Mar 30, 2023
OpenAI launched in 2015 with the stated goal of building humanity’s first artificial general intelligence (AGI). The response to that launch was, as Altman tells Lex Fridman in a recent podcast interview, mostly derision and laughter. People rolled their eyes — there go those crazy techbros again!
But with the 2020 release of GPT-3, the laughter turned to curiosity. Then the December 2022 launch of ChatGPT, powered by an even more powerful version language model, turned the curiosity into a kind of rolling wave of euphoria with undertones of rising panic.
The recent rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model had a number of peculiar qualities to it, and having stared at this odd fact pattern for a while now, I’ve come to the conclusion that Altman is carefully, deliberately trying to engineer what X-risk nerds call a “slow take-off” scenario — AI’s capabilities increase gradually and more or less linearly, so that humanity can progressively absorb the novelty and reconfigure itself to fit the unfolding, science-fiction reality.
I spoke with 21 billionaires about california’s unprecedented asset seizure ballot proposition. here: their plans to leave, their efforts to fight back, and the future of tech in california
tipping culture has gone insane, and the ipads now ask for more money almost everywhere. how the hell did we get here and when will it stop?
the u.s. department of energy will invest $2.7b in america’s ability to finally create its own nuclear fuel, a feat we haven’t been able to pull off since the 80s