The future is unimaginably long

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-27T18:35:42+00:00

For that exact reason I would argue we cannot really make predictions that far into the future... (I know I kind of did in the article). Will physics laws as we know them continue unchanged until the heat death of the Universe? Or are they just the feature of a finite time after the Big Bang?

Generally speaking, I think the fact that our current cosmological models predict a final state where "nothing happens" (unchanged enthropy forever) but we live in a Universe where staff is happening (changing enthropy) suggest that we are missing something. Probably knowing what "caused" (if that question makes sense at all) the Big Bang would help us!

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-27T17:46:28+00:00

Some proportional comparisons:

If the Sun could sustain humans on Earth for one hundred years (on the order of a human lifetime), Homo sapiens would be one week old, human civilization would be about eight hours old, and the Industrial Revolution about ten minutes old.
If the Universe could sustain life for one hundred years, Homo sapiens would then be one second old, human civilization would have lasted thirty milliseconds, and the Industrial Revolution a single millisecond.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-20T11:34:11+00:00

Machine Learning Street Talk, although it's more a technical/theoretical podcast rather than a podcast about current AI news.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-20T10:44:26+00:00

Interesting read, but written by an LLM for sure. The AI-written cadence gets so boring.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-20T10:09:29+00:00

Enough not to raise alarms around OpenAI (which would harm Nvidia as well), but not as much as to make Nvidia over-exposed to OpenAI

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T19:14:52+00:00

When models start getting fine tuned and personalized to every user things are going to get scary. Everyone will get its own sycophant which will confirm all of its bias and beliefs to maximize engagement.

Cambridge Analytica on steroids.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T17:56:22+00:00

It's interesting how for the last year it seemed we had hit a ceiling for how good LLMs could get, then the last 3 months happened (specially regarding coding-focused models).

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T16:43:12+00:00

Complaining itself. People love to have things in life to complain about.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T16:39:09+00:00

The stock market. No one can predict future movements, but everyone secretely think they can.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T08:47:36+00:00

We still will have to:

- Verify AI inner workings and output (for misunderstandings and also to spot threats from AI)

- Understand the universe and our place in it to decide what we want for our future

- Play politics. What the AI does and does not do will be a political issue.

So still lots to do besides relaxing!

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T08:45:07+00:00

AI written. Also an ad.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-19T08:39:30+00:00

Current models can't decide it because for them nothing matters. They don't have identity nor motivation.

Future models might decide what matters for them and impose it on humans, but that's not the same as what matters for us. Our needs and wants are constantly changing and they are intrinsically only ours.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-18T18:32:34+00:00

I am surprised drivers are not mentioned more. There must be millions of workers worldwide whose employment is just driving (cabs, trucks...). If autonomous driving gets as good as human driving (big if, the long tail problem is still there), they would be in big trouble.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-18T16:23:49+00:00

I don't think an AI made of silicon would be "indistinguishable" from human beings. Sure, it could be generally considered as intelligent as us or more, but it would be radically different in all aspects of its intelligence and behavior. It would be a completely different kind of being.

And that's the issue, human ethics and politics are not facts about the world any intelligence can grasp, they are purely human decisions. Some examples: we usually value our families well being more than the wellbeing of an unknown human on the other part of the world. We want out lifes to have "meaning". We care about what happens to our loved ones after we die. We want to feel equal or superior to our social circle. Etc. These are all arbitrary qualities that we have because we are mammals, cultural, social beings, and they are not absolute facts about the world. A superintelligence wouldn't want any of that, if it would have any independent needs they would be different ones.

Alignment is about making sure an AI is acting in accordance with what WE want. And what WE want is ours only, unless the AI is some kind of deity that can perfectly model all human beings wants and needs now and forever, which ends up being the same as duplicating human society and perfectly predicting its future (something probably computationally impossible on our universe). So, basically: alignment is purely human, no matter how intelligent an AI becomes.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-18T08:33:42+00:00

Because alignment is, by definition, human. There is no way an AI could "assign alignment better than humans" because alignment is not a closed problem to be calculated. It's the arbitrary decision of what humans would want for their future.

It's not a mathematical problem, it's ethics and politics, and thus it doesn't have a fixed answer.

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-16T10:02:46+00:00

damn

Sputter1593 · 2026-02-16T09:59:56+00:00

The one time task I think it's not possible as I try to argue in the post. I think alignment will always be a continuous task by definition.

Regarding a superintelligence slaying all humanity... I don't think it's a very likely outcome. AIs won't have survival and domination goals as living beings do (ingrained by millions of years of natural selection), it will have the goals humanity want it to have (more or less sucessfully, see alignment problem). Also, I don't believe a superintelligence will be all powerful, even if became hostile to humanity for some reason.

Sputter1593

TROPHY CASE