The Exchanges

Q So now some in the field believe that superintelligence is close, and you've already said this is moving faster than you expected. Do you believe that?

A Um, I don't know how close it is. I think unless we blow ourselves up, um, I think it's going to come. Nearly all the experts believe we will get super intelligence. They just differ on how long it will be. So not that long ago, Demis Hassabis thought it might be 10 years. Um, Jan LeCun thinks, um, unless you do it his way, it'll be much longer than that. But if you do it his way, I think he thinks we might get it in some reasonable length of time. I think we'll probably get it within 20 years. That's all I'm happy to say at present. Dario Amodi thinks it might come in a few years. Elon Musk thinks it might come maybe next year, I think. Um, so there's a big variety of opinions on when it'll come, but not much disagreement on that, that it will come.

AI assessment note: “I think we'll probably get it within 20 years.”

Q I've always wondered, because then you came out and recently, like we talked about, 20, 23 and said, you're concerned about where this is going. And I've always wondered, after seeing you make those statements, what do you think it is that you didn't anticipate in the beginning that you ended up where you are today? You know, isn't this kind of what you wanted?

A It was a combination of two things that made me realize how dangerous this stuff is. One was seeing the chatbots, particularly ones produced by Google before OpenAI. That could understand why a joke was funny. Um, that had always been a criterion for me of, do they really understand? If you can understand why joke's funny, you have to understand quite a lot. And they were very good at understanding why joke was funny. For example, um, in 20, 23, when I went public, I got lots of requests from Fox news. And I started off just replying Fox news is an oxymoron. Um, but then I left a gap between oxymoron. And so then I asked, um, I think it was GPT-IV why that was funny. Might have been 3.5, but I asked it why that was funny, and it understood why it was funny. Initially, it thought the gap between oxymoron was just a typo. So it explains that Fox News is an oxymoron, is saying it's not real news, it's just a drug. Um, sorry, it's just, um, nonsense, it's not real news. But then when I told it, what about the gap between oxymoron? It said, ah, that's an extra layer of humour. Um, it allows you to use the word moron, um, and also the oxy implies that Fox uses a drug. So it understood all that. Right. And that was, um, it's that level of understanding that worried me. Um, the other thing that worried me was up until the beginning of 20, 23, I'd always believed that making, um, these …

AI assessment note: “It was a combination of two things that made me realize how dangerous this stuff is.”

Q more than five years away. This week, the week that we were recording, um, he said, when we look back in this time, I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity. What do you think that statement means? Um, and, and what do you think about the fact that we've gone from five years till AGI to foothills of singularity in a year?

A I don't know exactly what that metaphor means, but I think he's indicating it's coming faster than he thought. Um, of course it's jagged. So it's not like it'll get smarter than people or as smart as people at all things at exactly the same time. It's already way better than us, the general knowledge. These AIs know thousands of times more than any one person. Um, it's way better than us at playing games. It's already way better than almost all of us at math. Um, and it may soon be better than all of us at math. Um, it's still worse than us at some things. So it's, it's very jagged. Um, so the whole concept of AGI that it's going to be equal to people at everything all at the same time doesn't really make sense to me. It's going to be better at some things, worse at other things. But right now, I would say we're at about, we're close to AGI, because if I ask a chatbot, I can ask it any question, and most of the time it'll answer at the level of a not very good expert. It'll be much better than me at anything I don't know a lot about. So in that sense, we've really reached AGI.

AI assessment note: “I don't know exactly what that metaphor means, but I think he's indicating it's”

Q In, in your estimation, um, you talked about how it's moved faster than you expected. Um, Uh, what do you think has enabled it to do it? Is it techniques? Is it the fact that there's been this data center rush? And what didn't you anticipate about the progress here?

A Um, it's a combination. Obviously, there's been huge resources put into it. For most of the history of your neural network since the 19 fifties, there were just a few people working on them with modest resources. Um, over the last few years, we've seen, um, Hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe trillions of dollars put into AI. Um, so that's certainly one factor. We've also seen a lot of progress in the engineering. So without sort of major conceptual breakthroughs, the engineering has become much more efficient. So things that were sort of inconceivable a few years ago, they can now run. Um, We've also seen new ideas, but, but mainly since Transformers, it's been much better hardware, many more resources, um, better engineering, and many more talented people. So, 20 years ago, there were a few hundred, few hundred people doing research on neural networks in the whole world. Um, now it's more, more like a million, I guess, I mean. There's lots and lots of people.

AI assessment note: “it's been much better hardware, many more resources, um, better engineering”