Just because people may have opinions different from yours doesn't mean they're denying reality. They just have a different opinion.
The hard, cold truth is that nobody knows the future. Everybody is just guessing.
Climate change is coming at us. That's still a prediction (it hasn't happened yet), but not believing in it right now is irrational and dangerous.
I don't think we can say that for AI. That AI will change the world is a belief. Doesn't mean that it won't.
Crypto's value fluctuation made more sense as a speculative asset class, and it clearly saw most of its traction there.
It's potential as a currency did lead to banks, financial institutions and governments taking a hard look at it. And CBDC's are an area of active investigation. So the hyper-optimists may have been off on some of their predictions, but something came out of it.
AGI-agencent tools are more grounded. They don't threaten to tear down existing entrenched institutions. They do one thing simple: commoditize and scale some level of intelligence. And they're pretty good at it, hence the hype.
Unless humanity develops a deep distaste for many things AI-made, the fascination will wear off and we'll be left with the cold hard truth of raw productivity increase and digital production on an unprecedented scale.
I disagree with this part. (I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here).
I'm not sure what you mean by "more grounded", but if you mean "more based in reality", I don't think this is clear. But, if what the evangelizers say is correct, it absolutely threatens to tear down entrenched institutions. It even threatens to tear down society itself by destroying what little trust remains.
IIRC, crypto was a little too idealistic in the promise of providing a digital currency without needing a central, trusted authority to back it. From my perspective, AI as we've seen it in the last few months simply provides a tool that can automate intelligent tasks easily.
I think the distinction is fuelled more by the companies and leading figures pushing the latter. OpenAI's stewardship, concerns for safety and generally downplaying how amazing these tools are while not ignoring the real effects they could have make AI sound more "grounded" than peak crypto was. Or it could just be the folks I pay more attention to.
> I disagree with calling this tech "AGI-adjacent", too, but that's not the part I'm calling out here
I think this rests mostly on the definition of "General" here. Here, I'm talking about LLMs as general task performers, as opposed to models created for more specific tasks. LLMs have proven to be more general purpose, which I'd argue makes them closer to the AGI ideal than, say, a sentiment analysis model.
Ah, I see. By that definition, it seems to me that cryptocurrency was actually more grounded than gpt.
Cryptocurrency (or even blockchain) has not (yet) changed the world. That was what everyone was predicting.
Then it hasn’t changed the world. That phrase doesn’t mean “a small number of things are different” it means that everything has pivoted.
That’s the definition of NOT changing the world.
but the examples of success so far seem cherrypicked leading to serious skepticism. there will be a revolution, and its already in progress dethroning entire business models but the future is still very uncertain.
what is humans role in this adventure into the singularity is even moreso clouded with more questions than answers
Bonus points for things that should cause us to make major adjustments (otherwise it doesn’t seem worth it to expend too much energy).
Have you ever looked at predictions from big consulting companies like McKinsey and the likes? "This new field with unlock a market of 30 billions in the next 5 years", that kind of crap?
In the fields where I worked, I used to take those predictions seriously (after all, they know better than I do, right?). What I realized is that they just don't have a damn clue. I can't blame them for failing: predicting the future is an unsolved problem. But making that kind of money by telling that kind of crap should honestly not be legal.
All that to say, some things are clearly coming right at us (ahem, climate change), some aren't (AI, for instance).
By all means keep your own estimates of what the world will look like in 10 years and act accordingly, but I'm trusting my own technologist's judgement on this one.
I’m excluding the desk jockey pundits from the argument, of course.
I am not estimating anything. I'm saying that there is no way to know where it will go. You are the one doing what the empty suits did: you are predicting something based on your beliefs only.
Not that you can't do it: everyone can believe what they want. But it would be wise to realize that it's a belief, even if you are a technologist.
I don't know, I don't see it this way. Bitcoin at the very beginning was an impressive piece of technology (still is), but it clearly did more harm than good.
Autonomous cars had some very impressive demos, and don't seem to have evolved much in a few years (it's impressive, but not good enough).
AI is making very impressive demos now, but it's not changing the world (what seems to work really well right now is to generate convincing disinformation at scale, which is not good).
To me it's all the same: impressive demo, but what matters is not the first 80%, it's the last 20. Everyone seems to be building infrastructure around what AI will become. Just like people built entire companies betting on the fact that cryptocurrencies would become global (they have not), or that blockchain would be useful outside from cryptocurrencies (it is not). Or like people built entire companies around "the new world with autonomous vehicles".
The problem is we got autonomous cars backwards. We needed multimodal GPT first. GPT-4 can look at a picture can tell you what's happening very clearly. Now, chain this together really fast and you have something that could be used for driving. I'm making no bets on when the hardware/models will be fast/cheap/power efficient enough to support this.
>but it's not changing the world
Eh, no, it is changed the world in a vast number of ways, but not spread very equally. On the scientific/AI side a whole bunch of "20 years away" and "We may never accomplish" have been changed to "now". On the language side things GPT has put any translation service on notice. Summerizers too.
I've never been a crypto fan. I believe there are purposes for it, but at the same time I have a bank that does all the same things.
What I do (did?) not have is an AI that actually solve real life problems that I run into now, and that's something that is both highly useful, and something that many people are willing to pay for.
Again, that's a belief :). Could totally be that they never become a thing, and nobody would be surprised.
It took longer than the likes of Tesla said, but it certainly hasn't been taking longer than a whole lot of people expected.
My prediction is that we're much more than a few years away from it becoming a reality in the way people imagine.
examples?
We haven't even seen a war coming right at us.
My old eyes can't see perfectly anymore, so I would probably miss it - whatever it is - anyway, but if you're so sure, would you bet everything you own on it?
> “[It] revealed an embryo of an electronic computer that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence. Later perceptrons will be able to recognize people and call out their names and instantly translate speech in one language to speech and writing in another language, it was predicted”
The section on "Past Winters" in TFA is a good part of the reason why you might want to not believe what you think you see coming right at us ....
Probably, yes, especially after what happened to Cassandra.
Still a fun counterfactual to develop. Lessee, you do know the future, but do not run your mouth off. Matter of fact, you pooh-pooh any such notion ...
Yes, I know. But there's no way to know if these people are right, right now. That will only be possible to know in the future, looking back, so it's still "predicting the future".