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For the record, I don't think it is, personally. But people are terrified, and not taking their fear seriously and dealing with it compassionately is a recipe for serious, and unnecessary disaster.
A job-ending development for many people, yes.
The chattering classes see themselves becoming obsolete. Fast. They're freaking out. From professors of English literature to op-ed writers, word slingers are in trouble. Not novelists, though; none of these systems can hold a story together for any great length.
If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.
The time to adapt to AI is now (Getting a trade is the safest bet), but obviously 99% of the population doesn't want to do any adaptation. So when GPT5,GPT6 comes out, only then will they confront AI, without any mental preparation.
That's why there's no point slowing down. People won't be alerted until the AI's get advanced enough, so better push it forward, to shock people into action. Institutions can move suprisingly fast when pushed to, every school and university has had to respond to ChatGPT already, and it kind of works. Otherwise people will just try and pretend this doesn't exist, forever.
So like putting poor performing FSD on public streets (daring regulators to ... do their job)?
Or connecting the nukes to some SkyNet-esque "defense" system, knowing its propensity for illogical and undefined behavior?
So… almost everyone who posts here?
Not sure why everyone here is so excited to be out of a job. I guess they all think that UBI will fall out of the sky. I think they’ll be in for a rude awakening.
Fear makes us stupid. Frightened people are dangerous people.
The civilization ending development is going to happen or not happen. It’s hubris to think any one person or one country has a say at this point.
Lots of people freak out based on concerns divorced from reality. I laughed at the people who thought the mayan calendar meant 2012 was the end of the world. I laughed at the people who thought the LHC would create a black hole that would gobble the earth. I laughed at the people who thought covid vaccines were a eugenics mass sterialization campaign.
Why shouldn't I? The magnitude of the risk they propose does nothing to change the sheer ridiculousness of it.
I disagree with the letter and I think these fears are overblown, but the attitude on display here is pretty unpleasant.
Edit: We actually don't want people to develop something "too good". There are some things in the past century that have been "too good". Plastics are too good. So are nuclear weapons. Completely powerful AIs and machines that can displace jobs of millions of people are too good. If there's an AI tomorrow that can replace every single physical job out there, what do you think will happen? Riot and chaos in the street after about 1-2 years.
Edit2: People will always go back to "we will just create different jobs". But do you really think that everyone is capable of skilled job? Remember, no physical jobs anymore.
I don't think you even need to replace every physical job out there for that to be the result. I think all the ingredients needed exist right now, and I'm worried that unless the discourse about LLMs changes significantly, the perceived threat of them is enough to bring those riots and chaos.
So how is this any different? Other group of people with more connection to the government can enforce a law to prevent others from displacing their jobs?
At least you are putting your disillusioned cynicism on full display, clearly showing that you think you already lost.
Are there going to be any non-“losers”? AGI has the potential to put everyone, literally everyone, out of work. Permanently.
Who is going to be left to do the laughing and call others “losers”?
And yeah, I had a laugh at the signatories. Of course my heart goes out to the non-billionaires that might be out of a job. Or maybe us lucky duckies are going to travel the world on our new basic income trust funds?
Please don't correct that.
[1] No AI was involved in the creation of this reply. ;-)
You laugh but I think your view is flawed because your belief is, “we have to create an AGI because everyone else will if we don’t”
The definition of a world ending arms race ?
This topic amongst others should be a good time for people to actually come together, reflect and and talk about the future we want to create rather than just LOL about it, start wars with each other etc ?
I guess your just being cynical but really? LOL?
Even ChatGPT would probably tell you this isn’t a smart way forwards.
As an American I know you think Russia is wrong, but it doesn't take a LLM to see that the invasion of Iraq was not all that different, the excuse for that war was that they had access to weapons of mass destruction so they needed to be wiped out.
Did you ever see any weapons of mass destruction?
The world is too small for these mindsets now. We need to grow up.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
It's not comparable to the Iraq war. A better comparison would be the USA invading Canada.