Category Archives: Artificial General Intelligence
Railtown AI Unveils Version 2.0 of Conductor – Newsfile
July 02, 2024 8:00 AM EDT | Source: Railtown AI Technologies Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 2, 2024) - Railtown AI Technologies Inc. (CSE: RAIL) (OTCQB: RLAIF) ("Railtown AI'', "Railtown" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the launch of Conductor Version 2.0, an advanced AI platform that is transforming how companies build and manage their software applications.
Conductor Version 2.0 is designed to drive new insights by seamlessly aggregating and analyzing diverse application data. By providing a holistic view of application performance and development processes, Railtown AI enables organizations to understand all aspects of their software applications. This enhanced perspective is a crucial step toward the company vision of building an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that manages and controls all aspects of the software application lifecycle.
"Our mission with Railtown AI has always been to empower businesses with actionable intelligence," said Marwan Haddad, CTO at Railtown AI. "With the release of Version 2.0, we're taking a giant leap forward by giving companies the tools they need to not only monitor but also optimize every aspect of their application ecosystem. This is more than just an update; it's a transformation in how we understand and manage software."
Key features of Conductor Version 2.0 include:
Conductor Version 2.0 is now available to all current and new customers.
About Railtown AI Technologies
Railtown AI, a Microsoft Partner, is a cloud-based Application General Intelligence Platform for Software Developers and Teams that practice Agile Project Management. We purposely built our Application General Intelligence Platform to help Software Developers and Agile practitioners save time on redundant tasks, improve productivity, drive down costs, and accelerate developer velocity. Railtown's proprietary AI technology, designed to enable our clients to be more productive and profitable, is accessible on Microsoft's Azure Marketplace.
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This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the future operations of the Company and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will," "may", "should", "intends", "anticipates", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the future plans and objectives of the Company are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators.
Readers are cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. As a result, the Company cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize, and readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will only update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by Canadian securities law.
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SOURCE: Railtown AI Technologies Inc.
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SoftBank CEO says AI that is 10000 times smarter than humans will come out in 10 years – CNBC
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company's annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 20, 2024. Son sketched out ambitions to help create AI thousands of times smarter than any human, making his most grandiose pronouncements since the Japanese conglomerate began taking steps to shore up its finances following a series of ill-timed startup bets.
Kosuke Okahara | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence that is 10,000 times smarter than humans will be here in 10 years, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said on Friday, in a rare public appearance during which he questioned his own purpose in life.
Son laid out his vision for a world featuring artificial super intelligence, or ASI, as he dubbed it.
The CEO first talked about another term artificial general intelligence, or AGI which broadly refers to AI that is smarter than humans. Son said this tech is likely to be one to 10 times smarter than humans and will arrive in the next three-to-five years, earlier than he had anticipated.
But if AGI is not much smarter than humans, "then we don't need to change the way of living, we don't need to change the structure of human lifestyle," Son said, according to a live translation of his comments in Japanese, which were delivered during SoftBank's annual general meeting of shareholders.
"But when it comes to ASI it's a totally different story. [With] ASI, you will see a big improvement."
Son discussed how the future will hold various ASI models that interact with each other, like neurons in a human brain. This will lead to AI that is 10,000 times smarter than any human genius, according to Son.
SoftBank shares closed down more than 3% in Japan, following the meeting.
Son is SoftBank's founder, who rose to prominence after an early and profitable investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He positioned SoftBank as a tech visionary with the 2017 launch of the Vision Fund, a massive investment fund focused on backing tech firms. While some of the bets were successful, there were also many high-profile failures, such as office sharing company WeWork.
After posting then-record financial losses at Vision Fund in 2022, Son said that SoftBank would go into "defense" mode and be more conservative with its investments. In 2023, the Vision Fund posted a new record loss, with Son shortly after saying that SoftBank would now shift into "offense," because he was excited about the investment opportunities in AI.
Son has been broadly out of the public eye since then.
He returned to the spotlight on Friday to deliver a speech that was full of existential questions.
"Two years ago, I am getting old, rest of my life is limited, but I haven't done anything yet and I cried so hard," Son said, suggesting he feels he hasn't achieved anything of consequence to date.
He added that he had now found SoftBank's mission, which is the "evolution of humanity." He also said he has discovered his own purpose in life.
"SoftBank was founded for what purpose? For what purpose was Masa Son born? It may sound strange, but I think I was born to realize ASI. I am super serious about it," Son said.
Continued here:
SoftBank CEO says AI that is 10000 times smarter than humans will come out in 10 years - CNBC
How is AI transforming the insurtech sector? – Information Age
Artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting almost every industry, and insurance and the insurtech sector on which it depends is no exception, with applications benefiting both customers and insurance firms themselves.
From a customer service perspective, the use of chatbots is helping to answer queries in a more efficient manner, providing customers with instant answers around the clock, says Quentin Colmant, CEO of insurtech firm Qover. AI-powered chatbots can assist customers with contract management, freeing up human agents for more complex issues, he says. Additionally, AI analyses vast amounts of customer data to personalise insurance recommendations. This allows insurtechs to tailor products to the specific needs of customers, ensuring they are presented with the most relevant options.
