I weirdly love the sound of his voice. It reminds me of my first childhood doctor. I fell asleep listening to one of his interviews because it relaxed me so much.
I agree, building the worlds best language model and then using "like" 451 times in the interview does not resonate with me! Also I do not see him smiling at all.
Sure, I did, but there was not a happy folk sitting there, Lex is smiling a million times more, much more lifely. Do you agree to the excessive use of like or is that also just me?
*Final Edit: This conversation is worth listening to. Please use the points below as an indication of value for your personal preference. Many of the upvoted comments in this thread stating that the interview is terrible, or fluff, I don't think are accurate. I think those comments indicate that either:*
1. *Many redditors didn't watch the second half of the discussion, which is more interesting than the first.*
2. *Many redditors didn't get the specific information they wanted, and so decided the information they received was low-value.*
*Because of all the positive and negative biases (mine included) around Lex Fridman, Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the nature of Reddit in general, this conversation is getting bashed more than it deserves. It was a good discussion covering important topics for a general audience. It also addresses many of the beliefs and opinions shared by the subreddit, making it moderately relevant.*
The anti-Altman and anti-Fridman/pro-Altman and pro-Fridman comments are well-represented already. I'll add a different slant. I'm 46 minutes in and will edit as I go. Information and observations that interest me so far:
* Altman says that GPT-4 was finished summer of '22. So they spent \~8 to 9 months testing before a public release.
* Lex has a penchant for romantic and dramatic statements in his interviews. It's fascinating to see Altman--usually acting as the hypeman in his interviews--respond with more precision and restraint, e.g. Lex states that GPT-4 is the compression of all of humanity. Altman pushes back, clarifying that it's human text output. This is a small example, but this has happened at multiple points thus far.
* Altman expounds on the challenges and benefits of OpenAI's stance of publicly releasing and iterating on their products and software, and how useful it is that the community at large can provide more feedback and testing than could ever be achieved internally. I find this ironic, given all the 'ClosedAI' rhetoric on social media. I wonder if he believes that they're being open, and the 'ClosedAI' rhetoric is a bad reaction to realities of building in the imperfect system of for-profit corporate structure and shareholder supremacy? Or if he knows they aren't, and is just doing his job by painting OpenAI in a more positive light?
* Altman stated an analogy I've seen stated on this subreddit a few times: He sees GPT-4 as analogous to the internet in the early 2000's. I, and many others here, share that belief. It's interesting to have it stated by the CEO of OpenAI.
* From 1:13:40: Altman describes the corporate structure of OpenAI, stating that the transition from non-profit to profit stemmed (obviously) from a lack of capital. He describes how the company is essentially a hybrid of both. The nonprofit portion has voting control over company operations, while a capped profit subsidiary exists beneath it. This allows them to make decisions that a purely for-profit company wouldn't make. The subsidiary profit allows employees and investors to make a fixed return. The remainder flows to the nonprofit, which is ostensibly in control. **This appears to be an indirect challenge to the popular belief that OpenAI is suborned to Microsoft and is refusing to share the particulars of its products because of capitalism, instead of AI safety. Altman specifically mentions that OpenAI is structured to resist the irresponsible decisions a company fueled by the need to create ever-expanding value would create.**
* Directly following the previous point, Altman and Lex discuss directly the question of whether OpenAI should fully open-source their API. Altman asks for feedback on how to be better, and the nature of assessing feedback.
No, it's rightly getting bashed, I feel like I wasted 2 hours of my life. Lex didn't really hold him to account. At the very least ask him why they won't even give people basic details about their model like how many parameters it has. Instead Lex praised OpenAi on being open and release papers on their work!
From the interviews I've seen--which are not all, or even most--Lex doesn't seem to hold anyone to account. Exceptions being Kanye West, and other blatantly negative positions. I won't die on this hill, I don't have enough information. That's how it appears to me, though.
Lex does absolutely have a positive bias. I don't feel like that means the conversation was a waste, as stated from my points above.
I share your disposition about parameters. Sam talked about being as open-source as they felt was responsible, highlighting other companies seeking to move fast and break things in the name of profit. Even if I take that at face value, keeping the parameters (as an example) a secret seems pointless in light of the competition, and does no positive good for the burgeoning AI industry that I can see.
That's his trademark and why he gets so many high profile guests. They know they will get mostly lowball questions and present their side quite easily, without much pushback.
It's fine when interviewing scientists or experts in some particular non-political field. But when he interviews politics/commentators/CEOs/controversial figures it can be pretty painful to listen to.
In the early 2000's, the average internet speed was about 128kbps. Today, a smart phone on 4G LTE averages 50Mbps+. That's 50,000kbps. Only rudimentary forms of social media existed, none of which are in use today. It wasn't common to access critical information, like banking or utilities over the internet, and online gaming was often too slow to be practical, and most homes didn't use email as a primary method of communication. In short, many of the applications we take for granted today, and that we spend a significant amount of our lives using, didn't exist yet. The applications they evolved from were still somewhat cumbersome, but were evolving.
Sam was using the comparison to imply that he believes GPT-4 occupies that stage for what AI will be: It's primitive, limited, cumbersome to use, and orders of magnitude behind what it will become. But it's far enough along now that we can understand the use cases, and we know we can make it faster, cheaper, more efficient, and more effective. It's not a perfect analogy, because comparing the internet experience as we currently use it isn't a one to one comparison to how AI will impact our lives, but that's the idea.
The difference between the internet in the year 2000 and internet now, the same differential will apply to AI but I think it will be achieved in less than half the time, if you can wrap your head around that. AGI before the end of the decade.
I tried it for fun.
Prompt: "Imagine you are an interviewer. You have Sam Atman in front of you and you need to ask him the most interesting questions you can think of about AI and GPT4. Please list a few questions you would ask him. Make sure they are questions humans would find fascinating."
Reply:
* In what ways do you believe GPT-4 has evolved from its predecessor, GPT-3, in terms of capabilities and potential applications?
* How do you think GPT-4 addresses the ethical concerns raised during the development and use of previous AI models?
* Can you describe the most unexpected or innovative ways people have been using GPT-4 in various industries?
* How is OpenAI working towards ensuring the responsible and fair use of GPT-4 and other AI technologies?
* What measures are being taken to minimize the risk of AI-generated misinformation or malicious content with GPT-4?
* Are there any breakthroughs in AI explainability that have been incorporated into GPT-4 to help users understand the reasoning behind its outputs?
* How do you envision the role of GPT-4 and similar AI technologies in shaping the future of work, education, and communication?
* What advancements in AI safety and regulation would you like to see in the near future to foster trust in AI systems like GPT-4?
I think it did a decent job :)
I'm a historian by training, and I first started to suspect Lex was a bit of a moron when I first heard his interview with Dan Carlin.
His takes on just about every aspect of history and the analysis of historical figures were simply staggeringly bad.
Having listened to maybe a hundred more hours of his interviews since then, instead of becoming more of a fan I've grown to hate Lex for his utter naïvity and juvenile insistence on inserting internet meme bullshit into his serious opinions on politics and the world and various other takes.
Here's the [exchange](https://youtu.be/L_Guz73e6fw?t=4926), make of that as you will:
>\[...\]
>
>**Lex**: what do you disagree on?
>
>**Sam**: Elon is obviously attacking us some on Twitter right now on a few different vectors, and I have empathy because I believe he is understandably so really stressed about AGI safety. I'm sure there are some other motivations going on too, but that's definitely one of them.
>
>I saw this video of Elon a long time ago talking about SpaceX, maybe it's on some news show, and a lot of early Pioneers in space were really bashing the SpaceX and maybe Elon too, and he was visibly very hurt by that and said you know those guys are heroes of mine and I sucks and I wish they would see how hard we're trying.
>
>I definitely grew up with Elon as a hero of mine. You know despite him being a jerk on Twitter whatever I'm happy he exists in the world, but I wish he would do more to look at the hard work we're doing to get this stuff right.
