Interesting recent interview with Geoffrey Hinton (‘father of AI’). ‘they still can’t match us but they are getting close…they can do little pieces of reasoning’. It’s not ‘just autocomplete or statistics’. ‘It’s inventing features and interactions between features to tell what comes next’. Reviews dangers and, in particular, the existential threat.
‘We are just a machine…just a neural net…no reason artificial nets cannot do what we do’. We are much more efficient in terms of use of energy. But the machines more efficient in learning from data.
Differing views – Hinton and Lecun
We are entering a period of huge uncertaintly. Yann Lecun has a different view to Hinton. If they end up smarter then us and decide want to take control – then trouble. Yann Lecun – AI has been built by humans (will have a bias towards good). Per Hinton depends on whether made by good people.
If you send battle robots to attack then becomes easier for rich countries to attack/ invade poorer countries.
Hinton the socialist?
Big Language Models will cause a big increase in productivity. Gave example of answering letters and complaints for a health service. Can do 5 times as much work. If get big increase in productivity – wealth will go to making the rich richer – particularly in a society that does not have strong unions.
Big chatbots – replacing people whose job involves producing text. How do we know more jobs will be produced than lost?
Jobs to survive – where you have to very very adaptable and skillful e.g. plumbing (working in awkward spaces). What about reasoning?
Multimodal AI
Most impactful developments in AI over next 5 years – multimodal language models – to include video (e.g. youtube videos). Yann Lecun would say language is so limited. Soon will be combined with multiple modalities. Attach visual AI to text AI (cf. Gemini at Google).
Thoughts on development of AI
Transformer architecture was invested at Google. Announced in a paper in 2017. Bard was delivered a couple of years later by Google – but Hinton took a couple of years to realise the significance of this.
If we keep training AI based on data created by AI – what will be the impact? Hinton says does not know the answer. Would be much easier if all fake data were marked as fake data.
How could you not love making intelligent things? We want experimentation but we do not want more inequality. How do we limit the potential harms?
Top 6 harms
Bias and discimination – present now, but relatively easy to fix (have a system which is significantly less biased than the system it is replacing. Analyse the bias and correct.
Battle robots – will be built by defince departments. How do you stop them? Some form of Geneva Convention?
Joblessness. Tey to ensure increase n productivity helps people who loase thier jobs. Need some form of socialism
Warring echo chambers – big companies wanting you to click on things and make you more indignant – begin to believe conspiracy theories. This is a problem to to with AI – not LLMs
Existential risk – important to understand this is not just sicence fiction/ fearmongering. If you have something a lot smarter than you which is very good at manipulating people – do people stay in control? We have a very strong sense of wanting to achieve control. AI may derive this as a way of achieving other goals. Jann Lecun argues that the good people will have more resources than the bad people. Hinton not so sure. Not conviced that good IA will win over bad AI.
Fake news – need to be able to makr everything that is fake as fake. Need to look at how to do with AI generated stuff.
Managing the risks
How can we limited the risk? Before the AI becomes super intelligent can do empirical work to understand how it might go wrong/ take control away. Government could encourage companies to put more resources into this. Hinton has left Google to participate in this discussion/ research.
How to make AI more likely to be good than bad? Great uses: medicine, climate change, etc. But need to put effort unto understanding the existential risks.
Loved this trip to Guatemala. Beautiful country. Lovely temperatures for visiting (17 to 27) – in Atitlan area. Food good and varied. Accommodation clean and inexpensive. Travel between bigger centres relatively straightforward – private bus operators between various locations – cost about 2/3 less when booked locally (and we were never let down). Felt reasonably safe for travel – eyes open.
People less engaging than other countries visited – saw this in restaurants, hotels, various activities. However there were notable exceptions e.g. coffee farm tour near San Pedro and 2nd hotel in Antigua.
Big advantage to speak Spanish – I was travelling with daughter who is reasonably fluent (notwithstanding differences between Guatemalan Spanish and Spain Spanish).
Reflections on trip to Guatemala 4
Deserves more time. Long trip to get there from Europe. I left out Tikal (the best example of a Mayan temple) and many more places. Transfers can be full days of travel – so you need to allow for this. But I had a fantastic holiday – reminder again that these various land grabs by empires were devastating for local people. Would recommend a visit to anyone looking g for new experiences, some adventure and insights into old and new cultures.
Wandering around Antigua on Saturday evening and early Sunday am – before leaving for airport – what a beautiful setting: surrounded by mountains/ volcanoes, beautiful square, cobbled streets, one and two storey buildings, lots of restaurants, bars, shops. Hope to see it again in person.
Took a ferry across the lake from San Pedro to Panajachel. Not for the faint hearted. Lake was calm but ferry fairly bombs along – the odd jar to the cack difficult to avoid.
Ferry stopped off at various villages and hostels. Most of our fellow travellers were backpacking visitors to Guatemama.
Panajachel, Guatemala 7
Grabbed a tuc tuc out to our very comfortable accommodation. Then walked back in and had a food look around town. Shop after shop selling much the same as we had seen in San Pedro.
Spent three days in Panajachel. Something disagreed with my constitution which curtailed my activities. One good visit to the Atitlan Nature Reserve.
Completed a 4 hour bus transfer to San Pedro la Laguna from Antigua on Sunday. Booked into our very basic, unexciting, accommodation, Casa San Pedro. Good decision not to drive – interesting ascents and descents thtough the mountains.
Monday started with a hike to the Indian Nose. Collected at hotel 4am; up top of Indian Nose c. 5.15am for sunrise. Worth every ounce of effort. Outstanding views.
San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala 10
Visited local Mayan museum later Monday. Great visit and insights. Worth it just for the video going back to 1941 in San Pedro.
Tuesday visited a coffee farm. Learned a lot. Coffee trees good for 45 years – pruned after 15 and 30. German influence. Families working on the plantation. Harvesting Nov. to March. Arabic coffee here ( and throughout Central America). 60% sun, 40% shade. Citrus flavour. 80% for export. Roast 15 mins medium, 20 mins strong. Medium has higher caffeine content.
Looking forward to painting class later.
Food has been good – eggs, fruit, coffee for breakfasts, lots of tacos etc for dinner.
Arrived in c. midnight on 8th and left c. 9.30am 11th.
Stayed here
Spent three nights in Antigua. Nice hotel, good food, good barber, good sports’ bar (saw Man City win final v. Milan), good book shop, great excitement for local 10k run last night. And excellent coffee everywhere.
Two short thunderstorms – par for the course this time of year. Temp varied between 17C and 27C.
Rafael Landivar SJ RIP
Back acted up so had to skip major hike – will do some hiking from Lake Atitlan.
Motorbikes everywhere
Obviously all relatively cheap visiting from European city. Feels like would be a good place to spend a week learning local Spanish at a future date.
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