I wish they'd focus more on the technical advances and less on trying to "save the world".
The situation may be a bit different now. The megacorporate world is the biggest threat from these tech developments, and the inventors are getting deeply embedded in this. Sort of similar situation that implications of nuclear weapons would be handled only by the military.
I'm not saying they can prevent themselves from thinking about the implications, anyone would, but this grandstanding as if nobody else will be able to figure it out or that only them understand the dangers is what is a bit weird.
My main point isn't "don't listen to the inventor", it's more like, "listen to the inventor but don't think that they know the future just because they invented a gadget". These are people that have investment documents saying they don't know what role money will play in post-AGI world. It has the vibes of a cult mixed with role play.
There's still plenty of anthropocene left for them to be right. At least I hope there is.
It’s obvious in hindsight, but can we really say with certainty that things would have been exactly the same if the inventors did or said nothing? I’m not willing to take that bet.
To me, effort such as this is always worth it, even if it DOES have no effect, because the chance it can change things for the better is worth it.
There were many different voices from many different walks of life of course.
Szilard predicted the development of the bomb would end major war, and he was mostly right for the right reasons, though he envisioned a UN-type organization to control the bombs. And he was one of the first to understand the potential for fission chain reaction once nuclear physics got underway. And he was involved in its development. I think Ilya would be happy to be compared to him.
Bohr, too, had pretty good predictions about the implications of the bomb.
Oppenheimer seemed to understand some of the implications but was happy to leave the policy stuff to the government, and not too try to influence anything like Bohr and Szilard tried to do.
Teller just wanted to keep pushing the tech bigger and bigger.
So the inventors had all sorts of different predictions and values, same as here. Some better than others.
I agree that you shouldn't ask the inventor just because they invented the gadget. But at least in the Manhattan project the scientists were in a very strong position that if they refuse to co-operate, the bomb just won't happen (soon enough). And for that you'd want inventors versed in the wider implications.
One difference from that era is probably that interest in wider philosophy and politics was encouraged from academics. E.g. the "giants of modern physics" (Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr etc) took great interest and scholarship in philosophy and societal issues whereas nowadays, as you said, there's practically 0% of the inventor of the gadget to understand the issues. They should "shut up and calculate", and leave the philosophy to philosophers and the societal impact to economists.
A problem is that philosophers and economists don't really understand the technology and its ramifications, and are heavily influenced by the hype. And philosophers have very little power to influence anyway. There are valid reasons for such specialization, but it has drawbacks.
Well if the workers doing the work don't have a hand in making decisions, who does? We know the answer, from our current era of heirs, limited partners and such, the scions one can see on Rich Kids of Instagram, although they leave the work to their private wealth advisors.
It's the most parasitic idea possible. "Just do all the work and figure out the innovations slave, the aristocracy will take it from there".
I can assure you their random dev #56 isn't taking any decisions already, this is all PR and grandstanding from the already-millionnaires leadership with their power plays about who knows best how to save all of us from AGI.
> "With an enduring passion for the preservation of human life and political freedom, Szilard hoped that the US government would not use nuclear weapons, but that the mere threat of such weapons would force Germany and Japan to surrender. He also worried about the long-term implications of nuclear weapons, predicting that their use by the United States would start a nuclear arms race with the USSR. He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating that the atomic bomb be demonstrated to the enemy, and used only if the enemy did not then surrender. The Interim Committee instead chose to use atomic bombs against cities over the protests of Szilard and other scientists. Afterwards, he lobbied for amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that placed nuclear energy under civilian control."
I think they are exactly the right amount full of themselves. Their insight may not be special, but what makes some bureaucrat's insight more valuable than theirs?
And LLMs aren't taking over the world any time in the foreseeable future, they're glorified parrots.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with what I believe or not that the president does, it's about the intelectual level the general public demands to chose one, for chat-gpt the ability to be persuading it's far easier than the ability to reach AGI, the same happens with humans.
If you focus on the technical advances then you are focusing on NOT saving the world. Good that at least this guy isn't so wholly focused on the technical side even though saving the world is such a blurry concept.
I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
The Nuremberg Trials.
And AGI is 10x impact of nuclear.
Builders are not cogs, and should not try to be them.
We need MORE ethics and good intentions - not less. It is the psychopathic corrupt business rot we should be afraid of - not people actively trying to do good
Feynman talked about how there was an idea of "normal" people walking around not knowing they were basically doomed and going to die in a certain nuclear holocaust in a few years.
Von Neumann thought the U.S. should launch a nuclear first strike at Moscow. Obviously, if war is inevitable then you don't have to be the father of game theory to figure out you should strike first.
It was just a year ago that literally everyone was predicting we would be in a recession right now. We can't predict that but we can predict how AGI plays out even when we haven't bothered to define a measure of what AGI even is. Even people who grew up "knowing" we would all have sentient robots by 1997. I can't think of a single prediction I have heard in my lifetime that has turned out to be true other than the government debt going up.
CGP Grey's popular "Human's Need Not Apply" video is a good example of this kind of thought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&t=199s
Claims that self-driving cars are already here and already better than human drivers, and that the only question is how quickly they replace humans. He argued that Baxter, the general purpose robot, could already copy the tasks of a human worker and do the work for much cheaper. Baxter was discontinued in 2018 because of low interest.
These people have a horrible track record when it comes to technology predictions, and it's unnerving that, instead of reflecting on how wrong they've been, they're doubling down and trying to slow technological advancement.