Which CEO said this for 'literally decades'?
And if so why are they still pursuing it then?
Most children have learned touching a hot stove is bad for them. Then why still do it at the age of 40?
Most children have learned touching a hot stove is bad for them. Then why still do it at the age of 40?
So even with their earnest belief that there is a > 5% chance this technology could be 1) capable of autonomously killing billions of people during this century and 2) may not be sufficiently aligned and might actually act on that capability, the EV basically still sums positive, to them.
Not saying this is necessarily a good or moral calculus. But it is what they think. There is no conspiracy or plot or deception.
Elon Musk in 2014 - "We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes" https://x.com/elonmusk/status/495759307346952192
Dario Amodei in 2017 - "There’s a long tail of things of varying degrees of badness that could happen. I think at the extreme end is the Nick Bostrom" https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/the-world-needs-ai-r...
They're still pursuing it because without an international treaty, they think it is inevitable. In the case of Dario, they want to align it just enough and be first to stop others causing harm (a vainglorious strategy, yet still a strategy). In the case of Musk and Altman, not completely clear to me.
Google feels less important right now probably, and Demis Hassabis no longer runs Deep Mind as CEO. However, he talked about this early too, and his reason for proceeding was he was only doing narrow AI (e.g. protein folding) which is fundamentally less dangerous.
I don't think this is true. He repeatedly says things like "I’ve been working towards AGI my whole life".
"Hassabis told him to add another potential threat to the list: artificial intelligence. Machines could become superintelligent and surpass us mere mortals, -perhaps even decide to dispose of us."
https://time.com/6310076/elon-musk-ai-walter-isaacson-biogra...
You're right that the picture is more complicated than I wrote above. Quickly looking, it seems that Shane Legg was concerned very very early on. I can't find anything tangible about what their strategy was to avoid the danger. It looks like Hassabis had longer timescales than Legg, so perhaps just thought they had more room before it really mattered?
- For Altman Id say he was already deeper in the "transformer & model landscape" in 2015?
- Musk in 2014: Not sure how much he was aware of the current-state back then
Altman read Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence, he mentions it in this post https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
I also read that book in 2014, and it is how I came to understand this problem early.
They probably just want to ensure that the first AGI is a nazi.