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Comments (143)

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  paxy
  All online discussions these days are like those chain email forwards of the last generation.“Omg did you know that AI researchers are taking up smoking because they think AI will cure cancer??”Oh really, which researchers?“I don’t know.”How many of them? One or many?“I don’t know.”What company do they work for?“I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s Anthropic.”How do you even know this?“I saw it on someone’s TikTok.”So if there are zero verifiable sources why do you believe this?“Because it sounds fun, and confirms my biases. Now I’m going to forward this to a hundred other people or I’ll have bad luck.”This is a meaningless example but this is true for so much more.
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  epiccoleman
  I can't claim to know anything about the RAND corporation. Maybe they don't deserve to be included in this next sentence, maybe they do.but there is something at least a little interesting about the notion that people working in the nuclear space they thought they might be saving the world - because in some sense, they... did?I've always felt like the fact that no nukes have ever been dropped (in war) after 1945 was a pretty huge success story for the human race. We invented this insanely powerful weapon and, despite the typical pattern of humanity, we managed to solve one of our biggest "coordination problems" effectively enough to not use another one for 80 years (and counting).I don't know that I'd extend this analogy to the AI labs, I'm not necessarily implying that they're all right about "saving the world," I just think it's worth noting that there was a contingent of people out there trying to save the world from a real threat and who seem to have - at least for now - succeeded.
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  cogogo
  No retirement benefits. The next evolution of unlimited vacation. No really, it benefits the employee.
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  rob74
  > This reminds me of the report that AI researchers have taken up smoking as a way to signal their belief that AI will cure cancer before smoking kills them.While reading the first half of this sentence, I fully expected the second half to be "...to signal their belief that AI will destroy the world before they can get lung cancer"
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  bozdemir
  Where the heck is my universal basic income?
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  berkeleynerd
  "Hope for the best, plan for the worst" is the better general advice IMHO.
• anon
  undefined
• inanutshellus
  The info about the RAND corporation was engaging, but... since the post promised to connect it to "strikingly similar to the rhetoric coming out of places like Anthropic" ... I was surprised that it entirely lacked quotes from Anthropic, save one link to another blog post that was itself, IIUC, a joke.
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  user43928
  I expected an interesting article about how most people underestimate change, but found nothing of the sort here, only a sarcastic comment.Do people really think we will be working for another 20-30 years?That seems very unlikely, and particularly so for software engineering.
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  chinathrow
  > This reminds me of the report that AI researchers have taken up smoking as a way to signal their belief that AI will cure cancer before smoking kills them.I can't even.
• johsole
  Is anyone actually no longer saving for retirement due to the advances in Ai?
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  sschueller
  If universal high income is just around the corner what sense does it make to enrich yourself right before it?The answer, non of these filthy rich individuals making these claims actually believes it.
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  sakex
  The smoking thing was a joke btw
• kentm
  I will not believe this until every frontier AI lab socializes a significant portion of their “profit” (subject to making a profit). I’m not talking about “Every kid with a Trump account gets a single share of SPCX”. I’m talking about “50+ percent of the shares are in a trust that distributes regular dividends to every US adult”. I’ll even be nice and allow those shares to be non-voting.Until then it’s all talk.
• nkrisc
  Reminds me of the anecdotes of people who gave away all their stuff right before they were to be raptured.
• NewEntryHN
  Am I the only one who think that we are overestimating the hindsight of "AI insiders" in comparison to the rest of the world?It seems that they themselves are discovering the capabilities of models purely empirically by training them, and just have a few months head start before they release the model and everyone else can witness those same capabilities.What do they have that make their multi-years (if not multi-decades) predictions more insightful than any other observer?
• LogicFailsMe
  That report about AI researchers came from one guy at Palantir, its CTO.Unless some bona fide "AI researchers" came forward and confirmed it, it never happened IMO.Edit: Palantir snowflake can't handle facts
• runamuck
  I just saw a Backerkit campaign for an "AI male device." I will let you use your imagination for its purpose. It kind of gave me a bad feeling, like "wtf is in store for humanity?" Although certain men would find it "Utopian."
• jeffrallen
  Smoking and AI maximalists are uncool.
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  FrustratedMonky
  Utopia or Disaster?Both options are converging. Which will win?Seems like we're on a knifes edge, so light em if you got em.https://coveringclimatenow.org/from-us-story/when-the-term-h...
• tdhz77
  A nice read, thought provoking of how humans can be trapped by cult like behavior.
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  Joel_Mckay
  >I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a lab like Anthropic announce they’re discontinuing all employer-sponsored retirement benefits.Speculative rhetoric is no different from a mathematical fiction companies use to gamble on future revenue. The bubble will go eventually, as even boring bonds indicate skepticism at the risk dynamic.Thankfully, once the IPOs run the cycle... we can hopefully get less AstroTurf from various cultists. =3
• artnap
  [dead]