3 ms·

> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than

by ryandv 1y ago

> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Not sure if wishful thinking trying to LARP-manifest this future into being, or just more unfalsifiable thinking where we can always be said to be past the event horizon and near to the singularity, given sufficiently underwhelming definitions of "event horizon" and "nearness."

ixtli 1y ago
The phrase for this is “high on your own supply.” These guys are embarrassing, frankly.
actuallyalys 1y ago
Agreed. I realize it’s a metaphor but saying we’re so close to the singularity that it’s guaranteed to happen (the event horizon being a point of no return) seems like wild hubris.
- derektank 1y ago
  Especially considering the global instability we're facing right now. The World Bank released new estimates US GDP growth in 2025, falling from roughly 2.5 to 1.5 percentage points. I don't think most people would predict the singularity beginning with less economic growth than we saw in the 80s
nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
He is purely a hype man, and many people are too gullible/invested/dumb to see it, call him on it, or care.
- anothermathbozo 1y ago
  What difference does that make at this stage of things?
  - nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
    All the difference. The difference between what is real, what is possible, what is plausible, what is feasible, and what is mass delusion. "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
orionsbelt 1y ago
It all sounds probably correct to me. Of course, progress could stall out, but we appear to have sufficient compute to do anything a human brain can do, and in areas, AIs are already far better than humans. With the amount of brain power working in, and capital pouring into, this area, including work on improving algorithms, I think this essay is fundamentally correct that the takeoff has started.
- IAmGraydon 1y ago
  > in areas, AIs are already far better than humans. You could say the same thing about a CPU from 40 years ago - they can do math far better than humans. The problem is that there are some very simple problems that LLMs can’t seem to reliably solve that a child easily could, and this shows that there likely isn’t actual intelligence going on under the hood. I think LLMs are more like human simulators rather than actual intelligent agents. In other words, they can’t know or extrapolate more knowledge than the source material gives them, meaning they could never become more intelligent than humans. They’re like a very efficient search engine of existing human knowledge. Can anyone give me an example of any true breakthrough that was generated by an LLM?
  - Davidzheng 1y ago
    They could become better at humans bc there's a RL training loop? I don't understand how this isn't directly clear. Even raining purely on human data it's possible to be mildly superhuman (see experiments of chess AI trained on human data only) but once you have verifiable tasks and RL loop the human data is just Kickstarter
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - orionsbelt 1y ago
    You might be correct about LLMs. Let's say that you are. 40 years ago we were clearly compute bound. Today, I think it's fairly clear we are not; if there is anything a human can do that an AI can't, it's because we lack the algorithms, not the compute. So the question becomes, now that we have sufficient compute capacity, how long do you think it will take the army of intelligent creative humans (comp sci PhDs, and now accelerate by AI assistance) to develop the algorithmic improvements to take AI from LLMs to something human level? Nobody knows the answer to the above, and I could be very wrong, but my money would bet on it being <30 years, if not dramatically sooner (my money is on under 10). It seems to me like the building blocks are all here. Computers can now see, process scenes in real time, move through the world as robots, speak and converse with humans in real time, use tools, create images (imagine?), and so forth. Work is continuing to give LLMs memory, expanded context, and other improvements. As those areas all get improved on, tied together, recursively improved, etc., at some point I think it will be hard to argue it is not intelligence. Where we are with LLMs is Kitty Hawk. The world now knows that flight (true human level intelligence) is possible and within reach, and I strongly believe the progress from here on out will continue to be rapid and extreme.
Davidzheng 1y ago
We're definitely past the EH. I doubt even if we realize real risk is extremely high we could stop the rain due to economic pressures
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Briannaj 1y ago
I could not take the article seriously after reading that.
- insin 1y ago
  I get the feeling the first paragraph was intended to make people who immediately went "this is is absolute horseshit" stop reading, in the same way an obvious spam email does

by ryandv 1y ago

ixtli 1y ago

The phrase for this is “high on your own supply.” These guys are embarrassing, frankly.

actuallyalys 1y ago

Agreed. I realize it’s a metaphor but saying we’re so close to the singularity that it’s guaranteed to happen (the event horizon being a point of no return) seems like wild hubris.

derektank 1y ago
Especially considering the global instability we're facing right now. The World Bank released new estimates US GDP growth in 2025, falling from roughly 2.5 to 1.5 percentage points. I don't think most people would predict the singularity beginning with less economic growth than we saw in the 80s

nyc_data_geek1 1y ago

He is purely a hype man, and many people are too gullible/invested/dumb to see it, call him on it, or care.

anothermathbozo 1y ago
What difference does that make at this stage of things?
- nyc_data_geek1 1y ago
  All the difference. The difference between what is real, what is possible, what is plausible, what is feasible, and what is mass delusion. "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

orionsbelt 1y ago

It all sounds probably correct to me. Of course, progress could stall out, but we appear to have sufficient compute to do anything a human brain can do, and in areas, AIs are already far better than humans. With the amount of brain power working in, and capital pouring into, this area, including work on improving algorithms, I think this essay is fundamentally correct that the takeoff has started.

IAmGraydon 1y ago
> in areas, AIs are already far better than humans. You could say the same thing about a CPU from 40 years ago - they can do math far better than humans. The problem is that there are some very simple problems that LLMs can’t seem to reliably solve that a child easily could, and this shows that there likely isn’t actual intelligence going on under the hood. I think LLMs are more like human simulators rather than actual intelligent agents. In other words, they can’t know or extrapolate more knowledge than the source material gives them, meaning they could never become more intelligent than humans. They’re like a very efficient search engine of existing human knowledge. Can anyone give me an example of any true breakthrough that was generated by an LLM?
- Davidzheng 1y ago
  They could become better at humans bc there's a RL training loop? I don't understand how this isn't directly clear. Even raining purely on human data it's possible to be mildly superhuman (see experiments of chess AI trained on human data only) but once you have verifiable tasks and RL loop the human data is just Kickstarter
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- orionsbelt 1y ago
  You might be correct about LLMs. Let's say that you are. 40 years ago we were clearly compute bound. Today, I think it's fairly clear we are not; if there is anything a human can do that an AI can't, it's because we lack the algorithms, not the compute. So the question becomes, now that we have sufficient compute capacity, how long do you think it will take the army of intelligent creative humans (comp sci PhDs, and now accelerate by AI assistance) to develop the algorithmic improvements to take AI from LLMs to something human level? Nobody knows the answer to the above, and I could be very wrong, but my money would bet on it being <30 years, if not dramatically sooner (my money is on under 10). It seems to me like the building blocks are all here. Computers can now see, process scenes in real time, move through the world as robots, speak and converse with humans in real time, use tools, create images (imagine?), and so forth. Work is continuing to give LLMs memory, expanded context, and other improvements. As those areas all get improved on, tied together, recursively improved, etc., at some point I think it will be hard to argue it is not intelligence. Where we are with LLMs is Kitty Hawk. The world now knows that flight (true human level intelligence) is possible and within reach, and I strongly believe the progress from here on out will continue to be rapid and extreme.

Davidzheng 1y ago

We're definitely past the EH. I doubt even if we realize real risk is extremely high we could stop the rain due to economic pressures

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Briannaj 1y ago

I could not take the article seriously after reading that.

insin 1y ago
I get the feeling the first paragraph was intended to make people who immediately went "this is is absolute horseshit" stop reading, in the same way an obvious spam email does