Sergey Brin says AGI is within reach if Googlers work 60-hour weeks
Sergey Brin says AGI is within reach if Googlers work 60-hour weeks
Google says it has no immediate plans to change work-from-home policies.
That's why I bake my cake at 2608°C for ~1,8 minutes, it just works™
Project Manager here, and where I’m from it’s common knowledge that 9 women can have a baby in a month .
Or!—hear me out—one woman whose 8 co-gestators were just laid off by someone who doesn’t understand what their job was
And an eager young bride can do in 7 months what takes 9 for cows and countesses.
You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
lol, because if they work 40-hour weeks they might create it a couple of weeks later
Or, worse, they might actually have to hire enough people to actually do the job. Why hire 100 people with good work life balance, when you can hire 60 people that aren't allowed to have lives or families.
AGI is not in reach. We need to stop this incessant parroting from tech companies. LLMs are stochastic parrots. They guess the next word. There's no thought or reasoning. They don't understand inputs. They mimic human speech. They're not presenting anything meaningful.
I feel like I have found a lone voice of sanity in a jungle of brainless fanpeople sucking up the snake oil and pretending LLMs are AI. A simple control loop is closer to AI than a stochastic parrot, as you correctly put it.
pretending LLMs are AI
LLMs are AI. There’s a common misconception about what ‘AI’ actually means. Many people equate AI with the advanced, human-like intelligence depicted in sci-fi - like HAL 9000, JARVIS, Ava, Mother, Samantha, Skynet, and GERTY. These systems represent a type of AI called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), designed to perform a wide range of tasks and demonstrate a form of general intelligence similar to humans.
However, AI itself doesn't imply general intelligence. Even something as simple as a chess-playing robot qualifies as AI. Although it’s a narrow AI, excelling in just one task, it still fits within the AI category. So, AI is a very broad term that covers everything from highly specialized systems to the type of advanced, adaptable intelligence that we often imagine. Think of it like the term ‘plants,’ which includes everything from grass to towering redwoods - each different, but all fitting within the same category.
That undersells them slightly.
LLMs are powerful tools for generating text that looks like something. Need something rephrased in a different style? They're good at that. Need something summarized? They can do that, too. Need a question answered? No can do.
LLMs can't generate answers to questions. They can only generate text that looks like answers to questions. Often enough that answer is even correct, though usually suboptimal. But they'll also happily generate complete bullshit answers and to them there's no difference to a real answer.
They're text transformers marketed as general problem solvers because a) the market for text transformers isn't that big and b) general problem solvers is what AI researchers are always trying to create. They have their use cases but certainly not ones worth the kind of spending they get.
LLM's can now generate answers. Watch this:
I promise this is relevant and worth the watch.
"Work 50% longer weeks so you can make something that'll both make me richer AND cost you your jobs!" is not the motivational speech he thinks it is.
I don't even know what AGI is, and I read the headline as "rich disconnected from reality asshole".
Turns out I was right.
A General ignoramus
Wait, are these AI boosters bragging about how close they are to building God the torture that Roko's Basilisk is inflicting on us all?
This is almost too depressing to be funny.
If it can be reached in 60 hour work weeks it can be reached in 40, but nah mfs should rush to get themselves replaced
If it can be reached in 60 hour work weeks, then it can be reached in 40 hour work weeks be hiring a second person.
If management isn't willing to put the effort in of hiring the required staff, why would I want to work the job of 2 people for 1 persons pay?
IT project management doesn't work that way, but it doesn't matter much. 60 hour work weeks wouldn't help, either.
He can fuck all the way off.
globally
Let's work 20 hour weeks then. Who wants AGI other than war pigs and billionaires?
I mean, we could get a rogue agi take over the world. It might not even be worse lmao
WarPigs by Sabbath was about the future.
Thought this was an Onion article!
Hey plebs! I demand you work 50% more to develop AGI so that I can replace you with robots and fire all of you and make myself a double plus plutocrat! Also, I want to buy an island, small city, Bunker, Spaceship, And/Or something.
