[Belphemur]

Quite an interesting read Basically saying we're in war time economy with a race to super intelligence. Whichever super power does it first has won the game.

Seeing the last tariffs and what China done about the rare earth minerals (and also the deal the US made with Ukraine for said minerals), the article might have a point that the super power will cripple each other to be the first with the super intelligence. And you also need money for it so tariffs.

[dsr_]

There's only one problem with a race to superintelligence, and that's that nobody has evidence that mere intelligence is coming, much less superintelligence.

(There are a thousand more problems, but none of them matter until that first one is overcome.)

[lifthrasiir]

Today's AI does exhibit some intelligence, period. It is absurd to claim that an intelligent-looking entity doesn't have intelligence, only because we might not be able to determine which part of the entity has one. The superintelligence is an entirely different problem though because there is no clear path from intelligence to so-called superintelligence, everything has been just a speculation so far.

[taurath]

> It is absurd to claim that an intelligent-looking entity doesn't have intelligence

I think if one really thinks about this statement, they'll find the opposite to be at least as possible.

[dsr_]

There must be a pony around here somewhere!

(This is the punchline to a joke.)

[f4uCL9dNSnQm]

> It is absurd to claim that an intelligent-looking entity doesn't have intelligence

Is it? I am pretty sure biology will solve good old "are viruses alive?" sooner than we agree on definition of intelligence. "Chinese Room" is at least 40 years old.

[lifthrasiir]

And so do tons of counterarguments against the Chinese Room argument.

Practically speaking, the inherentness of intelligence doesn't really matter because both intelligent-looking entity and provably intelligent entity are capable for societal disruptions anyway. I partly dislike the Chinese Room argument for this reason; it facilitates useless discussions in most cases.

[taurath]

If societal disruption is the key, then I can name quite a few inanimate objects that match the criteria for intelligence

[filoeleven]

Clever Hans would like a word.

[lifthrasiir]

In that case there was still some intelligence. It turns out that a composite entity of Hans and its trainer was intelligent, and people (including the trainer) unknowingly regarded that as Hans' own intelligence.

[overfeed]

Good gods, I can't wait for a second AI winter. Maybe we'll come up with fundamental breakthroughs in a couple of decades and give it another college try?

For the folks who lived though it; were the Expert Systems boosters as insufferable in the 80s as the LLM people are now about the path to machine intelligence?

[dsr_]

No, because they mostly got military funding, not private equity.

ARPA would throw relatively large sums of money at you, but demand progress reports and a testable goal. Very little got rolled out based on hype. (Let's not talk about vehicle design.) If your project didn't show signs of working, or not enough signs of working, funding ended.

Anything which met goals and worked, we now think of as "automation" or "signal recognition" or "solvers", not "intelligent systems".

[dangus]

This take is way too generous to the current US administration’s quality of long term planning.

Tariffs aren’t there to pay for a race to superintelligence, they’re a lever that the authoritarian is pulling because it’s one of the most powerful levers the president is allowed to pull. It’s a narcissist’s toy to feel important and immediately impactful (and an obvious vehicle for insider trading).

If the present administration was interested in paying for a superintelligence race they wouldn’t have signed a law that increases the budget deficit.

They also wouldn’t be fucking with the “really smart foreign people to private US university, permanent residence, and corporate US employment” pipeline if they were interested in the superintelligence race.

[CuriouslyC]

While I agree about the competence of the high level decision makers in the administration, the people advising them are incredibly smart and should under no circumstances be underestimated. Peter and his circle are totally crazy, but if you're playing against them you better bring your A game.

[dangus]

I would submit the idea that the people advising this administration are not very smart. In what discernible way has this administration biased its selection process to include “smart?”

I don’t underestimate their ability to do damage but calling them smart is generous.

Not even Peter Thiel, he’s one of the most over-hyped people in tech. Access to capital is not intelligence, and a lot of his capital comes from the equivalent of casino wins with PayPal and Facebook.

[globalnode]

i agree, the only thing theyre thinking about is how to hold onto power.

[verzali]

It says the people running the US right now think that is the game we are playing - it doesn't say it is the one we actually are playing. America is utterly fucked if they are wrong, and only a bit less so if they are right.

[moomoo11]

Imagine if super intelligence turns out to be a second organic brain you connect to your default brain..

[esafak]

Many have imagined this. Grok can interpret Neuralink signals without a natural language translation.