Wednesday, April 19, 2023

What AI future do we want to have? Lex, Max what do you say?

The exponentially growing number of AI related posts in my feed are 99% focused on tools and current development. The sentiment is positive. Bullish. Gold rush. I love it ❤️





For another perspective, I highly recommend the Lex Fridman podcast episode with the MIT professor Max Tegmark. In my opinion, Max is often drawn to the edges of problems (typical physicist mindset) and unafraid of big perspectives, listening to him sparks new thoughts in my head.
He has gained a lot of attention lately as one of the authors of the open letter urging for a 6-month pause in AI development, which is the major topic in the interview.

Max talks about our drive for improved efficiency, which has historically created wealth and automated away tedious and dangerous work—great! But now we have a tool that can automate jobs people find meaningful and enjoyable, how do we tackle that?

Should we optimize everything as much as possible? What are we optimizing towards? Efficiency? Our happiness and fulfillment? Or something else? Could we fail and steer towards a unwanted goal?

Do we need to pause and think?
That’s impossible!?

No, Max argues that we have successfully defined global guardrails before, e.g. for cloning of DNA, and it is possible to do again if we want to.

❓What should we do? AI-Pause? or go all-in-AI? What do you think?

πŸš€ This far, the ChatGPT revolution has been amazing for me. I feel empowered to take on new challenges since I have an assistant on my side. Awesome.

🌟 My dream scenario would be to leverage the AI assistant to remove tedious work, like helping me pay the parking ticket I just got 🀬, and empower me to do new things e.g., creating graphic illustrations, programming Python scripts, and becoming an better writer. However, there are also scenarios that don't sound that appealing, like optimizing away face-to-face interaction with my colleagues. Where are we heading?

I think everything Max says boils down to taking the situation into our own hands, and steering towards the best possible outcome while trying to avoid the unwanted scenarios. He suggests a pause, there might be other ways.

πŸ’‘To me, the 3-hour-long podcast episode served as a sobering break from the normal flow of information. But now, I'm ready to jump back into AI details, AI tools, and how to AI-optimize my work as a project leader — and sometimes pause, reflect, and adjust the direction.

❓What are your thoughts? Are you afraid of having your job automated away? Or do you feel AI-empowered ?

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