Lee Cronin
speaker
545 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2023
last heard Jun 2024
Lee Cronin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
And I only know one way to embody intelligence, and that's in chemistry and human brains. So category error number one is they have agency. Category error number two is saying that, assuming that anything we make is going to be more intelligent. Now, you didn't say super intelligent. I'll put the words into our mouths here, super intelligent. I think that there is no...
No reason to expect that we are going to make systems that are more intelligent, more capable. When people play chess computers, they don't expect to win now. The chess computer is very good at chess. That doesn't mean it's super intelligent. So I think that superintelligence, I mean, I think even Nick Bostrom is pulling back on this now because he invented this. So I see this a lot.
When did this first happen? Eric Drexler, nanotechnology, atomically precise machines. He came up with a world where we had these atom cogs everywhere. They were going to make self-replicating nanobots. Not possible. Why? Because there's no resources to build these self-replicating nanobots. You can't get the precision. It doesn't work.
It was a major category error in taking engineering principles down to the molecular level. The only functioning nanomolecular technology we know produced by evolution. There. So now let's go forward to AGI. What is AGI? We don't know. It's super. It can do this. Humans can't think. That... I would argue the only AGIs that exist in the universe are produced by evolution.
And sure, we may be able to make our working memory better. We might be able to do more things. The human brain is the most compact computing unit in the universe. It uses 20 watts. It uses a really limited volume. It's not like a chat GPT cluster, which has to have thousands of watts model that's generated and has to be corrected by human beings. You are autonomous and embodied intelligence.
So I think that there are so many levels that we're missing out. We've just kind of went, oh, we've discovered fire. Oh, gosh, the planet's just going to burn one day randomly. I mean, I just don't understand that leap. There are bigger problems we need to worry about. So what is the motivation? Why are these people, let's assume they have their earnest, have this conviction?
Well, I think it's kind of they're making leaps that they're trapped in a virtual reality that isn't reality.
I think that that's right, the unintended consequences we have to think about, and that I fully agree with. But let's go back a bit. Sentience, I mean, again, I'm far away from my comfort zone and all this stuff, but hey, let's talk about it because I give myself a qualification.
I think the paperclip scenario is just such a poor one because let's think about how that would happen. And also, let's think about we are being so... unrealistic about how much of the Earth's surface we have commandeered. You know, for paperclip manufacturing to really happen, I mean, do the math. It's like, it's not going to happen. There's not enough energy, there's not enough resource.
Where is it all going to come from? I think that what happens in evolution is really... why is a killer virus not killed all life on Earth? Well, what happens is, sure, super killer viruses that kill the ribosome have emerged. But you know what happens? They nuke a small space because they can't propagate. They all die. So there's this interplay between evolution and propagation, right? And death.
I think the nice thing about where we are, I would love for the AI crowd to take a leaf out of the book of the bio warfare, chemical warfare crowd. I mean, not love, because actually people have been killed with chemical weapons in the First and Second World War, and bioweapons have been made, and we can argue about COVID-19 and all this stuff. Let's not go there just now.
But I think there is a consensus that some certain things are bad and we shouldn't do them, right? And sure, it would be possible for a bad actor to engineer something bad, but the damage would be, we would see it coming, and we would be able to do something about it.
Now, I guess what I'm trying to say is when people talk about Doom and they just, when you ask them for the mechanism, they just say, you know, they just make something up. I mean, in this case, I'm with Jan LeCun. I think he put out a very good point about trying to regulate jet engines before we've even invented them. Yeah. And I think that's what I'm saying.
I'm not saying we should, I just don't understand why these guys are going around making, literally making stuff up about us all dying.
Yeah.
When basically we need to actually really focus on. Now, let's say there's some actors are earnest, right? Let's say Yudikowsky is being earnest, right? And he really cares, but he loves it. It goes, and then you're all going to die. It's like, you know, why don't we try and do the same thing and say, you could do this and then you're going to be happy forever after. Yeah.
I understand that. And I kind of, I guess, I mean, I'm involved in the whole hype cycle. I would like us to... I don't want us to... So what's happening right now is there seems to be... So let me just say... Having some people saying AI doom is a worry, fine, let's give them that.
But what seems to be happening is there seems to be people who don't think AI is doing that, trying to use that to control regulation and to push people to regulate, which stops humans generating knowledge. And I am an advocate for generating as much knowledge as possible. Mm-hmm.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, I grew up in the 70s and 80s where nuclear doom... A lot of adults really had existential threat. Almost as bad as now with AI doom. They were really worried, right? There were some great... Well, not great. There were some horrific documentaries. I think there was one called Fred's that was generated in the UK, which was terrible. It was so scary.
And I think that... The correct thing to do is obviously get rid of nuclear weapons, but let's think about unintended consequences. We've got rid of all the sulfur particles in the atmosphere, right, or the soot. And what's happened in the last couple of years is global warming has accelerated because we've cleaned up the atmosphere too much. Sure.
Showing 421–440 of 545 · page 22 of 28
← Previous
Next →