6 ms·

Just to put Bill Gates thoughts on AI into perspective, this was his comment on an AMA 9 years ago to the question "What kind of technological advancement do y

by jcattle 22d ago

Just to put Bill Gates thoughts on AI into perspective, this was his comment on an AMA 9 years ago to the question "What kind of technological advancement do you wish to see in your lifetime?": > The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia,... Right now computers don't know how to represent knowledge so they can't read a text book and pass a test. https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/dea5flw/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_...

throw310822 21d ago
I don't like meta comments usually, but unless I have a bad case of deja-vu, isn't this comment (and much of this discussion) way older than 3 hours?
- purplethreads 20d ago
  They removed the other thread because people were calling out Epstein stuff
  - GeorgeWBasic 20d ago
    That's the sort of thing that should be discussed!
    - EricDeb 20d ago
      It's not invalid, but it's completely unrelated to his opinions about A.I.
      - HNPedoLovers 20d ago
        [dead]
      - paganel 20d ago
        A pedo talking about AI is still a pedo and his opinion should be discounted on the spot. You know, because of him being a pedo. Unless you entertain discussing the opinions held by pedos, in which case I have nothing to add.
ViktorRay 22d ago
Fascinating. Can't help but wonder how things will change over the next decade or so.
- petre 20d ago
  For the worse. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air, to quote Ford Perfect.
  - jansan 20d ago
    It's Ford Prefect
- bbor 20d ago
  Well it’s just the one breakthrough that we needed — specifically, it was solving the frame problems. Now the dam has burst and we’re in for ‘turbulence’.
fittingopposite 21d ago
Wow. First time I can't see stuff on Reddit without an account :(
- zatkin 21d ago
  I logged in just to share the entire comment for you: >The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia,... Right now computers don't know how to represent knowledge so they can't read a text book and pass a test. >Another whole area is vaccines. We need a vaccine for HIV, Malaria and TB and I hope we have them in the next 10-15 years.
  - lazyasciiart 20d ago
    But there is a malaria vaccine? https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/php/public-health-strategy/malaria-vaccines.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/php/public-health-strategy/malar...
    - rb666 20d ago
      Yes? So not 9 years ago...
- accrual 21d ago
  Yes, it's a shame. It's in part due to scrapers and AI. There's a wealth of relevant knowledge inside Reddit, and agents aren't able to easily check there for updates on recent topics.
  - iamacyborg 21d ago
    > It's in part due to scrapers and AI. It has nothing to do with that, scrapers can still scrape new reddit. This is just a hostile action to move visitors to a site that shows more ads.
    - 21d ago
reducesuffering 21d ago
Yes, exactly why you should not put belief in someone who has proven themselves to make poor predictions. He's even further removed from the zeitgeist 9 years later. Daniel Kokotajlo had the closest prediction for our current world, 5 years ago: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-... You should adjust that these are the kind of the people with the most prescient accuracy for where we are going again. Their world model is more accurate. Kokotajlo authored: https://ai-2040.com/ https://ai-2040.com/
- thelaxiankey 21d ago
  where is the error? 9 years ago (2017) 'attention is all you need' hasn't been written yet, no llms exist. his take is literally 'it would be cool if something like llms existed', seems fine (if anything, vaguely predictive) to me. As for Kokotajlo, he's a good SF author, but I don't think it's nearly as good a prediction as it appears at first glance. Like any SF, he's correct about some things, and way, way off base about others. Specifically, he was mostly correct about short-term (1-2 year horizon) technical aspects, but anyone familiar with how transformers work would have guessed those. I'm not even in AI/rationalia land, but believe I was having these exact conversations by 2021. Specifically about multimodality and steam-of-consciousness ['chain of thought' reasoning]. He is spot-on about chip shortages (to my eyes, his most well-done prediction). Other thoughts are a storytelling device, like a well-told horoscope. He makes non-categorical statements that were already happening as if they categorically will become a new thing. But really he's just going off the current trend that everyone knows, and thus will be nearly-impossible to falsify. For example, 'People who still remember 2021 think of it as the golden days, when conformism and censorship and polarization were noticeably less than they are now. Just as it is normal for newspapers to have a bias/slant, it is normal for internet spaces of all kinds—forums, social networks, streams, podcasts, news aggregators, email clients—to have some degree of censorship (some set of ideas that are prohibited or at least down-weighted in the recommendation algorithms) and some degree of propaganda.' Sounds scary! But it is literally just saying 'polarization and marketing specialization will continue to deteriorate'.... which, duh. In essence, you could make this statement for 2018-> 2021, or for 2008->2018 and 'feel' just as correct! Other key thoughts were somewhat off. Specifically, 'It now costs an order of magnitude less compute (compared to 2020) to pre-train a giant model' is kind-of-true, in that it costs less now, but the models have gotten so much bigger that the prices haven't actually gone down much. Might be changing soon, but definitely several years off. The scariest central prediction that the political stuff rests on is 'After years of tinkering and incremental progress, AIs can now play Diplomacy as well as human experts'. This part, as far as I can tell, is just not true and hasn't changed. And, well, 2026 predictions are just not correct at all. Some examples: 'Mormons create a “Christian Coalition” internet stack, complete with its own email client, social network, payment processor, news aggregator, etc.' -- basically untrue. I know a few ex-mormons, such a thing is not prolific. 'The US and many other Western governments are gears-locked' The US is far from gears-locked, in fact, it's full-steam ahead to er, well, something. '“Should I wear shorts today?” “Order some more toothpaste, please. Oh, and also an air purifier.” “Is this cover letter professional-sounding?”' -- kind of correct, but in practice most people just do the last one. I'm not aware of many that give chatgpt agents credit card access (refer to the famous vending machine experiment). But predicting this with GPT3 is not that crazy, cause people were already doing that. Personally, I am much more biased towards the METR timelines/way of thinking: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measu... I found Kokotajilo's response comment to this kind of, idk, immature, and not especially mathematical.
okasaki 21d ago
[flagged]
paul7986 21d ago
In January after 8 years (17 years in tech overall) at the same govt IT firm in the Mid-Atlanic region I was laid off. I quickly enrolled in healthcare classes and starting my clinical rotation for low level healthcare position ($25 an hour hopefully vs. multiples in tech) in September. Also, I will be doing my clinical Radiology rotation this time next year. Still won't be making the same money but i dont see a future in creative tech anymore when anyone can type to create graphics, songs, web designs, websites, iPhone apps, etc. This note of his reinforces what I thought I should do and what I am doing is the right path.
- ricardobayes 21d ago
  For what it's worth I'm also drawn to radiology tech - I guess because it's one of the most "techy" fields out there in healthcare? Hope all goes well for you.
  - paul7986 21d ago
    Thank you and it's a competitive field to get into just look for schools out in the middle of nowhere and wherever for easier entry into a program.
  - hvs 21d ago
    Unfortunately radiology is also one area of healthcare being highly targeted for AI replacement of humans.
    - paul7986 20d ago
      Well not radiology technicans as they are required to use equipment on patients to get diagnostic data. AI could possibly reduce the amount of radiologists (they are doctors) jobs.
- mike_bob 21d ago
  If you're interested in healthcare IT look into becoming an Epic admin. Hospitals and clinics want RNs with a tech background for those roles, and they pay really well (~150k here in CA)
cameronh90 20d ago
Irrespective of how it all turns out, I'm personally incredibly excited to be alive during it. In many ways, it is the ultimate milestone.
- akomtu 20d ago
  We'll probably see the explanation of the Fermi paradox.

