I am curious if by “Altman technocracy” you meant:
Sam Altman the individual CEO. It is likely that Mr. Altman doesn’t personally know all the innovations in the source for the most successful models OAI has released. (Besides stack more layers...)
OpenAI/Google specifically. What’s unique here that isn’t true for past innovations is the remotely hosted models, which are hugely ahead of any scientific paper, can’t be torn down and reverse engineered. Past major innovations—jet engines, smartphones, efficient cars, battery—someone tears it to bits, and over time all the major secrets are known throughout the industry. Only NDA breaking leaks and rumors are how we know anything past gpt-3, except for insiders, who only know what their LLM shop does not any innovations found at the other ones.
AI allowing humans to understand less and less about the details of how everything works.
Yes this will happen, but it’s not 1 way. Learning tools like Arduinos/rPis/Linux/oss/3d printers have made computers not the exclusive domain of IBM. And inexorably over time the open alternatives have become strictly dominant solutions for most purposes.
If it weren’t for the compute requirements, open source AI would likely be strictly dominant over closed today for the simple reason that anyone can contribute and the model reports what it is doing to no one and has no restrictions that a user wants to remove. (This is also what’s wonderful about Linux, no rules and no forced upgrades, so it is possible to do anything, including a lot of r&d stuff or editing the kernel)
Assuming open source models qualitatively catch up, and compute provides diminishing returns or becomes cheaper, the same will be true. There will be nothing a user won’t be able to explain or build with the help of their open AGI. They will be able to reverse engineer any technology they can tear apart, design (at a smaller scale not SOTA) anything that the civilization knows how to build.
Want to design your own GPU or write an OS from scratch? As a single person that’s a lifetime project. With your own AGI, a weekend. Change something fundamental in the strategy and rewrite all the drivers to use the new compute cores? A few hours to update.
I used ‘Altman’ since he’ll likely be known as the pioneer who started it. I highly doubt he’ll be the Architect behind the dystopian future I prophesise.
In respect of the second, I simply don’t believe that to be the case.
The third is inevitable, yes.
I would hope that ‘no repair’ laws, and equal access to CPU chips will come about. I don’t think that this will happen though. The demands of the monopoly/technocracy will outweigh the demands of the majority.
I am curious if by “Altman technocracy” you meant:
Sam Altman the individual CEO. It is likely that Mr. Altman doesn’t personally know all the innovations in the source for the most successful models OAI has released. (Besides stack more layers...)
OpenAI/Google specifically. What’s unique here that isn’t true for past innovations is the remotely hosted models, which are hugely ahead of any scientific paper, can’t be torn down and reverse engineered. Past major innovations—jet engines, smartphones, efficient cars, battery—someone tears it to bits, and over time all the major secrets are known throughout the industry. Only NDA breaking leaks and rumors are how we know anything past gpt-3, except for insiders, who only know what their LLM shop does not any innovations found at the other ones.
AI allowing humans to understand less and less about the details of how everything works.
Yes this will happen, but it’s not 1 way. Learning tools like Arduinos/rPis/Linux/oss/3d printers have made computers not the exclusive domain of IBM. And inexorably over time the open alternatives have become strictly dominant solutions for most purposes.
If it weren’t for the compute requirements, open source AI would likely be strictly dominant over closed today for the simple reason that anyone can contribute and the model reports what it is doing to no one and has no restrictions that a user wants to remove. (This is also what’s wonderful about Linux, no rules and no forced upgrades, so it is possible to do anything, including a lot of r&d stuff or editing the kernel)
Assuming open source models qualitatively catch up, and compute provides diminishing returns or becomes cheaper, the same will be true. There will be nothing a user won’t be able to explain or build with the help of their open AGI. They will be able to reverse engineer any technology they can tear apart, design (at a smaller scale not SOTA) anything that the civilization knows how to build.
Want to design your own GPU or write an OS from scratch? As a single person that’s a lifetime project. With your own AGI, a weekend. Change something fundamental in the strategy and rewrite all the drivers to use the new compute cores? A few hours to update.
I used ‘Altman’ since he’ll likely be known as the pioneer who started it. I highly doubt he’ll be the Architect behind the dystopian future I prophesise.
In respect of the second, I simply don’t believe that to be the case.
The third is inevitable, yes.
I would hope that ‘no repair’ laws, and equal access to CPU chips will come about. I don’t think that this will happen though. The demands of the monopoly/technocracy will outweigh the demands of the majority.