Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on Recursive Self-Improvement.
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An economist might counter that any such business would loose market share. But, in actuality, a lot busineses are not competing for survival or even for market share but have it due to entrenchment. examples include: ISPs, healthcare, etc
I was reminded about how delusional people are when I was hanging out with some MAGA supporters in the south this weekend. These people adore Elon Musk and what he's done and the way that he runs his companies. They get this mentality because they work in government where their jobs are very cushy, but there is a lot of incompetence and bureaucracy going on, and they hate it. I honestly believe they wouldn't enjoy living in a world where Elon Musk mentality is running everything, including their jobs. That delusion makes them think that a world where Elon Musk is running everyone else's job is better for them.
I'd argue that of the people that Elon hires, many of them probably grew up in an environment where they had the support, love, and care that they need to become great because their predecessors worked in occupation that are not competing for survival. Else you end up with situations like China where the youths just don't have the ability (due to time, money and energy) to put down roots and build up the next generation. Their predecessors planted the seeds and nurtured them to grow value that is then extracted by Elon working the people into the ground and tossing them aside when they are no longer useful.
1. "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." - John Wanamaker
There's the meme that the smartest people in the world are figuring out how to show ads. It's no different this time around. I understand that not everyone working on AI is building an ad network - but ultimately it feels like that's the end result.
It didn't feel quite this way 15 years ago. Back then, it felt much more tangible how technology was improving our lives. It is sort of tangible now too - I am doing things with AI that I otherwise couldn't. But somehow if feels like progress for the sake of progress.
And to be honest, it doesn't feel like the progress is for me or the people I care about.
AI is doing very little to improve the human condition; all it seems to be good at is optimizing productivity and generating profits somewhere maybe. That is not an AI-generated problem; using profits as an all-things compass is a disease we have been cooking for ourselves for a long time. But I'm sort of hoping AI will make the problem so bad that we will be forced to fix it, or perish.
Nobody tries to solve any actual problems anymore, they just produce meaningless consumer slop. And when people like Musk try to invent reusable rockets or electric cars, everyone says they’re stupid. And then they do it, and everyone says it was always going to happen anyway.
When is the last time Google or meta or whoever actually solved a problem? They’ll spend 500b in a year, enough to reforest the entire planet, and what do they actually give us? I couldn’t name a single thing they’ve done in the last ten years which actually produces value, but they’ve spent trillions.
It has exploded, the explosion just isn't evenly distributed. And just as it was with the internet, most people and even most industries are not actually using it yet. Many that are are using it in name only.
People can star github repos and signup their employees for a new subscription quickly, real adoption takes far longer.
Last night I was able to give claude a task and they increased the classification accuracy from
81.3/89.9/92.1 to 90.9/99.3/99.6
In a little over 2 hours. In a task that up until opus 5.5 I was doing by hand/manually. and the day before was able to get the first results.
The intelligence explosion may just be user error.
FWIW, why I'm rooting hard for AGI: -In the best case, AGI will lead to UBI, so unemployment for all becomes the default scenario. Sounds scary but unemployment is better than many soul-sucking occupations, e.g. cold-calling. -If AGI does result in a productivity boom due to automation, we're in for a deflationary spiral, so we don't need a huge amount of money for a decent standard of living.
It does lead to the question of how we'll find meaning in our lives, but I think we'll adapt in a few years.
If you’re the robot owner, why wouldn’t you just cull the population and build Jurassic park?
There’s just no way it’s feasible to pay the entire population to sit around.