The stories lens is great. The best (and to me, truest) alternative story right now I think is Simon Willison's electric bicycle for the mind:
"I've been thinking about generative AI tools as 'bicycles for the mind' (to borrow an old Steve Jobs line), but I think 'electric bicycles for the mind' might be more appropriate. They can accelerate your natural abilities, you have to learn how to use them, they can give you a significant boost that some people might feel is a bit of a cheat, and they're also quite dangerous if you're not careful with them!"
> With access to infinite resources, these adherents ran reinforcement learning on their companies. They threw billions of dollars' worth of spaghetti at the wall until something stuck. Analogous to the prosperity gospel, engineering works were evidence of salvation.
> An alternative path would have instead explored what Ilya did see. A new book by Keach Hagey and reporting by Nitasha Tiku’s reveal that it wasn’t superintelligence. They describe political skirmishes and psychodrama amongst a set of very nerdy priests of a corrupt AGI-theist conclave. What Ilya saw ended up being pretty mundane: That Sam Altman was a pathologically lying asshole.
What's the alternative? We stagnate and live in mudhuts until kingdom come? Technology is the salvation of man, and is what it fundamentally means to be human. In the long run, we're all dead, only our physical works of technology remain.
I think his point is that there ain't no kingdom coming... So stagnate or use tech or worship it or whatever...In the long run, the universe won't care about you or your artifacts
The stories lens is great. The best (and to me, truest) alternative story right now I think is Simon Willison's electric bicycle for the mind:
"I've been thinking about generative AI tools as 'bicycles for the mind' (to borrow an old Steve Jobs line), but I think 'electric bicycles for the mind' might be more appropriate. They can accelerate your natural abilities, you have to learn how to use them, they can give you a significant boost that some people might feel is a bit of a cheat, and they're also quite dangerous if you're not careful with them!"
> With access to infinite resources, these adherents ran reinforcement learning on their companies. They threw billions of dollars' worth of spaghetti at the wall until something stuck. Analogous to the prosperity gospel, engineering works were evidence of salvation.
> An alternative path would have instead explored what Ilya did see. A new book by Keach Hagey and reporting by Nitasha Tiku’s reveal that it wasn’t superintelligence. They describe political skirmishes and psychodrama amongst a set of very nerdy priests of a corrupt AGI-theist conclave. What Ilya saw ended up being pretty mundane: That Sam Altman was a pathologically lying asshole.
!!! thanks for writing this up
You're welcome. Very much looking forward to your follow-ups and to more interlocution!
What's the alternative? We stagnate and live in mudhuts until kingdom come? Technology is the salvation of man, and is what it fundamentally means to be human. In the long run, we're all dead, only our physical works of technology remain.
I think his point is that there ain't no kingdom coming... So stagnate or use tech or worship it or whatever...In the long run, the universe won't care about you or your artifacts
Isn’t “chain of thought” worse than “AGl”