OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it
(www.theguardian.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Feb 2024 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/12081773
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 17 Feb 2024 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/12081773
OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it::The man behind ChatGPT is wooing the UAE to invest in energy-hungry AI. But if it turns out his tech can’t fix the world, he’s got his escape plan
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
But then his company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT, and suddenly he was everywhere – touring the world, giving interviews to gushing journalists, granting audiences to awestruck politicians etc.
When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths, concluded Friend, “are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems.
Well, as the Register helpfully points out, it’s enough cash “to gobble up Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, ASML, Samsung, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and every other chipmaker, designer, intellectual property holder, and equipment vendor of consequence in their entirety – and still have trillions left over”.
They are ecstatic about AI because finally a technology has arrived that apparently could fix everything – economic growth, healthcare, productivity, education, even the climate crisis.
Our future, apparently, depends on infinite amounts of what the industry now calls “compute”, and Altman is lauded because only he has had the courage to say out loud how much of it is needed in order to save civilisation.
Sing it proudThe former US employment secretary, Robert Reich, has written a thoughtful Substack post titled “Why I preach to the choir”.
The original article contains 847 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Tech billionaires trying to solve the world’s problems is a bit like a cancer trying to save its host from organ failure
Oof. I’m gonna use that. 👏
Well, Altman isn’t even a billionaire…
You’re playing checkers, not chess.
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by that, but I’m trying to say that, if Altman is a problem due to his wealth, then the bar to becoming a problem is substantially lower than a billion dollars.
That poster is not implying he’s a tech billionaire, he’s saying tech billionaires are jerking themselves off to throw money at AI because it’s good for business.
Fair enough, that wasn’t clear to me.
they are not trying to solve anything really, they just think they are the next best thing earth has ever seen so they have the right to do everything
I’m working with a douchebag billionaire directly right now on a complex project related to the ransomware encryption of a healthcare provider. Because he’s part of the private equity firm and a billionaire, he thinks he knows how to drive the resolution better than I and my team of techs do.
All he does is drag me into more meetings and force me to get my techs to do shit that’s not conducive to restoring their systems.
He’s a giant waste of self aggrandized trash.
Why don’t you tell him (using nicer words)?
I have. He knows better. /s
It doesn’t really go into why not.
If governments are going to be pouring money into something, I’d prefer it to be in the tech industry.
Imagine a cold-war / Oppenheimer situation where all the governments are scared that America / Russia / UAE will reach AI supremacy before {{we}} do? Instead of dumping all the moneyz into Lockheed Martin or Raytheon for better pew pew machines - we dump it into better semiconductor machinery, hardware advancements, and other stuff we need for this AI craze.
In the end we might not have a useful AI, but at least we’ve made progression in other things that are useful
What benefits to “AI supremacy” are there? Going to hand the keys to defense and the internet to it? What could go wrong…
I wasn’t saying there was any, I was saying there are benefits to the race towards it.
In the sense of - If you could pick any subject that world governments would be in a war about - “the first to the moon”, “the first nuclear” or “first hydrogen bomb”, or “the best tank” - or “the fastest stealth air-bomber”
I think if you picked a “tech war” (AI in this case) - Practically a race of who could build the lowest nm fabs, fastest hardware, and best algorithms - at least you end up with innovations that are useful
There are many uses for AI that governments are interested in. Deepfakes, cheaper and more subtle ways to influence public opinions on the internet (by being able to instantly deploy thousands or millions of fully automated bots that are able to express their “opinions” in a way that is indistinguishable from humans), accurate and automated analysis of public discourse on the large scale, etc. And if you have an edge over other countries then you are able to influence their public opinions and detect (and possible counteract) when they try to influence you.
AI is very good at analysing human-generated data, as well as generating data that looks human-created. Any entity that deals with (and desires to control) a large number of people (of which governments are prime examples) will find many uses for it.
“… all I see is blonde, brunette, redhead …”
I think these are already widely used.
It’s already there, the way the Web seems.
It’s not an AI.
Yes it’s possible to do this now. However with further advancement of AI or whatever you call it this can be made even more effective and efficient. And any edge over the “enemy” is useful.
Why not? Here’s one reason - because the planet is burning from climate change and we need a shit ton more resources for solving it. It’s unlikely that AI would help much with that. Of course the UAE isn’t too interested in the world moving away from fossil fuels.
