirement in good health after which I will quietly pass in my sleep, knowing I left her as well as I could in a symbiotic relationship with the universe.

vonneumannstan 2y ago
Here's the difference, you are not personally building the device which will cause your demise and your succession. We as humanity ARE doing that and have agency to choose NOT to do that.

smokel 2y ago

It is interesting that you bring this to the attention, but I don't see why we should not trust or celebrate someone if they have views that you don't agree with. Edit: especially since I think your implied claim that Sutton would actively want everyone to die seems very much unfounded.

zoogeny 2y ago

> doesn't care if humans all die That seems to be a harsh and misleading framing of his position. My own reading is that he believes it is inevitable that humans will be replaced by transhumans. That seems more like wild sci-fi utopianism than ill-will. It doesn't seem like a reason to avoid celebrating his academic achievements.

cowsandmilk 2y ago

> doesn't care if humans all die His last slide literally says “best hope for a long-term future for humanity”. That’s literally the opposite of what you’re claiming.