“AI #51: Altman’s Ambition” by Zvi

[Editor's note: I forgot to post this to WorldPress on Thursday. I’m posting it here now. Sorry about that.]

Sam Altman is not playing around.

He wants to build new chip factories in the decidedly unsafe and unfriendly UAE. He wants to build up the world's supply of energy so we can run those chips.

What does he say these projects will cost?

Oh, up to seven trillion dollars. Not a typo.

Even scaling back the misunderstandings, this is what ambition looks like.

It is not what safety looks like. It is not what OpenAI's non-profit mission looks like. It is not what it looks like to have concerns about a hardware overhang, and use that as a reason why one must build AGI soon before someone else does. The entire justification for OpenAI's strategy is invalidated by this move.

I have [...]

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Outline:

(01:02) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(01:57) Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

(03:22) GPT-4 Real This Time

(05:49) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(12:38) They Took Our Jobs

(15:33) Get Involved

(15:50) Introducing

(17:13) Altman's Ambition

(22:34) Yoto

(26:32) In Other AI News

(35:04) Quiet Speculations

(41:55) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(43:32) Washington DC Still Does Not Get It

(46:16) Many People are Saying

(48:48) China Watch

(49:38) Roon Watch

(50:48) How to Get Ahead in Advertising

(52:35) The Week in Audio

(56:45) Rhetorical Innovation

(01:01:18) Please Speak Directly Into This Microphone

(01:03:13) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult

(01:03:39) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:06:02) The Lighter Side

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First published:
February 20th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gBHNw5Ymnqw8FiMjh/ai-51-altman-s-ambition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.