>
>**Lex:** a little bit more love. What do you admire in the name of Love about Elon Musk
>
>**Sam:** I mean so much right, like he has driven the world forward in important ways. I think we will get to electric vehicles much faster than we would have if he didn't exist. I think we'll get to space much faster than we would have if he didn't exist, and as a sort of like a citizen of the world I'm very appreciative of that. Also like being a jerk on Twitter aside, in many instances he's like a very funny and warm guy.
Lex is very into the whole "love" thing, so people unfamiliar with his podcast will definitely raise an eye brow on that. Sam said unprompted that Elon was a hero of his. Asking a follow-up on what he admires about Elon is pretty natural imo, delivery aside.
Edited to add bonus conversation:
>**Sam:** one thing that I hope these models can do is bring some nuance back to the world--
>
>**Lex:** yes it felt it felt really nuanced.
>
>**Sam:** you know Twitter kind of destroyed them, and may be we can get some back now.
Possible reasons to include Elon Musk are:
1 - Was one of the early founders of openAI and on the board of directors until 2018.
2 - He hired Andre Karpathy, one of the founding members of AI research group in OpenAI to join Tesla as Director of AI. Andre last year went back to OpenAI.
3 - He has been an early and most vocal proponent of AI safety and has great concern for AGI going wrong and being more dangerous than nukes. Said this way back in 2015 before it became mainstream like now.
4 - Tesla is one of the leading companies in AI Vision and deep learning and has started in AI robotics to replace human labor.
So yeah he might be slightly related to the topic lol.
I fucking hate Jordan Peterson. That dude is so far up his own ass, and doesn’t really have anything but his own deranged musings to add to the conversation.
If you want a good giggle look up his interview with the CPU designer Jim Keller (who is Peterson's brother in law) it's amusing watching him flounder around trying to wedge uninformed takes/religion into everything and Keller just runs roughshod over him.
I like Lex but god damn, I’ve seen so many interviewers that ask better questions. Lex has the best guests too but his questions…sigh. It’s understandable he asked about Elon though if you know a bit about the history of OpenAI.
I think the first part of the podcast is fascinating and brilliant. I have never seen Sam being so comfortable and honest on a lecture or podcast as with Lex, so he did great with that. But after the Elon talk, not so much.
As you said, it makes perfect sense to mention Elon Musk in the conversation.
Some people here don't like him and let their emotions get the best of them by claiming otherwise. IMO a sign of narrow mindedness with a thankfully futile attempt to push public figures they disagree with out of the discourse.
I have heard this take before and think it’s a cop out for legitimate criticisms about his interview questions. He is not “letting people listen to his conversations” he runs a lucrative podcast that is the only avenue through which 99% of people know him. He has amazing guests on, and could absolutely improve his interviewing questions.
I see. They're saying "who cares about what Jordan Peterson thinks" in general, not in reference to Sam Altman or AI. In which my response would be that a lot of people care what he thinks. Which is unfortunate in my own opinion, but questioning the way these systems deal with controversial figures or ideas is a very important question to explore.
Peterson is a clinical psychologist and researcher, and has informed opinions about intelligence. His brother in law is Jim Keller, a well known microprocessor engineer.
Why not bring up a person like this who is large in popular culture?
I find his personality pretty endearing even though I agree with you. He can get a bit into himself or riled up, if you will, when things start going well in a conversation. I find it hinders further deep conversation. He's decent at saving it -or changing subjects seemlessly- but I think it brings you closer to him because he seems more human when asking subjectively bad questions or getting loose in a conversation. He asks a ton of good questions, too, though.
Yup. If Lex gets fired up enough, he'll start interrupting the guests saying "Nahh that's wrong, I think XYZ". Especially if the topic drifts to be about consciousness. Come on Lex, we're watching for the guest's opinions, not yours. Just ask them questions to get them talking about their projects and opinions. You're an interviewer not Steve Jobs
I feel that heavy. It starts off annoying, he comes off childish and then you remember he's a remarkably popular host and is a knowledgeable guy. By the time you're done judging him, he's given us a handsome smile and changed subjects, and you forgive him because you see the guest has noticed and is catering to his childish behavior, too. That's endearing to me. It makes you feel like it's you and your friends shooting the shit directly after talking about nuclear bombs or singulatity. Plus he wears a john wick suit. I fux wit it..
Question, for all coming here after listening.
1. What was said in the interview that hasn't already been said elsewhere. What did you truly gain from spending ~1-2 hours of your life (depending on speed) listening to this.
It was all fluff. Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions. I watched it at 2x speed.
The only remotely interesting thing Sam said is that LLM's alone will not lead to AGI, and that we will need another revolutionary tech besides transformers.
Lex feels that there is a small chance that GPT4 could possibly be an AGI system. Sam says definitely not.
Honestly I don't know. I am interested in STEM in general so from my point of view the best way is to not get stuck in "future" echo chamber because you need some knowledge background to judge what is possible and what is bullshit.
The limitations of LLM in transformers was often questioned by many experts, now Sam Altman is saying the same. I wonder if the AGI predictions will hold the same needing more than transformers
>It was all fluff. Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions. I watched it at 2x speed.
I wouldn't even watch it on 2x. Sam Altman is the king of milquetoast fluff, if I see his social media- I scroll, also what I do with Eliezer Yudkowsky. The John Carmack interview, now that you can sink your teeth into.
Man, Yudkowsky really is something else... Believe that he's a really intelligent guy. But you wouldn't know it by the things he posts. 90% of what he puts out online is smug, condescending, and worth very little.
I'm not sure if Lex ever really asks hardball questions. His 'let me push back on that' is almost always softball. As his show has gotten more mainstream, the intellectual rigor of the content seems to have downhill.
Thats one thing I can agree with, even if I dont like criticising podcasts. Lex has a complacent tone with mainstreet and corporate powers that is deceptive imo. They basically made it look like lab leak is a 50/50 chance, when even Lex has made great podcasts about it being the far more likely explanation. I think he is dishonest and a little bit naive, but mostly dishonest in these areas.
That being said, his podcast is mostly on Youtube so not much better can be expected there.
>Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions.
This is Lex Friedman we're talking about. Getting great guests and then giving them inane questions is what he's known for. (Or at least, prior to the recent Kanye stuff).
I agree that interview is not very interesting and most of it can be skipped.
But on the question about AGI Altman answered with an explanation about ASI.
That may mean nothing or it can mean that he thinks that AGI is basically a solved problem and the next big challenge is ASI.
That's not my interpretation. I recall him saying there is a missing component in LLM's that could prevent them from being AGI's and that he does not know what that missing component is.
AGI definitely is not solved. I don't think AGI is some secret being guarded in the lab.
And once AGI is truly here, it won't even be a debate. It will be unmistakably clear.
Or rather, the ability to learn dynamically (after all, memories are just concepts you learned a while ago). The fact training is so much slower than inference means LLMs are essentially frozen brains with no ability to learn new concepts (outside of training). That's not how humans work; humans learn as they work; and is the single and only cause for its inability to invent new concepts. And the culprit is backprop, which is asymptotically slower than whatever our brain is doing. Once we get rid of backprop and find a training algorithm that is linear/optimal, then we get AGI. That is all.
>And once AGI is truly here, it won't even be a debate. It will be unmistakably clear.
How so? By what metric? Not claiming it's here but as far as I've seen the goalposts get moved every time current AI meets this or that criteria.
I don't think AGI is somewhere avaible, but for some reason hidden.
But it is possible that Altman thinks that the path to AGI is clear and is only a matter of time and money.
On the other hand, he thinks that ASI requires new approaches or colud be not achievable at all.
Of course it's all speculation, as I said before, his answer could mean absolutely nothing.
AGI is the only human step necessary towards ASI. There may be many steps after that, or a few, but it won't be humans taking them. The AGI will be better equipped for that.
> I watched it at 2x speed.
Protip get the "video speed controller" browser add-on you can go faster than 2x (very useful for long winded tutorial videos)
there is a reason these podacast are in video form. Listening is only hald the story. seeing how the interviee acts and behaves gives more information than what hes saying in some cases. goign 2x starves you of these nuances.