The emergence of generative AI is likely to see this evolve further, using multiple data sources to provide even more personalised digital interaction. General information typically provided through static and dynamic FAQs are likely to be superseded by a more interactive human-style chatbot, which was on the increase even before the advent of generative AI, says Tony Farnfield, partner and UK practice lead at management consulting firm BearingPoint. The ability to link an AI bot to back-end policy and claims systems will scale back the need for human intervention.
Generative AI can also help target specific areas of frustration for customers, says Rory Yates, global strategic lead at EIS, referencing its own client esure Group. They focused on a key customer frustration when calling a contact centre, which was repetition, so being passed from one person to the next, and needing to re-explain the reason for making contact, he says. Their use of generative AI helps alleviate this. Then at the end of every call, generative AI is used to summarise the notes, capturing the details of the call, making sure accurate records are kept.
Internal efficiency is another major benefit of the effective use of AI. Steve Muylle, professor of digital strategy and business marketing at Vlerick Business School, gives the example of AI helping insurers to generate accurate quotes almost immediately. In 2019, Direct Line launched Darwin a motor insurance platform that uses AI to determine individual pricing through machine learning, he says. This approach has translated into better customer reviews and improved customer service.
Another example is in Asia, where insurance companies work with Uber, he adds. After an accident, insurers can ask nearby Uber drivers to check accidents, leveraging their knowledge of cars and their ability to take photos or videos for reporting, which can then be analysed by AI. This provides the insurers with more data, potentially from a third party, and is also a side gig for the Uber drivers.
Another application is in the onboarding and training of employees. AI-powered virtual assistants can guide new employees through the onboarding process, providing support and answering questions around the clock, says Christian Brugger, partner at digital consultancy OMMAX. Interactive AI-powered tools, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, can offer immersive training experiences, simulating real-life scenarios employees might face.
Its also being used to improve efficiency more generally, in the same way as it might any other business. The ability to automate high-volume, routine, low-value-added tasks has allowed insurers to speed up their services and increase productivity, says Steve Bramall, credit director at Allianz Trade. This frees up valuable experts to spend more time with customers and brokers, improving customer experience.
Yet the use of AI also brings risks and ethical considerations for insurers and insurtech firms. With all AI, you need to understand where the AI models are from and where the data is being trained from and, importantly, whether there is an in-built bias, says Kevin Gaut, chief technology officer at insurtech INSTANDA. Proper due diligence on the data is the key, even with your own internal data.
Its essential, too, that organisations can explain any decisions that are taken, warns Muylle, and that there is at least some human oversight. A notable issue is the black-box nature of some AI algorithms that produce results without explanation, he warns. To address this, its essential to involve humans in the decision-making loop, establish clear AI principles and involve an AI review board or third party. Companies can avoid pitfalls by being transparent with their AI use and co-operating when questioned.
AI applications themselves also raise the potential for organisations to get caught out in cyber-attacks. Perpetrators can use generative AI to produce highly believable yet fraudulent insurance claims, points out Brugger. They can also use audio synthesis and deepfakes pretending to be someone else. If produced at high-scale, such fraudulent claims can overwhelm the insurer, leading to higher payouts.
Cyber-attacks can also lead to significant data breaches, which can have serious consequences for insurers. These can expose confidential client information, which inevitably poses new challenges towards fostering client trust, says James Harrison, global head of insurance at Dun & Bradstreet. Additionally, failure to comply with data protection regulations, such as GDPR, can lead to legal consequences and financial penalties.
Having robust cybersecurity measures is essential, particularly when it comes to sensitive or personal data, says David Dumont, a partner at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, and its important to ensure these remain able to cope with new regulations. In the EU, the legal framework on cybersecurity is evolving and becoming more prescriptive, he explains. Within the next year, insurtechs may, for example, be required to comply with considerable cybersecurity obligations under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), depending on the specific type of products and services that they offer.
All this means AI requires careful handling if insurers and insurtechs are to realise the benefits, without experiencing the downsides. The future of AI in insurtech is brimming with potential, believes Colmant. AI will likely specialise in specific insurance processes, like underwriting or claims management, leading to significant efficiency gains and improved accuracy. This will also likely lead to even greater personalisation and automation.
However, the focus will likely shift towards a collaborative approach, with AI augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing them entirely. Throughout this evolution, ethical considerations will remain a top priority.
How artificial intelligence is helping to slash fraud at UK banks Rob Woods, fraud expert at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, tells Charles Orton-Jones why behavioural data and AI are a powerful fraud-fighting combination
Why is embedded insurance so popular right now? Charles Orton-Jones asks five industry experts how embedded insurance could transform the sector and whether or not it offers real value for consumers
Will more AI mean more cyberattacks? An increased use of AI within organisations could spell a rise in cyberattacks, explains Nick Martindale. Heres what you can do
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How is AI transforming the insurtech sector? - Information Age
AI doomers have warned of the tech-pocalypse while doing their best to accelerate it – Salon
One of the most prominent narratives about AGI, or artificial general intelligence, in the popular media these days is the AI doomer narrative. This claims that were in the midst of an arms race to build AGI, propelled by a relatively small number of extremely powerful AI companies like DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musks xAI (which aims to design an AGI that uncovers truths about the universe by eschewing political correctness). All are backed by billions of dollars: DeepMind says that Microsoft will invest over $100 billion in AI, while OpenAI has thus far received $13 billion from Microsoft, Anthropic has $4 billion in investments from Amazon, and Musk just raised $6 billion for xAI.
