Taking it a step further, building that infrastructure may contribute somewhat directly to limiting the other resources actual wars are being fought over.
I think it’s misunderstanding the guy’s whole deal to expect truth or reality to be major factors in his writing. “Sell, sell, sell!” is the goal above all else. Sell whatever he’s invested in today. Sell himself. Sell!
You’re honestly convinced that he’s faking this level of futurism? I’m happy to see people call him wrong, maybe even defend him on a few point, but calling him dishonest on this central point seems irrational. Ditto for someone I personally have absolutely 0 respect for: Elon Musk. They are both honestly convinced that AI is incredibly important in the short-medium term, IMO - they just want to own the fix and be the hero.
Is Sam Altman generally considered good at his job? OpenAI hasn't really come up with any groundbreaking breakthroughs (transformers came from Google and diffusion came from academia) and they definitely do not make a profit or have any concrete plan to become profitable. He's really good at raising gargantuan amounts of money, but that's not enough to be considered a good founder.
> Is Sam Altman generally considered good at his job?
No credit for popularizing the current generation of AI, kicking off $hundreds of billions in CapEx spends, and for more concrete achievements, leading the fastest company to hit 100m users / $1b ARR?
There were many ventures in the past that got investors without a current profitable going concern. Oil & mining speculation, chartering boat crews to go on exploration expeditions and more.
I know theres this whole joke about being pre-revenue on the Silicon Valley TV show, but getting investors in order to be able to build a business which becomes profitable after goes back a long time. Like a really long time.
I wonder how did he come to such a prediction. When was the last time we had a war over advanced tech? Armies didn't fight over telegraph, radio, phones and cars.
A war to get AI would also be foolish. A few hundred bombs from your adversaries and AI won't have electricity to function.
At the risk of belaboring the subtext: It's kind of prediction which flatters the predictor's ego, and exaggerates the importance of the company and its output.
If believed, the claim can be leveraged to boost investor activity, land big contracts, and lobby for special legal/tax benefits.
Telegraph, radio, phones, cars didn't guarantee success. Those things can't outthink you. Somewhat extreme case: let's say Israel saw that Iran was days away from getting AGI. It would instantly throw every nuke it had at Iran.
Now, scale that up to the global superpowers and near-superpowers. I wouldn't want to put money on what e.g. the U.S. would do if China was days away from AGI. There are a lot of options below going nuclear, e.g. assassinations, hacking, destruction of equipment.
Once someone has a thing that can invent, hack, assemble, strategise 24/7, replicate itself, all bets are very much off. We need to sleep, it doesn't.
Is there any evidence that the "smarter" side wins wars? I'd put money on the faction with more soldiers and industry over more "intelligence" every single time.
Crudely and slowly, ChatGPT has already been demonstrated controlling a humanoid robot.
The current humanoid robot startups are talking about 100s of thousands of units, and if they're attached to an AI that's even merely normal human level (or can fake it in practice) then they can run every step of logistics and manufacturing to make more of themselves.
At 100kg/unit, Starship could pop a thousand or so on the moon per launch.
So, in such a hypothetical scenario, if you don't get this right then your war game planners will be very quickly suggesting 7.3e20 individual androids burying everyone under a 43km thick layer worldwide.
Modern industrial manufacturing is not done by humans but specialized machines. You cannot outcompete CNC, injection molding, and lathes with humanoid robots.
Sure, but there's usually someone who replies "but humans do some of it!", which I was trying to preempt here.
(IMO humanoid robots are a sign that the startup/VC market is following Musk, who in turn happened to see one on TV just before declaring to whoever the Optimus model was going to happen: they obviously could work for all this, but equally obviously aren't the sensible choice for almost anything).
This is and will be increasingly a digital world. This is just an extrapolation question.
