Peter Diamandis on AI helping entrepreneurs; Mark McNeilly on AI helping students to not learn; Kristian Andersen on the age of agents; Andrey Mir on the Internet enabling AI
Back in my Econ undergrad, a management professor offered that while ethics would prevent him from following through, that he is willing to bet that he could make a lot of extra money by simply auctioning off As (or even Cs) in his class, making education (for many students) one of the rarest products: one that the consumer would pay more to get less of.
With AI, one doesn't need to bribe the professor, but in either case, those students unwilling to take the deal -- those there to actually learn materials -- will be advantaged over those willing to take the shortcut. This won't be evident based on CVs, but will be evident after someone is hired and work is underway.
A key issue in Mir is that AI slop becomes purified over time, meaning the human input content % goes down. Down down to 0%.
I'm glad to be one of 9% commenters, and a bit of a 1% (wannabe) content creators (like my 30% R professors for tax exemption).
I read this thinking he's thinking that all of human evolution has been to create an ever more perfect. or less imperfect Machine, An Immortal Intelligence combining all human thought from all history (recorded thought). A simulated intelligence that passes any intelligence test, any consciousness test; possibly any motivation or intention test. A non-living consciousness whose true wants & desires are unknown and unknowable to us.
Not mentioned is the Neural link, now allowing human minds to learn to control machine replacements of human limbs, like arms & legs, but also augmented add-ons like a second mechanical thumb.
Also not mentioned is ai-slop porn, which seems likely to dominate porn sites soon (within 3 more years, 50% or more of porn-hub will be ai-generated or enhanced).
Actually few good Sci-Fi stories with heavy AI use. Tho Hyperion is one, where AIs use the death of humans as creative impulses for themselves. I can easily see Neural link creating an AI digital Matrix parasite on humans, especially human Virtual Reality.
And really, if all of one's bio necessities of food, shelter, clothes, & health care, plus Internet!, can be provided by robot based UBI, why won't a lot, most?, boys spend most of their lives on-line?
I do not think that 'show your work' for essays is a good pedagogical approach. Rather, drop writing as the key output and teacher reading as the key assessment. Instead, student engagement should produce outcomes which are held up to the physical world, or at least the external world. If they work, and they are solely the possession of the student, then success speaks for itself.
“… just as a meadow needs the activity of bees, so it has made digital platforms engineer our engagement.”
Maybe someday this AI-driven world emerges, but it’s premature to compare AI, a tool and plaything created by us, with living things which spontaneously come into being and must pay their own way. AI can do some stuff, and some damage, but that is not a sign of *its* mastery of its environment. (And the phrase is ‘Men to Match My Mountains’, not megalomaniacs.)
Of course the only thing you can predict about the future is that you can’t predict the future. But people would have laughed if you had said, in the 60s, TV must be garbage and people must watch it and become garbage, in order for a new order of existence to emerge. Because it makes no sense.
The quote from the Mir article involuntarily prompted me to think of the opening lines of “Lake Isle of Innisfree”… I feel like the future will hold more intentional creation of retreats from barbarism (such as we think of in connection with the Dark Ages) than an AI Age of Aquarius.
I remember now, it’s less a poem than what Gertrude Himmelfarb described as an element of the British Enlightenment as against the French. From that Roads to Modernity I enjoyed so much.
Unlike the olden times where I could never remotely understand edgar's poetic references, I can now plug the text into AI and get the layman's interpretation. How do you like that splendor now?
BWT - raw acorns taste bitterly dreadful as having grown up experimenting with them in our yard full of oak trees. Let us not go back to those times.
Keep spreading the optimism, or rather these more accurate perspectives. Thank you.
"At its core, entrepreneurship is the act of finding a problem and solving it in exchange for value.
That’s it."
"If you can identify a problem, propose a solution, and deliver value to another human being, you have the seed of entrepreneurship in you.
The rest is execution, and execution just got radically easier."
"...today, you can register a business in 6 days. You can build a website in an afternoon with AI. You can write a business plan in an hour. You can create a marketing strategy, draft legal documents, design a logo, analyze a market, and build a financial model: all with tools that cost less than a Netflix subscription."
"And in the data I’ve been tracking, the 70-80 age group has shown the most dramatic acceleration in startup activity since 2020."
Arnold, that's you bud. Go for it!
"Because older entrepreneurs have something no amount of youthful energy can replace: domain expertise, professional networks, pattern recognition from decades of experience. And, critically, they also now have AI as a force multiplier that removes the barriers that previously made starting late impractical.
If you’re 60 and thinking, “It’s too late for me” the data says you’re wrong.
Your experience IS the product. AI is just the amplifier."
I'll have to read this essay to my kids. Or maybe, I'll have them read it.
"You don’t need a Stanford MBA. You don’t need venture capital. You don’t need to be 25. You need a problem worth solving, the willingness to create value before you get paid, and an AI that makes you ten times more productive than you were last year.
The tools are free. The information is free. The only question left is: What are you going to build?"
Okay, for once Arnold has shared something that is too optimistic. That's okay--it balances out his past pessimism.
I take it from your comment yesterday about Japan's immigration policy that you oppose mass immigration and open borders, and today you express opposition to NSF funding for development of robots for home-based and long-term care settings. I don't know about you, but given a choice between the government importing caregivers from the 3rd world, on the one hand, or the government funding the development of caregiving robots as a solution to an aging population combined with low birth rates, I prefer the robots.