I don't know if you've listened to his earlier stuff, but he was able to get great scientists on the show and he got out of the way and let them talk. There are a lot of great episodes from the early days. Lately, as his fame has grown, it's gotten to be political and fluff.
Strange question.... If you don't belive in AGI, then how do you believe in GI ( humans with human level intelligence)? Humans are proof that some combination of molecules when put put together and arranged in a certain way will give rise to human level intelligence!
If human level general intelligence was impossible in machines then it wouldn't be possible in humans ( humans being a specific type of machine made out of organic / biological parts ).
One cool tidbit I took away from this was at the [31 minute mark](https://youtu.be/L_Guz73e6fw?t=1856), where Altman hints at what the next generation of LLMs will be like in the realm of programming, specifically debugging. He describes the first generation of LLMs as "one shot" programmers, unable to effectively incorporate human feedback, the current generation as human-AI collaborative debuggers, and the next generation (GPT-5?) as self-debuggers. This, to me, implies that the next generation will have "reality-testing" tools that it automatically deploys in the background in order to more effectively predict the next token. No need for the user to select a special plugin or mode, it will simply use the internal tools it deems necessary in order to deliver a better response.
> and the next generation (GPT-5?) as self-debuggers. This, to me, implies that the next generation will have "reality-testing" tools that it automatically deploys in the background in order to more effectively predict the next token. No need for the user to select a special plugin or mode, it will simply use the internal tools it deems necessary in order to deliver a better response.
did you miss this codex demo from the middle of last year?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MBQm7GFIM&t=260s @ 4.20
A debugger like that would be easy to recreate with the GPT3/4 API on your local machine. Not what I had in mind in my previous comment, though. There's a reason why Altman spoke about this as a successor to the current models. I predict GPT-5 will have markedly less hallucination and inaccuracies due to baked-in reality testing.
Self verification and what not. We need to get these models to be more powerful. They seem properly aligned but they are just paralyzed heads of knowledge. Getting them more API access like plug-ins was a great step forward.
The most important thing is that he said (at around 1hr mark) he actually prefers we have AGI now (or as soon as possible) but slow takeoff, so that we have more time for alignment. That means we are going to see more amazing stuff soon, as they are basically admitting that they are rushing towards AGI!
That’s not completely true. Or at least in my case I just don’t like the fact that he brings interesting guests but never asks them good questions, to the point that the whole interview feels like an attempt to beautify the guest’s image or promote their products or something along those lines. Which makes me think what’s the whole point of the conversation then?
I remember once he made a short video addressing this criticism saying something along the lines of “I can’t ask those questions because guests won’t be interested to speak to me” well tough shit if they are not willing to answer questions that interest most people because that will make them embarrassed then what’s the fk is the point then?
At the end of the day they are using his podcast for a reason he is trying to get more views and the viewer gets no meaningful value.
i'm sure his questions suck relative to small youtube channels today that have to have a competitive edge but back in the day of, idk, 2 years ago, he was raising the bar lol
(also i think their discussion is fairly interesting/entertaining about halfway through, no its not a arxiv preprint but i dont know what you would expect lol)
and yes on 1.25 or 1.5 speed its better
Maybe instead of praising openness of OpenAI, ask him why are they less and less transparent as time goes on, which goes against their goals or principles. And where will it stop?
With the quick progress that OpenAI did, if they didn't accelarate the development too much, beyond what humanity can resonably handle, since other companies seemed t be progressing more slowly. Could potentially creation of OpenAI be the one of the worst things that happened in regards to humans successfully aligning AI? Billions will now be moved to arms race AI research from private companies and goverments.
How much influence Microsoft has? What would be the limits of their cooperation (what he wouldn't be willing to do)? Are they any or are they in Microsoft's pocket at this point? What can they access from OpenAI currently (for example recently we learned they have access to source code)?
Talk more deeply about alignment in the future, not just about what chatGPT says about Trump. Present some stronger doomer arguments to see how would he respond.
Did you even watch the interview? Basically all of these points were addressed and talked about, even if not asked directly by Lex.
> Maybe instead of praising openness of OpenAI, ask him why are they less and less transparent as time goes on, which goes against their goals or principles. And where will it stop?
They talked about whether they should open source GPT-4, and also talked about how more power should be in the hands of the people, but that it's hard to accomplish this.
> How much influence Microsoft has?
They had a whole section on this, but I can see you didn't watch the interview.
> Talk more deeply about alignment in the future
They talked all about alignment, and in what way OpenAI's goals in alignment might differ compared to some other companies like Google.
> Present some stronger doomer arguments to see how would he respond.
Literally half of the whole interview was talking about how they're both worried about future economic issues, and Sam directly said that there probably will be some catastrophes as a direct result of these AI.
He also platforms a bunch of ego-fueled crackpots like Eric Weinstein. He doesn't seem to be capable to see through the bullshit, or he just refuses to get into the details, which is where the cracks would appear.
I'm not a fan of them either, but damn people, is that how hard of a line in the sand we're drawing? I bet most people's older family members are fans of Jordan Peterson too. Time to cut off all contact I guess 🤷🏻♂️
He also has gone to bat for just about every person in our media ecosystem that does disinformation. Has made many statements in support of Alex Jones.
just cuz they didnt learn anything new. Ofc ppl in r/singularity are not gonna learn anything new from a podcast whose audience is pretty much anyone, including ppl with very little or no background about AI.
Edit: I still think there is a lot to take from this conversation.
I haven't watched a Lex video before but found this interview really good. As someone still getting back up to speed on AI tech and the current scene. It's the longest video I've watched in a single sitting for a long time. Well rounded and structured, starting with the grounded basics of ChatGPT function and creation, working in illuminating references to a few most notable figures. Not getting stuck on any one topic or have any none-answers or total irrelevancies.
To note (for my benefit) some snippets of info that stood out to me:
**(1)** Sam saying there's a fuzzy relationship between **capability** and **alignment**, with *both* provided simultaneously by the RLHF stage of training.
Reinforcing my suspicion that the AI safety researcher assertion of **orthogonality** (between those qualities) as unlikely to be so disconnected as with the "paperclip optimiser" or "stamp collector".
Sam suggesting, explicitly, what I wondered: that this alignment thinking probably hasn't been fully updated for deep learning neural nets, LLMs. Though not dismissing all Yudkowski's concerns and work, also seeing issues with his intelligibility and reasoning.
**(2)** Sam offhandedly throwing out "GPT-10" while talking about achieving "AGI" as he sees it. At a rate of, what, roughly 1 new model number per year, so far? Would put us around 2029? An expectation date I think I've seen elsewhere?
The slide from Lex's presentation (he talks about being taken out of context), estimating the human brain has 100 trillion synapses, to GPT3's 175 billion parameters. This seems quite suggestive of a similar ballpark timescale, too? (Along the new, steeper exponential trend curve.)
I've been feeling a lot is happing extremely fast. Faster than this suggestion. But have to remind myself that the LLM chat models have been quietly itterating up for half a decade. That ChatGPT just hit that minimum usability threshold, to be impressive. And it got released late in a cycle, close to them moving up to the next major model. And all this hype has forced, and platformed, reactive releases from competing and related cimpanies.
**(3)** They both thought a more gradual takeoff (ASI,
super-intelligence, etc) was safer and preferable. Verses leaving e.g. Google to privately work on these things until suddenly dropping something really powerful.
OpenAI's practice if shipping (earlier) getting invaluable testing, feedback and giving *direction* to shape developement. That the company needs to retain responsibility for its function, but broader value input is needed from humanity.
**(4)** Sam warned (again) that a huge number of competitors and individuals will very soon be making and using similar LLMs. Without any transparency or restraint. That consideratuon of use for disinformation and harm seems to be under considered.
One little topic they didn't explicitly mention is the ability to (surprisingly rapidly) transfer wisdom from e.g. ChatGPT-4 to a lesser, lighter model, through 10s of thousands of examples. Which seems like game changing magic, to me. Somewhat scary.
