This is the flip side of the "self-made man" narrative.
It allows one to disavow any sense of social reciprocity after becoming obscenely rich.
I was curious, so I looked through his Wikipedia page -- it says he donated $1m to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 2009 (which helped his family move to USA when he was a child). Even the NYT article notes that "The gift is small, given Mr. Brin’s estimated $16 billion in personal wealth" :D
(this is like you making $1m annually and donating $62.50)
The way you articulated it, connected with a thought I've had (for over a year now):
AI is like oil, in that it's "burning" a resource that took geological timescales to accrue. Its value derives from the energy-dense and instantaneous act of combusting a fossil fuel, and in this particular part of the "terrain", it will be a local maximum for A Long Time.
Just like how it's taken absurdly long (still very much WIP) for human societies to prioritize weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, I fear we are going to latch onto GenAI/LLMs pretty hard, and not let go.
From a certain perspective, these students are optimizing their Time, which is not an unwise strategy. If you've saved 3 hours by using an LLM, would it make sense to spend 1 hour checking those references by hand?
Of course, they're also cheating themselves out of an education, but few students have that Big Picture at their age.
It was a week-long silent meditation (Vipassana), focusing on "Mindful Awareness".
It was at a point in my life where I was able to do it (and I'm grateful), but I have a kid in kindergarten now, so it'd be hard to convince my wife that it's important enough that she should single-handedly manage for a week.
Overall, I think the major benefit for me, was that it bootstrapped this mental model:
* Our minds are constantly spawning processes, and "learning how to start + keep running a debug process" is an invaluable tool for gathering data.
* Once you've gathered a reasonable amount of data, you will start to spot patterns. One of the teachers at this retreat expressed it as "wisdom will arise"
I have a long way to go, but I'm grateful every day that I have this foundation.
In an ideal world, it'd be nice to do this again, to compare where I am today (IIRC, it's been ~8 years).
For what it's worth, I think recognizing patterns and then stepping away to say "execute this way, or choose another way" is a huge huge skill. Not all past patterns make sense for current/future situations!
"We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models"
sama in 2024:
"using technology to create abundance--intelligence, energy, longevity, whatever--will not solve all problems and will not magically make everyone happy. but it is an unequivocally great thing to do, and expands our option space. to me, it feels like a moral imperative."
sama in 2025:
...proposals requiring AI developers to vet their systems before rolling them out would be 'disastrous' for the industry.
This pattern has recurred in every era where "technology will disrupt X" -- the affluent pay to "opt out" of the ersatz tech-supported version of X, while people of fewer means have no choice but to put up with it.
It allows one to disavow any sense of social reciprocity after becoming obscenely rich.
I was curious, so I looked through his Wikipedia page -- it says he donated $1m to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 2009 (which helped his family move to USA when he was a child). Even the NYT article notes that "The gift is small, given Mr. Brin’s estimated $16 billion in personal wealth" :D
(this is like you making $1m annually and donating $62.50)
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