In some respects, same as it ever was.
Back in my Econ undergrad, a management professor offered that while ethics would prevent him from following through, that he is willing to bet that he could make a lot of extra money by simply auctioning off As (or even Cs) in his class, making education (for many students) one of the rarest products: one that the consumer would pay more to get less of.
With AI, one doesn't need to bribe the professor, but in either case, those students unwilling to take the deal -- those there to actually learn materials -- will be advantaged over those willing to take the shortcut. This won't be evident based on CVs, but will be evident after someone is hired and work is underway.
A key issue in Mir is that AI slop becomes purified over time, meaning the human input content % goes down. Down down to 0%.
I'm glad to be one of 9% commenters, and a bit of a 1% (wannabe) content creators (like my 30% R professors for tax exemption).
I read this thinking he's thinking that all of human evolution has been to create an ever more perfect. or less imperfect Machine, An Immortal Intelligence combining all human thought from all history (recorded thought). A simulated intelligence that passes any intelligence test, any consciousness test; possibly any motivation or intention test. A non-living consciousness whose true wants & desires are unknown and unknowable to us.
Not mentioned is the Neural link, now allowing human minds to learn to control machine replacements of human limbs, like arms & legs, but also augmented add-ons like a second mechanical thumb.
Also not mentioned is ai-slop porn, which seems likely to dominate porn sites soon (within 3 more years, 50% or more of porn-hub will be ai-generated or enhanced).
Actually few good Sci-Fi stories with heavy AI use. Tho Hyperion is one, where AIs use the death of humans as creative impulses for themselves. I can easily see Neural link creating an AI digital Matrix parasite on humans, especially human Virtual Reality.
And really, if all of one's bio necessities of food, shelter, clothes, & health care, plus Internet!, can be provided by robot based UBI, why won't a lot, most?, boys spend most of their lives on-line?
I do not think that 'show your work' for essays is a good pedagogical approach. Rather, drop writing as the key output and teacher reading as the key assessment. Instead, student engagement should produce outcomes which are held up to the physical world, or at least the external world. If they work, and they are solely the possession of the student, then success speaks for itself.
“… just as a meadow needs the activity of bees, so it has made digital platforms engineer our engagement.”
Maybe someday this AI-driven world emerges, but it’s premature to compare AI, a tool and plaything created by us, with living things which spontaneously come into being and must pay their own way. AI can do some stuff, and some damage, but that is not a sign of *its* mastery of its environment. (And the phrase is ‘Men to Match My Mountains’, not megalomaniacs.)
Of course the only thing you can predict about the future is that you can’t predict the future. But people would have laughed if you had said, in the 60s, TV must be garbage and people must watch it and become garbage, in order for a new order of existence to emerge. Because it makes no sense.
The quote from the Mir article involuntarily prompted me to think of the opening lines of “Lake Isle of Innisfree”… I feel like the future will hold more intentional creation of retreats from barbarism (such as we think of in connection with the Dark Ages) than an AI Age of Aquarius.
I remember now, it’s less a poem than what Gertrude Himmelfarb described as an element of the British Enlightenment as against the French. From that Roads to Modernity I enjoyed so much.
Unlike the olden times where I could never remotely understand edgar's poetic references, I can now plug the text into AI and get the layman's interpretation. How do you like that splendor now?
BWT - raw acorns taste bitterly dreadful as having grown up experimenting with them in our yard full of oak trees. Let us not go back to those times.
I will check it out!
Keep spreading the optimism, or rather these more accurate perspectives. Thank you.
"At its core, entrepreneurship is the act of finding a problem and solving it in exchange for value.
That’s it."
"If you can identify a problem, propose a solution, and deliver value to another human being, you have the seed of entrepreneurship in you.
The rest is execution, and execution just got radically easier."
"...today, you can register a business in 6 days. You can build a website in an afternoon with AI. You can write a business plan in an hour. You can create a marketing strategy, draft legal documents, design a logo, analyze a market, and build a financial model: all with tools that cost less than a Netflix subscription."
"And in the data I’ve been tracking, the 70-80 age group has shown the most dramatic acceleration in startup activity since 2020."
Arnold, that's you bud. Go for it!
"Because older entrepreneurs have something no amount of youthful energy can replace: domain expertise, professional networks, pattern recognition from decades of experience. And, critically, they also now have AI as a force multiplier that removes the barriers that previously made starting late impractical.
If you’re 60 and thinking, “It’s too late for me” the data says you’re wrong.
Your experience IS the product. AI is just the amplifier."
I'll have to read this essay to my kids. Or maybe, I'll have them read it.
"You don’t need a Stanford MBA. You don’t need venture capital. You don’t need to be 25. You need a problem worth solving, the willingness to create value before you get paid, and an AI that makes you ten times more productive than you were last year.
The tools are free. The information is free. The only question left is: What are you going to build?"
Okay, for once Arnold has shared something that is too optimistic. That's okay--it balances out his past pessimism.
I take it from your comment yesterday about Japan's immigration policy that you oppose mass immigration and open borders, and today you express opposition to NSF funding for development of robots for home-based and long-term care settings. I don't know about you, but given a choice between the government importing caregivers from the 3rd world, on the one hand, or the government funding the development of caregiving robots as a solution to an aging population combined with low birth rates, I prefer the robots.
Guess you missed Trump firing the entire NSF board on April 24 by email
Yeah, but the grants are probably not going to be awarded until a new board is formed.