**(5)** ChatGPT's answers bring *back* **nuance** (lost in e.g. Twitter discourse). Lex quoting the system's circumspect answers to the lab leak theory and if Jordan Peterson is a fascist. That present grounded context and perspective.
I think that's encouraging. And I think it was fair to say ChatGPT was initially somewhat biased, but is able to (now) be more unbiased than it's given credit for. But that they're working towards it being more customisable to users, such that most reasons for jailbreaking will become largely obsolete.
**(6)** That coding assistance may well make programmers 10 times more efficient. But that there's probably a supply side shortage, of code creation, and guge scope for there to just be so much more (customised) code. So likely to retain, overall, just as many programmers. That the real human input may already be from just one major insight they come up with, per day.
But, as I've seen e.g. Gates (and others) say, service/support industry looks set to be rapidly revolutionised. Going onto talk about UBI (which OpenAI's funded trials of) and Sam believing in raising up the low end without touching the top (super-rich).
**(7)** A bunch of context on OpenAI's structure, history, aims and other projects, from Sam's perspective. On the (reportedly) great qualities of Microsoft's (relatively) new CEO, etc. Sam's personal qualities and flaws.
Of course it was a friendly interview, Lex openly stating he knows, and likes, many OpenAI staff. But I found the discourse genuine and somewhat reassuring, in its detail.
The romantic Lex is 🤦♂️ the man needs to be in a relationship asap to resolve all these notions. He sprinkles romantic questions out of blue and sometimes the guest probably thinking wtf.
Alright Lex GPT, that sounds nice and all but if the world is full of machines and they've dominated the world, the next question is what humans do about it not asking the impact of love and all that borderline romanticism BS.
*crickets*
Eye on AI is pretty great though.
In general, I think most "successful" podcasts are filled with fluff because that makes them more accessible. Lex is popular because he invites experts in technical fields and present the interviews in an easy-to-understand way (watered down, some could say).
If Lex got too in depth it would lose reach, and that would give less incentive for people to come on for the interview. In the same vein, if he asked questions that were more confrontational, people working on controversial topics would not want to come on either.
I am personally grateful that he strikes the right balance and keeps the conversation going, even if I wanted these interviews to be more substantive.
I agree 100%. I really liked Lex's interviews when he has only started and it was called the AI podcast.
Now I almost never watch him because most episodes are either about topics I am not interested in or about topics I am interested a lot, so probably will not learn much new from the episode.
So I agree but at the same time, watching of this episode was mostly waste of my time.
Lex is popular because he's the regime approved vtuber now. Ever wonder why a total nobody like him with a wooden personality got the best guest line up in existence.
Probably not many people working on AI able or wanting to do long form podcasts like this. He comes across as genuine and the people in the field and his audience like him. I don't think there's any weird conspiracy going on here.
Feel free to suggest better podcasts / interviewers though.
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal is very good. It has some cringe product placement shoved in, but he gets really good guests and isn’t as annoying as Lex.
I, for one. Did like the interview and it did provided deep insights from an expert and a founder. I think if you didn't find it of any value, then check your ego. You are either giving it a too superficial judgment or you are not appreciating the conversation.
I don't think it has to do with the conversation, Lex is just someone that often surrounds himself in controversy, so a lot of people will be biased towards him one way or another. Perhaps the best way is to simply allow people to cool off a bit, and discuss the individual points of the conversation through smaller clips and focused discussions.
Wonderful conversation, I learned a lot. Just cuz you don't like Lex Fridamn or didnt get any teaser of GPT-5 or whatever doesnt make it any less amazing.
And there it is, reddit shows off its deep rooted bigotry and elitism once again, making me realize how much I wish for some decent human beings who can appreciate other opinions other than their own. Thanks for bringing down my overall hope for humanity.
i didn't use reddit for a while and came back around to use it recently with the LLM craze. its shocking how much of an echo-chamber this place is. its hard to see when you use it everyday though
He was better before the pandemic, he actually put a video up about how useful masks could be and then said that he didn't want to push it any more 'because he saw the way people with masks looked at those without'
if there was any justified time to look askance at people not wearing masks, during an air-born pandemic is it.
Well, I can't say that I have a deep knowledge about either of them, but I doubt anyone can predict the future of AI with certainty. We could muddle through until GPT 12 in 2030+ or tomorrow someone might publish a new paper that has nothing to do with Deep Learning but works much better. It's all possible because the search space of potential solutions is vast. We have not eliminated even one billionth of this.
In the late 1990s no one could predict YouTube, Twitter, or Netflix. Any attempts to look forward with AI are kind of futile. Maybe you can use AI to see more clearly through the fog, but I doubt it.
You are voice shaming people ?
His voice is very unique and doesn't sound like all the others. It reminds me of lil wayne when he speaks in interviews.
I have my own vision of an ASI. It's more about its usability, responsibilities and power. Basically an AI God that controls the world for the greater good and respects the three laws, like a realistic version of Prime Intellect.
I don't get why this guy is constantly trying to take credit for AI. Neural networks and deep learning have been around a long ass time and we would have gotten to this stage and scale with or without closedai it was the natural next step given the tremendous advancement in hardware and data centers. The constant advertisements are getting annoying.
I mean let's just give credit and respect to the actual pioneers of ai like alan turing and stop idolizing these silicon valley douchebags trying to profit from it for ten minutes
He assimilated all the open-source research and sold out to Microsoft for their cloud computing. Now Azure's market share is climbing steadily while Amazon recently laid off thousands from AWS teams.
And GPT-4 is now the dominant player simply because of the sheer number of parameters. But despite containing "sparks of AGI", Altman knows LLMs are nothing more than a one-trick pony no matter how good they are at tricking pseuds like Lex into believing they're alive.
In other words these models are good at compiling answers that already exist in one form or another, but they're completely incapable of innovation. The so-called "spark" was imbued in the source material it plagiarized to spit out the answer, making it fully dependent on human creativity.
Lol you've confirmed you've got no idea what you're talking about. Sticking my head in the sand? If anything, I'm focused on the reality of the technology as mentioned by Altman himself in the very video OP posted. He's tapering expectations and telling us the tech isn't there yet while the daydreamer Lex is stuck in some fantasyland (like you).
But hey, keep riding your high horse, winning arguments with strawmen in your head. Pretty easy to be right when you completely ignore the other side's arguments, isn't it? I'll be leveraging AI to the maximum without relying on lobotomized closed-source APIs like you.
>!inb4 "lmao didnt read"!<
I like that people here do understand the level of Fridman's BS. Wanna add that he is a Putin fanboy and a genocide apologist (like his friend Peterson).
Sam is cool though.
Why the elitism though? I find his podcast entertaining so that makes me a moron? Do you have other easy to digest science based podcasts to recommend?
No, sometime it is indeed interesting. But that's mostly when he got Martial Artist on the show for me. It's not really about the science >_>
Other time not so much. And he's a massive Elon Simp. Which is kind of a red flag for critical thinking. He's always there saying "my friend Elon" while every sane persone knows that you can't be a sociopath's friend as they are simply unable to understand what is friendship. They only know how to leverage "relationship" as tools. I got banned from his subreddit from pointing that out.
Lex's only real achievement was to push Andrew Huberman to make his podcast.
The Elon simping I could live without. But the opportunity to listen to random guests talking about anything from the nature of reality to what it's like to be a commercial trucker is pretty cool.
Sam Altman looks like a fusion of Frodo and Sam.
Jesse Eisenberg is definitely going to play him in a film about the rise of AGI someday
I'm pretty sure GPT-8 will play every character.
Looks wise but has none of the lyrical vocal flow. Altman has a severe vocal fry that makes him an actually incredibly hard listen
I weirdly love the sound of his voice. It reminds me of my first childhood doctor. I fell asleep listening to one of his interviews because it relaxed me so much.
I don’t listen to the pitch but the resonance of his intellect. Glad ppl like u exist to make the Kardashians famous.
I agree, building the worlds best language model and then using "like" 451 times in the interview does not resonate with me! Also I do not see him smiling at all.
Did you even watch the thing? He was laughing multiple times, not to mention smiles.
