The Mathocalypse - Hacker News

12376-1287 2 hours ago|

Guy is misrepresenting AGMAI, talking about the Simons Institute (AI boosters), Quanta (AI boosting magazine from the Simons Foundation), Scoot Alexander (!) and Steven Pinker (!).

The he puts up preemptive straw man arguments against doomers. His blog has become a joke.

AgentME 1 hour ago||

I don't think Aaronson's post is swiping at AI doomers at all. The post's one use of "doom" is to call the position that math doesn't matter and that AI will never breach the realm of true human creativity as a "doomed worldview". The post later praises Scott Alexander's argument (for taking AI x-risk seriously, a position associated with "AI doomers") against Pinker.

ballmerpoint 2 hours ago||

I’m still wondering why UT Austin is letting him teach a course (CS395T AI Alignment Theory) so completely outside his field of expertise (Quantum Computing).

sebzim4500 2 hours ago||

There aren't a lot of people with expertise in AI alignment (some would say that's the problem) and Scott worked for OpenAI for 2 years IIRC.

matt3210 3 hours ago||

Agents basically did statistically guided brutforcing. There is no value in what they produced because it lead to no understanding of anything and most likely will hurt the field IMO

woah 2 hours ago||

Evolution did statistically guided brute forcing. Doesn't mean that biology has no value

dekhn 2 hours ago||

That is not a correct description of what the AI did.

blactuary 1 hour ago|

>In any case, what really matters is that the true inner sanctum of human creativity hasn’t been breached and probably never will be, and also, that Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are contemptible little nerds.

>If you’re still a proponent of that doomed worldview, still aboard the sinking ship, I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to read yesterday’s other great contribution to AI discourse, besides the OpenAI Mathocalypse dump: namely, Scott Alexander’s open letter to Steven Pinker. I feel some responsibility for this, as the person who first introduced Steven Pinker to the existence of the rationalist community, and who also first introduced Steven Pinker and Scott Alexander to one another (they had both been fans of each other’s writing).

Whole lotta yikes