The "State of AI Review" a Summary - Lolz from Sam Altman and a Blunder by Marc Andreessen?
I review the main findings of the annual "State of AI Review" by Nathan Benaich and team. Comment on some @sama lolz and check out a "techno-optimist manifesto" by a well-known investor.
Hey folks, in this week’s newsletter, I’m reviewing the “State of AI Review” deck produced by Nathan Benaich and the good people at Air Street Capital.
This dense report consisting of over 160 slides, documents the main trends, themes and progress made in the AI space over the previous 12 months (from October 2022 to present).
But before diving into the State of AI Review, I want to take you on a quirky stroll through some commentary by tech industry leaders, Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Marc Andreessen (a16z).
I think you’ll find it part funny (Mr Altman’s Reddit trolling) and part eye-brow-raising (Mr Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”).
There’s a lot to cover, so …
Let’s dive in!
This newsletter is sponsored by What Works Digital
ChatGPT—The Ultimate Guide
As an aside, I recently finished writing a detailed guide to using ChatGPT, so if you need a refresh, or if this is your first time using it (what have you been doing with your life!?), head on over to What Works Digital and check it out now.
Before we get stuck into the “State of AI Review”, let’s review what some AI leaders are saying, because, at times, it’s been … weird.
I’ll start with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and the boss of ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, trolling the r/singularity subreddit
Being a globally famous tech celebrity and multi-millionaire living in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech bubble has, by his own admission, made him “pretty disconnected from the reality of life for most people.”
He has also been called out for being “tone deaf” for using the phrase “median human” to represent what AGI might achieve. As in,
“For me, AGI” — artificial general intelligence — “is the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.”
—Sam Altman, The New Yorker
That hasn’t, however, stopped Sam from getting in the lolz.
In September, he trolled Reddit users, better known for being the trolls themselves, on the subreddit r/singularity, saying,
“agi has been achieved internally”
—Sam Altman, Reddit r/singularity
Shortly afterwards, he (assuming ‘samaltman’ is actually the Sam Altman), edited the comment with a follow-up, saying,
“(EDIT obviously this is just memeing, y’all have no chill! when agi is achieved it will not be announced with a reddit comment…)”
—Sam Altman, Reddit r/singularity
The subreddit has over 1.5 million subscribers so it caused a bit of a stir and quickly rippled out into the Twitter/X-sphere.
Sadly, there was no AGI this time, and the lolz were firmly on the Redditors.
A savvy X (formerly Twitter) user used OpenAI’s DALL·E 3 to generate an image of the OpenAI offices overflowing with paperclips, in reference to Nick Bostrom’s runaway AI thought experiment known as the “Paperclip Maximiser”.
OpenAI Core Values changed
Around the same time, OpenAI also changed its “Core Values” on its website careers page, from this,
To this,
It’s pretty clear what OpenAI’s goals are then.
Maybe there’s a strong smell of AGI already percolating from their labs.
Personally, I don’t think AGI is going to be as big a deal when released as people make out.
Just like GPT-4 could/has(?) smashed the original Turing Test without much fanfare, in a few short years, we will have AGI and embodied AGI (aka robots) that are easily as good as the “median human” in most tasks, and no one will even bat an eye-lid.
To be clear, I mean A-G-I, not A-S-I.
That is Artificial General Intelligence, rather than Artificial Super Intelligence.
ASI is a whole different ballgame from AGI, and it could admittedly pose an existential threat to human civilisation.
But whether ASI is even achievable is unknown.
I’m pretty sure AGI is achievable though, given where we stand today with AI.
Admittedly Sam Altman has a long way to go before he equals or surpasses the self-confessed “king of sh*t-posting”, Elon Musk, but maybe as AGI approaches we will get more of this delirious humour from @sama, keep watching.
Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” blunder?
Talking about “sh*t-posting”…
a16z venture capital co-founder, and one-time 1990’s Internet Browser (Mosaic/Netscape anyone?) pioneer, Marc Andreessen, recently published his opus magnum, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”.
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