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I'm sure others have seen this, but AutoGPT is here, a framework that lets instances of GPT call other instances of GPT to create complex task chains with no human input. In other words, it lets GPT instances prompt other instances to complete projects. Only about a week after being released, the examples are staggering.
This is an example of BabyAGI automating a sales prospecting pipeline, something I can say from experience normally takes a typical sales rep at least half a day to do. We can already automate it, and pretty well. This type of thing wasn't possible a week ago.
There are all sorts of other examples, and it's clear that massive automation is happening. I'm willing to bet we'll reach 30% unemployment in five years. If not sooner. The question becomes - what do we do about it?
The standard liberal answer is Universal Basic Income, and many on the left seem to think it will just magically appear once the government realizes the economic power of AGI. Problem is even if we get the buy-in from the political class, the implementation of UBI is not a simple undertaking! The funding, distribution, and potential impact on inflation alone are going to cause monstrous headaches and take years to work through. Plus even if we do have UBI, the potential of widening income inequality is insane, as those who own and control AGI technology stand to reap substantial profits, further concentrating extreme amounts wealth in their hands.
Another solution, favored by some conservatives, is to focus on retraining and upskilling the workforce. While I get the general direction here, I highly doubt a retraining program could possibly be enough to counter the rapid pace of automation. Furthermore, not everyone will have the aptitude or desire to transition into highly technical or specialized fields, which may leave a significant portion of the population without viable employment options. "Learn to code" just doesn't hit the same when software devs are going to be replaced as well.
Even if we get lucky enough to have both UBI and massive retraining, it may not be enough!
Why not get the government to throw some cash at massive infrastructure and public works projects? We could take a page out of the 1930s New Deal playbook and create a boatload of jobs in all sorts of industries. I've rarely seen anyone discuss this, but it may be necessary as it was during the Great Depression. Plus, it'd boost the economy, help repair our public infrastructure, and maybe even help tackle climate change if we invest in green tech. We could even turn this impetus towards space...
Last but not least we've got the potential impact of automation on mental health and societal well-being. We're already in the middle of a Meaning Crisis. As we increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to perform jobs and soon everyday tasks, we've got to ensure that people are still able to find purpose and meaning in their lives. This probably won't be what we've traditionally looked to, such as the arts or writing, since AI is already making that irrelevant.
Perhaps we will finally realize the importance of community in our lives and to our happiness, and start adding economic numbers and frameworks to those who create social goods. Have the government fund people to run local meetup groups, or help their neighbors with tasks, volunteer at old folks' homes, etc. It's a bit of a bludgeon solution right now, but we could refine things over time.
At the end of the day we all know the rise of AGI is going to be a shitshow for a number of reasons. I've outlined some potential solutions or stopgap measures to prevent the breakdown of society, but how does the Motte think we can navigate this change?
I love what they put in the readme:
You can just sense muffled screaming from Eliezer. "Why would they put a skull icon and a warning sign only to let people use it opensource, for free?" he'd exclaim. "Dying without a shred of dignity" he'd say. "If this is how we proceed, we're completely fucked in future iterations". I don't think he's right about everything and am fairly sympathetic to Ilforte's point of view, that the strong actors seeking to control GPT-4 are the major threat. Anyway, it's interesting.
At the time, I thought this was quite a bit out there. Surely no one sane would run a program after detecting that it might try to kill everyone. What absurd doomsaying.
I now totally agree with him.
The incentives of academia seem near-perfectly configured to encourage running the programme.
Overstretched early-career academics running out of grant money and desperate for promising preliminary results now because if they don't meet the grant application deadline they're gonna get fired from their moderate-status job? When running the programme gives you a 90% chance of good results and a 0.1% chance of killing everyone, and you know that every other overstretched researcher in the world will be facing the same dilemma eventually (making it a stochastic certainty that someone will run the program)... well, it may as well be you, at least you won't have to live the Last Days of Mankind with low-status.
The way you say "status" makes it sound as if it were a matter of petty vanity, but as I have found out through accidental A/B testing, in the city I am currently in, a lone early-30s guy with a Russian name can't even get housing without prominently displaying that he works for a university. When you are a beggar (in the sense that your ability to enter economic relationships necessary for basic survival depends on the goodwill of strangers), status is rather existential; and most academics probably can't even conceive of life as anything other than a beggar, because we live by begging for housing, admission, publication, and grant money, and even if we choose to leave academia the first step to be surmounted is that you have to beg a corporation for a job, or a VC for funding, or an indifferent public to buy your startup's product.
Have you tried changing some of the vowels so it sounds Ukrainian?
Do you really think the ordinary westerner knows the difference between Russian and Ukrainian dialects?
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The heuristic is: If I heard the name growing up, it's Russian. If it sounds like a name I heard growing up, but the letters are different, it's Ukrainian.
I suspect this is pretty close to what people are doing, even if they don't realize it.
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