If it's in reach working 60 hour weeks, it's also in reach working 40 hour weeks, it will just take 1/3rd longer. ;)
Let's be real, it'll probably happen faster on 40 hour work weeks than 60.
lots of evidence starting to point to it'd be quicker in 32 hour weeks than 40
50%
Or just hire 50% more engineers? Or wait 50% longer?
with "hire more" you do run up against the "9 women can have a baby in 1 month" limit, but in this case it's likely to help.
Anyone else feel hungry?
No, but lets go get some margaritas.
Slushy the rich?
Bloody Mary's are back on the menu!
They talk about AGI like it's some kind of intrinsically benevolent messiah that is going to come along and free humanity of limitations rather than a product that is going to be monetised to make a few very rich people even richer
It's a belief in Techno-Jesus that will solve all our problems so we don't have to solve them ourselves (don't need to do the uncomfortable things we don't want to). Just like aliens, the singularity, etc.
Ironically the world is full of people who like to think about solutions to problems. But those in power won’t put them to solve those because it’s not part of the political game.
And somehow it will run on thin air
What if the whole earth, itself, is like, one giant supercomputer, designed to answer the ultimate question, and it's just been running for billions of years?
Or, y'know, he could hire 50% more programmers / contractors, instead of overworking his current staff
There's an upper limit to how many bodies you can throw at a task.
9 women won't make a baby in one month.
But you can make an average of 1 baby a month in 9 months with 9 woman. It's all about proper planning and budgeting over longer periods.
That wouldn't allow him to also simultaneously pay low wages.
What if you do more with less?
He isn't even using that head anyways, seems like some cost cutting is in order.
Then you wouldn't need to tell people to work more hours.
Disgusting prasite seeking free labour
Perhaps this is what you mean, but it's even worse than just unpaid hours for current employees. His implicit goal is to generate a slave-class of people (which is what actual AI would be) that he can make more of or delete at his whim, and eliminate to livelihoods of any current employees (besides him and other execs, of course).
They warn us about AGI while simultaneously attempting to sell it to us.
Black PR is PR too, it's like warnings about weapons of the future and combat robots and antiutopia for many people worked as an ad, and they want that exact future.
I think it's the same with AGI. People think Skynet is cool and want Skynet, because they think it's the future.
Except it's a bit less, like real fascism doesn't look similar to Warhammer, just to a criminal district ruled by a gang, scaled for a country.
"Man who works 10 hours per year tells underlings to work 60 hours per week."
You know it's bad when I had to click all the way through to the body of the article to verify this isn't a The Onion thing. Do we still have a "Not The Onion" space here?
Yeah, over at !nottheonion@lemmy.world
For how many years? Cuz y'all ain't anywhere near AGI. You can't even get generative AI to not suck compared to your competition in that market (which is a pretty low bar) lol
I don't believe a single word of this bullshit.
With all the rounds of layoffs they've had, their remaining employees would need to be quite stupid to give a shit what this disloyal piece trash says.
Real AGI is a Guillotine that only removes the heads of dragons.
I don't get it.
Are you perhaps calling all of humanity a dragon?
Billionaires are often referred to as dragons because they horde wealth. A Guillotine that could know the difference and decide to only harm billionaires would be a technological marvel.
Who gives a fuck what Sergey brin thinks
So he's saying it's not in reach then.
I hope they tell him to get fucked.
AGI requires a few key components that no LLM is even close to.
First, it must be able to discern truth based on evidence, rather than guessing it. Can’t just throw more data at it, especially with the garbage being pumped out these days.
Second, it must ask questions in the pursuit of knowledge, especially when truth is ambiguous. Once that knowledge is found, it needs to improve itself, pruning outdated and erroneous information.
Third, it would need free will. And that’s the one it will never get, I hope. Free will is a necessary part of intelligent consciousness. I know there are some who argue it does not exist but they’re wrong.
Third, it would need free will.
I strongly disagree there. I argue that not even humans have free will, yet we're generally intelligent so I don't see why AGI would need it either. In fact, I don't even know what true free will would look like. There are only two reasons why anyone does anything: either you want to or you have to. There's obviously no freedom in having to do something but you can't choose your wants and not-wants either. You helplessly have the beliefs and preferences that you do. You didn't choose them and you can't choose to not have them either.
