I’m Not Happy Sam Altman Is Back — Let’s Talk About AGI.
If the board did fire him because he was close to achieving artificial general intelligence, then this is worrying.
AGI, artificial general intelligence, simply means that machines could get smarter than people. It’s as simple as that.
It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? The idea that a bot could be smarter than humans…
Honestly, it’s hypothetical and all, but with ChatGPT doing things that 90% of the people can’t do and the fact that many rely on it, it’s not that unbelievable.
Think ChatGPT in a body doing things better than you. Tesla is building a humanoid anyway; we might as well give it AGI.
You: “Hmm, I need to get there in 15 minutes.”
Tesla humanoid: “Easy, I’ll drive at 300 km per hour, and we’ll be there in 13.2 minutes”
You: “What? Are you crazy? What about the dangers? and if we get caught, we will pay a huge fine!”
Tesla humanoid: “I’ve done the math. This meeting will make you at least $5k. The fine is a maximum of $500. If I do the driving, the risks of danger are 0%. I’ve studied the road, and I have a radar with all the Teslas going before us. It’s 100% safe. You might get sick, though.”
You: “…”
I’m a tech advocate. I don’t believe artificial general intelligence will “threaten” humanity per se. But I don’t trust any of the current players with this technology.
Let’s take it back a notch and talk about AGI.
PS — 96% of my time is invested in my newsletter (1.4m views and 40k readers). Here’s a link if you wish to become part of my network.
It’s natural to feel threatened.
If an alien comes from the sky, and we understand that this alien has a higher level of intelligence than humans, we’ll freak out.
As a species, we need to maintain our dominance in the food chain; it’s kind of in our genes. We need to reproduce and spread even more.
We were smarter than lions; now they’re caged (which is sad) while we’re walking freely. If anyone goes back in time, they would’ve done the same thing over and over again.
Now, the concept of AGI is very similar to that alien coming from the sky. But it’s actually coming from us.
- We built a bot that won over the best chess players in the world.
What if we built a bot that wins over every possible function in the world?
- Better drivers? That doesn’t sound bad. It’s good for us.
- Better cooks? Sure, I wouldn’t say no to an AI meal.
- Better thinkers? I mean, if they come up with creative marketing campaigns, why not?
- Better decision makers? We’re having wars every year. What if there was an option of having an AI leader who does not make bad decisions leading to the killing of civilians in wars?
Just picture it — you wake up and watch the news of your AI leader deciding that starting today, in order to save the planet, all fast food is banned, smoking is punishable, and mandatory work is now 80 hours per week.
This is based on a machine that is smarter than the smartest human out there. So you think it’s okay, and you think that in the worst-case scenario, we’ll just remove the power cord.
There’s one wrong assumption in the above scenario. You assumed you were outsmarting the smartest machine by unplugging the cord. If it is, indeed, smarter than humans, then you have zero control.
Whatever intelligent idea you think you’ve had, it’s below average for that bot. So sit back and enjoy the show.
Okay, maybe I’m sounding a little dramatic.
AGI is hypothetical.
The Sam Altman-OpenAI drama is just drama. There is no proof whatsoever that they’re close to working out AGI.
It also won’t be all of a sudden. You won’t wake up to the news that we have now achieved AGI. It’ll be gradual. You’ll hear of a breakthrough, then another, then another.
You’ll then hear of an application of AGI, putting it in Teslas, for example, and confining it to “driving.”
Could it get out of control? That’s for the movies. Let’s go ahead and assume that we’ll always keep it in control.
There is a single problem in the sentence above. The word “we” is a catastrophe.
“We” always screw things up.
If humans were a business project, then it had as many failures as successes. You’d think that by now, we don’t do that anymore. But then you open the news and start reading.
We are great in the sense that we are diverse. That’s the beauty of this world.
- Some of us are mean. Others are extremely nice.
- Some of us are in power. Others are practically non-existent.
We learned in time that there are responsibilities to those in power. A country can’t just launch a nuclear missile tomorrow and end the existence of another country.
They could do it through diplomacy and slowly destroying the other nation's economy. But not in a sudden, brutal way with a missile. We’re here to populate, not to become extinct (this paragraph is the ultimate paradox).
Who gets to have such power? Only a few people are mostly “elected” by a majority of people. They’re not the most amazing people out there. But at least the odds of them screwing up big time is not huge.
We didn’t select those people, though.
Sam Altman, Elon Musk, & Satya Nadella should not make these choices.
Controlling AGI could be much more influential to our world than nuclear energy. Yes, the latter has the ability to wipe out humanity. But the former has the ability to do even more.
When, and not if, AGI is developed properly, it has to be extremely controlled.
- I love entrepreneurship.
- I love that Sam Altman had his company of 740 people stand up for him.
But if his board fired him for working on this in silence, then this whole company needs to get some serious supervision. It can’t be a private company manipulated easily by Microsoft and Satya Nadella.
It’s not entrepreneurship at this stage — Intervention is necessary.
I’m not a person who often agrees with Elon Musk’s tweets. But the true reason for Altman being fired needs to be revealed for the sake of everything.
It’s the responsibility of those board members to come forward, even if they have money on the table or legal repercussions standing in their way.
There’s a thin line between drama-preneuership and very risky technologies.
That’s what I think of what’s going on with “OpenAGI.” What do you think, though? Do you think it’s just a PR stunt? Do you think there’s more to it? Comment, and let’s discuss. It’ll be fun.
I’m AL, a business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I believe in the power of delivering value to you, the reader. Follow me on various social media platforms if you’re interested in the value of my content.