Ah yes, it's like job hunting in that regard. In the end, they are hoping to benefit though, so keep that in mind ;-)

Also, mentors are great. Make sure you listen to them!

Oh, I'm not the only one! Good to know.

What's there to panic about for grad school? They won't bite ;-)

Thanks!

Name: speeding_snail

Location: Netherlands

Age: 28

Current Preoccupation: Job searching, energy transition, judo, reading, self improvement (such a hollow phrase)

Previous Preoccupation: Being a student, reddit, wallowing in despair at times

I quit Reddit and I thought about Hubski again. I'm hoping it's just as fun as it was in the olden days!

Also, I love seeing all these familiar names still.

I recently discovered Gallowstreet, a Dutch jazz band. It's almost New Orleans style jazz and I'm loving it.

It's an hour and a half for me at least, so I'll have to plan it a bit more in advance. But yeah, time to visit it soon!

Ah yes, I was about to say the same thing. It's all the way in the Hague unfortunately.

I'm not sure what is meant here:

Ford says that it "maintains the highest transaction prices of any full-line automaker – $36,300 per vehicle."

Do they mean they are expensive? Or that they make the most money per transaction?

Anyway, it seems to me that Ford cannot keep up with what people actually want and instead of innovating and improving, doubles down on the markets where they already have a sizable part of the market. I wonder what the effects are for Ford globally (Ford is a rather popular brand in the Netherlands for example).

You gotta do something for others to invest in your company, and even better if you can get something out of it as well! And it seems you did get something out of it, so that's good.

Although I must say I'm kinda surprised you guys started this company. For some reason I was under the impression mk was a physicist and ecib, well, I don't know.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure if AGI would benefit from being "just like a human". I even find it a strange goal. I mean, we use all kinds of mental shortcuts and have biases that do hold us back or even confuse us. As AI is used to replace or enhance human capabilities, AI should be able to interpret the human communication, but it really should not do as we do. But I think that is another discussion entirely.

I guess the main point I want to make is that this is not an experience that humans ever has had to deal with, ever, and it's going to be horrible.

Agreed, especially if we don't prepare.

I don't think you have any idea how awful it will be; I have spent years doing exactly that with AI and AGI; I have a company doing AI and robotic consulting for a few years, after selling a company doing personalized voice recognition for 8 wonderful years, and I can tell you that AI is not well understood at all, which is really unfortunate.

Yeah, I have a notion of what can be done at the moment, but I don't know the latest developments etc, so you're probably right. Do you have any literature which can help me understand why you think it'll mean the end of humanity?

Great picture thenewgreen

I'm curious what you can do with this in a few years! (and it seems I have some reading up to do on this)

Ah, that does make it more clear. Thank you for clearing that up. I do still disagree with that somewhat, because we as humans can do things the AI is not capable of. Or at least, not yet capable of. It's a bit like you would redesign a module someone else already created just because you can.

The only thing we do know is that big changes are about to happen and many people will be caught unaware. We need to find a good answer to various possible outcomes and try to steer this into the right direction.

Scary indeed. All those ads, all the information coming your way all the time! It would be maddening. At least with all those access devices, I can simply turn them off when it becomes too much.

Let me just get this straight. Do you agree or disagree with the piece? Your commentary is a bit run on and I cannot make a lot of sense out of it.

Anyway, in some ways I can agree with the piece. Humans are quite surprisingly flexible in what they can do. I mean, we have jacks of all trades on this very forum. However, I also believe that AI will automate away many (if not most) jobs. The transportation sector will be hit by self driving trucks, banks by even more automation where people can do their own things without having to go to a bank. For example, in the Netherlands banks have gone from offices with tellers and everything to spaces where larger decisions are made, accounts are opened and closed (mainly because you need ID to open an account) and people who don't know how to use the computer system are helped via a local version of the very same computer system. No tellers needed, only a few advisers because the brunt of the info is online. But the core of what I disagree with in this piece is that there is no reason to suppose that the new industries that will arise cannot be automated.

So, let's explore that for a bit, shall we? Nowadays we have all kinds of industries that we did not consider automatable even just a few years back. Now we have computers doing image recognition, resulting in cars driving themselves, computers assisting doctors with diagnoses. We have machine learning, which has had and has a huge impact on various computer systems we use every day. Essentially, if it can be made into an algorithm, a computer can do it. This is not bad per se, and it will probably open us up for more joyful pursuits. But it does open up another can of worms, as our old economic system cannot work when only a few people have income (assuming new industries get automated away as quickly as they came).

But to get to (what I think) is your point. Converting to General AI will indeed be painful, but I don't think that the resulting AI will have a good reason to just kill off humans. We are not completely worthless, I mean, we still do things that AI can hardly replicate and we do it way more efficiently and effortlessly than AI can! Sure, AI programming will not be "just like now, but better!", but it probably also isn't the apocalyptic wasteland of Terminator or Matrix. We can adapt and we should adapt to the new reality, but as always, we don't really know what will be coming. All we can do is speculate and prepare for various outcomes.

I would be at a loss without a computer. I need it for school (engineering student, that shit is impossible without a computer) and I need it to find information. I would also need a new hobby as the computer is sort of my hobby with a little bit of programming and researching open source tools :p

I social media I can do without and TV (this is actually the thing I want to get rid of) and just start reading more instead of wasting time on forums. Video chat would be a great loss though as I want to keep in touch with some people on the other side of the great pond.

Yup, I found that out as well. Funny thing is that you'll make some friends on the other side of the pond, so you'll miss friends even if you're at "home". If you need help planning your trip to NL, don't hesitate to ask :)

A bit late to reply to this, but thanks for mentioning me. I'm still interested in parkour and love to see it. Unfortunately, I'm still not actually practising...

And Max, I don't know how you did (or will do), but kudos for doing it!