alt Hacker NewsIt is very weird to wonder, what if they're all wrong. Sam Bankman-Fried was clearly as committed to these ideas, and crashed his company into the ground.
But clearly if out of context someone said something like this:
"Clearly, the most obvious effect will be to greatly increase economic growth. The pace of advances in scientific research, biomedical innovation, manufacturing, supply chains, the efficiency of the financial system, and much more are almost guaranteed to lead to a much faster rate of economic growth. In Machines of Loving Grace, I suggest that a 10–20% sustained annual GDP growth rate may be possible."
I'd say that they were a snake oil salesman. All of my life experience says that there's no good reason to believe Dario's predictions here, but I'm taken in just as much as everyone else.
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"In Machines of Loving Grace, I suggest that a 10–20% sustained annual GDP growth rate may be possible.""
Absolutely comical. Do you realise how much that is in absolute terms? These guys are making up as they go along. Cant believe people buy this nonsense.
> I'd say that they were a snake oil salesman.
I don't know if "snake oil" is quite demonstrable yet, but you're not wrong to question this. There are phrases in the article which are so grandiose, they're on my list of "no serious CEO should ever actually say this about their own company's products/industry" (even if they might suspect or hope it). For example:
> "I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power"
LLMs can certainly be very useful and I think that utility will grow but Dario's making a lot of 'foom-ish' assumptions about things which have not happened and may not happen anytime soon. And even if/when they do happen, the world may have changed and adapted enough that the expected impacts, both positive and negative, are less disruptive than either the accelerationists hope or the doomers fear. Another Sagan quote that's relevant here is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."