Speaking of what excites you…The psychologist Angela Duckworth (best known for her research on grit) talks about “the complex dance between having intelligence and having interest.” The more she studies intelligence, she said, “the more I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what it is.’” People who have interest in a topic or subject learn better and rememb... See more
language models are not intelligent in the ways that even small children are intelligent, but they are already superhuman at tasks like summarization, translation (both linguistic and conceptual), and association. And when you apply those skills to artfully curated source material written by equally, but differently, gifted humans, magic can happen... See more
The reason experts are so split on whether or not we're on an exponential path to AI is that intelligence is multi-dimensional. You can be both exponentially exploding/scaling in one dimension and stagnating in another. You can be both superhuman and subhuman at the same time. People tend to focus on the dimensions most salient to their inclination... See more
Intelligence without risk is an empty thought, as is an intelligence whose realization takes no time. Risk and time are the presuppositions for the history of intelligence in which nothing is given in advance and nothing is completed as the totality of that history.
Sometimes I’ve had this feeling like someone is so much smarter than me and therefore I have no hope of competing. But usually what is really going on is that they are just more obsessed than me. Intelligence is good, and some amount is required, but the obsession is better.
"I grew up implicitly thinking that intelligence was this, like really special human thing and kind of somewhat magical. And I now think that it's sort of a fundamental property of matter..." @sama