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Reminds me of making Chess in QBasic in school, without knowing what an array was. Was trying to encode board state in graphics (by putting some special pixels at corner of squares). Then got around talking to someone who had already made a chess game - he casually mentioned arrays. It was a revelation to me!

The cycle of just implementing something quickly and seeing the program work for the first time with wonder was something. In contrast to later on, where I delayed implementation and took hammock-oriented programming to an extreme. Curiously, AI is bringing back the 'just do it and iterate' phase with its pros and cons.

Yes, but 'Success is not given to many who deserve it (ex: Tesla)' is not incompatible with the original point 'Successful people know about failure.'

PS: Success is helped by both talent/hard-work + luck/networking. There are poor people who have the first but not the second, but also privileged people who have the second but not the first.

(Some dont have both, and there are rare few who have both).

Thomas Edison?

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Maybe you can reframe your point as a typical trend, but there are other typical paths as well.

Googling "succesful people with history of failure" gives interesting examples.

Not a fan of overregulation killing business, but Europe is definitely an important check against the surveillance powers of big tech companies in US. European regulations become a reference point for the rest of the world, especially poorer countries who dont have power to regulate US tech companies by themselves.

Doesn't Amazon Bedrock change this, since OpenAI does not have access to the data?

A useful test to see the value of definitions, is to check if there are simple programs which become conscious according to the definition. There are very simple programs (<1000 lines) which do cost optimization, interact with the os and other programs with a coherent self-reference, can reason if they will be able to do some simple tasks etc.

Of course, you can be like Daniel Denett and bite the definition bullet - he was talking about 'free-will', not consciounsess and that a chess program has the necessary properties.

But, it makes more sense to take conscious experience as more fundamental, what we are directly aware of, and try to explain everything else with that as the base.

Sure, but isn't the response worse than the problem? When intellectual standards are abandoned (as opposed to correcting a specific bias), discourse degrades into mindless anger, conspiracies and leaders who defraud their own supporters.

Given the money available to conservatives, why haven't they been able to setup vibrant universities, films, art etc. The point here is not to blame conservatives, but push the analysis of the cause to something deeper than just saying that the opponents have all the power.

Are you asking us to be wary of robots bearing tacos?

If it just a mundane chatbot, the discussion is moot. But, we already have AI making breakthroughs in research and approaching the abilities do science just like a scientist does. (The last two paragraphs of your comment also assume such a high capability scenario).

Imagine giving the access, to whoever wants it, to a scientist who may not have many fresh insights, but has the advantage of a huge memory containing all the scientific literature in their mind, the standard patterns of deductions, and the ability to work at a very fast pace 24/7. They could identify vulnerabilities in biological mechanisms, just like AI identifies security flaws in code today.

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Regarding hurting themselves, I was not referring to someone who is too dumb to follow lab safety precautions, but someone who has a nihilistic mindset. State actors and militia use weapons to take over and enjoy the power they acquire - they dont want to get killed by a deadly virus(unless they engineer and selectively apply the vaccine before they release the weapon - but this is very hard to keep secret). Someone who is nihilistic wont have such reservations on using the weapon even if it destroys them eventually.

Regarding restrictions on API LLMs leading to use of local LLMs, it is the local LLMs which will be used anyway (once they have the capability). That we live in a mass surveillance envirnoment is common knowledge. The bottleneck, where restrictions can be applied, is not inference but training which requires hundreds of millions of dollars. Chinese scientists have themselves spoken about AI safety concerns and it is indeed a threat to China just like anyone else.

Also, restricting high end weapons ability does not interfere with 99.9% of LLM usage (open-weights or proprietary) - so it need not interfere with business strategy.

Wikipedia is a presentation of partial selection of biology textbooks and research papers, not using them as a collective brain to generate new artifacts.

There is a big difference between having a large bookshelf of programming language/networking/OS manuals and the ability to generate a functional software product which previously required a hundred or more developers. Even a hundred developers may not be able to find a subtle exploit in code which requires a tedious scan of millions of lines. Computer security hacks can be much less of a problem in comparison to exploits in biology.

Also, even Wikipedia (and public resources in general) have restrictions - there is information dangerous enough to be not published. In the 1930's itself, Szilard (who discovered the chain reaction) and Bohr advocated for restrictions on openly publishing research on uranium fission.

Restricting things like creation of a highly infectious virus is very different from restricting books or even guns. There is no 'monopoly' over such a technology, as a use of the technology will inevitably harm the creators themselves.

Restrictions on high end biology, chemistry would leave overwhelming number of use cases of LLMs unaffected - no need to ban open weight LLMs. Such restrictions can be even more effective, if it is coupled to researchers getting early access to see the possible problems and have an opportunity to prevent the outbreak or create new vaccines well in advance.

Restrictions are not enabling monopolies. The opposite is true, if a LLM engineered virus or other harmful technology is let loose, public opinion can very quickly swing towards draconian regulation. (see nuclear power after Chernobyl).

There are plenty of weapons (see custom made virus) which no state actor (or even an informal militia) would want to release, as these weapons attack everyone. But, open access to details of its construction leaves everyone vulnerable to motivations of small groups of crazy individuals.

Power depends on understanding - Seeing a larger scale view of what is happening as opposed to an arbitrary sequence of manipulations.

The foundations of the WW2 technologies you cite were dependent on previous theoretical efforts (ex:relativity) to develop a good understanding.

Without understanding, you get brittle demos which fail as the environment or problem description changes.

This doesn't seem to be investment focussed activity, but rather extending Claude credits for education and research. Which is a good thing, independent of other bad things that might be happening.

This is not about employer vs employee and job security. In fact, the post mentions that there could be good reasons for layoffs. What the post highlights is -

1. Trust - When an employer tells the employee something and then ignores it - then a truth based culture gives in to cynicism. Communications in the company become suspect. Even when there are win-win situations, where cooperation could lead to positive outcomes for both management and workers, a lack of trust means the company cant execute.

Also, this will affect communications with customers and shareholders.

2. Regardless of being right, the author is helping others in similar situations, who can adjust their expectations.

3. The post isn't so much about company vs employee, but competing factions within the company, who are invested in alternative tools/proposals. Promotion is used as a means of making one's faction stronger. This need not be for the benefit of the company or customers. Lobbying will also, of course, affect truth.

Factions might be inevitable (and there can even be good reasons - people genuinely have differences of opinion). But, if the company has good leaders, they will prevent this from erupting into a strong zero-sum conflicts which drown other goals - company's profits, promoting competent people, a culture of trust.