by jcattle 22d ago

throw310822 21d ago

I don't like meta comments usually, but unless I have a bad case of deja-vu, isn't this comment (and much of this discussion) way older than 3 hours?

purplethreads 20d ago
They removed the other thread because people were calling out Epstein stuff
- GeorgeWBasic 20d ago
  That's the sort of thing that should be discussed!
  - EricDeb 20d ago
    It's not invalid, but it's completely unrelated to his opinions about A.I.
    - HNPedoLovers 20d ago
      [dead]
    - paganel 20d ago
      A pedo talking about AI is still a pedo and his opinion should be discounted on the spot. You know, because of him being a pedo. Unless you entertain discussing the opinions held by pedos, in which case I have nothing to add.

ViktorRay 22d ago

Fascinating. Can't help but wonder how things will change over the next decade or so.

petre 20d ago
For the worse. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air, to quote Ford Perfect.
- jansan 20d ago
  It's Ford Prefect
bbor 20d ago
Well it’s just the one breakthrough that we needed — specifically, it was solving the frame problems. Now the dam has burst and we’re in for ‘turbulence’.

fittingopposite 21d ago

Wow. First time I can't see stuff on Reddit without an account :(

zatkin 21d ago
I logged in just to share the entire comment for you: >The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia,... Right now computers don't know how to represent knowledge so they can't read a text book and pass a test. >Another whole area is vaccines. We need a vaccine for HIV, Malaria and TB and I hope we have them in the next 10-15 years.
- lazyasciiart 20d ago
  But there is a malaria vaccine? https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/php/public-health-strategy/malaria-vaccines.html https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/php/public-health-strategy/malar...
  - rb666 20d ago
    Yes? So not 9 years ago...
accrual 21d ago
Yes, it's a shame. It's in part due to scrapers and AI. There's a wealth of relevant knowledge inside Reddit, and agents aren't able to easily check there for updates on recent topics.
- iamacyborg 21d ago
  > It's in part due to scrapers and AI. It has nothing to do with that, scrapers can still scrape new reddit. This is just a hostile action to move visitors to a site that shows more ads.
  - 21d ago

