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On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman outlined his vision for an AI-driven future of tech progress and global prosperity in a new personal blog post titled "The Intelligence Age." The essay paints a picture of human advancement accelerated by AI, with Altman suggesting that superintelligent AI could emerge within the next decade.
"It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I'm confident we'll get there," he wrote.
OpenAI's current goal is to create AGI (artificial general intelligence), which is a term for hypothetical technology that could match human intelligence in performing many tasks without the need for specific training. By contrast, superintelligence surpasses AGI, and it could be seen as a hypothetical level of machine intelligence that can dramatically outperform humans at any intellectual task, perhaps even to an unfathomable degree.
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Despite the criticism, it's notable when the CEO of what is probably the defining AI company of the moment makes a broad prediction about future capabilities—even if that means he's perpetually trying to raise money. Building infrastructure to power AI services is foremost on many tech CEOs' minds these days."If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible," Altman writes in his essay, "we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips). If we don't build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people."
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While enthusiastic about AI's potential, Altman urges caution, too, but vaguely. He writes, "We need to act wisely but with conviction. The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges. It will not be an entirely positive story, but the upside is so tremendous that we owe it to ourselves, and the future, to figure out how to navigate the risks in front of us."
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"Many of the jobs we do today would have looked like trifling wastes of time to people a few hundred years ago, but nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter," he wrote. "If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable. And if we could fast-forward a hundred years from today, the prosperity all around us would feel just as unimaginable."
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 30 2024, @03:40PM
The future belongs to whoever shows up.
Lets say his quote is correct. That would imply the birth rate in Amish communities is vastly lower than the birth rate of hipster urbanites. (checks the numbers...) Hmm I think I have to disagree.
Its like claiming drivethrus will eliminate waitress employment. Well, I'm sure there's an impact, but humans like getting their food from hot young human females (and variations etc).
Sure in some boring dollars and cents fashion the most economical way to logistically distribute beer is likely Amazon drone delivery in the long run. I don't see bars going out of business any time soon, LOL.
I might not feel too strong of a pull to Amish life, but if the alternative gets worse... sure.
Also, as time goes on I could totally see a 1950s DieselPunk aesthetic creating some kind of Neo-Amish community. No electronics beyond vacuum tubes, no electronic entertainment beyond B+W video broadcasts, etc. Frankly I'd visit that as a theme resort. A giant dome faraday cage containing a functional civilization surrounding by our non-functional civilization. They'd have to be pretty careful whom they let in, LOL.