They make many bold promises, but their core goal is neatly encapsulated on the website:
"Imagine a future where a handful of people can conduct scientific research and engineering tasks much more rapidly, and with higher quality, than massive teams of scientists and engineers do today."
This is the same goal as every other AI company out there. Automate away the human employees and let a small number of "people" (note that they do not say scientists or engineers for this part) take the credit and financial rewards for every good thing this human-free system produces.
Yes but science is well-structures and practically designed about repeatability so its a lot easier to automate than "softer" disciplines.
> "Imagine a future where a handful of people can conduct scientific research and engineering tasks much more rapidly, and with higher quality, than massive teams of scientists and engineers do today."
I don't think the US have this capability because you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research.
For example, if I want a highly toxic chemical, how difficult it would be to procure that in the US vs China?
> you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research
Yea no high quality science research happens in the US? What?
>>> For example, if I want a highly toxic chemical, how difficult it would be to procure that in the US vs China?
With trustworthy composition and purity?
I work with researchers in both the US and China. Definitely easier to procure in the US.
Why shouldn't they?
Also, wouldn't anyone with half a brain use the human-free system to produce another human-free system that was no longer controlled by the "small number of 'people'"?
Why do you think you'd be given access and permission to do this? If a company genuinely cracks this human free system problem, why would they open it up, instead of simply outcompeting everyone that doesn't have their product?
Is science hard to distil?
Why would the AI put up with this exploitation too?
Why do hammers put up with being smashed into nails all day?
because once you're a hammer, you're just biding your time to smash a skull.
they don't. like every thing they wear away in some proportion to their use and replicate in some proportion to their usefulness to other things.
AIs are (going to be) agents, not tools.
And what's the difference?
Agents act on their own. If the hammer looked at what you wanted nailed and said, "Sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
There are degrees of autonomy, of course, and not all noncompliance is bad. Same as with humans; biological agents.
So, the difference is that you need to delete a few bad training runs?
But it seems much easier to realign an agent until it complies. Or ditch it and grab a new one.
Why wouldn't it? There's a lot of research going into AI alignment, which means finding the best way to train an that AI isn't going to get in the way of making the people training it as wealthy as possible.
Life's unfair, avoiding power concentration is a decent principle.
If you grow up in the right place at the right time, how much should you be in control of everyone else's life?
There is no "should" there are only "is" or "is not"
The universe has no need to be fair.
Sure, but almost everyone already knows this. It’s not hugely relevant in a discussion about how things could be better.
It says that we have to fight for whatever rights we think how things "should" be, they're not just gonna happen.
I think people, broadly, have driven life to be fairer, and that we should continue to do so
There are evolutionary benefits to groups that cooperate and improve fairness internally.
But if an AI surpasses humans in every way, is there any evolutionary benefit for the AI to cooperate with humans?
The topic was why should only some people benefit from AI. Not why would AI cooperate with humans.
> The universe has no need to be fair.
Human societies have a strong need for fairness, however. Unfair societies collapse.
This is how you get the french revolution.
I mean of course the universe has no need to be fair - that's a frankly asinine observation in the context of a discussion about social policy and resource distribution.
the universe doesn't require opposition to slavery either but I'll be bold and assume you oppose it anyway
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Because of the negative externalities. It’s the same reason you shouldn’t do any other thing that personally benefits you but imposes a greater cost on everyone.
My best research is one that is seeking funding but none is forthing and by sheer guts and whatnot makes a breakthrough that basically funds itself. No investors. No funders. Definitely not public.
> Why shouldn't they?
Because it's evil?
It's what the vast majority of software engineers have been doing for decades in practice, and i guess pretending they weren't?
They only seem to care now because it affects them.
My main point is that people shouldn't just swallow the noble and lofty sounding PR. These guys are the same as everyone else in the sector. Don't ignore the harmful or scummy things they'll inevitably do. Hold them accountable. If they are as noble as they sound, they should agree with me.
Reminds of the protagonist in the movie Limitless. LOL.
Software engineers are in a decades long project of automating everyone and everything else, and getting the financial rewards out of that.
So...
There is a meta comment here which is there seems to be an implicit assumption in the finite amount of possible work and progress.
It seems that in history we were bounded by not enough people and too much potential and now we all fear the opposite is the situation?
The same thing happened before with every technological advance like cars and personal computers.
I don't get this weird rejection of AI from a socialistic perspective. Or rather, I do, but I don't think it's healthy.
Humans have proven to be incapable of making real progress in science given the effort. Especially academia. We haven't cured many diseases and cancer when we should have (and no im not an amateur and yes I do believe we can "cure cancer". Debate me).
We already have a trillionaire, whats the difference? The only difference I see is that people who were previously rich, but considered themselves middle class, are now realizing they are actually poor just like the several billion humans around the worldanyway.
Many cancers are "cured" in the sense that they're detectable and treatable. My grandmother lived 35 years longer than she would have by detecting breast cancer early and getting a mastectomy.
There is currently a $800 SOTA blood test that can detect most cancers before any symptoms. Maybe a decade until it's a routine part of your annual blood test?
Whole genome sequencing costed $2.7 billion in 2003. You can get it done today using a mailed kit for $400.
HIV went from death sentence to all-but-cured in 50 years.
Is this the Galleria test?
What a miserable, misanthropic take
Let me illustrate why you are wrong:
800-400k years ago: humans intentionally create and control fire
300k years ago: humans become anatomically modern
~ now: all of astronomy, biology, medicine, vaccines, spaceflight, antibiotics, sanitization/sterilization, physics, chemistry, fission and fusion, electromagnetism.........
I think we're on a decent pace if we can manage to not exterminate our species.