AI is of interest to me. Where do you see things heading in the next 5 years. Any fun predictions?
Discussion
High variance. Extreme opportunity. Extreme danger.
Give us some juicy specifics, Mike 😉
I think we don't know what we don't know. It's not hard to imagine scenarios why which AI could be weaponized in a winner-take-all scenario.
I've noticed some in this corner of the internet tend to take the point of view that decentralized protocols are the ultimate defense against these downsides, and I find that disturbingly naive. I do not share the view that the nation state is now effectively obsolete and we should accede to purely bottoms up, decentralized and communitarian approaches to such an asymmetric threat.
I tend to take the point of view that the dangers will very much manifest in the physical realm, and sometime in the next decade or two, we will likely touch the fire. The question is whether we will be able to put that fire out or not. I don't know how to quantify the risks there.
Re decentralised, I think there needs to be an allowance for it to grow, room for mistakes and hopefully it matures up as an ecosystem. Just like how democracy has taken 2000 yrs and still fine tuning. There’s probably no one ideology or protocol that’s fits all but allowing it to happen is a start. On AI, on one hand I wonder how much it impacts long term thinking process on humans. On this other hand, just this morning my friends were sharing how a local startup implemented autonomous (hands free) driving on local cars, forked comma.AI on open source. But we are def at the early stages of machine consciousness.
To be clear: I think decentralized protocols and a decentralized approach is critical to a positive future, given the risks of concentrated power over information. Don’t get me wrong. I just think the problem can’t be reduced to along a simplistic systemic axis like this. The risks are multivariate, and the potential for harm is theoretically unbounded.
There are externality risks associated with it — I can advertently or inadvertently bring you harm by effects that stem from the technology — whether or not you are party to any transaction or relationship with the creation or use thereof.
Govts aren't obsolete because of decentralization, they are just going to lose so much power that they won't be able to subjugate anyone anymore.
Jet fuel for the Great Weirding :)
Probably no apocalyptic foom, but we're just getting started integrating LLMs into feedback loops/agent models. It turns out that language token prediction is a really good trick for dealing with fuzzy inputs/world models, far beyond just generating text. Text alone is pretty disruptive to work, but agents that can be delegated tasks will be more so, I think.
A lot of financially independant people who were able to finally bring forward those projects they'd filed away in their heads because they didn't have certain skills and couldn't afford to hire a whole crew to get started on them. And, a whole lot of people who fell behind permanently because of FUD, due to carefully crafted (and well-placed) propaganda. AI is certainly going to eliminate a lot of jobs. Of course. Technology always has.
Also, certain types of small startups that will take off because they will have BTC and no need for large investors due to low overhead. Low overhead because of AI.