Link to the podcast, with transcript.
The mention of MIRI, about (bad) AI forecasts :
Russ Roberts : [It] seems to me that there are a lot of people in AI who think [strong AI development is] only a matter of time, and that the consequences are going to be enormous. They're not going to just be like a marginal improvement or marginal challenge. They "threaten the human race."
Gary Marcus : Before we get to those consequences, which I actually do think are important, I'll just say that there's this very interesting [?] by a place called MIRI in Berkeley, MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute). And what they found is that they traced people's prediction of how far away AI is. And the first thing to know is what they found is, the central prediction, I believe it was the modal prediction, close to the median prediction, was 20 years away. But what's really interesting is that they then went back and divided the data by year, and it turns out that people have always been saying it's 20 years away. And they were saying it was 20 years away in 1955 and they're saying it now. And so people always think it's just around the corner. The joke in the field is that if you say it's 20 years away, you can get a grant to do it. If you said it was 5 years away, you'd have to deliver it; and if 100 years, nobody's going to talk to you.
(If people have always been saying it's 20 years away, then the median prediction wouldn't be 20 years from today.)
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Previous Open Thread
Next Open Thread
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.