This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they work in craft businesses, in fishing boats, or in various mercantile trades.
Nobody's even talking about how AI is going to displace that kind of labor, because it's hard to do, hard even to conceive, and it doesn't seem likely to happen in the near term. Lawyers and judges can already be automated, but a yeoman farmer?
That doesn't always translate to happiness but I fully expect AI will reduce costs for all kinds of things, and those things that are now either rare or non-existent will become common. Today not everyone has a robot vacuum, I think in 20 years or so everyone who wants one will have a robot vacuum, and those who can afford the luxury of a robot vac today will be able to afford real robots who can do much more complex things. I'm quite excited about the next few decades, as long as we can keep despots from monopolizing the technology.
Also, AI, even short term, is going to make some people and some countries extremely wealthy, so maybe this isn’t such a bad time to be thinking about those who are still extremely poor and who won’t benefit.
As I already wtote in a previous comment months ago, they speak of AI finding ways to solve this and that grand problem, but never do they wonder if we are ready to listen to the answer. Solve global warming? Burn less petrol. Solve cancer? Eat less meat.
Not only we won't listen to answers, but chatGPT and Anthropic and others will eagerly lobotomize AI to stop it from giving the answers we don't want because of "too woke" or something, to keep juicy government contracts. After all, "Reality has a liberal bias", as the (recently unemployed) Colbert once said.
Getting the pope involved makes it all seem more mystical and magical than it is. And these remarks only further feed that delusion. Regardless of intent, it seems to just feed the AI marketing and hype.
Kind of ironic given almost every AI lab except the one you started and work for actually done model releases to the public, some more "open" than others, but still something.
Look around at what other companies are doing, Qwen/Alibaba seems to have found a pragmatic middleground where they keep the most powerful model variant closed source and only API-accessible, while other models are being released openly to the public, to the entire world in fact, and when the next model release comes around, the previously undisclosed model has now been superseded.
I wonder if Chris ever copy-pasted his writing into Claude and asked something like "Please review this honestly and give me raw feedback, and challenge every claim that is weak", seems there are more "not really reflective of reality" points than just the above.
https://iafsc.org/our-work/faith-ai-covenant
I hope we don’t see safetyism, which is already a problem (see age verification and social media moderation), evolve into some sort of religious moralization implemented through AI providers.
What we NEED are unapologetic technologists who don't dare Galileo to roll over in his grave as they prance around the rhetoric of dogmatic marketeers.
What we NEED is a war of worlds, the old and the new, the imagined systems of men and the logical systems that have elevated all mankind, between the ones trying to drag the iniquities of the past into the future and those willing to abandon the past for it.
What we NEED are leaders that actually give a damn about winning this world for what we can become, not assjackal executives trying for a bigger IPO than the last.
The only thing that makes Ai the opportunity of the millennium is its power to empower us to render Pope and CEO alike irrelevant. Ai allows us to create a future without either of them and it is only us who stand in the way of making that future real.
Your AGI is their Second Coming. Same thing, different crowd.
It seems though that a major problem continues to be allegiance to legacy states, not only in the sense of their role as governors and regulators of the industrial age, but even in the (to me, bizarre) belief that they will be the mechanism by which the internet is made safe for use by the body politic.
What we NEED are sincere elder-statesmen and women to see the writing on the wall and lead a peaceful and total deprecation of governments, and of nuclear weapons in particular.
It seems increasingly obvious that the internet is here to stay, that is represents an evolutionary force, and that it doesn't have the capability to recognize borders or tolerate censorship.
What we NEED is to be absolutely sure that these realities are not the basis for wars among men.
Olah argues that "if we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives."
That sounds part hypocritical and part evasive; the responsibility starts with the people inside the incentives — with him.
geerlingguy•24m ago
I love how he's framing AI as some new and fascinating form of consciousness... when in fact it is a cold, calculating technology devoid of any empathy or care.
hansmayer•21m ago
And if at least they were able to calculate properly at least...
solidasparagus•12m ago
fooker•11m ago
> cold, calculating technology devoid of any empathy or care
I don't see why these statements are contradictory. AI seems to be both of these in my opinion. Unless you can only accept that organic chemistry is the root of consciousness...
recursive•10m ago
It's like saying that's not a recording of me blackmailing the senator. It's merely a series of pulse code modulated samples that. Any semantic significance is purely in the mind of the listener.
randerson•10m ago
"The AI works in mysterious ways"
whateveracct•7m ago