I wanted to finish the last 70 pages on New Year's Eve, but ok I managed it on the 1. January. 😉 If you want to read one single book about the AI Industry it HAS to be "Empire of AI" written by Karen Hao.
The famous tech journalist reports on her research into the inner workings of the flagship company Open AI and shows how two rival camps within the company have been battling for years for dominance in the AI discourse: one is focused on the common good and was risk-oriented, upholding ethical goals (AI safety). The other wants to grow commercially quickly and attract investor money.
We know the outcome of this story already: The profit camp has now finally won this battle, also cause of the wrong double game played by their CEO (who seems to have a a special relationship towards truth or honesty).
In order to compete with other AI players to win the AGI-race, Open AI is investing vast sums of money in data centers and talents. Despite the fact that today's AI models have yet to deliver on any of their promises.
Hao strongly doubts the current cult dogma of the Silicon Valley (scaling, scaling, scaling) repeated by CEOs such as Open AI boss Samuel Altman over and over: More computing power, more AI chips, and more water/ressources consumption (building data centres) do not lead to better results and especially not to AGI. Her book is a plea for the political discourse on desirable AI of the future to be led by society, science and communities – and not, as is currently the case, by a handful of tech billionaires.
In her own words: “There is a different way forward. Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be what it is today. We don’t need to accept the logic of unprecedented scale and consumption to achieve advancement and progress. So much of what our society actually needs—better health care and education, clean air and clean water, a faster transition away from fossil fuels—can be assisted and advanced with, and sometimes even necessitates, significantly smaller AI models and a diversity of other approaches. AI alone won’t be enough, either: We’ll also need more social cohesion and global cooperation, some of the very things being challenged by the existing vision of AI development.”
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henry ✷