Is the Intelligence-Explosion Near? A Reality Check.

everyone's now talking about AI but few have the faintest glimmer of what's about to hit them that's a quote from Leopold Ashen brener who was recently fired from open AI he believes that artificial superintelligence is just around the corner and has written a 165 page essay explaining why I spent the last weekend reading this essay and want to tell you what he says and why I think he's wrong let me start with some context on Ashen brener who you see talking here young man early 20s German origin had a brief Geck at the Oxford Center for Global priorities now lives in San Francisco and according to his own website recently founded an investment firm focused on artificial general intelligence in his new essay Ashen brener says that current AI systems are scaling up incredibly quickly he sees no end to this trend and therefore they soon outperform humans in pretty much anything I can't see no end says man who earns money from seeing no end he explains that the most relevant factors that currently contribute to the growth of AI performance is the increase of computing clusters and improvements of the algorithms neither of these factors is yet remotely saturated that's why he says performance will continue to improve exponentially for at least several more years and that's sufficient for AI to exceed human Intelligence on pretty much all tasks by 2027 we'll have artificial general intelligence AGI for short according to Ashen brener he predicts that a significant contribution to this Str will be what he calls un hobbling by this he means that current AIS have limitations that can easily be overcome and will soon be overcome for example a lack of memory or that they can't themselves use Computing tools like why not link them to your math software indeed let them live stream on YouTube the future's bright people I know it sounds a little crazy but I'm with him so far I think he's right that it won't be long now until AI outsmarts humans because I mean look it isn't all that H is it I also agree that soon after this artificial intelligence will be able to research itself and to improve its own ALG rithms where I get off the bus is when he concludes that this will lead to the intelligence explosion accompanied by extremely rapid progress in science and technology and Society overall do you get off the bus and miss the boat or get off the boat and miss the bus these damn English idioms always throw me off the reason I don't believe in Ashen brena's predictions is that he totally underestimates the two major limiting factors energy and data training bigger models takes up an enormous amount of energy according to Asen Brena by 2028 the most advanced models will run on 10 GW of power at a cost of several hundred billion by 2030 they'll run at 100 gaw at a cost of a trillion dollars for comparison a typical power plant delivers something in the range of a gwatt or so that means by 2028 they'd have to build 10 power plants in addition to the supercomputer cluster can you do that totally is it going to happen you got to be kidding me what did all those power stations run on anyway well according to Ashen brener on natural gas even the 100 gaw cluster surprisingly doable heat rights because that would take only about 1,200 or so new weals totally du and if that doesn't work I guess they can just go the Sam Alman way and switch to nuclear fusion power honestly I think these guys have totally lost the plot they're living in some techno utopian bubble that has group think written on it in capital letters Yes helon Energy says they'll produce net power from Neutron free nuclear fusion by 2028 leaving aside that there are some reasonable doubts about how Neutron free this Neutron free Fusion actually is and I for sure wouldn't go anywhere near the thing no one has ever managed to get net energy out of this reaction I talked about all the fusion startups in an earlier video then there's the data okay so you've trained your AI on all the data that was available online now what where are you going to get more data Ashen brener says no problem you deploy robots who collect it where do you get those robots from well Ashen BR thinks that AIS will solve all remaining robot problems and the first robots will build factories to build more robots all right but what will they build the factories with ah resources that will be mined and transported by let me guess more robots that'll be built in the factories that'll be constructed from the resources mined by the robots I think that isn't going to work creating a huge robot Workforce will not just require AGI it'll require changing the entire world economy this will eventually happen but not within a couple of years it'll take decades at best and until then the biggest limiting factor for AGI will be lack of data the best algorithm in the world isn't going to deliver new insights if it's got no data to work on that said I think he's right that AGI will almost certainly be able to unlock huge progress in science and technology this this is because a lot of scientific knowledge currently goes to waste just because no human can read everything that's been published AGI will be able to do this there must be lots of insights hidden in the published scientific literature without doing any new research whatsoever the other relevant thing that AGI will be able to do is to just prevent errors the human brain makes a lot of mistakes that are usually easy to identify and correct logical mistakes spicy data retrieval error memory lapses why did I go to the kitchen and so on even before AGI actually does anything new it'll change the world by basically removing these constant everyday errors the second half of his essay is dedicated to the security risks that'll go along with AGI his entire discussion is based on the US versus China like the rest of the world basically doesn't exist that's one of the symptoms of what I want to call the Silicon Valley bubble syndrome but leaving aside that he forgets the world is more than just two countries and that the world economy is about to be crushed by a climate crisis I agree with him most people on this planet including all governments currently seriously underestimate just how big an impact AGI will make and when they'll wake up they'll rapidly try to gain control of whatever AGI they can get their hands on and put severe limitations on its use it's not that I think this is good or that I want this to happen but this is almost certainly what's going to happen in practice it'll probably mean that high compute queries will require security clearance let's step back and have a quick look at past predictions of the impending machine revolution in 1960 Herbert Simon a Noble priz laurat in economics speculated that machines will be capable within 20 years of doing any work a man can do in the 1970s Marvin Minsky predicted that human level machine intelligence was just a few years away in a 1993 essay the American Computer scientist Vera vinch predicted that the technological singularity would come in less than 30 years all these predictions were wrong what I take away from this long list of failed predictions is that people involved in Frontier research tend to vastly overestimate the pace at which the world can be changed I wish we'd actually live in the world that Ashen Brena seems to think we live in I can't wait for superhuman intelligence but I'm afraid the intelligence explosion isn't as near as he thinks so in the meantime don't give up on teaching your toaster to stop burning your toast artificial intelligence is really everywhere these days if you want to learn more about how neural networks and large language models work I recommend you check out the courses on brilliant.org brilliant.org offers courses on a large variety of topics in science Computer Science and Mathematics all their courses have interactive visualizations and come with follow-up questions some even have executable Python scripts or videos with little demonstration experiments whether you want to know more about large language models or Quantum Computing want to learn coding in python or know how computer memory Works brilliant has you covered and they're adding new courses each month and of course I have a special offer for users of this channel if you use my link brilliant.org zabina you'll get to try out everything brilliant has to offer for 430 days and you'll get 20% off the annual premium subscription so go and check this out out yes helon energy cells still produce net power from Neutron free nuclear this Neutron free Fusion Neutron free Neutron free free thanks for watching see you tomorrow

Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 552,842

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder

Id: xm1B3Y3ypoE

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024