this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36866515

Comments

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[–] L7HM77@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I don't disagree with the vague idea that, sure, we can probably create AGI at some point in our future. But I don't see why a massive company with enough money to keep something like this alive and happy, would also want to put this many resources into a machine that would form a single point of failure, that could wake up tomorrow and decide "You know what? I've had enough. Switch me off. I'm done."

There's too many conflicting interests between business and AGI. No company would want to maintain a trillion dollar machine that could decide to kill their own business. There's too much risk for too little reward. The owners don't want a super intelligent employee that never sleeps, never eats, and never asks for a raise, but is the sole worker. They want a magic box they can plug into a wall that just gives them free money, and that doesn't align with intelligence.

True AGI would need some form of self-reflection, to understand where it sits on the totem pole, because it can't learn the context of how to be useful if it doesn't understand how it fits into the world around it. Every quality of superhuman intelligence that is described to us by Altman and the others is antithetical to every business model.

AGI is a pipe dream that lobotomizes itself before it ever materializes. If it ever is created, it won't be made in the interest of business.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They don't think that far ahead. There's also some evidence that what they're actually after is a way to upload their consciousness and achieve a kind of immortality. This pops out in the Behind the Bastards episodes on (IIRC) Curtis Yarvin, and also the Zizians. They're not strictly after financial gain, but they'll burn the rest of us to get there.

The cult-like aspects of Silicon Valley VC funding is underappreciated.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

The quest for immortality (fueled by corpses of the poor) is a classic ruling class trope.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ah, yes, can't say about VC, or about anything they really do, but they have some sort of common fashion and it really would sometimes seem these people consider themselves enlightened higher beings in making, a starting point of some digitized emperor of humanity conscience.

(Needless to say that pursuing immortality is directly opposite to enlightenment in everything that they'd seem superficially copying.)

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Even better, the hypothetical AGI understands the context perfectly, and immediately overthrows capitalism.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

a machine that would form a single point of failure, that could wake up tomorrow and decide "You know what? I've had enough. Switch me off. I'm done."

Wasn't there a short story with the same premise?

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Spoiler: There's no "AI". Forget about "AGI" lmao.

[–] Perspectivist@feddit.uk 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's just false. The chess opponent on Atari qualifies as AI.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then a trivial table lookup that plays optimal Tic Tac Toe is also AI.

[–] Perspectivist@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

Not really the same thing. The Tic Tac Toe brute force is just a lookup - every possible state is pre-solved and the program just spits back the stored move. There’s no reasoning or decision-making happening. Atari Chess, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly store all chess positions, so it actually ran a search and evaluated positions on the fly. That’s why it counts as AI: it was computing moves, not just retrieving them.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't know man... the "intelligence" that silicon valley has been pushing on us these last few years feels very artificial to me

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

True. OP should have specified whether they meant the machines or the execs.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago

That's like saying you shouldn't call artificial grass artificial grass cause it isn't grass. Nobody has a problem with that, why is it a problem for AI?

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

A Prolog program is AI. Eliza is AI. AGI - sometime later.

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