Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 17 - Deep Thought

Funniest part from the notes!<p>"And then there’s the probably apocryphal story about Columbus on the voyage to the New World. Everybody thought that the world was much smaller than it actually was and that they were going to China. When they were sailing for what seemed like too long without hitting China, the crew wanted to turn back. Columbus convinced them to postpone mutiny for 3 more days, and then they finally landed on the new continent.<p>Eric Jonas: Which pretty much makes North America the biggest pivot ever"

The initial discussion about the hugeness and strangeness of AI reminded me of the godlike AIs in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, which are so incredibly advanced as to be pretty much beyond understanding in their native forms. The friendly ones end up speaking in zen koans.<p><a href="http://www.seanparnell.com/Hyperion%20Cantos/Web%20Pages/Ummon.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.seanparnell.com/Hyperion%20Cantos/Web%20Pages/Umm...</a>

We need a higher resolution in our vocabulary when talking about technological risks. Someone can be in favour of most forms of technology, and yet even when dealing with technologies with <i>extinction risk</i>, the word that comes up to describe the opposition is 'Luddite'. Which is not to say that I am opposed to AI research.

"The audience was split 50-50 on that. If it can accelerate—if it can more than double every 18th months going forward—it would seem like you’d get something like AI in just a few years. Yet most people thought AI was much further away than biotech 2.0. "<p>Interesting leap - is a large number of transistors on a die enough to enable an acceptable AI? I would have thought that more is necessary, and figuring out when it will happen will not be easily determined by a model like Moore's Law.