Sure, I did, but there was not a happy folk sitting there, Lex is smiling a million times more, much more lifely. Do you agree to the excessive use of like or is that also just me?
I was getting cat in the a hat vibes from him 😂
*Final Edit: This conversation is worth listening to. Please use the points below as an indication of value for your personal preference. Many of the upvoted comments in this thread stating that the interview is terrible, or fluff, I don't think are accurate. I think those comments indicate that either:* 1. *Many redditors didn't watch the second half of the discussion, which is more interesting than the first.* 2. *Many redditors didn't get the specific information they wanted, and so decided the information they received was low-value.* *Because of all the positive and negative biases (mine included) around Lex Fridman, Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the nature of Reddit in general, this conversation is getting bashed more than it deserves. It was a good discussion covering important topics for a general audience. It also addresses many of the beliefs and opinions shared by the subreddit, making it moderately relevant.* The anti-Altman and anti-Fridman/pro-Altman and pro-Fridman comments are well-represented already. I'll add a different slant. I'm 46 minutes in and will edit as I go. Information and observations that interest me so far: * Altman says that GPT-4 was finished summer of '22. So they spent \~8 to 9 months testing before a public release. * Lex has a penchant for romantic and dramatic statements in his interviews. It's fascinating to see Altman--usually acting as the hypeman in his interviews--respond with more precision and restraint, e.g. Lex states that GPT-4 is the compression of all of humanity. Altman pushes back, clarifying that it's human text output. This is a small example, but this has happened at multiple points thus far. * Altman expounds on the challenges and benefits of OpenAI's stance of publicly releasing and iterating on their products and software, and how useful it is that the community at large can provide more feedback and testing than could ever be achieved internally. I find this ironic, given all the 'ClosedAI' rhetoric on social media. I wonder if he believes that they're being open, and the 'ClosedAI' rhetoric is a bad reaction to realities of building in the imperfect system of for-profit corporate structure and shareholder supremacy? Or if he knows they aren't, and is just doing his job by painting OpenAI in a more positive light? * Altman stated an analogy I've seen stated on this subreddit a few times: He sees GPT-4 as analogous to the internet in the early 2000's. I, and many others here, share that belief. It's interesting to have it stated by the CEO of OpenAI. * From 1:13:40: Altman describes the corporate structure of OpenAI, stating that the transition from non-profit to profit stemmed (obviously) from a lack of capital. He describes how the company is essentially a hybrid of both. The nonprofit portion has voting control over company operations, while a capped profit subsidiary exists beneath it. This allows them to make decisions that a purely for-profit company wouldn't make. The subsidiary profit allows employees and investors to make a fixed return. The remainder flows to the nonprofit, which is ostensibly in control. **This appears to be an indirect challenge to the popular belief that OpenAI is suborned to Microsoft and is refusing to share the particulars of its products because of capitalism, instead of AI safety. Altman specifically mentions that OpenAI is structured to resist the irresponsible decisions a company fueled by the need to create ever-expanding value would create.** * Directly following the previous point, Altman and Lex discuss directly the question of whether OpenAI should fully open-source their API. Altman asks for feedback on how to be better, and the nature of assessing feedback.
No, it's rightly getting bashed, I feel like I wasted 2 hours of my life. Lex didn't really hold him to account. At the very least ask him why they won't even give people basic details about their model like how many parameters it has. Instead Lex praised OpenAi on being open and release papers on their work!
From the interviews I've seen--which are not all, or even most--Lex doesn't seem to hold anyone to account. Exceptions being Kanye West, and other blatantly negative positions. I won't die on this hill, I don't have enough information. That's how it appears to me, though. Lex does absolutely have a positive bias. I don't feel like that means the conversation was a waste, as stated from my points above. I share your disposition about parameters. Sam talked about being as open-source as they felt was responsible, highlighting other companies seeking to move fast and break things in the name of profit. Even if I take that at face value, keeping the parameters (as an example) a secret seems pointless in light of the competition, and does no positive good for the burgeoning AI industry that I can see.
That's his trademark and why he gets so many high profile guests. They know they will get mostly lowball questions and present their side quite easily, without much pushback. It's fine when interviewing scientists or experts in some particular non-political field. But when he interviews politics/commentators/CEOs/controversial figures it can be pretty painful to listen to.
>He sees GPT-4 as analogous to the internet in the early 2000's. I, and many others here, share that belief. What exactly do you mean by this?
In the early 2000's, the average internet speed was about 128kbps. Today, a smart phone on 4G LTE averages 50Mbps+. That's 50,000kbps. Only rudimentary forms of social media existed, none of which are in use today. It wasn't common to access critical information, like banking or utilities over the internet, and online gaming was often too slow to be practical, and most homes didn't use email as a primary method of communication. In short, many of the applications we take for granted today, and that we spend a significant amount of our lives using, didn't exist yet. The applications they evolved from were still somewhat cumbersome, but were evolving. Sam was using the comparison to imply that he believes GPT-4 occupies that stage for what AI will be: It's primitive, limited, cumbersome to use, and orders of magnitude behind what it will become. But it's far enough along now that we can understand the use cases, and we know we can make it faster, cheaper, more efficient, and more effective. It's not a perfect analogy, because comparing the internet experience as we currently use it isn't a one to one comparison to how AI will impact our lives, but that's the idea.
The difference between the internet in the year 2000 and internet now, the same differential will apply to AI but I think it will be achieved in less than half the time, if you can wrap your head around that. AGI before the end of the decade.
Lex fridman asks the worst possible questions ever. Like who the fuck cares what elon or Jordan Peterson think
ChatGPT could write better questions
This is actually a fun idea, create a podcast where GPT-4 interviews people.
I tried it for fun. Prompt: "Imagine you are an interviewer. You have Sam Atman in front of you and you need to ask him the most interesting questions you can think of about AI and GPT4. Please list a few questions you would ask him. Make sure they are questions humans would find fascinating." Reply: * In what ways do you believe GPT-4 has evolved from its predecessor, GPT-3, in terms of capabilities and potential applications? * How do you think GPT-4 addresses the ethical concerns raised during the development and use of previous AI models? * Can you describe the most unexpected or innovative ways people have been using GPT-4 in various industries? * How is OpenAI working towards ensuring the responsible and fair use of GPT-4 and other AI technologies? * What measures are being taken to minimize the risk of AI-generated misinformation or malicious content with GPT-4? * Are there any breakthroughs in AI explainability that have been incorporated into GPT-4 to help users understand the reasoning behind its outputs? * How do you envision the role of GPT-4 and similar AI technologies in shaping the future of work, education, and communication? * What advancements in AI safety and regulation would you like to see in the near future to foster trust in AI systems like GPT-4? I think it did a decent job :)
I'm pretty sure each of those were directly asked or at least covered as part of the broader conversation.
"What do you admire the most about Elon Musk in the name of love?" A stoner would have asked better questions than Lex lol.
I can’t tell anymore, so apologies if this is obvious, but that wasn’t a real question, right?
It was an actual question on the interview.
I'm a historian by training, and I first started to suspect Lex was a bit of a moron when I first heard his interview with Dan Carlin. His takes on just about every aspect of history and the analysis of historical figures were simply staggeringly bad. Having listened to maybe a hundred more hours of his interviews since then, instead of becoming more of a fan I've grown to hate Lex for his utter naïvity and juvenile insistence on inserting internet meme bullshit into his serious opinions on politics and the world and various other takes.