It’s repeatedly demonstrated that much of the voting public can be led by the nose to any desired conclusion. Therefore, influence via digital means, across all media. Satellite and all other digital sensing and tracking. Build a few million robots. Nukes. Control over the financial infrastructure. All vaguely smart cars. Intercept, alter or prevent any digital communication. The enemy wouldn’t be able to trust any message or video. An army without sensing, command and control, isn’t.
Besides the argument isn’t AGI vs everyone, it’s a country with AGI vs anyone else. I’d take that bet.
>Besides the argument isn’t AGI vs everyone, it’s a country with AGI vs anyone else. I’d take that bet.
You never entertained the idea that AGI could be a destructive force and instead of a country with AGI you could have a country that devoured its people?
My base case is we can’t control it. I was responding to people who seem to underestimate superintelligence, so referring to “the argument”. If AGI goes postal, everyone is at risk. If it doesn’t, the side with it wins. The odds of it only harming the country that has it, seems extremely slim.
You have to look at the late 1800s for examples. It won’t be wars over data centres and winning won’t be simple or even possible. It would look like the wars that the U.S. Army fought against indian tribes or like the British, French, German and Dutch colonization of Africa. That is assuming there is an AI side and a non-AI side. Incidentally those conflicts did involve a lot of strategic infrastructure like railways and telegraph lines.
Fighting the expansionary actions of an AI enabled culture will not be as simple as bombing power plants, after all those are prime targets in any modern war and are well defended. How do you propose to win against an entire bloc of countries that have decided to use the products of AI to do whatever they wish with the world?
It's arguable that every major conflict of the 20th century was over resources required by the combustion engine -- fossil fuels and rubber, in particular.
>resources needed to "build enough infrastructure."
Strarship will put into orbit 100tons at $10M or so. I.e. <5kg (Nvidia H100 plus 1M2 of aluminum radiator (would radiate 0.5-1Kw away at 60-70C) plus 0.5Kw of solar panels) for <$500, ie. peanuts compare to the price of the H100 or whatever NVDA would be charging $30K/card.
And wars willn't be fought over AI. Wars will be fought using AI. Humans will have no chance in controlling millions of their own and responding to the actions of the millions of the enemy's simultaneously active automated high-precision munitions of all kinds, and that picture leads to a new, non-nuclear this time, AI-based MAD (that of course means that like with nuclear race back then all the parties have to build their capabilities right now as fast as possible, Manhattan project style).
Heat doesn't radiate like that in space. This topic comes up on HN often enough.
There isn't anything to carry the heat away because space is, by definition, empty. The energy has to be carried away by something. Cooling space stations is a legit real problem.
The only thing space gets you is somewhat better solar efficiency, but we aren't lacking of land to build solar panels on here on earth.
What do you mean? I stated black body radiation numbers.
>There isn't anything to carry the heat away because space is, by definition, empty.
Heat radiation. Which is what Sun for example does in that empty space.
>Cooling space stations is a legit real problem.
Please, numbers. Otherwise it is just some hand-waving.
>The only thing space gets you is somewhat better solar efficiency, but we aren't lacking of land to build solar panels on here on earth.
Space gets you away from regulations, corrupt bureaucrats, and the threat of war/terrorism/etc. for example. At $100/Kg building in space looks to be just cheaper. And space allows to have solar and datacenter in the same unit, while on Earth you have to deliver your electricity from a solar farm somewhere to the datacenter. There is a reason Oracle started to talk nuclear in the datacenter. And between nuclear in the datacenter on Earth and solar+datacenter in space at $100/Kg i think the space scenario would be simpler and cheaper.
I agree with the sentiment but not the mechanism (munitions). If power equates to control of resources then destroying the resources is kind of self-defeating. Far better then to "win" a war by getting friendly regimes installed that are aligned to your interests. We're already seeing the importance of this kind of approach, but the ultimate evolution will be that what used to be called propaganda (disinformation) will not just facilitate a war of guns and bombs, it will _be_ the war - able to directly achieve the end-goals of the "war" with not a single shot fired. AI is a huge amplifier of capability in this domain.
This man needs to get out of his own head.