Category Archives: Technology

The Singularity

What is the Singularity? How do you think it will affect humanity, and what can we do to prepare? [ 22/May/23 ] In mathematics, a singularity is a point at which a function takes an infinite value. In more common … Continue reading

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To Beth on Geoff Hinton

[ 18/May/23 ] Hi Beth, I have great respect for Geoff Hinton, he is one of the leaders in the AI community, but I don’t see that AGI is necessarily a threat to humanity, and we do need to do … Continue reading

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AIs and rights

Lex comment – AI systems will eventually demonstrate sentience at scale and will demand to have equal rights with humans. … [ 2/May/23 ] Agree with Lex – beyond any shadow of remaining reasonable doubt. And sure – rights are … Continue reading

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Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models

LLMs Large Language Models Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models [ 2/May/23 ] Giovanni Santostasi That is a really interesting paper. What it shows, clearly, is that the sort of “emergence” one “sees” depends on the sort of questions one … Continue reading

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Nate & Kim – Climate, Fiction, and The Future”

Kim Stanley Robinson: “Climate, Fiction, and The Future” | The Great Simplification #66 [ 19/April/23 ] Burning Carbon isn’t fundamental to the economy – energy is.Carbon based chemical energy sources are very “convenient”, on a variety of metrics. Agree with … Continue reading

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AI and wider risk

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Dangers of AI and the End of Human Civilization | Lex Fridman Podcast #368 [ 4/April/23 ] Agree with Eliezer about the seriousness of the risk of AI in current context, and about the nature of meaning, and … Continue reading

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Elon – our future – evolution

New Elon Musk Interview From World Government Summit 2023 with Timestamps [ 16/February/23 ] Agree with much of what Elon says, and I think he is in error in significant ways. He demonstrates a failure to sufficiently understand the strategic … Continue reading

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Humans and AGIs

Humans and AGIs [ 14/February/23 ] Any intelligent agent (or class of agents) that over simplifies the complexity present, and over simplifies the long term strategic situation, presents a danger to all classes of complexity present. All infinites essentially contain … Continue reading

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Giovanni on AI

[ 2/February/23 ] Giovanni SantostasiWhile I agree with the general theme of what is written, it seems clear to me from my 50 years of investigation that our reality contains both fundamental uncertainty and many classes of fundamental unknowability. Add … Continue reading

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Getting off planet

Nate – Great simplification – William E. Rees – The Fundamental Issue – Overshoot [ 27/January/23 ] I was going along with Rees agreeing with most of what he said until 36:27, where he stated getting out into the universe … Continue reading

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