The human mind isn't infinitely complex. Consciousness has to be a tractable problem imo. I watched Westworld so I'm something of an expert on the matter.
maybe ai should work that extra time.
If you all work harder we’ll be able to fire you and increase my bonus!
If you all work harder we’ll be able to fire you FASTER and increase my bonus!
Fixed it for you
I thought Googlers were paid $500K+ and already worked 60-80 hours weeks?
I'm pretty sure the science says it's more like 20-30. I know personally, if I try to work more than about 40-ish hours in a week, the time comes out of the following week without me even trying. A task that took two hours in a 45-hour "crunch" week will end up taking three when I don't have to crunch. And if I keep up the crunch for too long, I start making a lot of mistakes.
Hahaha
That might speed it up, but that certainly is not a prerequisite.
A liar, scam artist, and scumbag.
lmao, what a tool
What a brilliant suggestion, no way an AI could have come up with that, executive jobs are safe forever!
I highly recommend Kara Swisher's recent book "Burn Book" for insights into the Tech lads like Brin, etc, as she's known most of them since the 90s.
Really helps contextualize the crazy cocktail of engineering/commercial power with general naivety a lot of these guys have going.
I bet it would happen faster if this guy was fired.
So he's saying they've exhausted the pool of applicants so badly to replace that with normal work weeks, just 150% amount of Googlers or maybe 200% amount of Googlers?
Power and fame break a man. Even if he wasn't broken from the beginning.
What I learned working with Googlers. They were dorks. Big ass dorks. Who got used by women because for the first time in their lives. They were attractive to these women. So many broken marriages and divorces from cheating husbands. That they joked about at the Christmas party. It was an eye opening experience.
If it's within reach of a 60 hour week then it's within reach of a 30 hour week.
This LLM copycat bullshit is never going to be it though. It's not thinking, it's looking up the answers at the back of the book.
Is Google in the cloning business? Because I could swear that's Zack Freedman from the Youtube 3D printing channel. He even wears the heads-up display (Youtube Link). Sorry for being off-Topic but who cares about what tech CEOs say about AGI anyway?
What is the point, though?
If you made AGI, you'd have a computer that thinks like a person. Okay? We already have minds that think like a person: they're called people!
I get that there is some belief that if you can make a digital consciousness, you can make a digital super-conciousness, but genuinely stop and ask what the utility is, and it's equal parts useless and evil.
First, this premise is totally unexamined. Maybe it can think faster or hold more information in mind at one moment, but what basis is there for such a creation actually exceeding the ingenuity of a group of humans working together? What problem is this going to solve? A "cure for cancer"? The bottleneck to cutting cancer isn't ideas, it's that cell research takes actual time and money. You need it synthesize molecules and watch cells grow, and pay for lab infrastructure. "Intelligence" isn't the limiting element!
The primary purpose is just to crater the value of human labor, by replacing human workers with workers with godlike powers of reasoning. Good luck with that. I'm sure they won't come to the exact reasoning as any exploited worker in 120 nano-seconds.
It's like Jason's problem-solving advice in "The Good Place":
“Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail… Boom, right away, I had a different problem.”
Sure. Let's work ourselves to death forTHIS.
I don't think a device will ever have a thought. I find it somewhat akin to a belief in the anamism of objects, that it will aquire some form of life force of its own. What a thought is, is a complete mystery. Nobody knows why they happen, where they come from. So, who is even to determine whether an inamimate object is exhibiting signs of consciousness? There are some people that believe it, others are just running a con.
They’re all desperate that so much venture capital is being poured on this, so whoever promises more gets more money, and whoever has more money can bankrupt the rival. There’s no need for an actual AGI to ever exist here to win the game.
...and the horse he road in on.
Lmfao
Yeah, Cloud Console would probably suck less too
No. Dumbass.
I guess we don't need it then.
Specifically, the women who report to him that he's attracted to need to spend 60 hours a week dating him.
Thanks for the input, Big Head.