I don't know. Seems like there's a quantitative difference between making predictions based on the track record of things that have already happened (climate change)
And making predictions based on a fiction you're hoping to sell to venture capitalists (ai)
I’m not sure the guy that was spamming me with studio Ghibli AI art of giant titty adolescent Japanese girls is an AI expert? But maybe he is their best and brightest.
Don't know exactly what Kevin is saying, but if he's saying we should do more to prepare for more intelligent AI coming in the near future, then I strongly agree.
I’m a published AI researcher and I don’t know anybody actually in the field who thinks the singularity is near. We will run out out training data before that.
Telling the entire world you got catfished by a Speak-and-Spell is one thing, but being deliberately disingenuous about science is another matter entirely.
Can I get an assist understanding this- not trolling. I read what he’s saying like “trust experts on AI like you would, for example, trust experts on climate.”
I know you shouldn’t substitute AI output for expertise, but it doesn’t look like that’s what he’s advocating for
I think the issue is with his sources of AI experts -- they are exclusively industry executives who are selling the product they are claiming is revolutionary. There's a lot of unknown about the future and even present capabilities of AI, according to this self-proclaimed expert.
As @beenwrekt.bsky.social (I think) pointed out, the right analogy here is not "AI experts = Climate experts" but rather "AI experts = Oil executives". At least for the particular AI experts Roose is referring to.
Climate change, the corresponding value was something like 98%.... so AI boosterism has almost TEN TIMES the chance of being right as climate denial! (oh god, somebody's going to say this one and mean it, aren't they.)
I was thinking this morning that the convergence of foreign policy thinkers on this notion (it shaped Biden administration policy profoundly) reminds me of nothing more than the Iraq War consensus.
I was at a party yesterday with a bunch of people who have been senior research scientists in this space for decades, and the universal consensus among them is “possible limited uses with a lot of human oversight”
It's generally true that long-standing experts will be conservative in predictions like these though. True in the case of climate change, scientists often downplay the effects if anything, every climate model update is "whoops it was worse than we thought!"
to be more polite, the people who are actually trying to make this shit work every day on multimillion-dollar projects are well aware of its possibilities and the limitations
Well, Kevin, we can predict the impact of climate change based purely on well established laws of physics. Predicting the impact of AI, however, is based on pure speculation about computer science, sociology, economics etc.
Ezra Klein and other NYT columnists have also fully bought into the AI hype. And their opinions then get used to justify the idea that AGI is coming soon.
I can’t tell whether Ezra is genuine or knows that the topic is flashy and will get him views. Maybe a bit of both? The Rationalist priors sorta just get absorbed without explicit argument. Similar ish to the priors for the likes of Yarvin.
The AI experts who operate like climate experts pretty much share a consensus that AI is over-hyped. Those whom Roose in his attempted analogy is calling "AI experts" are more like the fossil fuel company executives in the climate scenario.
Comments
And making predictions based on a fiction you're hoping to sell to venture capitalists (ai)
But I'm just some guy...
I know you shouldn’t substitute AI output for expertise, but it doesn’t look like that’s what he’s advocating for
I argue that we're the most successful cargo cult in history.
There's a reason we don't ask Bernie Madoff how to run a charity
Does Kevin Roose not understand the concept of financial interest? It would explain some things
At best you can trick it into what you want it to say. I guess that’s the expert?
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewagill.bsky.social/post/3l4wes7rsoc2c