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OpenAI researchers warned of AI breakthrough before CEO ouster according to Reuters. It seems that, disappointingly, there's more to the Sama exit than just petty politics.
I had found myself greatly reassured by the thought that, actually, this whole debacle was just (human) politics as usual - and not the eerie dawn of some new era.
Have other motizens noticed a substantial disconnect between their foremost worry the past while, and that of the normies in their life? Everyone else is chanting for Palestine, and I'm chanting sotto voce for a decade or two more of human supremacy before the singularity. And anytime I could comfort myself by the thought that, well, Serious People are not yet concerned, I see some preposterous headline from selfsame Serious People about how hillwalking is white supremacy, or equivalent bullshit. The illusion is bollocked.
Hmm this sounds alarming, I wonder what the new capability was, it must be something very powerful and dange...
Oh.
Truth is, 90% of all work is stupid. The difference between a committee of competent Harvard grads from every major (smart and competent, but no genius) and the kind of people who create true innovation is a couple of orders of magnitude.
AI might be around the corner, but super-human intelligence that can innovate (Neumann, Terence Tao) is much much much farther away than we think.
I don’t think that’s a big gap. And many geniuses have also had very weird beliefs. So the typical Harvard grad can regurgitate a bunch of things smart people say and then make connections between different thoughts. Seems like OpenAI has accomplished that.
What’s a genius? It seems a bit autistic that they can ignore what they’ve learned and try new things. Some are legit insights and some completely stupid.
That sounds like an AI hallucination.
So then true innovation would just be a bunch of processing power testing whether the hallucination had some missed insight.
I’ve seen too many geniuses also do stupid stuff. Like Bill Gates I believe many here have said he was the top of the top. But he’s also done some dumb stuff and many things where I think I had better ideas.
I don’t think Musks is smarter than me at all. But he benefited from right place right time to gain some skills and maybe some different personality traits.
It is funny how many people believe themselves smarter than Musk yet he is probably the most accomplished person in human history in pursuits that clearly require a lot of intelligence.
Yeah, I firmly believe myself as being smarter than 99% of the population (and have seen enough independent confirmations of this that I have very high confidence in this) but I would never think that I am smarter than Elon Musk. I would take a bet easily that Musk is smarter than me. It's amazing how plenty of people chastise those who think they are smarter than a large portion of the population but then these very same people think they are at the same level as Musk etc...
Someone being more intelligent doesn't mean you can't see when they are habitually making errors in some area.
I feel like Musk has "doctor's syndrome" where his success and competence in one area (or a couple) leads him to believe he has superior insight into all areas. Only for Musk and other famous people this gets supercharged both by their success and by their fans.
@orthoxerox quoted a story yesterday about a top journalist being outfoxed by a regular police officer during an interrogation, because they played someone else's game on their home terf. Well, Musk is constantly doing this and occasionally making a fool of himself is inevitable.
He is very competent, driven and successful but he isn't god.
Conversely, people are doing the same thing as Musk, they notice how he fumbles about in their area of expertise (or it gets pointed out by others), making overconfident claims and predictions, and therefore assume that he is a fool, or at least not as smart as his success would imply.
Nobel disease is a sufficiently established term to have a wikipedia page, and I feel is more accurate as Musk's accomplishments are at the level of a Nobel prize winner, than of a mere doctor.
It was not intented as a dig at Musk, I wasn't aware of the term Nobel disease.
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