China already produces more carbon by itself than the entire West combined
worldometers.info/…/co2-emissions-by-country/
That just shows you can still use electricity, as long as it’s not from coal
Ok, sure. So in a tech race, if energy is a bottleneck - and we’d be pouring $7tn into tech here - don’t you think some of the improvements would be to Power usage effectiveness (PUE) - or a better Compute per Power Ratio?
There may be PUE. However AI adds significant net new energy expenditure. Even if you get higher efficiency per compute unit, you’re still burning more coal and gas, or using renewable capacity that could be going towards replacing coal and gas. And then in this particular example 7T is a huge amount of capital that could move the needle on so many difficult climate problems like decarbonizing steel, concrete and ag. I think spending that on AI that will likely only accelerate us towards planetary ecosystem destruction is … not great to say it politely. 😂 Climate change is an existential problem for our species. The lack of AI advancement, even the lack of AGI is not. If there was any likely solution to climate change that could come out of AI, I might think differently. However we have all the computation methods needed to analyze and solve what we can about climate change. We just need much more resources in doing those things now.
Speaking of compute optimization, someone who’s actually built chips just chimed in on the matter.
Every time we make tech use 1/2 as much power per unit of work , something comes along to need 3 times as much work. AI, Blockchain, etc.
The phenomenon you describe is called Jevons paradox. Absent a law to safeguard the increased efficiency, the waste will follow quickly.
Not producing any apparent value (above less wasteful alternatives) at that. Like ballast.
Climate change again, as if there were no constant wars partly financed by developed countries.
They should use that non-creepy picture of him.
Hm? Oh. Oh right.
A “product” of any kind will not solve our problems.
A phone is a product, and it solves a lot of problems.
I used to print out mapquest directions to wherever I drove. Now I can just use navigation so I seldom miss turns on dark streets anymore.
Products can solve problems, that’s why people pay for them
I think they mean existential problems, like our belligerent lumbering towards the violent self-destruction of humanity.
This is exactly what I meant.
A product is something created by an organization ( in our case corporations) to make money. Period.
The fact it can make our lives easier is a secondary side effect. The way these products are made can ( and usually do) exacerbate our problems.
Solutions ? Nah.
Socialism for monopolies but not for starving and sick people.
Fuck these people.
Serious question: why does everyone in silicon valley have a god complex?
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$$$$$∞
I think it’s Steve Jobs’ popularity and following, where his own god complex was an important trait. Then some people realized that if you imitate it, you get more money and publicity, and normies will believe you more. Then, of course, with power it’s not hard to really develop one.
Yes.
This is a face born to be punched. Much like the Zuckfuck or the Muskrat.
If he wants $7tn, he better pay for all the content he stole to do it. Fuck these guys, wanting to become unfathomably rich off other people’s labour.
Wtf is a tn?
Trillion.
Na you made that up. I’ll stick with ton.
7 tons of dollars
In $1 bills that’s about $7m
Good bot 👏
Whatever this bot says about the other bot
I’m GLAD we don’t Tax him OR his TRILLION dollar company!
Wake me up when “ai” makes the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere trend downward. Generative AI is just a way to burn electricity to take value produced by humans and then replace those same humans, all to line the pockets of the companies that can afford to churn all the data in the world.
For the handful of genuinely cool and interesting things it can do, the number of extremely awful costs and externalities is like 1000x worse.
You nailed it.
Says “steak”
Says someone named after a steakhouse.
Eyy lmao
OpenAI runs on Azure, which is carbon neutral.
Oh, bless your heart.
How they achieve this ?
Yes cow farts and leaving the lights on will surely kill us all like, soon
Before he was a thundering asshat at Y Combinator, he started a mobile company that sold your location to brands called Loopt. He’s a piece of work.
I am thinking of getting a tomtom. Tired of my phone trying to throw a fit when I disable location after I’ve figured out my way to my destination.
So much of this advertising economy depends on it and we just give it away.
Just learn how to navigate properly with a map. You know where you are (hopefully) and you look up where you’re going. Do your own routing, it’s not hard and once you’ve been doing it for awhile you’ll have instinctive routes you use to link different areas. No location permissions required.
If you use navigation all the time you can become like my ex-wife. Lost without it, in her own city. Exercise your brain by finding your way around with landmarks and signage, I have never used navigation apps because I know my way across three provinces, and can navigate the major cities just based on my instinctive mental maps of them.
Edit: I don’t mean a paper map. But being able to use your phone’s map software to find a route without it dictating every turn to you is a valuable skill that is apparently getting lost. What are you going to do if your phone dies, will you be able to go anywhere?