reducesuffering 21d ago

Yes, exactly why you should not put belief in someone who has proven themselves to make poor predictions. He's even further removed from the zeitgeist 9 years later. Daniel Kokotajlo had the closest prediction for our current world, 5 years ago: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-looks-like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-... You should adjust that these are the kind of the people with the most prescient accuracy for where we are going again. Their world model is more accurate. Kokotajlo authored: https://ai-2040.com/ https://ai-2040.com/

thelaxiankey 21d ago
where is the error? 9 years ago (2017) 'attention is all you need' hasn't been written yet, no llms exist. his take is literally 'it would be cool if something like llms existed', seems fine (if anything, vaguely predictive) to me. As for Kokotajlo, he's a good SF author, but I don't think it's nearly as good a prediction as it appears at first glance. Like any SF, he's correct about some things, and way, way off base about others. Specifically, he was mostly correct about short-term (1-2 year horizon) technical aspects, but anyone familiar with how transformers work would have guessed those. I'm not even in AI/rationalia land, but believe I was having these exact conversations by 2021. Specifically about multimodality and steam-of-consciousness ['chain of thought' reasoning]. He is spot-on about chip shortages (to my eyes, his most well-done prediction). Other thoughts are a storytelling device, like a well-told horoscope. He makes non-categorical statements that were already happening as if they categorically will become a new thing. But really he's just going off the current trend that everyone knows, and thus will be nearly-impossible to falsify. For example, 'People who still remember 2021 think of it as the golden days, when conformism and censorship and polarization were noticeably less than they are now. Just as it is normal for newspapers to have a bias/slant, it is normal for internet spaces of all kinds—forums, social networks, streams, podcasts, news aggregators, email clients—to have some degree of censorship (some set of ideas that are prohibited or at least down-weighted in the recommendation algorithms) and some degree of propaganda.' Sounds scary! But it is literally just saying 'polarization and marketing specialization will continue to deteriorate'.... which, duh. In essence, you could make this statement for 2018-> 2021, or for 2008->2018 and 'feel' just as correct! Other key thoughts were somewhat off. Specifically, 'It now costs an order of magnitude less compute (compared to 2020) to pre-train a giant model' is kind-of-true, in that it costs less now, but the models have gotten so much bigger that the prices haven't actually gone down much. Might be changing soon, but definitely several years off. The scariest central prediction that the political stuff rests on is 'After years of tinkering and incremental progress, AIs can now play Diplomacy as well as human experts'. This part, as far as I can tell, is just not true and hasn't changed. And, well, 2026 predictions are just not correct at all. Some examples: 'Mormons create a “Christian Coalition” internet stack, complete with its own email client, social network, payment processor, news aggregator, etc.' -- basically untrue. I know a few ex-mormons, such a thing is not prolific. 'The US and many other Western governments are gears-locked' The US is far from gears-locked, in fact, it's full-steam ahead to er, well, something. '“Should I wear shorts today?” “Order some more toothpaste, please. Oh, and also an air purifier.” “Is this cover letter professional-sounding?”' -- kind of correct, but in practice most people just do the last one. I'm not aware of many that give chatgpt agents credit card access (refer to the famous vending machine experiment). But predicting this with GPT3 is not that crazy, cause people were already doing that. Personally, I am much more biased towards the METR timelines/way of thinking: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measuring-ai-ability-to-complete-long-tasks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/deesrjitvXM4xYGZd/metr-measu... I found Kokotajilo's response comment to this kind of, idk, immature, and not especially mathematical.

okasaki 21d ago

[flagged]

paul7986 21d ago

In January after 8 years (17 years in tech overall) at the same govt IT firm in the Mid-Atlanic region I was laid off. I quickly enrolled in healthcare classes and starting my clinical rotation for low level healthcare position ($25 an hour hopefully vs. multiples in tech) in September. Also, I will be doing my clinical Radiology rotation this time next year. Still won't be making the same money but i dont see a future in creative tech anymore when anyone can type to create graphics, songs, web designs, websites, iPhone apps, etc. This note of his reinforces what I thought I should do and what I am doing is the right path.

ricardobayes 21d ago
For what it's worth I'm also drawn to radiology tech - I guess because it's one of the most "techy" fields out there in healthcare? Hope all goes well for you.
- paul7986 21d ago
  Thank you and it's a competitive field to get into just look for schools out in the middle of nowhere and wherever for easier entry into a program.
- hvs 21d ago
  Unfortunately radiology is also one area of healthcare being highly targeted for AI replacement of humans.
  - paul7986 20d ago
    Well not radiology technicans as they are required to use equipment on patients to get diagnostic data. AI could possibly reduce the amount of radiologists (they are doctors) jobs.
mike_bob 21d ago
If you're interested in healthcare IT look into becoming an Epic admin. Hospitals and clinics want RNs with a tech background for those roles, and they pay really well (~150k here in CA)

cameronh90 20d ago

Irrespective of how it all turns out, I'm personally incredibly excited to be alive during it. In many ways, it is the ultimate milestone.

akomtu 20d ago
We'll probably see the explanation of the Fermi paradox.