I hope all enjoy(ed) a wonderful Thanksgiving Day (US). This is a post about OpenAI’s ChatGPT5 likely having achieved Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - “Project Q-Star (Q*)” sometime around November 15. It makes an earlier warning from “The Godfather of AI” timely and very important to understand.
Once the meals, football games, and dog shows are over, the following is a compelling interview that is worth watching in its entirety:
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of Artificial Intelligence,” explains why we must immediately insist that the engineers and experts in creating AI algorithms produce empirical research to determine the most effective means of preventing our General Artificial Intelligence creations from “taking over.”
Dr. Hinton explains in detail how he believes that computer AI systems already in existence are superior to biological intelligence because of their ability to instantly “teach” other systems everything they have learned and because their knowledge is not degraded over time (i.e. - they are not vulnerable to loss of “institutional knowledge” like humans are), and their “lives” are infinite.
He is 75 years old and he is scared. He thinks we should be, too - since superintelligence is imminent - if it does not already exist.
In addition, Sam Altman’s recent firing and re-hiring at OpenAI may very well have been related to his handling and/or failure to alert the Board to the company’s having recently made a breakthrough in Q-Star (Q*) “artificial general intelligence.”
The following YouTube video covers some of what Altman and OpenAI have been successful in creating very recently (since November 15):
This is a very big deal. Artificial General Intelligence - with “self-awareness” and the ability to infinitely replicate itself.
Here’s the link to a Reuters article explaining how communications pertaining to an AGI breakthrough at OpenAI’s Q-Star Project likely precipitated the firing (and subsequent re-hiring) of Sam Altman:
OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say
By Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin, and Krystal Hu
November 23, 2023
The first 7 to 8 minutes of Dr. Hinton’s video confirm that my understanding of how the brain works on a macro level are correct, a boolean logic brain and a biological brain that I call ‘the subconscious.’
Over the last few years there have been lots of discussions about free will, pro and con, some scientists even appealing to quantum mechanics to support their positions. If “will” resides in the biological or subconscious brain, then “free will” is very unlikely, humans would not be any different from any other life form, will depending only on how the brain was wired and trained. As to logical brains, they should all come to the same conclusion. That precludes “will” from residing in the boolean brain since we don’t all agree. Conclusion, we know diddly squat!
The danger of AI is that it can be trained for good or bad. AI has no ‘conscience.’ Imagine humanoid robots trained by Nazis.
The Captain
Conscience
A triangle in the heart that starts to spin when we do bad things. The spinning alerts us to stop. As the triangle spins the tips wear down. If the triangle spins long enough the tips wear away and no longer alerts us to stop.