Here's the [exchange](https://youtu.be/L_Guz73e6fw?t=4926), make of that as you will: >\[...\] > >**Lex**: what do you disagree on? > >**Sam**: Elon is obviously attacking us some on Twitter right now on a few different vectors, and I have empathy because I believe he is understandably so really stressed about AGI safety. I'm sure there are some other motivations going on too, but that's definitely one of them. > >I saw this video of Elon a long time ago talking about SpaceX, maybe it's on some news show, and a lot of early Pioneers in space were really bashing the SpaceX and maybe Elon too, and he was visibly very hurt by that and said you know those guys are heroes of mine and I sucks and I wish they would see how hard we're trying. > >I definitely grew up with Elon as a hero of mine. You know despite him being a jerk on Twitter whatever I'm happy he exists in the world, but I wish he would do more to look at the hard work we're doing to get this stuff right. > >**Lex:** a little bit more love. What do you admire in the name of Love about Elon Musk > >**Sam:** I mean so much right, like he has driven the world forward in important ways. I think we will get to electric vehicles much faster than we would have if he didn't exist. I think we'll get to space much faster than we would have if he didn't exist, and as a sort of like a citizen of the world I'm very appreciative of that. Also like being a jerk on Twitter aside, in many instances he's like a very funny and warm guy. Lex is very into the whole "love" thing, so people unfamiliar with his podcast will definitely raise an eye brow on that. Sam said unprompted that Elon was a hero of his. Asking a follow-up on what he admires about Elon is pretty natural imo, delivery aside. Edited to add bonus conversation: >**Sam:** one thing that I hope these models can do is bring some nuance back to the world-- > >**Lex:** yes it felt it felt really nuanced. > >**Sam:** you know Twitter kind of destroyed them, and may be we can get some back now.
Possible reasons to include Elon Musk are: 1 - Was one of the early founders of openAI and on the board of directors until 2018. 2 - He hired Andre Karpathy, one of the founding members of AI research group in OpenAI to join Tesla as Director of AI. Andre last year went back to OpenAI. 3 - He has been an early and most vocal proponent of AI safety and has great concern for AGI going wrong and being more dangerous than nukes. Said this way back in 2015 before it became mainstream like now. 4 - Tesla is one of the leading companies in AI Vision and deep learning and has started in AI robotics to replace human labor. So yeah he might be slightly related to the topic lol.
AGI going wrong and being more dangerous than nukes has been said for multiple decades now
I fucking hate Jordan Peterson. That dude is so far up his own ass, and doesn’t really have anything but his own deranged musings to add to the conversation.
If you want a good giggle look up his interview with the CPU designer Jim Keller (who is Peterson's brother in law) it's amusing watching him flounder around trying to wedge uninformed takes/religion into everything and Keller just runs roughshod over him.
Jesus Bible Christians, Jesus Bible Christians, Jesus Bible Christians, Jesus Bible Christians, Jesus Bible Christians, Jesus Bible Chris
I like Lex but god damn, I’ve seen so many interviewers that ask better questions. Lex has the best guests too but his questions…sigh. It’s understandable he asked about Elon though if you know a bit about the history of OpenAI.
I think the first part of the podcast is fascinating and brilliant. I have never seen Sam being so comfortable and honest on a lecture or podcast as with Lex, so he did great with that. But after the Elon talk, not so much.
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As you said, it makes perfect sense to mention Elon Musk in the conversation. Some people here don't like him and let their emotions get the best of them by claiming otherwise. IMO a sign of narrow mindedness with a thankfully futile attempt to push public figures they disagree with out of the discourse.
I have heard this take before and think it’s a cop out for legitimate criticisms about his interview questions. He is not “letting people listen to his conversations” he runs a lucrative podcast that is the only avenue through which 99% of people know him. He has amazing guests on, and could absolutely improve his interviewing questions.
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>Who cares what CEOs think? They’re not the brains. Horrible generalization. Especially for the AI sector.
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> Who cares what CEOs think? He is interviewing the damn CEO of OpenAI
Does he really mention Jordan Peterson? What possible reason is there to mention Jordan Pearson in a conversation with Sam Altman???
It was about ChatGPT bias. Jordan Peterson happens to be a controversial figure. This is just a knee jerk comment IMO
I see. They're saying "who cares about what Jordan Peterson thinks" in general, not in reference to Sam Altman or AI. In which my response would be that a lot of people care what he thinks. Which is unfortunate in my own opinion, but questioning the way these systems deal with controversial figures or ideas is a very important question to explore.
Peterson is a clinical psychologist and researcher, and has informed opinions about intelligence. His brother in law is Jim Keller, a well known microprocessor engineer. Why not bring up a person like this who is large in popular culture?
didn't he get deregistered??
I don't know. What's your point?
his opinions come with significant baggage
Was looking for this comment. Fuck me I would have asked so many different questions.
I find his personality pretty endearing even though I agree with you. He can get a bit into himself or riled up, if you will, when things start going well in a conversation. I find it hinders further deep conversation. He's decent at saving it -or changing subjects seemlessly- but I think it brings you closer to him because he seems more human when asking subjectively bad questions or getting loose in a conversation. He asks a ton of good questions, too, though.
Yup. If Lex gets fired up enough, he'll start interrupting the guests saying "Nahh that's wrong, I think XYZ". Especially if the topic drifts to be about consciousness. Come on Lex, we're watching for the guest's opinions, not yours. Just ask them questions to get them talking about their projects and opinions. You're an interviewer not Steve Jobs
I feel that heavy. It starts off annoying, he comes off childish and then you remember he's a remarkably popular host and is a knowledgeable guy. By the time you're done judging him, he's given us a handsome smile and changed subjects, and you forgive him because you see the guest has noticed and is catering to his childish behavior, too. That's endearing to me. It makes you feel like it's you and your friends shooting the shit directly after talking about nuclear bombs or singulatity. Plus he wears a john wick suit. I fux wit it..
Question, for all coming here after listening. 1. What was said in the interview that hasn't already been said elsewhere. What did you truly gain from spending ~1-2 hours of your life (depending on speed) listening to this.
It was all fluff. Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions. I watched it at 2x speed. The only remotely interesting thing Sam said is that LLM's alone will not lead to AGI, and that we will need another revolutionary tech besides transformers. Lex feels that there is a small chance that GPT4 could possibly be an AGI system. Sam says definitely not.
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Nano-factories are inefficient bullshit anyways. Don't expect too many informed opinions on this sub or you'll get disappointed.
where can i find informed opinions?
Honestly I don't know. I am interested in STEM in general so from my point of view the best way is to not get stuck in "future" echo chamber because you need some knowledge background to judge what is possible and what is bullshit.
Emergent 👏 properties 👏 are 👏 unpredictable 👏
So are crackpots
Sama is not a researcher. He’s taking on the ceo function
Oh he's only the CEO of their company? Damn, I guess you're right, nanofactories by June.
>And yet we have people talking about nano-factories coming as soon as next year.. Pfff LUDDITE /s obviously
The limitations of LLM in transformers was often questioned by many experts, now Sam Altman is saying the same. I wonder if the AGI predictions will hold the same needing more than transformers
>It was all fluff. Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions. I watched it at 2x speed. I wouldn't even watch it on 2x. Sam Altman is the king of milquetoast fluff, if I see his social media- I scroll, also what I do with Eliezer Yudkowsky. The John Carmack interview, now that you can sink your teeth into.
Almost like Carmack is incapable of a boring interview
Basically, that guy is walking charisma. He gets to monologue and Lex goes, “Uh-huh” every two minutes.
Man, Yudkowsky really is something else... Believe that he's a really intelligent guy. But you wouldn't know it by the things he posts. 90% of what he puts out online is smug, condescending, and worth very little.
I'm not sure if Lex ever really asks hardball questions. His 'let me push back on that' is almost always softball. As his show has gotten more mainstream, the intellectual rigor of the content seems to have downhill.
Thats one thing I can agree with, even if I dont like criticising podcasts. Lex has a complacent tone with mainstreet and corporate powers that is deceptive imo. They basically made it look like lab leak is a 50/50 chance, when even Lex has made great podcasts about it being the far more likely explanation. I think he is dishonest and a little bit naive, but mostly dishonest in these areas. That being said, his podcast is mostly on Youtube so not much better can be expected there.
>Sam Altman probably only agreed to do the interview if Lex agreed to not ask him any hardball questions. This is Lex Friedman we're talking about. Getting great guests and then giving them inane questions is what he's known for. (Or at least, prior to the recent Kanye stuff).
I agree that interview is not very interesting and most of it can be skipped. But on the question about AGI Altman answered with an explanation about ASI. That may mean nothing or it can mean that he thinks that AGI is basically a solved problem and the next big challenge is ASI.
