(1) The framing of all this as military technology (and the DoD is the single largest purchasing agent on earth) reminds me of nuclear power development. Molten Salt reactors and Pellet Bed reactors are both old tech which would have created the dream of safe, small-scale nuclear power. However, in addition to not melting down and working at relatively small scales, they also don’t make weapons-usable materials. Thus they were shunted in favor of the kinds of reactors we mostly have now. In an alternative past without the cold war driving us to make new and better weapons, we hit infinite free energy for everyone back in 1986 and in 2022 we finally got our Dyson Sphere running.
So yeah, the sad thing about it being an arms race with China and DARPA et al that is the AGIs will look a certain way, and that might become “”“what AGI is””” for several decades. And the safeguards and controls that get put around those military-grade AGIs will prevent some other kind, the equivalent of Molten Salt reactors, from getting developed and built.
But we have to accept the world of incentives we have, not the one we wish for.
(2) As a PD defector/exploiter without much in the way of morals or shame, what I like about all this slowing down is that it gives smaller players a little opportunity to catch up and play with the big guys. I suspect at least a few smaller players (along with the open source community) would make some hay while the sun is shining and everyone else is moving slow and ensuring alignment, which is democratizing and cool. I put this up here as a selling point for those people who crave the pedal to the metal on AI dev. The slowness the OP is talking about allows a different pedal to different metal if you are looking for it, perhaps with your foot on it.
(1) The framing of all this as military technology (and the DoD is the single largest purchasing agent on earth) reminds me of nuclear power development. Molten Salt reactors and Pellet Bed reactors are both old tech which would have created the dream of safe, small-scale nuclear power. However, in addition to not melting down and working at relatively small scales, they also don’t make weapons-usable materials. Thus they were shunted in favor of the kinds of reactors we mostly have now. In an alternative past without the cold war driving us to make new and better weapons, we hit infinite free energy for everyone back in 1986 and in 2022 we finally got our Dyson Sphere running.
So yeah, the sad thing about it being an arms race with China and DARPA et al that is the AGIs will look a certain way, and that might become “”“what AGI is””” for several decades. And the safeguards and controls that get put around those military-grade AGIs will prevent some other kind, the equivalent of Molten Salt reactors, from getting developed and built.
But we have to accept the world of incentives we have, not the one we wish for.
(2) As a PD defector/exploiter without much in the way of morals or shame, what I like about all this slowing down is that it gives smaller players a little opportunity to catch up and play with the big guys. I suspect at least a few smaller players (along with the open source community) would make some hay while the sun is shining and everyone else is moving slow and ensuring alignment, which is democratizing and cool. I put this up here as a selling point for those people who crave the pedal to the metal on AI dev. The slowness the OP is talking about allows a different pedal to different metal if you are looking for it, perhaps with your foot on it.