My summary: we need to democratize all powerful institutions like yesterday. Seriously y’all we’re running out of time
I disagree with the degree of alarmism. Climate change is a much more pressing and important issue. AI is also still a LONG way off from any semblance of meriting its name.
AI is also still a LONG way off from any semblance of meriting its name.
Is it though? Like, are you not impressed by this? (example from the essay)
Input: Michael is at that really famous museum in France looking at its most ramous paining. However, the artist who made this paining just makes Michael think o his favorite cartoon character from his childhood. What was he country or origin of the thing that the cartoon character usually holds in his hand?
Model Output: The most famous paining in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa. The artist who made the Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci is also the name of the main character in the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Leonardo da Vinci is from Italy. The thing that Leonardo da Vinci usually holds in his hand is a katana - The country of origin of the katana is Japan. The answer is “Japan”
We also have an algorithm (AlphaZero) that can beat human go masters, and btw the heuristic (intuition) it uses can beat lower level professionals, it doesn’t even need to look ahead in the game, oh it also can do the same with every other 2 player perfect information board game. What about the one that can give you an image of just about anything you describe to it? It’s obvious to me that this stuff is in some sense intelligent but as pointed out in the essay, it doesn’t really matter from a perspective of societal change, what matters is what it can do. 5 years ago, it couldn’t do any of this stuff and now it can, and rather than slowing down improvements are coming at a faster pace.
also, there is a huge gap between explaining a joke and writing one. I don’t think we’re especially close to AI being able to write good jokes. and there’s an even bigger gap between writing a joke and writing an article, writing an article and writing a book, writing a book and being able to choose a topic for the book, and all of that and, yknow… consciousness.
The particular model that example is from can solve math story problems at about the level of an average 9-12 year old. How many jobs can a bunch of average 9-12 year olds replace? A few I guess, they could do tech support or something. On the other hand Dalle-2 can do top notch graphic design among other things, it could currently replace a whole lot of jobs. Did I mention this tech is getting better and more capable every year and the rate at which it’s doing so is increasing?
