SneerClub

989 readers

1 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

OpenAI Employees Say Firm's Chief Scientist Has Been Making Strange Spiritual Claims (futurism.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem here is that “AI” is a moving target, and what “building an actual, usable AI” looks like is too. Back when OpenAI was demoing DOTA-playing bots, they were also building actual, usable AIs.

For some context: prior to the release of chatGPT I didn't realize that OpenAI had personnel affiliated with the rationalist movement (Altman, Sutskever, maybe others?), so I didn't make the association, and i didn't really know about anything OpenAI did prior to GPT-2 or so.

So, prior to chatGPT the only "rationalist" AI research I was aware of were the non-peer reviewed (and often self-published) theoretical papers that Yud and MIRI put out, plus the work of a few ancillary startups that seemed to go nowhere.

The rationalists seemed to be all talk and no action, so really I was surprised that a rationalist-affiliated organization had any marketable software product at all, "AI" or not.

and FWIW I was taught a different definition of AI when I was in college, but it seems like it's one of those terms that gets defined different ways by different people.