Many doomers argue that the AGI race is catapulting humanity toward the precipice of annihilation: if we create an AGI in the near future, without knowing how to properly align the AGIs value system, then the default outcome will be total human extinction. That is, literally everyone on Earth will die. And since it appears that were on the verge of creating AGI or so they say this means that you and I and everyone we care about could be murdered by a misaligned AGI within the next few years.
These doomers thus contend, with apocalyptic urgency, that we must pause or completely ban all research aiming to create AGI. By pausing or banning this research, it would give others more time to solve the problem of aligning AGI to our human values, which is necessary to ensure that the AGI is sufficiently safe. Failing to do this means that the AGI will be unsafe, and the most likely consequence of an unsafe AGI will be the untimely death of everyone on our planet.
The doomers contrast with the AI accelerationists, who hold a much more optimistic view. They claim that the default outcome of AGI will be a bustling utopia: well be able to cure diseases, solve the climate crisis, figure out how to become immortal, and even colonize the universe. Consequently, these accelerationists some of whom use the acronym e/acc (pronounced ee-ack) to describe their movement argue that we should accelerate rather than pause or ban AGI research. There isnt enough money being funneled into the leading AI companies, and calls for government regulation are deeply misguided because theyre only going to delay the arrival of utopia.
Some even contend that any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. So, if you advocate for slowing down research on advanced AI, you are no better than a murderer.
The loudest voices within the AI doomer camp have been disproportionately responsible for launching and sustaining the very technological race that they now claim could doom humanity.
But theres a great irony to this whole bizarre predicament: historically speaking, no group has done more to accelerate the race to build AGI than the AI doomers. The very people screaming that the AGI race is a runaway train barreling toward the cliff of extinction have played an integral role in starting these AI companies. Some have helped found these companies, while others provided crucial early funding that enabled such companies to get going. They wrote papers, books and blog posts that popularized the idea of AGI and organized conferences that inspired interest in the topic. Many of those worried that AGI will kill everyone on Earth have gone on to work for the leading AI companies, and indeed the two techno-cultural movements that initially developed and promoted the doomer narrative namely, Rationalism and Effective Altruism have been at the very heart of the AGI race since its inception.
In a phrase, the loudest voices within the AI doomer camp have been disproportionately responsible for launching and sustaining the very technological race that they now claim could doom humanity in the coming years. Despite their apocalyptic warnings of near-term annihilation, the doomers have in practice been more effective at accelerating AGI than the accelerationists themselves.
Consider a few examples, beginning with the Skype cofounder and almost-billionaire Jaan Tallinn, who also happens to be one of the biggest financial backers of the Rationalist and Effective Altruist (EA) movements. Tallinn has repeatedly claimed that AGI poses an enormous threat to the survival of humanity. Or, in his words, it is by far the biggest risk facing us this century bigger than nuclear war, global pandemics or climate change.
In 2014, Tallinn co-founded a Boston-based organization called the Future of Life Institute (FLI), which has helped raise public awareness of the supposedly grave dangers of AGI. Last year, FLI released an open letter calling on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, where GPT4 was the most advanced system that OpenAI had released at the time. The letter warns that AI labs have become locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one not even their creators can understand, predict, or reliably control, resulting in a dangerous race. Tallinn was one of the first signatories.
Tallinn is thus deeply concerned about the race to build AGI. Hes worried that this race might lead to our extinction in the near future. Yet, through his wallet, he has played a crucial role in sparking and fueling the AGI race. He was an early investor in DeepMind, which Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman cofounded 2010 with the explicit goal of creating AGI. After OpenAI started in 2015, he had a close connection to some people at the company, meeting regularly with individuals like Dario Amodei, a member of the EA movement and a key figure in the direction of OpenAI. (Tallinn himself is closely aligned with the EA movement.)
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In 2021, Amodei and six other former employees of OpenAI founded Anthropic, a competitor of both DeepMind and OpenAI. Where did Anthropic get its money? In part from Tallinn, who donated $25 million and led a $124 million series A fundraising round to help the company get started.
Here we have one of the leading voices in the doomer camp claiming that the AGI race could result in everyone on Earth dying, while simultaneously funding the biggest culprits in this reckless race toward AGI. Im reminded of something that Noam Chomsky once said in 2002, during the early years of George Bushs misguided War on Terror. Chomsky declared: We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, he said, referring to the U.S. There is one easy way to do that stop participating in it. The same idea applies to the AGI race: if AI doomers are really so worried that the race to build AGI will lead to an existential catastrophe, then why are they participating in it? Why have they funded and, in some cases, founded the very companies responsible for supposedly pushing humanity toward the precipice of total destruction?
In fact, Amodei, Shane Legg, Sam Altman and Elon Musk all of whom founded or cofounded some of the leading AI companies have expressed doomer concerns that AGI could annihilate our species in the near term. In an interview with the EA organization 80,000 Hours, Amodei referenced the possibility that an AGI could destroy humanity, saying I cant see any reason in principle why that couldnt happen. He adds that this is a possible outcome and at the very least as a tail risk we should take it seriously.
Over and over again, the very same people saying that AGI could kill us all have done more than anyone else to launch and accelerate the race toward AGI.
