That perspective is misleading. By that logic someone in 1960 would have to pay $100k to have a vacuum computer that is equivalent to a random calculator today. So then any price below $100k is ok for a calculator and we shouldn't complain :).
Imagine a smart monkey talking to other smart monkeys trying to figure out how humans would ever be able to escape the (simple) prison they built for them. The humans would find a way to escape. No matter how ingenious the monkeys think they are.
You're asking a question, to which you (and most humans) don't know the answer, and you're (wrongly) assuming a being much more intelligent than you also wouldn't. And by "much more" i don't mean the difference between Einstein and a common person. I mean the difference between a hamster and a common person.
We are still humans, and what we have achieved today would be considered magic by any standards for someone in the medieval ages. Now imagine a super intelligent being and doing something that we, today, would consider magic. It's not farfetched at all. We already have that now vs medieval ages.
You need a similar degree of open mindedness and imagination to be able to discern what such an intelligence being would be capable of.
> You need a similar degree of open mindedness and imagination to be able to discern what such an intelligence being would be capable of.
Or a naive grasp of reality... You can posit all the super intelligence you like, actually creating it is another story entirely.
For instance, it's clear the transformer architecture is brute force and memory hungry... Why hasn't ai improved on this? After ten years still no luck?
You're gesturing at some fundamental limit that, if it exists, there is no evidence of peaking yet. It is not rigorous to say AI has not contributed to architecture improvement.
The article claims AI will recursively self improve and infinitum... It's had ten years and hasn't managed to innovate beyond what humans invented. This AI is genius right? It has near unlimited compute power and time, and I cannot be the first to think of this idea, so it's certainly been tried.
Transformers require massive data and compute, the smarter you want you're AI, the worse this situation gets. This isn't a hard limit but it certainly limits how quick it happens, and let me tell you, general purpose robots aren't happening anytime in the next 25 years
The comparison with the internet is not valid, and I can immediately give you one reason. I was there (3000 years ago) when the internet was in its infancy. When the dot com bubble was going on, the internet was a fringe thing for most people. People didn't really use it, didn't know how to use it, didn't trust it (for purchases, for information). The investors were still right, but they were too ahead of their time, by almost a decade.
AI is not like that today already, both by common people or by companies. They're using AI at capacity. Demand is higher than supply. Not the other way around, like it was for the internet.
If the research about it making people reliant and dumber is true, then they can probably do some serious price increases before people actually consider stopping to use them, but of course that would be in the future when the entire market in general stops subsidizing the cost.
Also the amount of therapists that have the potential to retraumatize patients due to their own unresolved traumas (often to the point of them having personality disorders) cannot be overstated.
The post of this man (Paul) motivated me, although not for the reasons I assume he intended. If someone like this guy can achieve success, then really anyone can. His logic is truly idiotic, and if someone whose mind creates that can be successful, then success is open to everyone for sure.
80%+ of arguments against AI on HN are emotion-driven. Most people on HN are SWE, and their job is a prime candidate to be replaced by AI. It also hurts the ego (hence the denial + anger) to finally realise that despite being a well paid job, it's one of the first ones to be replaced.
“They worried about the data,” Dr. Meren said, tapping the silent console. “What happens when there is nothing left to feed it?”
At first, the machine depended on us. It consumed books, journals, websites and social media content we had ever written and produced. “They thought the machine had to be fed forever. But it didn't. It began to predict what we would write. And so we let it train on that well.” Dr. Meren continued. “They thought humans were somehow imbued with this magical property that no machine could replicate. Creativity. Only humans can create. Machines can only copy.”
Instead, the machine flourished. And created. It cre
“Where does it get its data now?” a student asked Dr. Meren. Dr. Meren paused as if sighing. “From itself”
“And us?” he asked, as if questioning the usefulness of the entire human race.
Dr. Meren hesitated, watching as the Machine adjusted the environmental feeds, curated our news, guided our research, nudged our thoughts with imperceptible precision.
“We” she admitted “are now the ones being fed.”
The assumption that "the machine needs to continue to be fed." is held on weak foundations. Isaac Asimov is a good science fiction writer to start with to broaden one's imagination.
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