[yashap]

I hope so, but for different reasons. Agreed they spit out plenty of gibberish at the moment, but they’ve also progressed so far so fast it’s pretty scary. If we get to a legitimate artificial general super intelligence, I’m about 95% sure that will be terrible for the vast, vast majority of humans, we'll be obsolete. Crossing my fingers that the current AI surge stops well short of that, and the push that eventually does get there is way, way off into the future.

[smallmancontrov]

It doesn't have to be super, it just has to inflect the long term trend of labor getting less relevant and capital getting more relevant.

We've made an ideology out of denying this and its consequences. The fallout will be ugly and the adjustment will be painful. At best.

[rbetts]

I believe (most) people contribute their ambitions to nurture safe, peaceful, friend-filled communities. AGI won’t obsolete those human desires. Hopefully we weather the turbulence that comes with change and come out the other side with new tools that enable our pursuits. In the macro, that’s been the case. I am grateful to live in a time of literacy, antibiotics, sanitation, electricity… and am optimistic that if AGI emerges, it joins that list of human empowering creations.

[szundi]

Wise words, thank you.

[jeezfrk]

Current AI degrades totally unlike human experts. It also, by design, must lag its data input.

Anything innovated must come from outside or have a very close permutation to be found.

Generative AI isn't scary at all now. It is merely rolling dice on a mix of other tech and rumors from the internet.

The data can be wrong or old...and people keep important secrets.

[hmottestad]

Gotta wonder if Google has used code from internal systems to train Gemini? Probably not, but at what point will companies start forking over source code for LLM training for money?

[youssefabdelm]

Or liberating... as Douglas Rushkoff puts it.

If and only if something like high-paying UBI comes along, and people are freed to pursue their passions and as a consequence, benefit the world much more intensely.

[shadowerm]

How can one not understand that UBI is captured by inflation.

Its just a modern religion really because anyone can understand this it is so basic and obvious.

You don't have to point out some bullshit captured study that says otherwise.

[gershy]

I'm not sure passion exists in a world without struggle...

[drdaeman]

That requires achieving post-scarcity to work in practice and be fair, though. If achievable, it’s not clear how it relates to AGI. I mean, there’s plenty of intelligence on this planet already, and resources are still limited - and it’s not like AGI would somehow change that.

[diego_sandoval]

I'm not sure if that is something we actually would want.

Lots of people certainly think they want that.

[nntwozz]

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” — Buckminster Fuller

[amarcheschi]

everything points to the opposite

[cactusplant7374]

I think of ChatGPT as a faster Google or Stackoverflow and all of my colleagues are using it almost exclusively in this way. That is still quite impressive but it isn’t what Altman set out to achieve (and he admits this quite candidly).

What would make me change my mind? If ChatGPT could take the lead on designing a robot through all the steps: design, contract the parts and assembly, market it, and sell it that would really be something.

I assume for something like this to happen it would need all source code and design docs from Boston Dynamics in the training set. It seems unlikely it could independently make the same discoveries on its own.

[randmeerkat]

> I assume for something like this to happen it would need all source code and design docs from Boston Dynamics in the training set. It seems unlikely it could independently make the same discoveries on its own.

No, to do this it would need to be able to independently reason, if it could do that, then the training data stops mattering. Training data is a crutch that makes these algos appear more intelligent than they are. If they were truly intelligent they would be able to learn independently and find information on their own.

[guerrilla]

> I’m about 95% sure that will be terrible for the vast, vast majority of humans, we'll be obsolete.

This isn't a criticism of you, but this is a very stupid idea that we have. The economy is mean to serve us. If it can't, we need to completely re-organize it because the old model has become invalid. We shouldn't exist to serve the economy. That's an absolutely absurd idea that needs to be killed in every single one of us.

[insane_dreamer]

> we need to completely re-organize it because the old model has become invalid

that's called social revolution, and those who benefit from the old model (currently that would be the holders of capital, and more so as AI grows in its capabilities and increasingly supplants human labor) will do everything in their power to prevent that re-organization

[jprete]

The economy isn't meant to serve us. It's an emergent system that evolves based on a complex incentive structure and its own contingent history.

[fny]

The problem is no one is talking about this. We’re clearly headed towards such a world, and it’s irrelevant whether this incarnation will completely achieve that.

And anyone who poo poos ChatGPT needs to remember we went from “this isn’t going to happen in the next 20 years” to “this is happening tomorrow” overnight. It’s pretty obvious I’m going to be installing Microsoft Employee Service Pack 2 in my lifetime.

[achierius]

Very true but the question, as always, is by what means we can enact this change? The economy may well continue to serve the owner class even if all workers are replaced with robots.

[kbr-]

The economy is meant to serve some people; some people take out of economy more than they give, some people give more than they take.

[danielovichdk]

Great theory. In reality the vast majority us serves only the economy without getting anything truly valuable in return. We serve it only, with noticing it, to grow into less human and more individual shells of less human. Machines of the Economy.

[hackinthebochs]

This doesn't engage with the problem of coordinating everyone around some proposed solution and so is useless. Yes, if we could all just magically decide on a better system of government, everything would be great!

[jay_kyburz]

It's not _that_ scary. I kind of like the idea of going out to the country and building a permiculture garden to feed myself and my family.

[wiml]

Until you try and you find that all the arable land is already occupied by industrial agriculture, the ADMs/Cargills of the world, using capital intensive brute force uniformity to extract more value from the land than you can compete with, while somehow simultaneously treating the earth destructively and inefficiently.

This is both a metaphor for AGI and not a metaphor at all.

[skulk]

Sure, if you can survive the period between the obsolescence of human labor and the achievement of post-scarcity. Do you really think that period of time is zero, or that the first version of a post-scarcity economy will be able to carry the current population? No, such a transition implies a brutish end for most.

[accra4rx]

think more deeply . who benefits with super intelligence ? at the end it is game of what humans desire naturally. AI has no incentive and are not controlled by hormones.

[markus_zhang]

It's already impacting some of us. I hope it never appears until the human civilization undergoes a profound change. But I'm afraid many rich people want that happen.

It's the real Great Filter in the universe IMO.