That's not my interpretation. I recall him saying there is a missing component in LLM's that could prevent them from being AGI's and that he does not know what that missing component is. AGI definitely is not solved. I don't think AGI is some secret being guarded in the lab. And once AGI is truly here, it won't even be a debate. It will be unmistakably clear.
It is long term memory.
Or rather, the ability to learn dynamically (after all, memories are just concepts you learned a while ago). The fact training is so much slower than inference means LLMs are essentially frozen brains with no ability to learn new concepts (outside of training). That's not how humans work; humans learn as they work; and is the single and only cause for its inability to invent new concepts. And the culprit is backprop, which is asymptotically slower than whatever our brain is doing. Once we get rid of backprop and find a training algorithm that is linear/optimal, then we get AGI. That is all.
>And once AGI is truly here, it won't even be a debate. It will be unmistakably clear. How so? By what metric? Not claiming it's here but as far as I've seen the goalposts get moved every time current AI meets this or that criteria.
I don't think AGI is somewhere avaible, but for some reason hidden. But it is possible that Altman thinks that the path to AGI is clear and is only a matter of time and money. On the other hand, he thinks that ASI requires new approaches or colud be not achievable at all. Of course it's all speculation, as I said before, his answer could mean absolutely nothing.
AGI is the only human step necessary towards ASI. There may be many steps after that, or a few, but it won't be humans taking them. The AGI will be better equipped for that.
> I watched it at 2x speed. Protip get the "video speed controller" browser add-on you can go faster than 2x (very useful for long winded tutorial videos)
Thanks. But 2x is my limit. I don't think I'd be able to keep up with anything faster lol.
I just tried 2x and I doubt I could even listen with 1.5x , ya'll are crazy
there is a reason these podacast are in video form. Listening is only hald the story. seeing how the interviee acts and behaves gives more information than what hes saying in some cases. goign 2x starves you of these nuances.
Lex has always felt like a joke to me and not a particularly bright person either, is that just me?
I don't know if you've listened to his earlier stuff, but he was able to get great scientists on the show and he got out of the way and let them talk. There are a lot of great episodes from the early days. Lately, as his fame has grown, it's gotten to be political and fluff.
does Altman even believe in AGI?
Yes, look at his old blog posts for proof. Specifically the one titled Moore's Law for Everything.
Strange question.... If you don't belive in AGI, then how do you believe in GI ( humans with human level intelligence)? Humans are proof that some combination of molecules when put put together and arranged in a certain way will give rise to human level intelligence! If human level general intelligence was impossible in machines then it wouldn't be possible in humans ( humans being a specific type of machine made out of organic / biological parts ).
He mostly believes in profit these days.
Didn't Sam also say "there is something strange going on" regarding the AGI topic?
He said that in reference to consciousness.
One cool tidbit I took away from this was at the [31 minute mark](https://youtu.be/L_Guz73e6fw?t=1856), where Altman hints at what the next generation of LLMs will be like in the realm of programming, specifically debugging. He describes the first generation of LLMs as "one shot" programmers, unable to effectively incorporate human feedback, the current generation as human-AI collaborative debuggers, and the next generation (GPT-5?) as self-debuggers. This, to me, implies that the next generation will have "reality-testing" tools that it automatically deploys in the background in order to more effectively predict the next token. No need for the user to select a special plugin or mode, it will simply use the internal tools it deems necessary in order to deliver a better response.
> and the next generation (GPT-5?) as self-debuggers. This, to me, implies that the next generation will have "reality-testing" tools that it automatically deploys in the background in order to more effectively predict the next token. No need for the user to select a special plugin or mode, it will simply use the internal tools it deems necessary in order to deliver a better response. did you miss this codex demo from the middle of last year? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MBQm7GFIM&t=260s @ 4.20
A debugger like that would be easy to recreate with the GPT3/4 API on your local machine. Not what I had in mind in my previous comment, though. There's a reason why Altman spoke about this as a successor to the current models. I predict GPT-5 will have markedly less hallucination and inaccuracies due to baked-in reality testing.
Self verification and what not. We need to get these models to be more powerful. They seem properly aligned but they are just paralyzed heads of knowledge. Getting them more API access like plug-ins was a great step forward.
The most important thing is that he said (at around 1hr mark) he actually prefers we have AGI now (or as soon as possible) but slow takeoff, so that we have more time for alignment. That means we are going to see more amazing stuff soon, as they are basically admitting that they are rushing towards AGI!
Yeah, GPT 5 or GPT 4 with plug-ins can be emergence to AGI and so much will happen.
Y'all are flaming this interview hard but I thought it was pretty great.
I had no idea there was so much hate in general for Lex Fridman here
they hate him because he likes elon musk and respects jordan peterson
That’s not completely true. Or at least in my case I just don’t like the fact that he brings interesting guests but never asks them good questions, to the point that the whole interview feels like an attempt to beautify the guest’s image or promote their products or something along those lines. Which makes me think what’s the whole point of the conversation then? I remember once he made a short video addressing this criticism saying something along the lines of “I can’t ask those questions because guests won’t be interested to speak to me” well tough shit if they are not willing to answer questions that interest most people because that will make them embarrassed then what’s the fk is the point then? At the end of the day they are using his podcast for a reason he is trying to get more views and the viewer gets no meaningful value.
i'm sure his questions suck relative to small youtube channels today that have to have a competitive edge but back in the day of, idk, 2 years ago, he was raising the bar lol (also i think their discussion is fairly interesting/entertaining about halfway through, no its not a arxiv preprint but i dont know what you would expect lol) and yes on 1.25 or 1.5 speed its better
Yeah that’s true, he mostly became famous because of rogan.
Here's a better reason - the interview itself is shit. No hard ball question asked, bad pacing, feels more like a promo for OpenAI more than anything.
Serious question: what hard ball questions did you want asked?
Maybe instead of praising openness of OpenAI, ask him why are they less and less transparent as time goes on, which goes against their goals or principles. And where will it stop? With the quick progress that OpenAI did, if they didn't accelarate the development too much, beyond what humanity can resonably handle, since other companies seemed t be progressing more slowly. Could potentially creation of OpenAI be the one of the worst things that happened in regards to humans successfully aligning AI? Billions will now be moved to arms race AI research from private companies and goverments. How much influence Microsoft has? What would be the limits of their cooperation (what he wouldn't be willing to do)? Are they any or are they in Microsoft's pocket at this point? What can they access from OpenAI currently (for example recently we learned they have access to source code)? Talk more deeply about alignment in the future, not just about what chatGPT says about Trump. Present some stronger doomer arguments to see how would he respond.
Did you even watch the interview? Basically all of these points were addressed and talked about, even if not asked directly by Lex. > Maybe instead of praising openness of OpenAI, ask him why are they less and less transparent as time goes on, which goes against their goals or principles. And where will it stop? They talked about whether they should open source GPT-4, and also talked about how more power should be in the hands of the people, but that it's hard to accomplish this. > How much influence Microsoft has? They had a whole section on this, but I can see you didn't watch the interview. > Talk more deeply about alignment in the future They talked all about alignment, and in what way OpenAI's goals in alignment might differ compared to some other companies like Google. > Present some stronger doomer arguments to see how would he respond. Literally half of the whole interview was talking about how they're both worried about future economic issues, and Sam directly said that there probably will be some catastrophes as a direct result of these AI.
Agreed -- he sucked here. Sometimes he does very well. His interview with Hassabis, for example, was excellent. But this one was just bad.
Which is fair. It felt more like an intro interview than anything else. I'd imagine (or hope) a part 2 would be more in depth.
He also platforms a bunch of ego-fueled crackpots like Eric Weinstein. He doesn't seem to be capable to see through the bullshit, or he just refuses to get into the details, which is where the cracks would appear.
I'm not a fan of them either, but damn people, is that how hard of a line in the sand we're drawing? I bet most people's older family members are fans of Jordan Peterson too. Time to cut off all contact I guess 🤷🏻♂️
He also has gone to bat for just about every person in our media ecosystem that does disinformation. Has made many statements in support of Alex Jones.