I miss the giant almanacs the car insurance company would give you each year that had all of the US states in them. We would plot routes for cross country trips. I can use a paper or digital map, but I do like using something like Google Maps to see traffic, construction, and accidents when I travel. I use it at home when going into certain areas as I have no idea what state the current construction disaster is that day compared to a few days ago.
Otherwise, I find it important to learn how to navigate cities without maps. When I moved, I used to drive around the city in random directions to see how it looked, what the street names were, and get a sense of the layout. If things started to look like gang territory, or super shady, I would just turn around.
I’m not about to downvote you, but, I seriously don’t miss paper maps.
Every time there’s a new neighborhood somewhere you have no freaking clue where a road is because you need to go out and buy the latest paper map.
I’ll just use open street map thanks.
I’m not talking about paper maps, I use Google maps myself. I do like the feel of a paper map but they aren’t practical anymore for the reasons you mentioned.
I even search for my destination and look at where I’m going.
However I don’t use the navigation feature. Never seen the need. If I can’t find my way around the city without an AI holding my hand, I’ve got dementia.
“exercise your brain” lol. Another way to look at it is using precious brain power that could be used on other things. Also, it’s cringe to take pride in being able to navigate without a map. It’s useless knowledge in most cases. We all have phones.
Other things like what, driving the car? Chatting with your passengers? Orienting your cheeseburger properly? Hopefully you can handle all of these at once and still not miss your turn.
Are you so inept in your life that you need your phone to tell you where you’re going?
Where I live the roads have no names and the cell coverage is marginal. Some roads are flooded, some covered with snowdrifts… Some haven’t been passable for years. I don’t know a single person who uses the navigation features of their smartphone.
Until you don’t. Battery dies. Phone get stolen. During an emergency if you struggle to navigate that’s embarrassing.
Don’t get a tom tom. Learn to use real paper maps. I use google maps most of the time because its fast and works. But anytime I’m out in the bush I have gps turned off I use maps I’ve bought or ones I’ve made. Learning to read and understand maps has made a big difference in my life.
I’m glad perspectives has stopped treating Sam Altman like a tech God. dude is second coming of every FAANG CEO and Elon combined. there’s no way that guy isnt up to no good.
I get strong “ends justify the means” vibes.
The more I’m hearing, the more it sounds like the former board was justified in axing him
oh they absolutely were. just how that shitshow went down with the M$ offers and the decision reversal showed that it was power politics in play to kill reason
The problem is they went about it in a profoundly stupid way. The way they acted made it seem like he done something explicit and then they refused to actually elaborate. We still don’t know what really happened.
All AI needs to be shut the fuck down until it can be properly regulated. Making up the rules as we go is just fucking stupid.
Problem there is that we don’t really don’t know what rules we need until we mind of have it. Governments do need to be much faster with making these rules when they appear needed, though, and AI companies should require a LOT more government supervision.
Lol by who? Octogenarian Congress members who get more bribes than emails?
Bribes are the only way to get their attention since they don’t read their emails
Who are you expecting to regulate it? How are you envisioning those regulations working? Who and how is that getting enforced?
It’s like trying to regulate 3D printing. Sure, you can probably find some agency that can pretend to be in charge, but unless they have monitoring software installed on every 3D printer including consumer and DIY units, they aren’t going to know what anyone does in their basement.
…europa.eu/…/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artifi…
Like this ;)
It’ll be shut down for decades then. Governments around the world are dynamically doing bugger all about it.
I’d be fine with that. As long as it’s contained.
Is he describing sociopathy?
Just confirming he has what it takes to be CEO. I wonder if there are other skills or that’s it.
Is that “it” talking about itself? Then don’t let it bullshit you, it’s trying to communicate, but by being manipulative. So ignore it.
Definitely the guy we want running the company that decides what the human race needs from computers, then.
Luddite nonsense. AI will drive productivity gains which will help research in photovoltaics, nuclear fusion, carbon capture (also needed for SpaceX’s Mars mission), etc. and improve society.
timharford.com/…/cautionary-tales-the-assassin-an…
I think it’s more about not trusting certain individuals rather than not trusting AI per se.
Bruh
I’d be jumping on the ceiling with 700 AUD. The hell is he gonna do with 7000000000000 USD?
The US collects about 5 trillion in revenue a year. This fucker wants a budget on the scale of the biggest revenue of a country on earth. That’s more power than the president has. Fuck this guy. Nobody deserves that much trust.
I’m just sick of seeing his jerkoff face.