this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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213
Nobel Prize awarded to ‘godfather of AI’ who warned it could wipe out humanity (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 1 day ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] lambda_notation@lemmy.ml 47 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

"They used physics to do it" is just a laughably pathetic motivation. Nobel hated "abstract wankery" or "intellectual masturbation" and wanted to promote results which benefitted the common man and society directly. This is incidentally also why there doesn't exist a Nobel prize in economics. The nobel prize comitte has since long abandoned Nobel's will in this matter and it is anyones guess what the order of magnitude of spin Nobel's corpse has accumulated.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 15 points 20 hours ago

it is anyones guess what the order of magnitude of spin Nobel’s corpse has accumulated.

I'm guessing it's nearing the theoretical limits of "abstract wankery."

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works -1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

The nobel prize comitte has since long abandoned Nobel's will in this matter

How long? Wouldn't this just kind of suggest that criteria is simply different at this point? Maybe complex electronic devices didn't exist back then, so one can really only guess as to what he would think. Because he's been dead for a very long time...

The prize is named after the dude, he doesn't get to decide the rules of its award in perpetuity.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

The prize is named after the dude, he doesn't get to decide the rules of its award in perpetuity.

Yes he does. It's the law.

Nobel's last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind"

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

I mean we do kind of deserve it. But at least we've had a good run.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 19 hours ago

and physicists use tools from math, so fields medals should be awarded to physicists.

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Physics' Nobel prize awarded for a Computer Science achievement, actual physics is having a dry spell I guess

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

i'm here to remind you that for last 20ish years half of the time chemistry nobel goes to biologists, and now they doubled down on ai wankery with giving it to alphafold

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago

To be fair, AlphaFold is pretty incredible. I remember when it was first revealed (but before they open sourced parts of it) that the scientific community were shocked by how effective it was and assumed that it was going to be technologically way more complex than it ended up being. Systems Biologist Mohammed AlQuraishi captures this quite well in this blog post

I'm a biochemist who has more interest in the computery side of structural biology than many of my peers, so I often have people asking me stuff like "is AlphaFold actually as impressive as they say, or is it just more overhyped AI nonsense?". My answer is "Yes."

[–] kamenlady@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Beyond recognizing the laureates’ inspirations from condensed-matter physics and statistical mechanics, the prize celebrates interdisciplinarity. At its core, this prize is about how elements of physics have driven the development of computational algorithms to mimic biological learning, impacting how we make discoveries today across STEM. 

They explain the flex at least

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 10 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Seems like a pretty extreme flex, I'm worried it'll snap.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 4 points 19 hours ago

If they award a Nobel for materials science, this should win.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be fair, regardless of one's stance on the utility of current AI or the wisdom of developing it, it is an extremely difficult and potentially world changing technical achievement, and given there isn't a computer science prize, physics is probably the most relevant category to it

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

not really. A lot of techniques have been known for decades. What we didn't have back then was insane compute power.

and there's the turing award for computer science.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Insane compute wasn't everything. Hinton helped develop the technique which allowed more data to be processed in more layers of a network without totally losing coherence. It was more of a toy before then because it capped out at how much data could be used, how many layers of a network could be trained, and I believe even that GPUs could be used efficiently for ANNs, but I could be wrong on that one.

Either way, after Hinton's research in ~2010-2012, problems that seemed extremely difficult to solve (e.g., classifying images and identifying objects in images) became borderline trivial and in under a decade ANNs went from being almost fringe technology that many researches saw as being a toy and useful for a few problems to basically dominating all AI research and CS funding. In almost no time, every university suddenly needed machine learning specialists on payroll, and now at about 10 years later, every year we are pumping out papers and tech that seemed many decades away... Every year... In a very broad range of problems.

The 580 and CUDA made a big impact, but Hinton's work was absolutely pivotal in being able to utilize that and to even make ANNs seem feasible at all, and it was an overnight thing. Research very rarely explodes this fast.

Edit: I guess also worth clarifying, Hinton was also one of the few researching these techniques in the 80s and has continued being a force in the field, so these big leaps are the culmination of a lot of old, but also very recent work.

[–] demesisx@infosec.pub 0 points 1 day ago

Narrator: It isn’t.

