Right. When we’re far away from things, treating them as points is a useful approximation. Take the question “Which way is my house?” When I am across the city, this is a useful question with a straightforward answer. When I am in the yard, or worse, inside it, I can no longer treat my house as a point.
It is precisely because we are near to AGI (I’ve felt “inside the house” since GPT-2) that questions that treat this construct as a point aren’t very useful.
I like an analogy I heard Toby Ord use at EAG; hopefully he doesn’t mind me borrowing it.
It’s like being on a hike with friends up a mountain shrouded in clouds. At some point on the hike, things get a bit misty, and then vision drops to minimal. At what point did we enter the cloud? Was it when the first mists appeared? When visibility dropped below some metric? Maybe it doesn’t matter, except insofar as being in a cloud requires taking actions, like tying ourselves together with rope so we don’t get lost.
Right. When we’re far away from things, treating them as points is a useful approximation. Take the question “Which way is my house?” When I am across the city, this is a useful question with a straightforward answer. When I am in the yard, or worse, inside it, I can no longer treat my house as a point.
It is precisely because we are near to AGI (I’ve felt “inside the house” since GPT-2) that questions that treat this construct as a point aren’t very useful.
I like an analogy I heard Toby Ord use at EAG; hopefully he doesn’t mind me borrowing it.
It’s like being on a hike with friends up a mountain shrouded in clouds. At some point on the hike, things get a bit misty, and then vision drops to minimal. At what point did we enter the cloud? Was it when the first mists appeared? When visibility dropped below some metric? Maybe it doesn’t matter, except insofar as being in a cloud requires taking actions, like tying ourselves together with rope so we don’t get lost.