Experts as in AI-2027, Jenson “I think we’ve achieved AGI in March 2026” Huang, or that AI Researcher(tm) calling to pre-emptively bomb Microsoft data centers in summer 2022?
I am looking forward to a bunch of investigative documentaries exploring “How the cult of Omnissiah infected every single Doomsayer CEO of an AI company in Delusional 20s” (or whatever monicker our times will have got in the future).
Hassabis is a genius. He is way, way smarter than me and I’m sure the majority of techies, but please get real. This is Prophets of Doom of our generation.
A string is a stretch, let’s not get wild here. If you include references to the most successful implementation of communism and all that it entailed to the masses, then, sure.
I dream of a world where I can just read a prompt behind some slopicle and cut the middleman entirely.
The bulls and I do not disagree about AI. We disagree about which derivative the structure is written on. They are watching the level. I am watching its acceleration. That is not a difference about technology. It is a difference about arithmetic - and arithmetic, eventually, does not take opinions.
Regardless, 2nd order (and higher) derivatives are nothing new in finance and are a part of any decent university’s curriculum. Corporate debt is not an options contract. Using Gamma risk to explain AI bubble mechanics is a poor fit.
- Doomsayers with Yudkowsky et. al. at the helm calling to bomb datacenters
- “Roko’s Basilisk”
- General AI psychosis and treatment of AI as something with consciousness. Any attempts of rebuttal are met with lazy “but how do you know you are conscious. haha got ‘em”
- Inquisitorial purges of non-believers: “our CEO mandates you shall use AI in your work, or else”
- Communion with a God: “I was talking to ChatGPT and I realised <something personally profound>”
- “You are just using it wrong” aka “You are not praying hard enough”
- Cult Executive Officers
- Promise of incoming salvation with AGI taking over and making a Heaven (or Hell - caveat emptor) on Earth
Man, it must be hard to be a tech CEO these days./s
Even if you take a realistic position on AI, you can’t get off the train. Wall Street and your investors will hang and quarter you the moment you start expressing doubts.
So you grind your teeth, make grandiose investment promises, sign lofty budgets, and hope it all works out.
Comparisons with luddites are absurd. AI is much closer to a religion.
The curve has always been the bog standard S curve of technological development. In Paul Saffo’s words: “…we routinely overestimate short-term change and underestimate long-term change.”
I concur. In one of my previous teams we told people to avoid using "best practices" and replace it with "good practices" instead. It may sound like some semantic nitpicking, but I've seen far too many cases of target fixation on "best practices" disregarding the actual problem people were trying to solve.