AI Generally Taking Us Toward Stupid
Kyrsten Sinema AND Victoria Nuland announcing their retirement on the same day?!
Well, I'll be. Maybe there is a god?
What's that? Nope. Sorry. Without clearer proof, "maybe" is the best you'll get from me on that topic, but only because I refuse to adhere to any one group's version of a god.
My own God, however, totally hates me. That, I believe. Time for a reformation, maybe?
I didn't follow up on Sinema's case but I'm assuming that the local venom got to her, but the corporate dollars were there to console her? Despite some having pinned her as a moderate-centrist tethered to a non-crazy reality, that's not quite what I or many see. Rather, she essentially betrayed her party and blocked what the Dems had clearly made their campaign promises, deceiving and disappointing many, though she got richer because of it. Her position between the two poles hardly matters past that.
Nuland, however, that's a surprise. Not sure what to think about her decision yet other than "get out before the crap really hits the fan."
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Trump.
But, Nikki. Still.
Something odd there. Hope she's not slated to be the next Sec. of State or Defense Queen, or anything like that.
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Unfortunately, being the beings we are entails a course along the lines of the one that I feared, and quicker than we all expected, it would appear. I'm speaking of AGI.
There seems to be some confusion—which I share—in regard to which milestones have been crossed, hence, Elon Musk suing Sam Altman is something I applaud, I think... from what I can gather.
The problem: It really is unclear whether or not AGI has been achieved or if it's to be achieved within three months, or two to three years. Frankly, even the latter would be way ahead of the time frame in which most expected to see the technological singularity materialise.
Personally, I expected a loud pop or large flash along with the event, maybe a fetus appearing in the night sky, next to a monolithed moon, who knows?
I'm now limited in regard to internet access and can't really check everything out, but I did see a headline that was meant to be taken as Altman announcing that ChatGPT 5.0 is full AGI. Given how these things go and that one is taking a gamble by assuming that a headline's intended interpretation matches the article's content, that may not be the case, but it's clear that full transparency isn't what's been offered, until after the fact.
Any which way, and although I'm not certain that Sam Altman deserves all of the blame, Musk's suit should be stamped Humanity vs. OpenAI, Microsoft, US Gov. et al.
The next step in our evolution that this singularity entails isn't one that should be rushed into in isolation, and certainly not within a global atmosphere that's teetering on the brink of a full-scale war.
You can bet that war efforts are what's feeding the true motivation to fund such hubris, by-passing all that shouldn't despite Altman's claims that safeguards are being carefully implemented. If for war, machines will learn how to best kill. Can we really contain that past that point?
Previously discussed but here it is again: the 2023 756-page "Final Report" by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which is chaired by Eric Schmidt, of Google fame.
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There's a data problem. What's needed to train the system "doesn't exist". Synthetic data is what all are finding themselves having to rely on.
I'm still unsure what could be, realistically, the potential ramifications of that.
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Gemini 1.5 Pro not only solved the needle-in-a-haystack test, it achieved 99.7% recall pushed to 10 million tokens within a context window of up to 1 million.
Beats the pants off of humans. Socks and undies, too.
I'm not sure how OpenAI's Q fares in comparison, but the Q system architecture is, apparently, the key that accelerated matters.
In medical spheres is where humans are quickly becoming embarrassments to the field.
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A 4-Feb-2024 Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Andy Kessler called "Power Corrupts, Absolutely" clearly established just how ridiculously-obsessive and deluded by a belief in free-market magic that a segment of right-wing libertarians manage to be.
Kessler begins with:
...OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that a “global regulatory body” was needed to monitor artificial intelligence. This is a colossally dumb idea. But Mr. Gates doubled down: “If the key is to stop the entire world from doing something dangerous, you’d almost want global government.” Wait, global what? ... In fact, of his 2023 world tour meeting heads of state, Mr. Altman noted, “there was almost universal support for it.” Well of course there was. Demand for power is insatiable. (Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.)
The article sees Kessler make the same, tired argument regarding "government bad" without really establishing the fact or considering the difference between "a bad government", "government bad", and "efficient government" beyond some vague notion relating to "size".
He affirms that "[g]overnments don’t like to govern, but they like to control. Human freedom always takes a back seat" while being "reminded of something P.J. O’Rourke told [him] in 2009" about government always wanting to tell others what to do, O'Rourke's conclusion for this behaviour being: "Government is just a form of bullying for weaklings. Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.”
In closing, Kessler offers:
I prefer limited government. Spend enough on defense to keep us safe and secure, help the truly downtrodden, do some basic research and then, as Grover Norquist so eloquently suggested, get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” For the economy, the government should set the rules of the sandbox, then get out of the way and let markets and competition do their magic.
In Kessler's own words: colossally dumb.
The self-adjusting free-market lunacy is just that, perhaps due to short-term-memory issues or little knowledge of recent history, but deregulation led to deeply corrupt, lobbyist-run government that's responsible for globally-affecting market crashes and the geopolitical and economic now that people like Kessler do nothing but whine about.
There are some areas that shouldn't be left to magic or idiocy.
And there are areas that demand total, global cooperation. For all.