Similarly, DeepMind cofounder Shane Legg wrote on the website LessWrong in 2011 that AGI is his number 1 risk for this century. That was one year after DeepMind was created. In 2015, the year he co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk and others, Altman declared that I think AI will most likely sort of lead to the end of the world, adding on his personal blog that the development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.
Then theres Musk, who has consistently identified AGI as the biggest existential threat, and far more dangerous than nukes. In early 2023, Musk signed the open letter from FLI calling for a six month pause on advanced AI research. Just four months later, he announced that he was starting yet another AI company: xAI.
Over and over again, the very same people saying that AGI could kill us all have done more than anyone else to launch and accelerate the race toward AGI. This is even true of the most famous doomer in the world today, a self-described genius named Eliezer Yudkowsky. In a Time magazine article from last year, Yudkowsky argued that our only hope of survival is to immediately shut down all of the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined. Countries should sign an international treaty to halt AGI research and be willing to engage in military airstrikes against rogue datacenters to enforce this treaty.
Yudkowsky is so worried about the AGI apocalypse that he claims we should be willing to risk an all-out thermonuclear war that kills nearly everyone on Earth to prevent AGI from being built in the near future. He then gave a TED talk in which he reiterated his warnings: if we build AGI without knowing how to make it safe and we have no idea how to make it safe right now, he claims then literally everyone on Earth will die.
Yet I doubt that any single individual has promoted the idea of AGI more than Yudkowsky himself. In a very significant way, he put AGI on the map, inspired many people involved in the current AGI race to become interested in the topic, and organized conferences that brought together early AGI researchers to cross-pollinate ideas.
Consider the Singularity Summit, which Yudkowsky co-founded with the Google engineer Ray Kurzweil and tech billionaire Peter Thiel in 2006. This summit, held annually until 2012, focused on the promises and perils of AGI, and included the likes of Tallinn, Hassabis, and Legg on its list of speakers. In fact, both Hassabis and Legg gave talks about AGI-related issues in 2010, shortly before co-founding DeepMind. At the time, DeepMind needed money to get started, so after the Singularity Summit, Hassabis followed Thiel back to his mansion, where Hassabis asked Thiel for financial support to start DeepMind. Thiel obliged, offering Hassabis $1.85 million, and thats how DeepMind was born. (The following year, in 2011, is when Tallinn made his early investment in the company.)
If not for Yudkowskys Singularity Summit, DeepMind might not have gotten off the ground or at least not when it did. Similar points could be made about various websites and mailing lists that Yudkowsky created to promote the idea of AGI. For example, AGI has been a major focus of the community blogging website LessWrong, created by Yudkowsky around 2009. This website quickly became the online epicenter for discussions about how to build AGI, the utopian future that a safe or aligned AGI could bring about, and the supposed existential risks associated with AGIs that are unsafe or misaligned. As noted above, it was on the LessWrong website that Legg identified AGI to be the number one threat facing humanity, and records show that Legg was active on the website very early on, sometimes commenting directly under articles by Yudkowsky about AGI and related issues.
Or consider the SL4 mailing list that Yudkowsky created in 2001, which described itself as dedicated to advanced topics in transhumanism and the Singularity, including strategies to accelerate the Singularity. The Singularity is a hypothetical future event in which advanced AI begins to redesign itself, leading to a superintelligent AGI system over the course of weeks, days, or perhaps even minutes. Once again, Legg also contributed to the list, which indicates that the connections between Yudkowsky, the worlds leading doomer, and Legg, cofounder of one of the biggest AI companies involved in the AGI race, goes back more than two decades.
These are just a few reasons that Altman himself wrote on Twitter (now X) last year that Yudkowsky the worlds leading AI doomer has probably contributed more than anyone to the AGI race. In Altmans words, Yudkowsky got many of us interested in AGI, helped DeepMind get funding at a time when AGI was extremely outside the Overton window, was critical in the decision to start OpenAI, etc. He then joked that Yudkowsky may deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for this. (These quotes have been lightly edited to improve readability.)
Rationalists and EAs are also some of the main participants and contributors to the very race they believe could precipitate our doom.
Though Altman was partly trolling Yudkowsky for complaining about a situation the AGI race that Yudkowsky was instrumental in creating, Altman isnt wrong. As a New York Times article from 2023 notes, Mr. Yudkowsky and his writings played key roles in the creation of both OpenAI and DeepMind. One could say something similar about Anthropic, as it was Yudkowskys blog posts that convinced Tallinn that AGI could be existentially risky, and Tallinn later played a crucial role in helping Anthropic get started which further accelerated the race to build AGI. The connections and overlaps between the doomer movement and the race to build AGI are extensive and deep the more one scratches the surface, the clearer these links appear.
Indeed, I mentioned the Rationalist and EA movements earlier. Rationalism was founded by Yudkowsky via the LessWrong website, while EA emerged around the same time, in 2009, and could be seen as the sibling of Rationalism. These communities overlap considerably, and both have heavily promoted the idea that AGI poses a profound threat to our continued existence this century.
Yet Rationalists and EAs are also some of the main participants and contributors to the very race they believe could precipitate our doom. As noted above, Dario Amodei (co-founder of Anthropic) is an EA, and Tallinn has given talks at major EA conferences and donated tens of millions of dollars to both movements. Similarly, an Intelligencer article about Altman reports that Altman once embraced EA, and a New York Times profile describes him as the product of a strange, sprawling online community that began to worry, around the same time Mr. Altman came to the Valley, that artificial intelligence would one day destroy the world. Called rationalists or effective altruists, members ofthis movementwere instrumental in the creation of OpenAI.
