AI Enthusiasm

So AI leaders promise that investing trillions into data centers will lead to a cure for cancer and various other downstream benefits, without stopping to think about how these inputs will translate into the desired outputs. It also leads them to support some extreme policies, such as investment in AI science at the expense of human scientists, and... See more

LLMs know so much, and are good at tests. They are intelligent (at least by any colloquial meaning of the word) while a human baby is not. But a human baby is learning all the time, and consciousness might be much more linked to the process of learning than its endpoint of intelligence.

For instance, when you have a conversation, you are continually... See more

The ultimate moat, or the final competitive edge worth paying for, in my opinion, is an opinion.

A perspective that only you can see, because the uniqueness of your life experience created it. That may just be the last thing anyone else can replicate.

This is why trillions of dollars of spending with no clear path to utilization by the real economy is so concerning. Most will not benefit, because their competitors will benefit to the same extent, and neither will have a competitive advantage because of it.

And a decent number of people are willing to attribute conscious experience to large language models. And in fact, people are slightly more willing to do so when they’ve had more experience interacting with them.

The first step is to understand the fundamental difference between humans and AIs. We are analog, chemical beings, with emotions and feelings. Compared with machines, we think slowly—and we act too fast, failing to consider the long-term consequences of our behavior (which AI can help predict). So we should not compete with AI; we should use it. At... See more

AI can help us complete tasks at scale with unmatched efficiency. However, there are areas where our humanity is a distinct advantage. Our capacity for compassion and connection with people allows us to see, understand, and express things that machines just can’t. Even the most convincing imitations of human intelligence (from the best AI models)... See more

Somehow we are too distrustful to talk to each other, and more than happy to confess to a sycophantic alien machine.

Chatbot companies want to have it both ways: personalization and emotion as a retention moat, but minimal responsibility for safeguarding the intimate relationships now running on their servers.