Noah Smith: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

Original Article In the olden days, everyone was a farmer; in the early 20th century, a lot of people worked in factories; today, most people work in services: And it’s easy to think that in a simple supply-and-demand world, this shrinking of the human domain will reduce wages. As humans get squeezed into an ever-shrinking set of tasks, the supply of labor in those remaining human tasks will go up. A glut of supply drives down wages.

July 27, 2023

Timothy B. Lee & Sean Trott - Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon

Original Post When ChatGPT was introduced last fall, it sent shockwaves through the technology industry and the larger world. Machine learning researchers had been experimenting with large language models (LLMs) for a few years by that point, but the general public had not been paying close attention and didn’t realize how powerful they had become. Today almost everyone has heard about LLMs, and tens of millions of people have tried them out.

June 6, 2023

Marc Andreessen - Why AI Will Save The World

Original Post The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people freaking out. Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it. First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output.

May 27, 2023

Brian Chau: Diminishing Returns in Machine Learning - Hardware Development and the Physical Frontier

Original Article Diminishing Returns in Machine Learning Part 1 Hardware Development and the Physical Frontier The release of ChatGPT sparked a sensational reaction among media and ordinary people alike. It rapidly grew to 100 million users faster than any web app in history, including TikTok and Instagram. It is set to drastically change the economy by automating repetitive cognitive work in many walks of life. GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest release, scores within the 80th percentile of humans on many academic tests.

March 27, 2023

Tyler Cowen - Existential risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human history

Original Post In several of my books and many of my talks, I take great care to spell out just how special recent times have been, for most Americans at least. For my entire life, and a bit more, there have been two essential features of the basic landscape: 1. American hegemony over much of the world, and relative physical safety for Americans. 2. An absence of truly radical technological change.