Yet another New York Times article notes that the EA movement beat the drum so loudly about the dangers of AGI that many young people became inspired to work on the topic. Consequently, all of the major AI labs and safety research organizations contain some trace of effective altruisms influence, and many count believers among their staff members. The article then observes that no major AI lab embodies the EA ethos as fully as Anthropic, given that many of the companys early hires were effective altruists, and much of its start-up funding came from wealthy EA-affiliated tech executives not just Tallinn, but the co-founder of Facebook Dustin Moskovitz, who, like Tallinn, has donated considerably to EA projects.
There is a great deal to say about this topic, but the key point for our purposes is that the doomer narrative largely emerged out of the Rationalist and EA movements the very movements that have been pivotal in founding, funding and inspiring all the major AI companies now driving the race to build AGI.
Again, one wants to echo Chomsky in saying: if these communities are so worried about the AGI apocalypse, why have they done so much to create the very conditions that enabled the AGI race to get going? The doomers have probably done more to accelerate AGI research than the AI accelerationists that they characterize as recklessly dangerous.
How has this happened? And why? One reason is that many doomers believe that AGI will be built by someone, somewhere, eventually. So it might as well be them who builds the first AGI. After all, many Rationalists and EAs pride themselves on having exceptionally high IQs while claiming to be more rational than ordinary people, or normies. Hence, they are the best group to build AGI while ensuring that it is maximally safe and beneficial. The unfortunate consequence is that these Rationalists and EAs have inadvertently initiated a race to build AGI that, at this point, has gained so much momentum that it appears impossible to stop.
Even worse, some of the doomers most responsible for the AGI race are now using this situation to gain even more power by arguing that policymakers should look to them for the solutions. Tallinn, for example, recently joined the United Nations Artificial Intelligence Advisory Body, which focuses on the risks and opportunities of advanced AI, while Yudkowsky has defended an international policy that leaves the door open to military strikes that might trigger a thermonuclear war. These people helped create a huge, complicated mess, then turned around, pointed at that mess, and shouted: Oh, my! Were in such a dire situation! If only governments and politicians would listen to us, though, we just might be able to dodge the bullet of annihilation.
This looks like a farce. Its like someone drilling a hole in a boat and then declaring: The only way to avoid drowning is to make me captain.
The lesson is that governments and politicians should not be listening to the very people or the Rationalist and EA movements to which they belong that are disproportionately responsible for this mess in the first place. One could even argue plausibly, in my view that if not for the doomers, there probably wouldnt be an AGI race right now at all.
Though the race to build AGI does pose many dangers, the greatest underlying danger is the Rationalist and EA movements that spawned this unfortunate situation over the past decade and a half. If we really want to bring the madness of the AGI race to a stop, its time to let someone else have the mic.
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AI doomers have warned of the tech-pocalypse while doing their best to accelerate it - Salon
Softbank CEO Says AI That’s 10000X Smarter Than Humans Is Inevitable – Hot Hardware
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son remarked, during a shareholders meeting, that he believes AI will be 10,000 times smarter than human intelligence 10 years from now. Son also remarked that he saw Softbanks mission to be the evolution of humanity, while also stating he had finally discovered his own purpose in life.
During the meeting last week, Son remarked that the company will place its entire focus on pairing robots with artificial intelligence to be utilized in all sorts of mass production, logistics, and autonomous driving. Son recognized that the effort will require immense capital and pooling funds with partners, as he said Softbank could not finance it on its own.
Son began his speech talking about artificial general intelligence, or AGI. He added that he believes AI will be at least 10 times smarter than humans within 3-5 years, even earlier than he anticipated. However, he went on to say that if AGI is not going to be that much smarter than humans, then we dont need to change the way of living, we dont need to change the structure of human lifestyle.
Son, and Softbank have not had the best of years in the recent past. While some of Sons investments had good returns, there were also many that did not, such as office sharing company WeWork. However, Softbank subsidiary Arm, a British chip designer, has prospered in more recent times with the attention of investors focused on anything AI. It is perhaps of Arm that Son is now willing to make such a bold statement in terms of Softbanks mission, and his own vision.
During his speech, Son summed up his vision for himself and Softbank, remarking, Softbank was founded for what purpose? For what purpose was Masa Son born? It may sound strange, but I think I was born to realize ASI. He concluded, I am super serious about it.
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Softbank CEO Says AI That's 10000X Smarter Than Humans Is Inevitable - Hot Hardware
Is It Sinking In? Chatbots Will *Not* Soon Think Like Humans – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
Psychologist and tech writer Gary Marcus scoffs at the idea that machines that think like people (artificial general intelligence or AGI) are just around the corner.
The author of Rebooting AI (Vintage 2019) says there are no big new developments in the offing:
It was always going to happen; the ludicrously high expectations from last 18 ChatGPT-drenched months were never going to be met. LLMs are not AGI, and (on their own) never will be; scaling alone was never going to be enough. The only mystery was what would happen when the big players realized that the jig was up, and that scaling was not in fact All You Need.
