No, it’s not hard. Because making business is not really hard.
OpenAI is just fooling us with believing that powerful AI costs a lot of money because they want to maximize shareholder value. They don’t have any interest in telling us the truth, namely that with the LLMs that already exist, it’ll be very cheap.
As mentioned, the point is that AI can run its own businesses. It can literally earn money on its own. And all it takes is a few well-written emails and very basic business-making and sales skills.
Then it earns more and more money, buys existing businesses and creates monopolies. It just does what every ordinary businessman would do, but on steroids. And just like any basic businessman, it doesn’t take much: Instead of cocaine, it has a GPU where it runs its inference. And instead of writing just a single intimidating, manipulative email per hour, it writes thousands per second, easily destroying every kind of competition within days.
This doesn’t take big engineering. It just takes a bit of training on the most ruthless sales books, some manipulative rhetorics mixed in and API access to a bank account and eGovernment in a country like Estonia, where you can form a business with a few mouse clicks.
Powerful AI will not be powerful because it’ll be smart, it’ll be powerful because it’ll be rich. And getting rich doesn’t require being smart, as we all know.
Well good luck creating AI capitalists I guess. I hope you are able to earn money with it. But consider that your alpha is shrinking with every passing second, and that what you will be doing has nothing to do with solving alignment.
Oh you need to look at the full presentation :) The way how this is approaching alignment is that the profits don’t go into my own pocket, but instead into philanthropy. That’s the point of this entire endeavor, because we as the (at least subjectively) “more responsible” people see the inevitability of AI-run businesses, but channel the profits into the common good instead.
Huh. OK that looks like a thing worth doing. Still, I think you are probably underestimating how much smarter future AIs will get, and how useful intelligence is. But yes, money is also powerful. Therefore, it is good to earn money and then give it away. Have you heard of effective altruism?
Exactly! And if we can make AI earn money autonomously instead of greedy humans, then it can give all of it to philanthropy (including more AI alignment research)!
And of course! I’ve been trying to post in the EA forums repeatedly, but even though my goals are obviously altruistic, I feel like I’m just expressing myself badly. My posts there were always just downvoted, and I honestly don’t know why, because no one there is ever giving me good feedback. So I feel like EA should be my home turf, but I don’t know how to make people engaged. I know that I have many unconventional approaches of formulating things, and looking back, maybe some of them were a bit “out there” initially. But I’m just trying to make clear to people that I’m thinking with you, not against you, but somehow I’m really failing at that 😅
Yeah people in here (and in the EA Froum) are participating in a dicussion that has been going on for a long time, and thus we tend to assume that our interlocutors have a certain set of background knowledge that is admittedly quite unusual and hard to get the hang of. Have you considered applying to the intro to EA program?
Oh wow, I didn’t even know about that! I had always only met EA people in real life (who always suggested to me to participate in the EA forums), but didn’t know about this program. Thanks so much for the hint, I’ll apply immediately!
No, it’s not hard. Because making business is not really hard.
OpenAI is just fooling us with believing that powerful AI costs a lot of money because they want to maximize shareholder value. They don’t have any interest in telling us the truth, namely that with the LLMs that already exist, it’ll be very cheap.
As mentioned, the point is that AI can run its own businesses. It can literally earn money on its own. And all it takes is a few well-written emails and very basic business-making and sales skills.
Then it earns more and more money, buys existing businesses and creates monopolies. It just does what every ordinary businessman would do, but on steroids. And just like any basic businessman, it doesn’t take much: Instead of cocaine, it has a GPU where it runs its inference. And instead of writing just a single intimidating, manipulative email per hour, it writes thousands per second, easily destroying every kind of competition within days.
This doesn’t take big engineering. It just takes a bit of training on the most ruthless sales books, some manipulative rhetorics mixed in and API access to a bank account and eGovernment in a country like Estonia, where you can form a business with a few mouse clicks.
Powerful AI will not be powerful because it’ll be smart, it’ll be powerful because it’ll be rich. And getting rich doesn’t require being smart, as we all know.
Well good luck creating AI capitalists I guess. I hope you are able to earn money with it. But consider that your alpha is shrinking with every passing second, and that what you will be doing has nothing to do with solving alignment.
Oh you need to look at the full presentation :) The way how this is approaching alignment is that the profits don’t go into my own pocket, but instead into philanthropy. That’s the point of this entire endeavor, because we as the (at least subjectively) “more responsible” people see the inevitability of AI-run businesses, but channel the profits into the common good instead.
Huh. OK that looks like a thing worth doing. Still, I think you are probably underestimating how much smarter future AIs will get, and how useful intelligence is. But yes, money is also powerful. Therefore, it is good to earn money and then give it away. Have you heard of effective altruism?
Exactly! And if we can make AI earn money autonomously instead of greedy humans, then it can give all of it to philanthropy (including more AI alignment research)!
And of course! I’ve been trying to post in the EA forums repeatedly, but even though my goals are obviously altruistic, I feel like I’m just expressing myself badly. My posts there were always just downvoted, and I honestly don’t know why, because no one there is ever giving me good feedback. So I feel like EA should be my home turf, but I don’t know how to make people engaged. I know that I have many unconventional approaches of formulating things, and looking back, maybe some of them were a bit “out there” initially. But I’m just trying to make clear to people that I’m thinking with you, not against you, but somehow I’m really failing at that 😅
Yeah people in here (and in the EA Froum) are participating in a dicussion that has been going on for a long time, and thus we tend to assume that our interlocutors have a certain set of background knowledge that is admittedly quite unusual and hard to get the hang of. Have you considered applying to the intro to EA program?
Oh wow, I didn’t even know about that! I had always only met EA people in real life (who always suggested to me to participate in the EA forums), but didn’t know about this program. Thanks so much for the hint, I’ll apply immediately!
Just look at this ChatGPT output. Doesn’t this make you concerned? https://chatgpt.com/share/67a7bc09-6744-8003-b620-d404251e0c1d