I don’t think it would work to slow down AI capabilities progress. The reason is that AI capabilities translate into money in a way that’s much more direct than “science” writ large—they’re a lot closer to engineering.
Put differently, if it could have worked (and before GPT-2 and the surrounding hype, I might have believed it) it’s too late now.
It might depend on whether or not radically new paradigms are needed to get to true AGI or whether just scaling up the existing tech is enough.
If scaling up the existing tech isn’t enough such a project could focus all the money on transformers and their applications while shutting down the pursuit of radically new paradigms.
I don’t think it would work to slow down AI capabilities progress. The reason is that AI capabilities translate into money in a way that’s much more direct than “science” writ large—they’re a lot closer to engineering.
Put differently, if it could have worked (and before GPT-2 and the surrounding hype, I might have believed it) it’s too late now.
It might depend on whether or not radically new paradigms are needed to get to true AGI or whether just scaling up the existing tech is enough.
If scaling up the existing tech isn’t enough such a project could focus all the money on transformers and their applications while shutting down the pursuit of radically new paradigms.
I think you are missing the joke, Szilard was probably describing a landscape very much similar to the extant one
Not missing the joke, just engaging with a different facet of the post.