> And this is all fine, because they’re going to make AGI and the expected value (EV) of it will be huge! (Briefly, the argument goes that if there is a 0.001% chance of AGI delivering an extremely large amount of value, and 99.999% chance of much less or zero value, then the EV is still extremely large because (0.001% * very_large_value) + (99.999% * small_value) = very_large_value).
This is a strawman. The big AI names aren't making a Pascal's wager type argument around AGI.
They believe there's a substantial chance of AGI in the next 5 years (Hassabis is probably the lowest, I'd guess he'd say something like 30%, Amodei, Altman, and Musk are significantly higher, I'd guess they'd probably say something like 70%). They'd all have much higher probabilities for 10 years (maybe over 90%).
You can disagree with them on probabilities. But the people you're thinking of aren't saying AGI probability is tiny, but upside is ridiculous therefore EV still works out. They're biting the bullet and saying probability is high.
Yeah, but their past history should be taken into account here. Altman and musk are just confidence men. what they’ve touched in the past has turned to crap, and it’s only been the people around them that have made anything work despite those people mucking it up.
trust past history as an indicator of future action. In this case, sure some neat stuff will come out of it. But it won’t be nearly what these people say it is. They are huffing each other’s farts.
Money influences thinking so undoubtedly it's a mix, but I think a lot of HNers discount the former, when it plays a very large role. E.g. if you look at the emails that resulted from discovery in Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, you'll see that from the very beginning of its inception OpenAI's founders have been trying to build AGI. This wasn't a marketing term that was made up years into OpenAI after it blew up and needed to dance in front of investors. This was an explicit goal of OpenAI from the very beginning.
This is a strawman. The big AI names aren't making a Pascal's wager type argument around AGI.
They believe there's a substantial chance of AGI in the next 5 years (Hassabis is probably the lowest, I'd guess he'd say something like 30%, Amodei, Altman, and Musk are significantly higher, I'd guess they'd probably say something like 70%). They'd all have much higher probabilities for 10 years (maybe over 90%).
You can disagree with them on probabilities. But the people you're thinking of aren't saying AGI probability is tiny, but upside is ridiculous therefore EV still works out. They're biting the bullet and saying probability is high.