False Gods

Superintelligence In A Few Thousand Days

Author

AI For All
September 27, 2024

Hello readers,

Welcome to another edition of the AI For All newsletter! Sam Altman shared his vision for the future, believing that superintelligence will arrive in a few thousand days, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is leaving the company, and the FTC is cracking down on deceptive AI claims and schemes and those exploiting AI hype. Let’s dive in!

False Gods

Sam Altman at US Senate hearing

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post titled The Intelligence Age, and it reads like something we’ll all look back on in a few years and ask, “how did anyone fall for this?” Altman claims that it is possible we will have superintelligence in “a few thousand days,” a timeline that he hopes is long enough for OpenAI to invent such a technology but also short enough to not scare away investors and disillusion the believers who have been spreading the gospel the last few years. This is quintessential key jangling.

Altman presents a utopic vision for the near future where AI is basically a god. He makes prophecies for a technology that he has not built and nobody knows how to build. His possibly feigned confidence seems entirely based on the following:

“How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?

In three words: deep learning worked.

In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.

That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data […] There are a lot of details we still have to figure out, but it’s a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge. Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale.”

This is fallacious. Altman assumes that because deep learning algorithms scaled initially to highly imperfect results, that they will scale indefinitely to godly results. He assumes that all the remaining problems will be solved and bases this on nothing. Spoken like a true salesman with a third-hand understanding of the actual technology.

Look, I’m all for optimism, but this is basically a religion. “AGI will arrive in my lifetime, and it will be paradise on Earth.” Remember, OpenAI is currently trying to raise money. Additionally, they are trying to become a for-profit and give Altman equity, a legally complicated proposition. Their CTO, Mira Murati, is leaving the company along with two others, adding to the list of departees that includes Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, John Schulman, and Greg Brockman, who is on extended leave. I certainly wouldn’t remove myself from a company that is apparently a few years away from building God.

Given that Sam Altman clearly believes that “scale is all you need,” it’s no surprise that he went to the White House to ask for just a few massive data centers that each consume the power of an entire city, all to defeat China. The threat that China will surpass the U.S. (as if hallucinating chatbots move the geopolitical needle) is the government version of FOMO. Interestingly, EY noted in their CEO Outlook Global Report that, “the fear of being left behind is driving significant [AI] investment and focus.” Apparently, TSMC executives (and other APAC companies) dismissed Altman’s $7 trillion dollar semiconductor plans as absurd and referred to him as a “podcasting bro.”

Lastly, the FTC announced a crackdown on “deceptive AI claims and schemes,” targeting operations that use AI hype. I don’t bring this up to suggest anything in particular about Altman’s blog post. Why would you think that? The FTC says, “Claims around artificial intelligence have become more prevalent in the marketplace, including frequent promises about the ways it could potentially enhance people’s lives […] The cases included in this sweep show that firms have seized on the hype surrounding AI and are using it to lure consumers into bogus schemes.” coughs profusely

🔥 Rapid Fire

📖 What We’re Reading

“Millions of organizations are actively deploying and leveraging generative AI applications to streamline productivity, reduce costs, and improve efficiencies. By 2026, it is anticipated that more than 80 percent of enterprises will have deployed generative AI-enabled applications, according to Gartner. As organizations experiment with GenAI and scale their ecosystems, it is imperative to proceed with caution and implement strict security guardrails from the outset.”

Source: AI For All

“Generative AI-powered voice technology is reshaping how we communicate, from language translation to accent augmentation, to complete transformation or obfuscation. This has created new opportunities for industries such as customer service, entertainment, law enforcement, and beyond. As the technology matures, it promises far-reaching applications, but the journey is not without challenges, including scalability, quality, and ethics issues.”

Source: AI For All

💻️ AI Tools and Platforms

  • Kneron → Full-stack edge AI inferencing

  • RelationalAI → Knowledge graph for the cloud

  • Sirion → Enterprise AI contract management

  • Greptile → AI that understands your codebase

  • Brightwave → AI research assistant for finance