samr71 (u/samr71) - Readit News

samr71 commented on AI 2027 ai-2027.com/... · Posted by u/Tenoke

Will people finally wake up that the AGI X-Risk people have been right and we’re rapidly approaching a really fucking big deal?

This forum has been so behind for too long.

Sama has been saying this a decade now: “Development of Superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity” 2015 https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

Hinton, Ilya, Dario Amodei, RLHF inventor, Deepmind founders. They all get it, which is why they’re the smart cookies in those positions.

First stage is denial, I get it, not easy to swallow the gravity of what’s coming.

samr71 · 9 months ago

It's not something you need to worry about.

If we get the Singularity, it's overwhelmingly likely Jesus will return concurrently.

samr71 commented on xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/rvz

whats_a_quasar · 9 months ago

The solar city acquisition was for "only" $2.6 billion. This deal is way bigger. I'm not sure what the Tesla valuation was at the time of that deal, but I have to imagine it's proportionally way bigger too. A $45 billion acquisition when the acquirer, xAI, has an $80 billion valuation will threaten the integrity of xAI. Particularly because that's just a paper valuation and xAI doesn't have much of any revenue.

If I were an investor in xAI I would be furious about this. They're almost certainly overpaying for Twitter and there's definitely going to be litigation.

Edit: It sounds like the combined entity is taking on Twitter's $12 billion of debt from when it originally went private. As of last December xAI had raised "more than $12 billion" in total [1], so the deal attaches Twitter's debt to that ~12 billion pot of VC money. Unless I'm really misunderstanding something this deal looks like a bailout of Twitter and a huge new liability for xAI.

It's definitely possible my hot take is wrong and the xAI investors support the transaction. I hope so because if not there's going to be some brutal lawsuits over this.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/technology/elon-musk-xai-...

samr71 · 9 months ago

They're gonna go public and the market cap will be at ~$300B within a year or two

samr71 commented on The most underreported story in AI is that scaling has failed to produce AGI fortune.com/2025/02/19/ge... · Posted by u/unclebucknasty

garymarcus · 10 months ago

you obviously never actually read the paper; you should.

samr71 · 10 months ago

Gary I respect you - will do!

samr71 commented on AI killed the tech interview. Now what? kanenarraway.com/posts/ai... · Posted by u/ghuntley

marcosdumay · 10 months ago

The GP is still passing through hundreds of people, dozens of them capable, until he reaches somebody that convinces him of their competence. You were passed down because you weren't convincing enough.

Or maybe he is getting resumes from a channel that has been victim of machine-gun filling, and there indeed thousands of incompetent people posting resumes into every channel and just half a dozen real applicants.

TBF, I have no idea how to fix either one of those problems. Hiring is just completely broken.

samr71 · 10 months ago

I have only a resume to convince them. I have job experience at major companies, with examples of what I've built when there, personal projects I've made, a github link, a great GPA from a good school.

And I know similar Junior-mid people in the same boat. We can all do Fizzbuzz, we've all built things, and somehow we're not getting interviews, but people that can't do Fizzbuzz are.

Do thousands of incompetents also machine-gun apply to, say, mechanical engineering, accounting, marketing, HR, or finance gigs? Is it just tech?

Something isn't adding up.

samr71 commented on The most underreported story in AI is that scaling has failed to produce AGI fortune.com/2025/02/19/ge... · Posted by u/unclebucknasty

jonny_eh · 10 months ago

Can you be specific?

samr71 · 10 months ago

Garry Marcus constantly repeats the line that "deep learning has hit a wall!1!" - he was saying this pre-ChatGPT even! It's very easy to dunk on him for this.

That said, his willingness to push back against orthodoxy means he's occasionally right. Scaling really has seemed to plateau since GPT-3.5, Hallucinations are still a problem that are perhaps unsolvable under the current paradigm, LLMs do seem to have problems with things far outside their training data.

Basically, while listening to Gary Marcus, you will hear a lot of nonsense, it will probably give you a better picture of reality if you can sort the wheat from the chaff. Listening to only Sam Altman, or other AI Hypelords, you'll think the Singularity is right around the corner. Listen to Gary Marcus, you won't.

Sam Altman has been substantially more correct on average than Gary Marcus, but I believe Marcus is right that the Singularity narrative is bogus.

samr71 commented on AI killed the tech interview. Now what? kanenarraway.com/posts/ai... · Posted by u/ghuntley

dowager_dan99 · 10 months ago

You need to run through hundreds of candidates to find someone marginally qualified. I am not exaggerating.

samr71 · 10 months ago

Do we have different definitions of "marginally qualified"? Idk, I feel I'm a decent engineer - I can certainly do whatever leetcode medium they throw at me, as much as this counts of anything - and can actually code, but I still get maybe 1 callback per 50 applications.

Does "marginally qualified" mean "Ivy League Competitive Programmer PhD" or something?

samr71 commented on AI killed the tech interview. Now what? kanenarraway.com/posts/ai... · Posted by u/ghuntley

solarmist · 10 months ago

I hear this all the time, but I have yet to experience it. It may be because the small companies that I interview with are all startups, but I have yet to be able to get a call back from any other kind of small company. And the startups I do interview with have a full FAANG interview loops.

There seems to be a weird selection bias that if you're FAANG or FAANG adjacent these small companies aren't interested.

samr71 · 10 months ago

Yup. You can check out of FAANG anytime you like, but you can never leave.

Was path dependency for careers always this bad?

samr71 commented on AI killed the tech interview. Now what? kanenarraway.com/posts/ai... · Posted by u/ghuntley

dowager_dan99 · 10 months ago

Very few people doing this sort of interview (they tend to be our best, most empathetic developers) are likely to cut a multi-hour planned process short after a few minutes. It will eat at least an hour of their (very expensive & valuable) time.

Also how am I supposed to filter the 100's of AI-completed assessments? Who gets this opportunity?

samr71 · 10 months ago

Use another AI, of course!

Idk if I'm even being sarcastic here.

samr71 commented on FAQ on Microsoft's topological qubit thing scottaaronson.blog/?p=866... · Posted by u/ingve

samr71 · 10 months ago

Other than fast factorization and linear search, is there anything that Quantum Computing can do? Those do seem important, but limited in scope - is this a solution in search of a problem?

I've heard it could get us very accurate high-detail physics simulations, which has potential, but don't know if that's legit or marketing BS.