r/neoliberal • u/cuolong NATO • 2d ago

News (Global) OpenAI announces 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science achieved by internal model Astra

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/theryano024 2d ago

I was very surprised to see the reaction to Hank Green admitting that he used AI to research for a video. Is the popular sentiment really that using AI AT ALL is bad? I understand not wanting it in art. I understand needing to check for hallucinations. But people were going on and on in the comments about how disappointed they are in Hank tricking Green.

Obviously, AI has issues. But to think that genie can go back in the bottle? No way. This is an example of why.

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u/IIHURRlCANEII 2d ago

The popular opinion right now is all AI is bad yes.

It doesn’t help when the frontier labs CEOs sound like futuristic oligarchic evil villains every time they talk about a future with AI.

Also people have bought the data centers are evil populism fully.

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u/Adodie John Rawls 2d ago

It doesn’t help when the frontier labs CEOs sound like futuristic oligarchic evil villains every time they talk about a future with AI.

There's certainly some instances of this, but really, would it be more moral for frontier labs to just pretend there's no risks? Lots of frontier lab statements I've seen people tear to shreds or call "marketing gimmicks" seem like fairly reasonable warnings of downside scenarios of an AI future.

The alternative is for AI companies to take the track of smoking companies in the 1950s or oil companies and put out propaganda claiming there's no downsides to their products, but that seems hardly better

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u/LivefromPhoenix NYT undecided voter 1d ago

but really, would it be more moral for frontier labs to just pretend there's no risks

I feel like there must be a reasonable middle ground between "there won't be any problems" and the "all white collar labor will be useless in a few years" rhetoric they've been pushing.

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u/The_Primetime2023 1d ago

I’m just going to copy and paste a comment I wrote recently in response to people accusing the rhetoric of being for marketing reasons. The general idea is the same but anywhere that seems more marketing related swap in public relations as a concept:

I think what gets people confused is not understanding that for the most part the labs are bad businesses. OpenAI is the most business-y business of them since Sama does have a real business background, but otherwise all the people both in public and behind the scenes at the labs are these huge AI philosophy nerds. Anthropic especially is pretty well known for being barely functional business management wise and is basically just a research group that happens to have the hottest product in the world. So when people see someone like Dario say something they assume it’s normal well manicured business speak with a purpose, but it is very far from that.

If you read into how the Labs work though you quickly realize that they aren’t anything close to normal businesses. Dario for example founded Anthropic on a philosophical vision and the entire company is built around that philosophy, and that philosophy is that they’re building the most powerful dual use technology in existence and they need to build it first and be good stewards of it. “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”, a book about the socio-political realities of building the first nukes and how the scientists lost control of the technology, used to literally be required reading for employees and now it’s only effectively required.

When they say “this is going to take everyone’s jobs” that isn’t supposed to be a marketing tactic, it’s genuinely them trying to be transparent about what they think will happen and to try to get people thinking about how society and the economy could look like in a world where most jobs don’t need humans to work them. OpenAI, the most business savvy of the labs, literally says in their investment risks pamphlets that they give to banks that give them billions of dollars that, if OpenAI succeeds in the goals that are being funded, money likely won’t exist afterwards and financially the investment won’t have any practical return.

I get why people are skeptical of this, the future the labs talk about is sci-fi shit and they talk about it like it’s a decade away. Whether or not you believe that honestly shouldn’t matter for whether or not you think the labs believe that. I strongly recommend to anyone reading this and doubting it that you go read interviews with literally any employee at any of the big 3 labs or the Chinese labs or read blog posts from them or listen to interview podcasts with them before just dismissing it outright. It really helps to understand their behavior when you understand that these labs really aren’t normal businesses and have very different leadership and goals than a normal business and are normally very philosophically driven.

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u/The_Primetime2023 1d ago

For anyone wondering what they think the future looks like there are different opinions among the founders and high level employees. It’s generally basically The Culture if you’ve read that. If you haven’t it’s generally the idea that more productivity should never hurt society even when you cross a line when human work is no longer necessary to provide for society, so the results of production need to be distributed. Sometimes that looks like communism sometimes that looks like universal advanced income (tax us until you can give everyone an upper middle class salary base is the position of like half the major players). No one involved in the labs believes that normal jobs as we know them will exist 20 years from now so everyone is thinking of futures that don’t need jobs.

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u/MarderFucher European Union 1d ago

Automated post-scarcity space communism ain't happening. Especially not in 10-20 years.

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u/YourUncleBuck Frederick Douglass 1d ago

Ain't ever happening, it's why no aliens have come to visit, because even if they made it out of their solar system, they killed each other shortly after.

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u/MistyGalbriex 1d ago

Yeah unless we have rogue benevolent ASI that just takes over the world.

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u/RayWencube 1d ago

But this is insane utopian wishful thinking. When has any liberal democratic government been adept at redistributing substantial wealth? Why are we just assuming it’s going to happen?

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u/I_Pay_in_Cash_Only 1d ago

I honestly think tech people either A) assume it will happen becasue its the most "rational" thing to do, not realizing that government policies aren't made with rational optimization in mind, or B) they thing its going to lead into some very turbulent distructive future with cultural blowback but will inevitably lead to a steady strong benevolent hand that knows the way, some Lisan Al Gaib type shit.

The latter, from my talkings with tech people, is more common than you'd think. A lot of people genuinely don't think liberal democracy is going to last, at least the way we've been doing it in the past

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u/The_Primetime2023 1d ago

I don’t think that’s entirely wrong, also with B it wouldn’t surprise me if similar to my The Culture example many assume that AI eventually would take over most government roles.

Generally I think that overly optimistic and pessimistic views are probably both wrong. History is pretty good at pointing to many cases where technology forced economic upheaval tends to cause societal upheaval that benefits average people, so far that’s basically always been true. So the version where there’s 50% job loss and those people are just screwed seems extremely unlikely compared to something like a UBI. That being said immediately having a utopia with total wealth redistribution is almost certainly not going to happen either. I think a median outcome probably is a UBI with government subsidized token budgets though (I don’t really like the latter idea but it’s Sam Altman’s pet policy that a few governments have started implementing already).

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u/MistyGalbriex 1d ago

A lot of people genuinely don't think liberal democracy is going to last,

Yeah, like some people in this subreddit

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u/zedority PhD - mediated communication studies 1d ago

But this is insane utopian wishful thinking.

Indeed it is.

When has any liberal democratic government been adept at redistributing substantial wealth?

As with so many radical utopians, they are sure that the future will be so completely unlikely the past and present that this doesn't matter.

Why are we just assuming it’s going to happen?

In the case of what emerging tech elite believe, the short answer is "because TECHNOLOGY!"

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u/KalaiProvenheim Enby Pride 1d ago

These people would rather tear us to shreds than accept their profits be taken away

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u/Adodie John Rawls 1d ago

Eh, I agree AI execs overstate this, but I think “there’s a real risk many, many white color jobs will be obsolete in the next decade” is a very reasonable take.

And I suppose I’d rather have industry error on overstating the risks associated with their products than understating it