Nov 22 (Reuters) - Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
This sounds like the Einstein-Szilard letter in a way! I believe Karl Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as a farce.
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Well then if history repeats itself it will be built for sure.
I am not sure the labs will have much to offer in terms of AI. I think LANL tried some of this in the early 2000s and it was scoffed at as being irrelevant. LANL is now pushing AI as a big LANL focus but I none of the managers that wrote the latest mission statement have any expertise in AI or machine learning. Seems kind of hopeless.
11/25/2023 9:10 AM
There is some in LANL mostly some PIs applying known AI/machine learning methods to certain problems with some modest success but no one has developed anything that has any kind high impact, and any of the early AI, machine learning staff left 10-15 years ago. Some more recent people were doing good work on AI and quantum computing but I think they left as well. I think it is going to very hard attract strong people to work on AI at LANL with so many better options, better pay and better places to work. There are a few managers which have been titled as "AI supreme czar", "head leader of AI at LANL", "top big strong big leader AI at LANL" and none one on but these people have never done research on AI. You see lots of proposals with "we will apply AI techniques" but this is on the level of what undergraduates can do with canned programs and such. Evervody knows the buzz and hype but few really understand what it is and what type of problems it can be useful for, how accurate it can be and so one.
Go to the lab's home page for news at https://www.llnl.gov/news
and type in artificial intelligence in the "search for" box.
Meanwhile AI is being represented in Congressional circles by the likes of Boebert and AOC. Dark days are ahead.
There was some strong people looking at AI and related work about 15-10 years ago, but they have left. Some still have a few connections at the LANL. Most the AI work at LANL seems to connected with outside university. It seems like a buzz word that managers are throwing out now because everybody is using it. We are kind of late to the the party on this kind of work.