I've had several conversations with people over the last few weeks
that have highlighted how far apart my view of the near future is from
many people I talk to. Here are some things I might tweet if that was
the kind of thing I did:
AI has a very real chance of getting us all killed. I think it
probably won't because I expect a lot of people to work very hard to
avoid that outcome.
AI is so quickly approaching (or exceeding) expert human
abilities across so many areas that most people should be planning for
1-3 more years in which they can productively contribute. Use the
time well!
But also don't live your life in a way where if it takes
longer than that you're destitute; there's still a lot of uncertainty
in how quickly this plays out.
We are already seeing AI speeding up the development of AI, as
it substitutes for human expertise. As the remaining human
contribution gets smaller I expect this to compound dramatically, and
we'll see rapid improvement even compared to today.
I don't know if the metaphor is "goalpost moving" or "frog
boiling" but if you dropped a top model into 2006 it would very
clearly be "AGI".
If you think AI isn't improving rapidly you're doing some
combination of not applying it to hard enough problems, not giving it
enough context/tooling/tokens, or not using top models.
I'm worried about the environmental impacts of data centers, in
that I see plausible near futures in which the world produces vastly
more energy than it does today and almost all of it goes into powering
computers.
Many paths to appropriately serious action run through warning
shots, and we've been getting some. So far they look like hacks, and
there will be more. Aside: information that should not become public
is increasingly dangerous to keep.
Lots of people have plans to make the world better by improving
X to improve Y to improve Z, where it's Z that matters. If Z is more
than 3y out, consider finding a different plan.
If AI goes well I think the world could be extremely good. The
bottom 10% living far better than the top 10% do now. This is the
promise that gets people working so hard to build something so
dangerous.
I'm being a bit lazy here because the tweet format means I can make
bold claims without backing any of them up. If you think I'm wrong on
any of these, happy to give arguments in the comments.
I suppose you are right. Fiction rarely labels whether a given AI system is meant to be general or not.
There's definitely AI stronger then LLMs in fiction and AI weaker than LLMs in fiction and I cannot show that when people think of AGI they think of the examples stronger than LLMs.
So let me make another argument:
Even careful and thoughtful people are generally bad at predicting what other people believe outside of trivial examples. See for example thoughtful Democrats being often unable to articulate accurately what thoughtful Republicans believe and vice versa.
Whether or not other people believe LLMs are AGI is not a trivial example
We're generally worse at predicting what people 20 years in the past have thought about some issue unless we have specific evidence (e.g. a written record) than we are at predicting what our contemporaries believe
We have no specific evidence (e.g. a written record) about what people in 2006 thought AGI would look like exactly and if it matches LLMs
So we cannot accurately predict whether or not people in 2006 would've generally considered LLMs to be AGI
And it's especially not "clearly" or "obivously" the case they would've seen 2026 LLMs as AGI
I've had several conversations with people over the last few weeks that have highlighted how far apart my view of the near future is from many people I talk to. Here are some things I might tweet if that was the kind of thing I did:
AI has a very real chance of getting us all killed. I think it probably won't because I expect a lot of people to work very hard to avoid that outcome.
AI is so quickly approaching (or exceeding) expert human abilities across so many areas that most people should be planning for 1-3 more years in which they can productively contribute. Use the time well!
But also don't live your life in a way where if it takes longer than that you're destitute; there's still a lot of uncertainty in how quickly this plays out.
We are already seeing AI speeding up the development of AI, as it substitutes for human expertise. As the remaining human contribution gets smaller I expect this to compound dramatically, and we'll see rapid improvement even compared to today.
I don't know if the metaphor is "goalpost moving" or "frog boiling" but if you dropped a top model into 2006 it would very clearly be "AGI".
If you think AI isn't improving rapidly you're doing some combination of not applying it to hard enough problems, not giving it enough context/tooling/tokens, or not using top models.
I'm worried about the environmental impacts of data centers, in that I see plausible near futures in which the world produces vastly more energy than it does today and almost all of it goes into powering computers.
Many paths to appropriately serious action run through warning shots, and we've been getting some. So far they look like hacks, and there will be more. Aside: information that should not become public is increasingly dangerous to keep.
Lots of people have plans to make the world better by improving X to improve Y to improve Z, where it's Z that matters. If Z is more than 3y out, consider finding a different plan.
If AI goes well I think the world could be extremely good. The bottom 10% living far better than the top 10% do now. This is the promise that gets people working so hard to build something so dangerous.
I'm being a bit lazy here because the tweet format means I can make bold claims without backing any of them up. If you think I'm wrong on any of these, happy to give arguments in the comments.
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