<div dir="ltr">AI is exploding like a birthday cake with too many candles, and it's mind-blowing what machines can do! Yann LeCun and I are on the same wavelength here: the world needs more brains. Thanks to machine intelligence amplifying human intelligence, we're heading towards a new Renaissance, a brighter era of Enlightenment. And to all you AI doomsday preppers out there, Yann LeCun has dropped the mic: the "hard take-off" scenario is more unlikely than a unicorn sighting! So, hold off on the robo-apocalypse theories - our intelligent machines are still less wise than your average feline. Let's start there and see where the AI journey takes us, shall we?<br><br>To provide you with some details, I would like to directly cite two recent tweets from Yann LeCun. Here they are in verbatim:<br><br>First tweet: "The world requires greater intelligence. The fusion of machine intelligence and human intelligence will facilitate a fresh Renaissance, a novel phase of Enlightenment. Assertions about the destructive impact of AI are merely a contemporary version of obstructionism."<br><br>Second tweet: "It appears that those who anticipate the downfall of AI require a clear explanation: the concept of a rapid take-off is entirely unfeasible."<br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, 5 May 2023 at 06:29, Merle Lefkoff <<a href="mailto:merlelefkoff@gmail.com">merlelefkoff@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Roger, can you send me the full article about Hinton in the M.I.T. review. Thanks.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 4:39 PM Roger Critchlow <<a href="mailto:rec@elf.org" target="_blank">rec@elf.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Didn't read Cory's blog, though I'm still laughing at the blurb for Red Team Blues.<div><br></div><div>But I read Geoffrey Hinton's interview with MIT Tech Review yesterday.<div><br></div><div> <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai" target="_blank">https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai</a></div><div><br></div><div>It's not hype that chatgpt dazzled everyone with a model which is much smaller than a human brain, even though it took a fairly huge budget for OpenAI to build it. <br></div><div><br></div><div>And I read this posting from an anonymous googler today via hackernews.</div><div><br></div><div> <a href="https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither" target="_blank">https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither</a></div><div><br></div><div>It's not hype that the open source community has rapidly figured out how to produce equally dazzling models with drastically smaller budgets of resources, and is continuing to iterate the process.</div><div><br></div><div>-- rec --</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:11 AM Gary Schiltz <<a href="mailto:gary@naturesvisualarts.com" target="_blank">gary@naturesvisualarts.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:small">I love the graphic! I've had the misfortune of twice jumping on that roller coaster just before the Peak of Inflated Expectation - once for the AI boom/bust of the mid 1980s and once for the dotcom boom/bust of the late 1990s. Jumped on too late to make a killing, but didn't get too badly damaged by the Trough of Disillusionment either.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 10:34 AM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com" target="_blank">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p align="center"><img src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*aG2GG56d_C6DJnGzZn0d3Q.jpeg"></p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e" target="_blank">https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e</a></p>
<p>I *am* a fan of LLMs (not so much image generators) and
blockchain (not so much crypto or NFTs) in their "best" uses (not
that I or anyone else really knows what that is) in spite of my
intrinsic neoLuddite affect. <br>
</p>
<p>Nevertheless I think Doctorow in his usual acerbic and
penetrating style really nails it well here IMO.</p>
<p>I particularly appreciated his reference/quote to Emily Bender's
"High on Supply" and "word/meaning conflation" in the sense of
"don't mistake an accent for a personality" in the dating scene.</p>
<p>A lot of my own contrarian commments on this forum come from
resisting what Doctorow introduces (to me) as "CritiHype"
(attributed to Lee Vinsel)... the feeling that some folks make a
(a)vocation out of kneejerk criticism. It is much easier to
*poke* at something than to *do* something worthy of being *poked
at*. I appreciate that Doctorow doesn't seem to (by my fairly
uncritical eye) engage in this much himself... which is why I was
drawn into this article... <br>
</p>
<p>I also very much appreciate his quote from Charlie Stross: <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="m_-12567336606139248m_820795070332191448m_-8201875395306661030m_2413849329548925398m_7928671687561163185668a" style="box-sizing:inherit;font-weight:400;color:rgb(41,41,41);word-break:break-word;line-height:32px;letter-spacing:-0.003em;font-family:source-serif-pro,Georgia,Cambria,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;font-size:20px;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><i>corporations are
Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do
the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them
try to steer them in better directions:</i></p>
<p id="m_-12567336606139248m_820795070332191448m_-8201875395306661030m_2413849329548925398m_79286716875611631852871" style="box-sizing:inherit;font-weight:400;color:rgb(41,41,41);word-break:break-word;line-height:32px;letter-spacing:-0.003em;font-family:source-serif-pro,Georgia,Cambria,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;font-size:20px;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><i><a href="https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" style="box-sizing:inherit;color:inherit;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future</a><br>
</i></p>
<p style="box-sizing:inherit;font-weight:400;color:rgb(41,41,41);word-break:break-word;line-height:32px;letter-spacing:-0.003em;font-family:source-serif-pro,Georgia,Cambria,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;font-size:20px;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br>
<i></i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I could go on quoting and excerpting and commenting on his whole
article and the myriad links/references he offers up but will curb
my enthusiasm and leave it to the astute FriAM readers to choose
how much to indulge in. It was a pretty good antidote for my own
AI-thusiasm driven by long chats with GPT4 (converging on being
more like long sessions wandering through Wikipedia after the
first 100 hours of engagement).</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
</div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span>-- </span><br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.<br>Center for Emergent Diplomacy<br><a href="http://emergentdiplomacy.org" target="_blank">emergentdiplomacy.org</a></div><div>Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA</div><div></div><div><br>mobile: (303) 859-5609<br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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