It amuses me to think of Eliezer and Pei as like yang and yin. Eliezer has a very yang notion of AI: sharp goals, optimizing, conquering the world in a hurry. Pei’s AI doesn’t just have limitations—bounded rationality—its very nature is about working with those limitations. And yet, just like the symbol, yin contains yang and yang contains yin: Pei is the one who is forging ahead with a practical AI project, whereas Eliezer is a moral philosopher looking for a mathematical ideal.
It amuses me to think of Eliezer and Pei as like yang and yin. Eliezer has a very yang notion of AI: sharp goals, optimizing, conquering the world in a hurry. Pei’s AI doesn’t just have limitations—bounded rationality—its very nature is about working with those limitations. And yet, just like the symbol, yin contains yang and yang contains yin: Pei is the one who is forging ahead with a practical AI project, whereas Eliezer is a moral philosopher looking for a mathematical ideal.