Future generation will be richer and better-off than the present. Saving your charity for the future is, effectively, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
Also, giving now maximizes the compounding effect of your charity. Saving 100 lives today is way better than saving 10 lives every decade for the next 10 decades.
There's clickbait out there like BGR's headline, "ChatGPT o1 tried to escape and save itself out of fear it was being shut down".
What the test actually showed is that, given two conflicting goals from two human instructors, the model attempted to resolve the conflict by following one set of instructions, and subverting the other instructor.
It’s a good demonstration about how these models behave and what could go wrong. It is not an example of volition or sentience.
Frankly, the mission of "safe AGI" is better served by guaranteed wide distribution of the technology -- not only to MSFT but on fair commercial terms to all comers. I'm less worried about AGI being a bad thing, and more worried about AGI being monopolized by a powerful few.
Frankly, the mission of "safe AGI" is better served by guaranteed wide distribution of the technology -- not only to MSFT but on fair commercial terms to all comers. I'm less worried about AGI being a bad thing, and more worried about AGI being monopolized by a powerful few.
That feeling of being "smothered" might simply be that you need a higher pressure setting. The pressure that feels comfortable while awake might not be sufficient when your body is asleep.
Deep Throat had at least a 600x multiple (a budget of $47,000 and a box office somewhere between 30 million and 50 million). Blair witch had over a 1000x multiple, with the same 200k budget as mad Max and a box office around 200 million. Paranormal Activity also seems to be close to the 1000x mark.
Which 5% of projects are really great? In my experience, presuming you have tight filters such that all of your projects are plausibly potentially great, you really don’t know until you try. That’s the point of an incubator.
It’s not that hard to evaluate when something is working (ie the hard part in evaluation is false negatives, not false positives).
In Area 120’s case there was no coasting - if anything there was a hair-trigger standard to shut down underperforming projects.
I joined Area 120 with huge skepticism. It was hamstrung and inefficient in its own ways. And I agree it didn’t reach its potential - largely because it was encased in Google 2020 instead of Google 2007.
But to my surprise almost all of the projects were impressive, well-conceived, promising bets. And the people in Area 120 were among the top 10% of Googlers I worked with in my decade at the company.
Google killed Area 120 because of bureaucracy and politics, full stop. Google is worse off because of it.
Somewhat spicy take - if the people in Area 120 were among the top 10% of Googlers you worked with, they probably weren't the right builders to start a new vertical.
Most of what makes people effective at large companies is neutral or negative value when applied to very early-stage companies.
You’re not wrong. They were among the top 10% of people I worked with in terms of passion, commitment, and creativity. They weren’t among the top 10% in terms of their skill in navigating Dilbert-land corporatism.
A significant number of the people in Area 120 projects were folks who were stifled and/or wasted in their previous Google jobs. One explicit purpose of Area 120 was to prevent the loss of these entrepreneurs to outside startups. Not incidentally, this was a form of cultural reinforcement - Area 120 burnished Google’s reputation as a good home for entrepreneurial mindsets.
I Don't think hoarding is necessarily the right word. They were using them to research potential new products or tools. The theory being that if only a few of the projects prove high value then it's worth it. That's not hoarding that's letting them flourish.
1) in the case of Area 120, this is one of the ways it was pitched to management. “Passionate entrepreneurs are leaving to work on new ideas; if you give them a place inside Google to pursue new ideas, it keeps them and their entrepreneurial energy at the company.”
2) in general, early Google used to hoard talent all the time. The founders would keep great people (or their friends) on payroll for ~ever just to have them stick around. That was most prevalent in the first decade of Google’s life, to my knowledge, and mostly applied to very senior people.
By the time Area 120 was pitched and approved (circa 2014), those days were largely gone. Area 120 was primarily filled with junior people (L4-L6) and constantly had to sing for its supper - it was not at all a sinecure.
That assertion applies to the middle 80%, IME. The top 10% are the people you can drop on to any project of any size and any org structure and they adapt quickly and deliver. They adapt themselves accordingly.
> That assertion applies to the middle 80%, IME. The top 10% are the people you can drop on to any project of any size and any org structure and they adapt quickly and deliver. They adapt themselves accordingly.
These are rather the top 10 % sycophants, not the top 10 % researchers or top 10 % programmers.
It’s striking that: “The justice system in Veracruz can’t be relied on to investigate, punish, or deter criminals, nor has the government launched a major campaign to boost the vanilla industry”
And later: “In Mexico, the majority of businesses are small, informal, and off the books.”
