Carl T. BergstromJun 12, 2023

Not surprising that today's New York Times article about the singularity launders bullshit for big tech with just enough skepticism for plausible deniability.

More impressive: the article quotes 15 different people.

Sundar Pichai
Reid Hoffman
Bill Gates
Elon Musk
Sam Altman
Baldur Bjarnason
John von Neumann
Irving John Good
Hans Moravec
Ray Kurzweil
Rodney Brooks
Jerry Kaplan
Ryan Schaeffer
Eric Schmidt
Charlies Stross

Yes, every single one of them is a man.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/technology/silicon-valley-confronts-the-idea-that-the-singularity-is-here.html

Silicon Valley Confronts the Singularity

The frenzy over artificial intelligence may be ushering in the long-awaited moment when technology goes wild. Or maybe it’s the hype that is out of control.

The New York Times
Show threadklausfiend has movedJun 12, 2023
@ct_bergstrom I hope they got a fresh one from John von Neumann, who no doubt has many thoughts on present-day AI having been dead almost 70 years now. 🤣
Show threadZorro Notorious MEB 😡

@klausfiend @ct_bergstrom John Von Neumann is one of my heroes - I learned programming on a computer he helped design.

He did have some scathing opinions on technology advances like pseudo-random numbers and floating-point arithmetic.

Jun 12, 2023 at 10:59pmWeb
Show threadklausfiend has movedJun 13, 2023
@AlgoCompSynth @ct_bergstrom yeah, von Neumann is a titan in the field for a reason ... but quoting him for a piece like this feels to me like someone just Googled quotes from "famous computer scientist" and that's as far as they got.
Show threadZorro Notorious MEB 😡Jun 13, 2023
@klausfiend @ct_bergstrom I haven't read the article because articles like that are usually mierda de toro. I am curious what quote from Von Neumann they used; his wisecrack about random numbers is the only well-known one.