Thanks! If I read your reply correctly, then those are reasons why the extreme growth scenario that I’m worried about is unlikely and why, therefore, my conditional question is unimportant. They’re also similar to the reasons why I didn’t invest into crypto until 2016. I took it for an obvious speculative bubble about to pop, one with no commensurate underlying value.
I suppose my default assumption should still be that most of the current crypto price and market capitalization is purely speculative. But the more boom and bust cycles the market continues to survive without collapsing entirely the more I’m starting to think that I might be wrong about that in ways I don’t anticipate or that it may not be important in the end.
So I’m still interested in what might happen if the above scenario comes true and lasts for long enough to make a difference for safety research.
To be honest, I think crypto is either neutral or even slightly positive for the growth of AGI. The reason is that crypto mining is one of the major drivers of GPU and specialized ASIC designs. While it does cause shortages in the long run it actually helps fund the development of more chip fabs and even more powerful GPUs. It indirectly is making AI R&D cheaper because it is lowering the (long term) cost paid for powerful GPUs, and software stack improvements made to support GPU compute for the crypto market carryover to the inference and network training market.
Moreover, one company that got it’s start making crypto ASICs (bitmain) has used the money and chips it developed to get into the AI market.
However, at least for the niche I work in, AI systems that “take off” seem very far away. I think years of work are needed just to develop the platforms to make development and deployment of AI systems that do relatively well defined things (driving a car without crashing, maneuvering a robot to do manufacturing or logistics) reliable and economical.
Once we have this kind of stuff working reliably maybe we can start looking into the higher level abstractions that artificial sentience would need. But I don’t think it will be simple, and I don’t think it will just accidentally wake up from a random developers computer and eat the internet. Probably.
Preventing 51% attacks. Maybe also others. And for the environmentally minded people, there’s also the reason to decrease the power consumption. I heard a region of China has banned new mining facilities because of their energy consumption. If that continues, 51% attacks may become easier again unless more blockchains switch away from proof of work.
See that’s why I asked what’s the incentive to switch to proof of stake and not why it’s better. Like with climate change, this is a coordination problem.
Thanks! If I read your reply correctly, then those are reasons why the extreme growth scenario that I’m worried about is unlikely and why, therefore, my conditional question is unimportant. They’re also similar to the reasons why I didn’t invest into crypto until 2016. I took it for an obvious speculative bubble about to pop, one with no commensurate underlying value.
I suppose my default assumption should still be that most of the current crypto price and market capitalization is purely speculative. But the more boom and bust cycles the market continues to survive without collapsing entirely the more I’m starting to think that I might be wrong about that in ways I don’t anticipate or that it may not be important in the end.
So I’m still interested in what might happen if the above scenario comes true and lasts for long enough to make a difference for safety research.
To be honest, I think crypto is either neutral or even slightly positive for the growth of AGI. The reason is that crypto mining is one of the major drivers of GPU and specialized ASIC designs. While it does cause shortages in the long run it actually helps fund the development of more chip fabs and even more powerful GPUs. It indirectly is making AI R&D cheaper because it is lowering the (long term) cost paid for powerful GPUs, and software stack improvements made to support GPU compute for the crypto market carryover to the inference and network training market.
Moreover, one company that got it’s start making crypto ASICs (bitmain) has used the money and chips it developed to get into the AI market.
However, at least for the niche I work in, AI systems that “take off” seem very far away. I think years of work are needed just to develop the platforms to make development and deployment of AI systems that do relatively well defined things (driving a car without crashing, maneuvering a robot to do manufacturing or logistics) reliable and economical.
Once we have this kind of stuff working reliably maybe we can start looking into the higher level abstractions that artificial sentience would need. But I don’t think it will be simple, and I don’t think it will just accidentally wake up from a random developers computer and eat the internet. Probably.
Good point. A broad switch away from proof of work (as it seems to be happening) may change that dynamic.
What incentive is there for a broad switch to proof of work?
Away from proof of work. :-)
Sorry that’s what I meant to ask
Preventing 51% attacks. Maybe also others. And for the environmentally minded people, there’s also the reason to decrease the power consumption. I heard a region of China has banned new mining facilities because of their energy consumption. If that continues, 51% attacks may become easier again unless more blockchains switch away from proof of work.
See that’s why I asked what’s the incentive to switch to proof of stake and not why it’s better. Like with climate change, this is a coordination problem.