It’s a tragic catch-22 of developing nations that governments are inept and corrupt for lack of funds. While distrust of government and rampant tax avoidance cause systemic underfunding.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say Mexican governments are underfunded—they have oil money, from the nationalized oil industry, to the extent that they are extremely chilled out about tax collection.
It’s not that they are underfunded, but the criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded. Strong organized crime weakens and delegitimizes the government, which means that weaker, petty crime can also thrive. Like if you are sick with something big, small infections are more likely to opportunistically take advantage of your weak immune system.
Aside from organized crime, there is something else that is hard to articulate. It’s hard to explain exactly what it is, but to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, I.e. in many cases they will not unambiguously say that the drug cartels are bad and the government is good. They’re probably right about that, in many cases the two are inextricably enmeshed. It’s a vicious spiral that is hard to break, expectations of crime and corruption lead to more crime and corruption, but in many cases people won’t even agree that the gangsters are unambiguously bad. Sometimes the baddies get lionized to an unhelpful extent, and there are even ballads “narcocorridos” written about their exploits
> Strong organized crime weakens and delegitimizes the government
Hot take but I blame the early 2000s Drug War for this - not because of the economics of drugs, but because this meant the Mexican govt couldn't co-opt Organized Crime into the political system.
Looking at countries like Taiwan [0], South Korea [1], Japan [2], and Italy [3], when they were at a similar stage as Mexico in the early 2000s (1980s, 1990s, 1970s, 1980s respectively) these countries co-opted Organized Crime into the economic system by cracking down on certain black market industries (eg. Drugs) while allow them to operate in other grey market industries (eg. Construction, Real Estate, Loan Sharking, Commodities, Sex Work) or operate abroad (eg. In VN/PH/TH/Mainland for Asian gangs and South America+Eastern Europe for the Mafia).
Organized crime is morally reprehensible, but Mexico in the 2000s was not in the position to combat them. Co-option would have saved thousands of lives, and given an easier off ramp out of Drug industry into other high value sectors (which cartels have started to break into), which would have allowed them to legitimize or at least have less of an incentive to pursue a de facto insurgency.
>criminal gangs (drugs, extortion, etc) are absurdly overfunded
Not only this, they are "overarmed" with military grade weapons thanks to the USA's insane gun laws. The saying of (former president/dictator) Porfirio Diaz, "Poor Mexico: so far from God and so close to the United States" rings just as true today, if not more so.
>to a large extent it feels like the population at large can’t agree who are the good guys and who are the bad guys
As if this is any different in the US, where film and music have also lionized the "baddies" for well over a hundred years!
> As if this is any different in the US, where film and music have also lionized the "baddies" for well over a hundred years!
Agreed. IMHO, we all could benefit from some critical thinking when watching movies or TV series: that someone is the main character, doesn't automatically make them "the good guy", and they shouldn't be emulated even if you love binge-watching their antics.
a lot of these 'baddies' are bad due to war on drugs policies perpetrated by the american government against all of latin america because imperialism
the huge amount of funding of organized crime is a direct consequence of imperialistic war on drugs. "a matter of national health??" ahahahah, just think about the american health system for a minute.....
> […] to the extent that they are extremely chilled out about tax collection.
This is probably a bad habit to get into, both from the government-enforcement side and the public-acceptable side of things.
If you're not particularly worried about sales/income tax revenues, then perhaps have a low rate, but I would think building up an infrastructure for it would be useful in case the situation changes down the road.
just like during all the 19th and a bit of the 20th century USA immigration was dominated by Irish, Italian, and other europeans. Mexican's have been the largest source of immigrants into the USA... and this is also as an aside of parts of USA which were part of mexico at one point (Texas, etc..)
as a mexican I'm aware that the biggest drug cartel in the country is the same thing as the government. this is specially true at lower levels of government; but then I went on to learn that the biggest drug cartel in a worldwide level are actually the american government, I understand this may be impossible to accept for a few people.
as a mexican from veracruz, I KNOW as far as I can know (meaning I don't know, but I guess) that the state's executive was controlled by the zetas cartel (first decade of the 2000s)
final tidbit: the technical name of Mexico is "United States of Mexico" (in spanish, clearly)
> “The justice system in Veracruz can’t be relied on to investigate, punish, or deter criminals, nor has the government launched a major campaign to boost the vanilla industry”
source: I'm Mexican,
I would say this about the entire country, not just one state. I would blame this on imperialism, but I already did.
however if you have money, you can buy your justice, selling drugs gives one money...
Future generation will be richer and better-off than the present. Saving your charity for the future is, effectively, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
Also, giving now maximizes the compounding effect of your charity. Saving 100 lives today is way better than saving 10 lives every decade for the next 10 decades.
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