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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Over the last few months, I've followed someone named Alexander Kruel on Substack. Every single day, he writes a post about 10 important things that happened that day - typically AI breakthroughs, but also other of his pet concerns including math, anti-wokeness, nuclear power, and the war in Ukraine. It's pretty amazing that he is able to unfailingly produce this content every day, and I'm in awe of his productivity.

Unfortunately, since I get this e-mail every morning, my information diet is becoming very dark.

The advances in AI in the last year have been staggering. Furthermore, it seems that there is almost no one pumping the breaks. We seemed doomed to an AI arms race, with corporations and states pursuing AI with no limits.

In today's email, Kruel quotes Elizier who says:

I've already done my crying, late at night in 2015…I think that we are hearing the last winds start to blow…I have no winning strategy

Elizier is ahead of the curve. Where Elizier was in 2015, I am now. AI will destroy the world we know. Nate Soares, director of MIRI, is similarly apocalyptic.

We've give up hope, but not the fight

What comes after Artificial General Intelligence? There are many predictions. But I expect things to develop in ways that no one expects. It truly will be a singularity, with very few trends continuing unaltered. I feel like a piece of plankton, caught in the swells of a giant sea. The choices and decisions I make today will likely have very little impact on what my life looks like in 20 years. Everything will be different then.

So, party until the lights go out? How do I deal with my AI-driven existential crisis?

On a tangent, assuming holy AI arms race to come.. where to invest?

Leaving aside Google, NVIDIA, Meta, etc. I'm talking less well known, higher risk higher reward investments.

Also, I think I'm the only AI optimist here. Cliche as it is, a lot of problems will be solved and our life will be easier in a lot of ways. I'm not scared of being "replaced" by the time I am, everyone else is too.

I bought AGI (now known as AGIX) back in 2020, when it was about 1/8th its present price or lower. Crypto of course has its ups and downs but if you want less well known, higher risk, higher reward investments...

Be aware that AGI already had a big 150% pump this month, so you might want to look for something that hasn't pumped yet in the AI sphere. There are a fair few coins for selling/buying computing power peer to peer, which seems like it would be nice for the AI arms race. But I'm no technical expert and I can't recommend things I don't even own, let alone understand.

The people who will control AI will only allow you to live in a manner of gay race communism.

Is any of those things going to matter in a hypothetical post-scarcity and post-responsibility world?

Not being allowed to live in another manner will matter to certain people.

I honestly can't imagine how insane things may get in a post-scarcity world, but if people are still running things, then 'not allowed to be straight or monogamous' seems within the realms of possibiilty.

Not much worse than my current state of being.

How is everyone being replaced not scary to you?

Because it isn't replacing anyone yet? The problem is that the latest achievements of the GPT models are impressive but there is a lot of marketing involved and there are a bunch of unforced errors when more people look at it more closely. Yes it is going to be more accurate in the future but it won't replace anyone just yet.

What is scaring me though is peoples propensity to outsource that act of thinking and reason so readily to machines. What happens when they stop working?

Being replaced economically I don't care. I have half a mind to quit society and go live inawoods anyway. If everyone's getting laid off then at least I'll have a good excuse.

Being replaced as the dominant lifeform on the planet I do care about, which is why I've been advocating EMP-bombing every computer science lab in the world and burning all technological textbooks for some time now. Why more X-risk enthusiasts don't clamour likewise I don't really know, I can only darkly infer that it belies a lack of conviction on their part.

It strikes me as similar to the argument that the actions of the average Christian show that they don’t really believe that millions of babies are being systematically murdered via abortion. (An argument that I also think has merit.)

If you really think that AI presents an X-risk, shouldn’t you at least be advocating for stricter regulation? Treat it like nuclear weapons. Continue development if you must, but only with strict oversight in specially designated institutions, and with the equivalent of a non-proliferation agreement.

Not sure if I'd say ASML isn't well known, but it's a solid hardware bet that isn't exposed to (as much) China risk as TSMC is.

this isn't the 90s, in which tiny companies were going public. now they stay private until getting big. you're stuck with big companies like MSFT, NVDA. It's a lot of work having to research it...it'd rather just buy MSFT, which is a major AI play now and not much risk otherwise. The problem is, gains never hold anymore, shit gets pumped for a week and then goes back down again...look at the shitshow that is SPACs. Back in the 90s, before twitter and reddit, stuff would go up for years at a time, providing lots of entry points.

now they stay private until getting big.

Or in other words, "only the petit-bourgeoisie of sufficient means can invest".

I guess the collective of Bitcoin millionaires who can afford to fund this research really will inherit the world after all.

Obtain assets excluding your home of $1M or make $200,000 a year ($300,000 for couples) for two years and you too can be an "accredited investor", and be eligible to participate in all sorts of otherwise-unavailable scams. As the mark, of course.

As the mark, of course.

Don't worry, you'll probably be OK as long as you heed the omens. If the guy's name is pronounced "Bankman-Fraud" or "Made off"...

The current throw-money-at-transformers paradigm seems to favor big players. Maybe do a spread trade where you short robotics stuff and go long Google/Microsoft/Nvidia ? General AI hype would seem to drive both types of stock up, but by shorting robotics you'd bet on LLMs getting better much faster than robotics is improving.

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