Even futurist Ray Kurzweil is postponing and revising:
For yearsand as recently as April in his TED talkRay Kurzweil famously projected that AGI would arrive in as 2029. But in an interview just published in WIRED, Kurzweil (who I believe to still works at Alphabet, hence knows what is immediately afoot) let his predictions slip back, for the first time, to 2032. (He also seemingly dropped the standard for AGI from general intelligence to writing topnotch poetry).
Readers may recall that Kurzweil told the 2023 COSM conference that once AI reaches such a general human capability in 2029, it will have already surpassed us in every way. But he isnt worried, because we humans are not going to be left behind. Instead, humans and AI are going to move into the future together.
Hed been saying such things at COSM conferences since 2019, though the COSM panel that evaluated his comments was significantly more skeptical than many tech experts.
This is from his current interview with Wired:
How will we know when AGI is here? That’s a very good question. I mean, I guess in terms of writing, ChatGPTs poetry is actually not bad, but it’s not up to the best human poets. I’m not sure whether we’ll achieve that by 2029. If it’s not happening by then, it’ll happen by 2032. It may take a few more years, but anything you can define will be achieved because AI keeps getting better and better.
To make chatbots better, the programmers will need to solve a number of problems, including:
The model collapse problem (everything becomes jackrabbits):
Model collapse: AI chatbots are eating their own tails. The problem is fundamental to how they operate. Without new human input, their output starts to decay. Meanwhile, organizations that laid off writers and editors to save money are finding that they cant just program creativity or common sense into machines.
The hallucination problem (the Soviets sent bears into space):
Internet pollution if you tell a lie long enough LLMs can generate falsehoods faster than humans can correct them. Later, Copilot and other LLMs will be trained to say no bears have been sent into space but many thousands of other misstatements will fly under their radar. (Gary Smith)
And the innumeracy problem (I cant count):
Marvin Minsky asks: Can GPT4 hack itself? Will AI of the future be able to count the number of objects in an image? Creativity and understanding, properly defined, lie beyond the capability of the computers of today and tomorrow. (Robert J. Marks)
These deep problems may be fundamental to what a chatbot is. We shall see.
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Artificial General Intelligence, Shrinkflation and Snackable are Some of the Many New, Revised, or Updated Words and … – LJ INFOdocket
Were sure youll agree that 2024 is turning out to be anything butbeige(bland or unremarkable; uninspiring). Were set to see a record-breaking number of elections this year, with 50 countries due to head to the polls before the year is out. Readers with an interest in UK and/or European politics might remember that we addedBrexitto theOEDback in 2016. Since then, several related words have proven their longevity, and this month, weve added entries forleaver,Brexiter, andBrexiteer(referring to people who supported, campaigned, or voted for the United Kingdoms withdrawal from the European Union), as well asremainerandRemoaner(words referring to those who did the same on the other side, wanting the UK to stay in the EU).
If you find yourselfbefuddled(bewildered, confused) by current political debates, take refuge in theenjoyability(the fact or quality of being enjoyable; congeniality, pleasurableness) of the following lighter offering. Have you found the third series of Netflixs glamorousBridgertonbinge-worthy? Taken note of thehunkiness(qualities or characteristics considered to be hunky, especially rugged good looks or sexual attractiveness) of its male stars? Then it may interest you to know that it was not until the early 1900s that the wordglamourcame to be associated with attractiveness and luxury. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, glamour was all about enchantment to cast aglamour over someone meant putting them quite literally under your spell.
The word only became closely associated with visual opulence, physical attraction, and charisma in the later twentieth century, perhaps as a result of the rise of cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood. In the 1970s, the advent ofglam rock the style of rock music where performers such as David Bowie made flamboyant clothes and make-up a feature of their onstage performances and personas sealed this linguistic shift. Other associated additions includeglam rocker,visual kei(the glam rock movement or aesthetic in Japanese rock music),glam up(to make oneself more glamorous),glamour puss(a glamorous or attractive person),glamazon(a tall, glamorous, and powerful woman), andglampsite the most luxurious location to get your fix of the great outdoors.
Speaking of the great outdoors,wildscapenow has its own entry. Meaning an area within which plants and animals have been able to thrive with minimal or no human presence, it conjures up more peaceful scenes than some of our other environment-related additions.Five-alarm(designating a particularly large, fierce, destructive fire, especially one requiring a large-scale response from firefighters) andmegadrought(a drought lasting many years, great both in extent and severity) echo other alarming language used in the world of meteorology, such asweather bomb(added in 2015) andblood rain(added in 2012).
Moving back indoors and online, weve added a number of technology related terms, perhaps most notablyartificial general intelligence, orAGIfor short. This is a form of AI in which a machine or computer program can (hypothetically) simulate behaviour as intelligent as, or more intelligent than, that of a human being. When it comes to human activity on the internet, weve addedfreecycle(to give away an unwanted possession, especially when agreed or arranged via an online network) andedgelord(a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online).Snackable, meanwhile, can be used to describe a video or other item of digital content, especially on social media, that is designed for brief and easy consumption, or to refer to food intended as a snackIRL(in real life which is not a new addition, but is an enjoyable acronym).