[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It’s probably easier to righteously quit your job after a decade of collecting senior executive salary

Also: physics?

[–] msantossilva@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I guess some people are genuinely concerned about AI wiping out humanity. Do not worry, that will never happen. We are already doing a fine job fostering our own extinction. If we keep going down our current path, those soulless robots will never even get the chance.

Now, in truth, I do not know what will kill us first, but I reckon it is important to stay positive

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

What’s laughable are the “terminator” scenarios where it suddenly comes to life in an instant and in that moment already has the power to wipe us out, and then does so.

A more likely scenario is that we come to rely heavily on AI more and more as time goes by, until it truly does have a grip on resource supply chains, manufacturing facilities, energy plants, etc. And I don’t just mean that machine learning gets used in all of those contexts because we are already there. I’m talking about custodial authority. We’ve ceded those duties to it in large part - can’t do those jobs without AI.

Then a malicious AI could put a real squeeze on humanity. It wouldn’t need to be a global war. Just enough disruption that we starve and begin to war among ourselves. Has anyone ever noticed how many of us there are now? Our population would absolutely fall apart without our massive industrial and agricultural complexes running full time.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I mean it’s definitely helping, but not in the way I imagined. It is becoming a major driver of CO2 emissions due to the large computational power if needs, which will only increase in the future. The planet is boiling, and they will keep building more server farms for the next LLM upgrade, giving up on stopping/controlling climate change.

[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 18 hours ago

Wouldn’t that be something: we choke to death trying to create a supercomputer to tell us to stop doing exactly that

True irony

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

To clarify: AI is NOT a major driver of CO2 emissions. The most pessimistic estimations place it at a fraction of a percent of global energy consumption by 2030.

[–] mriormro@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, the crypto bro creed.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I mean it is also true for crypto. BTC, the most energy-hungry blockchain, is estimated to burn ~150TWh/year, compared to a global consumption of 180 000TWh/y.

Now is that consumption useless ? Yes, it is completely wasted. But it is a drop in the bucket. One shouldn't underestimate the astounding energy consumption of legacy industries - as a whole the tech industry is estimated to represent just a few percents of the global energy budget.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Meh. Feelings are louder than facts apparently.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 9 hours ago

some myths are hard to kill honestly

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Predictive text algorithms will not wipe out humanity. 🙄

[–] keropoktasen@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The Artificial Intelligence field is much broader than that limited definition of yours.

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

And yet the only tech any company is interested in using is LLMs, which are about to fall flat on their face. What tech in the field is close to being able to think for itself and truly act autonomously?

[–] RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.works -2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

I can tell you don't use AI. It's frightening how good it is. Edited "good"😂

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 4 points 9 hours ago

That's just true believer talk. It really is trash.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's frightening how God it is.

Intentional?

[–] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 hours ago

Written by AI?

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago

The problem isn't the technology. The problem is the people losing their minds about it.

[–] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago

That doesn't really count, lol. The reality is, we've already killed ourselves, we just won't admit it yet. The climate effects we're seeing today aren't even from recent emissions. Mr. Bones Wild Ride has only just begun, and there's no getting off.

[–] ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.today 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe the Nobel should have went to you.

[–] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago

The prize has nothing to do with these claims. Furthermore, past accomplishments do not make a person infallible. Nice ad hominem, though.

[–] zlatiah@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago

So it was the physics Nobel... I see why the Nature News coverage called it "scooped" by machine learning pioneers

Since the news tried to be sensational about it... I tried to see what Hinton meant by fearing the consequences. Believe he is genuinely trying to prevent AI development without proper regulations. This is a policy paper he was involved in (https://managing-ai-risks.com/). This one did mention some genuine concerns. Quoting them:

"AI systems threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society. They could also enable large-scale criminal or terrorist activities. Especially in the hands of a few powerful actors, AI could cement or exacerbate global inequities, or facilitate automated warfare, customized mass manipulation, and pervasive surveillance"

like bruh people already lost jobs because of ChatGPT, which can't even do math properly on its own...

Also quite some irony that the preprint has the following quote: "Climate change has taken decades to be acknowledged and confronted; for AI, decades could be too long.", considering that a serious risk of AI development is climate impacts

[–] Pieresqi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Yeesh, everyone now jumps on the ai hypetrain.