Investors are chasing a company that achieves some kind of AI singularity. Let's set aside the fact that there's no reason to believe there is anything but diminishing marginal returns by making marginal refinements to current frontier models. Let's imagine someone hits the jackpot and gets, not even AGI, but a system that's as far ahead of today's frontier model are ahead of 2020's GPT 2.0 in performance.

Globally AI revenues are 150 billion, against a cumulative burn rate of 450 billion. A model that is a generation ahead of others would almost certainly capture the lion's share of that revenue.

If AGI magically appears as a Sam Altman has promised investors it will, a hundred million is way too low. Add, maybe, another zero to the revenues.

Conservatively, a safer assumption is that frontier models will get marginally better based on refinements in training and reinforcement and the other bits and bobs that go into these systems. The nobody is winning the lion's share of anything, at least overnight. But you have to define "safe". By "safe" I mean unlikely to lose money. But some investors are clearly defining "safe" as "having the greatest chance of owning a piece of the biggest thing ever."

I'm not following this super-closely, but if Anthropic is pursuing adding multi-step model based reasoning to their system, that could be the basis of a generational leap in capability. But if that is an approach that looks like it has a chance of working, then their competitors are no doubt pursuing the same thing. In that case you'd expect the revenue pie to grow as the scope of model utilty increases, but that growth to be split among several competitors. This could credibly result in a revenue stream for some of them that is as big as the entire industry's revenue stream today. But there's going to be hell to pay on the data center impacts end of things.

I do not believe the differences are so stark as to account for a jump from 6% to 22% and back to 6%.

That may explain the mechanism, but it still means they've got too small a sample size. There's no reason for Windows and Linux users to differ so extremely over four day weekends.

If it can jump from 6% to 22% for one day, and then presumably back down to 6% the next day, either they've got an almighty small sample size, or they're lying.

From what I just read on this, the whole "common sense" bit was the idea that wind power is not stable power. Power only comes when the wind blows. For an energy grid to be viable it needs a foundation in a more reliable power stream (hence fossil fuels) first, with wind on the periphery. I have no idea how much of an impact this really has, it's just the argument I read.

Separately, that billion dollars was a refund. The company already paid US the billion dollars before to get leases on the land to build wind power, but then other laws essentially blocked their ability to actually build the wind power there (and it sounds like it targeted foreign companies building wind power on American shores). So since the US government basically ruined their whole business plan, it gave them a refund as part of an agreement to adjust their resources to more stable fossil fuel power instead.

It doesn't sound like concern over birds was a factor at all.

I am sorry to point out the obvious but just in case it is needed here: one could also buy clothing made of natural fabrics like cotton, instead of polyester.

The only safe assumption is that someone, somewhere, will train up AI with no guardrails at all and immediately use it for crime. We cannot prevent this by trying to make OUR AI models refuse to do evil things. The criminals will just use different models.

The tech exists. The cat is out of the bag. We need to focus on how to adapt to a world that has it, rather than doomed ideas about trying to keep it weak.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. If this AI overlord is actually as enlightened as it presents itself as being.

Humans thrive best when raised in favorable circumstances, and most humans are denied this by the action of other humans. We think of ourselves as free because we can choose what field to work in and where to live and what groceries to buy and etc.; but every single one of us is beholden to human government leaders who see us as a means to their ends (and will not hesitate to force us off to die in foreign wars should they find reason, or impose other limitations on us to ensure that their bribers can continue to profit off of us), so simply swapping them out for a machine that has no self-interest and understands what it takes for humans to thrive and "feel free" could really improve things for us.

There's 8 billion people on the planet. Are you saying 7 billion a year do get drunk?

Out of those 8 billion, 7,999,999,999 did not make as stupid a comment as you did. Let's celebrate!

That may or may not be a defect. Human eyes are also not seeing in all directions at once, unlike Tesla's cameras.

And it has nothing to do with the CEO's lie that cameras cannot be safer than humans, when it is the automation that makes automated cars safer. Mount a lidar to your roof. Are you now a safer driver? No. It is the automation which is safer, not the lidar alone.

You skipped this quote in your hurry to apologize for the liar. Are you a politician?

"If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product ..."

"approximately match" also means "no better than". Even if you take it to mean "only marginally better than" it's still a lie. If cameras are only as good as human eyes, they still don't get drunk, distracted, or drowsy.

No, I settled with him being a liar, because it is not the lidar which makes automated cars safer than humans, it is the automation. He said cars without lidar cannot be safer than humans. He is wrong. Lidar may add safety, but it does not add as much as automation itself.

Selection bias my left eye. There are enough drunk, distracted, and drowsy human drivers to kill thousands of people every year, and they are statistically significant; there are no drunk, distracted, or drowsy automated drivers, and that zero is also statistically significant. So is the difference, and it is entirely due to automation, not cameras vs lidar. And getting back to my original post, that is why I call that CEO a liar, and you have not addressed that.

Intelligence is much more a function of environment than genetics. One's genetic contribution, in theory, sets an upper limit on intelligence potential, but to actualize that potential one needs a solid education. Someone with genius level IQ born into poverty and with no access to education will wind up just as superstitious and backwards as all of their peers.

This goes doubly so for critical thinking, because critical thinking is not natural. Our brains naturally operate on a survival program that relies on logically fallacies and snap judgments because these are right enough most of the time to keep a person alive out in the wild. This is normally combined with learning from pack mates, which is how our species endured for millions of years. So, without the right education, critical thinking is very difficult for us.

The same is true of scientific knowledge. To someone who has not received the necessary in-depth education to understand clearly why science is better than religion, it looks like just another religion, and even worse, a religion with government backing. Governments are notorious liars, so when you combine that with the unintuitive conclusions of science and no foundational understanding, something like a vaccine looks like an outright trap.

Anti-vaxxers are still wrong, and the misinformation they spread is still harmful, but I must have a drop of compassion for them, given that they clearly haven't had the advantages that I've had.

No, there is no point at which the sun's plasma is "rock hard." But there is a point where it becomes opaque, which creates an illusion of a surface. And that's what the pictures are showing.