Speaking of snacks, babyccino(a frothy hot milk drink for children, intended to resemble a cappuccino) and the regrettableshrinkflation(a reduction in the size or weight of products with no corresponding reduction in price, a phenomenon first described this way in 2008) can now be found in theOED. Fewer tasty treats for more money? How regrettable. One last food-related anecdote before we sign off the verbbeefhas a new first sense. Evidence dating from the early 1800s shows the phraseto cry beefhad the meaning to raise the alarm or make an outcry against a person, especially to cry for help to arrest an escaping thief. This seems to be a precursor to the more familiar current senses ofbeef(and indeedbeefing) relating to arguments, fights, and feuds.
Sadly, we cantsqueeze another word in edgeways(to contribute something to a conversation, usually with the implication that this is difficult because the other speakers are talking incessantly).T minusthree months until the next quarterly update Join us then.
Learn More
For more insight into the surprising joint linguistic origins of the words glamourandgrammar, seethis blog post. Thesenew word notesinclude discussion of the wordcoruscating(recommended reading), and this piece focuses on updates aroundIndo-European words. A selection of highlights from the list ofnew wordsadded,new sensesadded, and additions tounrevised entriesare available too.
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Ray Kurzweil on how AI will transform the physical world – The Economist
BY THE TIME children born today are in kindergarten, artificial intelligence (AI) will probably have surpassed humans at all cognitive tasks, from science to creativity. When I first predicted in 1999 that we would have such artificial general intelligence (AGI) by 2029, most experts thought Id switched to writing fiction. But since the spectacular breakthroughs of the past few years, many experts think we will have AGI even soonerso Ive technically gone from being an optimist to a pessimist, without changing my prediction at all.
After working in the field for 61 yearslonger than anyone else aliveI am gratified to see AI at the heart of global conversation. Yet most commentary misses how large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini fit into an even larger story. AI is about to make the leap from revolutionising just the digital world to transforming the physical world as well. This will bring countless benefits, but three areas have especially profound implications: energy, manufacturing and medicine.
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Ray Kurzweil on how AI will transform the physical world - The Economist
Bill Gates Says A.I.s Impact on the Legal System Could Change Justice – Observer
Bill Gates speaks at the Global Solutions Summit on May 07, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Bill Gates has described A.I. as the most revolutionary technology since his company popularized personal computers in the 1980s. The Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder has written extensively on the topic, predicting itspotential to transform entire industries. Lately, he has been particularly excited about A.I.s impact in the legal sector. Imagine if you could make everybody in the legal system four times more productive, said Gates during a recent podcast interview with Nikhil Kamath, the billionaire co-founder of brokerage firm Zerodha. That changes justice, because right now the backlog is kind of nightmarish and here comes a potential solution.
In a wide-ranging conversation that touched upon Gates interest in nuclear energy start-ups and his fitness regime of vitamins and pickleball, the duo dedicated much of their time to discussing A.I. and A.G.I. (artificial general intelligence). Gates pointed to the ability of A.I. models to quickly read 10,000 legal documents and reason with its contents as evidence that were already superhuman in a dimension that is kind of surprising.
Gates, who has an estimated net worth of $133.3 billion, said he is fascinated by A.I.s ability to clear legal backlogs because its a mechanism that helps all business activity. An average of 14,000 cases are awaiting trial across U.S. prosecutors offices, according to a recent survey from Lafayette College which reported a 62 percent increase in backlogged cases since the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020.
Despite A.I.s broad implications for increased productivity, Gates said a fine balance must be taken with the impact such developments will have on reshaping society as we know it. We should be aware that so much extra productivity will surprise people and require us to rethink about a lot of different things, said Gates, adding that A.G.I. could affect the very organizing principles of society and alter individual philosophies of value. Gates told Kamath that he doesnt believe this will occur in the next two decades but conceded he cannot guarantee that, pointing out that he was personally surprised by the rapid breakthroughs in reading and writing displayed by OpenAIs GPT-4 when it was unveiled last year.
Microsoft, the tech giant Gates helped create in 1975, has bet big on A.I. in recent years through the launch of features like Copilot and a major partnership with OpenAI. It has been led for the past decade by CEO Satya Nadella, who Gates described as doing a great job. While Gates officially left the company in 2020, he revealed that Nadella still engages him in a supportive role to help shape Microsofts A.I. strategies.
The technology is also used by Gates philanthropic foundation for drug discovery research, said the billionaire. In addition to founding the Gates Foundation in the 1990swhich gives around $9 billion annually and counts health and agriculture as its largest prioritiesGates in 2010 helped co-found the Giving Pledge campaign to urge the wealthy to give away much of their fortune to philanthropy. Kamath, who has an estimated net worth of $3.1 billion, became the youngest person to join the campaign when he signed up last year at age 35.
Addressing criticisms that Giving Pledge signees still amass copious amounts of wealth for personal consumption, Gates said its great to debate these things and noted that while the campaign urges individuals give away at least half of their wealth, some signees, such as Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg,will donate up to 99 percent of their net worth. Often youre using the same skills that caused you to be successful and how youre using it on the behalf of equality, he said. That experience, that sense of urgency, can be very helpful in philanthropic innovation.
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Bill Gates Says A.I.s Impact on the Legal System Could Change Justice - Observer
Q&A with Ray Kurzweil about nanobots and AI-human mind-melds – The Boston Globe
You may find a lot of this hard to believe. I know I do. But it is not easy to dismiss Kurzweil, 76, as just another hand-wavy tech hype man. He has been working in AI since 1963, probably longer than anyone else alive today, and has developed several landmark technologies. In 1965, when he was a teenager, he got a computer to compose music, a feat that landed him on national TV and earned him a meeting with President Lyndon Johnson. He went on to invent a text-to-speech reading machine for blind people, an early music synthesizer, and speech-recognition tools. For the past decade, hes been the chief futurist at Google, where today he has the job title of principal researcher and AI visionary.
