200Bn Weights of Responsibility
docs.google.comIronic. Out there are artists who feel intense anxiety from the advancements of AI sapping away at their passion. Here is someone who has both passion and money, feeling the same kind of anxiety.
We've been told it's not a zero sum game, that there's a net gain at the end of this game. But what if there's net loss?
Not having adequate space and time to properly grieve and process the loss of his mother, combined with his existing mental health challenges and the relentless pace of the AI industry, likely played an even more significant role than the industry pressures alone.
There were strikes against the first radio stations when they played a record instead of using a live orchestra. They had leverage that does not exist today, so I feel their anxiety.
> Doing AI research at the moment can feel like participating in a war. And from Adolph Hitler to Dutch Schulz. it is widely known that going to war can lead to grave outcomes including psychopathy, divorce and suicide.
Brother… Please… you’re an AI researcher probably making half a million dollars a year to screw around with hyperparams or cuda kernels, shoveling some of the worst python code I’ve ever seen. Get over it.
It would feel a bit more honest if you quoted the very next line:
> Of course, this is not to equate participation in AI research with physical combat in a ‘literal war’.
Are you aware that this man killed himself?
That’s mental illness, doesn’t mean being a well paid AI researcher is equivalent to fighting in WW2, sorry.
He just lost a teammate. That kind of loss hits hard, no matter someone's salary or position.
The pace of AI progress is genuinely unsettling for many people in every profession right now. I’m thankful that engineers at frontier labs are being transparent.