Every few years, Kurzweil unspools his ideas and defends his predictions in a new book that is rich with footnotes, charts, and carefully honed arguments. His most recent book, The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge With AI, is no exception. But it did not persuade me that his AI-maximalist vision is coming close to fruition or that it would be desirable.
My interview with Kurzweil has been edited and condensed.
You say in the book that these are the most exciting and momentous years in all of history. Why is that?
Theres a graph that is really behind it. It shows the exponential progress in computation from 1939 to 2023. Weve gone from computers performing 0.000007 calculations per second per constant [inflation-adjusted] dollar to 130 billion calculations per second per constant dollar. And then recently Nvidia came out with a chip with half a trillion calculations per second. That represents a 75 quadrillionfold increase in the amount of computation you get for the same amount of money. And thats why were seeing large language models now. If you look at the progress just in the last two years, its been amazing, and its going to continue at that pace.
Artificial general intelligence will be able to do anything a human can do, at the best level that a human can do. And when it actually goes inside our body and brain, which will happen in the 2030s, we can harness that and make ourselves smarter. One of the implications is that were going to be able to make fantastic progress in coming up with cures for diseases.
I see how AI could give our civilization greater intelligence to solve big problems like finding new medical cures. But I am less sure that a lot of individual people will want so much more intelligence in their daily lives that theyll implant computers inside their bodies. Do you really think that access to more intelligence is fundamentally what people need most? I would suggest we really need more compassion, more forgiveness, more equanimity.
I think that also comes from intelligence.
And people dont necessarily say they want more intelligence, but when it actually [becomes available], they do want it. The fact that everybody has a smartphone if you had described it to people who came before by saying Everybodys got to carry this device around and tried to describe what it does, relatively few people would have voted for that. Yet everybody has a cellphone. So now if you go around and say, Would you want to put something that goes through your bloodstream and develop something in your brain that would talk to the web automatically? people would say, Theres no way Id want to do that. But when it actually happens and people who do that can cure diseases and can be much smarter in conversation youll have a lot more things in your mind that can pop up when a situation calls for it people definitely will do it, regardless of what they think about it right now.
The intelligence we get from having smartphones at our fingertips has also come with the downsides of distraction, solipsism, and other social trade-offs. Wouldnt those only be magnified with vastly more information at our disposal?
Well, were definitely going to have disagreements about things, and popular political figures that people dont like, and its not going to solve all of our problems. But fundamentally, more intelligence is better. Thats where the evolution of humans has gone, and thats why we create machines that make us smarter. And yes, there are always problems and things that humans can do that wouldnt otherwise be feasible that might be negative. But ultimately were much happier and have new opportunities because of making ourselves smarter.
I question your assumption that exponential rates of improvement in computing and related technologies will necessarily continue. I think its plausible that progress slows. GPT-4 inhaled essentially the entire internet but still has a limited understanding of the world. Where is a larger corpus of text going to come from that has a substantially richer representation of the world? And what about the energy consumption of all this computation?
Well, first of all, large language models are misnamed. They do a fantastic job with language, but thats not all they do. Were also using them, for example, to come up with medical cures, and thats not manipulating language thats manipulating biochemistry. Were using them to train robots so that robots can walk normally and do the kinds of things that humans can do, very simple things like clean up this table. So these models are coming that are going to learn really everything that humans can do, not just language. GPT-4 makes certain mistakes if it doesnt know a certain thing, itll just make things up. We actually know the solution to that: Thats going to require more computation.
I also think AI is actually a very valuable thing for humanity to have in terms of energy. We could meet all of our energy needs today if we converted one part out of 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the earth, and our ability to actually turn that into energy is growing exponentially. If you follow that curve, well meet all of our energy needs from the sun and wind within 10 years.
But there are real physical constraints. Were not putting up new electricity transmission lines or putting electricity storage on the grid at a pace that would let us get all our energy from the sun and wind in 10 years.
I put the graphs in the book: The ability to have the sun in particular added to our energy sources is enormous compared to what it was five years ago or 10 years ago. Weve got plenty of headroom there. And you can look at applying AI to lots of related areas manufacturing buildings for example. I dont think the energy needs of these things are going to be a barrier. Also, there are ways of bringing down the energy needs.
Do you fundamentally see technological advancement as inevitable?
Absolutely. And we get much more benefit than we get harm.
I often think we live in a generally pessimistic period. Do you feel out of sync with the times?
Yeah, a lot of people are just pessimistic in general. And quite a substantial number of AI scientists think whats happening is disastrous and its going to destroy humanity. They imagine somebody using AI for something thats negative, and they say, How are we going to deal with that? But the tools we have to deal with it are also growing.
I know theres a lot of AI experts who are very much against whats going on. Im just waiting until they get a disease which has no cure and then theyre saved by some cure that comes from AI. Well see how they feel about that.
Brian Bergstein is the editor of the Globe Ideas section. He can be reached at brian.bergstein@globe.com.
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Q&A with Ray Kurzweil about nanobots and AI-human mind-melds - The Boston Globe