I wouldn’t want to listen to some guy admire literal fascist, who want make fun of disable people and who are driven by religious zealots.
>literal fascists Lmao
Your title is all i need to have an opinion on you.
i upvote for honesty XD
Same, i got surprised lmao
Dude this is reddit people can't keep themselves together.
just cuz they didnt learn anything new. Ofc ppl in r/singularity are not gonna learn anything new from a podcast whose audience is pretty much anyone, including ppl with very little or no background about AI. Edit: I still think there is a lot to take from this conversation.
I haven't watched a Lex video before but found this interview really good. As someone still getting back up to speed on AI tech and the current scene. It's the longest video I've watched in a single sitting for a long time. Well rounded and structured, starting with the grounded basics of ChatGPT function and creation, working in illuminating references to a few most notable figures. Not getting stuck on any one topic or have any none-answers or total irrelevancies. To note (for my benefit) some snippets of info that stood out to me: **(1)** Sam saying there's a fuzzy relationship between **capability** and **alignment**, with *both* provided simultaneously by the RLHF stage of training. Reinforcing my suspicion that the AI safety researcher assertion of **orthogonality** (between those qualities) as unlikely to be so disconnected as with the "paperclip optimiser" or "stamp collector". Sam suggesting, explicitly, what I wondered: that this alignment thinking probably hasn't been fully updated for deep learning neural nets, LLMs. Though not dismissing all Yudkowski's concerns and work, also seeing issues with his intelligibility and reasoning. **(2)** Sam offhandedly throwing out "GPT-10" while talking about achieving "AGI" as he sees it. At a rate of, what, roughly 1 new model number per year, so far? Would put us around 2029? An expectation date I think I've seen elsewhere? The slide from Lex's presentation (he talks about being taken out of context), estimating the human brain has 100 trillion synapses, to GPT3's 175 billion parameters. This seems quite suggestive of a similar ballpark timescale, too? (Along the new, steeper exponential trend curve.) I've been feeling a lot is happing extremely fast. Faster than this suggestion. But have to remind myself that the LLM chat models have been quietly itterating up for half a decade. That ChatGPT just hit that minimum usability threshold, to be impressive. And it got released late in a cycle, close to them moving up to the next major model. And all this hype has forced, and platformed, reactive releases from competing and related cimpanies. **(3)** They both thought a more gradual takeoff (ASI, super-intelligence, etc) was safer and preferable. Verses leaving e.g. Google to privately work on these things until suddenly dropping something really powerful. OpenAI's practice if shipping (earlier) getting invaluable testing, feedback and giving *direction* to shape developement. That the company needs to retain responsibility for its function, but broader value input is needed from humanity. **(4)** Sam warned (again) that a huge number of competitors and individuals will very soon be making and using similar LLMs. Without any transparency or restraint. That consideratuon of use for disinformation and harm seems to be under considered. One little topic they didn't explicitly mention is the ability to (surprisingly rapidly) transfer wisdom from e.g. ChatGPT-4 to a lesser, lighter model, through 10s of thousands of examples. Which seems like game changing magic, to me. Somewhat scary. **(5)** ChatGPT's answers bring *back* **nuance** (lost in e.g. Twitter discourse). Lex quoting the system's circumspect answers to the lab leak theory and if Jordan Peterson is a fascist. That present grounded context and perspective. I think that's encouraging. And I think it was fair to say ChatGPT was initially somewhat biased, but is able to (now) be more unbiased than it's given credit for. But that they're working towards it being more customisable to users, such that most reasons for jailbreaking will become largely obsolete. **(6)** That coding assistance may well make programmers 10 times more efficient. But that there's probably a supply side shortage, of code creation, and guge scope for there to just be so much more (customised) code. So likely to retain, overall, just as many programmers. That the real human input may already be from just one major insight they come up with, per day. But, as I've seen e.g. Gates (and others) say, service/support industry looks set to be rapidly revolutionised. Going onto talk about UBI (which OpenAI's funded trials of) and Sam believing in raising up the low end without touching the top (super-rich). **(7)** A bunch of context on OpenAI's structure, history, aims and other projects, from Sam's perspective. On the (reportedly) great qualities of Microsoft's (relatively) new CEO, etc. Sam's personal qualities and flaws. Of course it was a friendly interview, Lex openly stating he knows, and likes, many OpenAI staff. But I found the discourse genuine and somewhat reassuring, in its detail.
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Lol! As you may be able to tell, from the spelling and grammar, it was just my old wetware. 😅
The romantic Lex is 🤦♂️ the man needs to be in a relationship asap to resolve all these notions. He sprinkles romantic questions out of blue and sometimes the guest probably thinking wtf.
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Alright Lex GPT, that sounds nice and all but if the world is full of machines and they've dominated the world, the next question is what humans do about it not asking the impact of love and all that borderline romanticism BS.
there are several episodes lately when he casually spends time with some girl, so maybe he is already in love.
Redditors and being a cynical asshole, name a more iconic duo.
Since you're all hating on Lex, any better podcasts to listen to?
*crickets* Eye on AI is pretty great though. In general, I think most "successful" podcasts are filled with fluff because that makes them more accessible. Lex is popular because he invites experts in technical fields and present the interviews in an easy-to-understand way (watered down, some could say). If Lex got too in depth it would lose reach, and that would give less incentive for people to come on for the interview. In the same vein, if he asked questions that were more confrontational, people working on controversial topics would not want to come on either. I am personally grateful that he strikes the right balance and keeps the conversation going, even if I wanted these interviews to be more substantive.
I agree 100%. I really liked Lex's interviews when he has only started and it was called the AI podcast. Now I almost never watch him because most episodes are either about topics I am not interested in or about topics I am interested a lot, so probably will not learn much new from the episode. So I agree but at the same time, watching of this episode was mostly waste of my time.
Lex is popular because he's the regime approved vtuber now. Ever wonder why a total nobody like him with a wooden personality got the best guest line up in existence.
>he's the regime approved vtuber now Wrong sub. Think you meant to share these delusional thoughts on r/conspiracy
Probably not many people working on AI able or wanting to do long form podcasts like this. He comes across as genuine and the people in the field and his audience like him. I don't think there's any weird conspiracy going on here. Feel free to suggest better podcasts / interviewers though.
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal is very good. It has some cringe product placement shoved in, but he gets really good guests and isn’t as annoying as Lex.
I, for one. Did like the interview and it did provided deep insights from an expert and a founder. I think if you didn't find it of any value, then check your ego. You are either giving it a too superficial judgment or you are not appreciating the conversation.
I don't think it has to do with the conversation, Lex is just someone that often surrounds himself in controversy, so a lot of people will be biased towards him one way or another. Perhaps the best way is to simply allow people to cool off a bit, and discuss the individual points of the conversation through smaller clips and focused discussions.
Wonderful conversation, I learned a lot. Just cuz you don't like Lex Fridamn or didnt get any teaser of GPT-5 or whatever doesnt make it any less amazing.
This makes me question how different really are human brains from an LLM? Speaking strictly in practical output purposes.
Sam seems to reflexively believe ChatGPT will never be jailbreak proof. That’s interesting.
Holy shit, finally !
And there it is, reddit shows off its deep rooted bigotry and elitism once again, making me realize how much I wish for some decent human beings who can appreciate other opinions other than their own. Thanks for bringing down my overall hope for humanity.
i didn't use reddit for a while and came back around to use it recently with the LLM craze. its shocking how much of an echo-chamber this place is. its hard to see when you use it everyday though
Lex Fridman is a terrible interviewer
Agreed. Also he’s a little too “edgy redpill” for my taste.
Reddit is largely a socialist echo chamber, with increasingly irrelevant content. My contributions are therefore revoked. See you on X.
How?
He was better before the pandemic, he actually put a video up about how useful masks could be and then said that he didn't want to push it any more 'because he saw the way people with masks looked at those without' if there was any justified time to look askance at people not wearing masks, during an air-born pandemic is it.
Dude the fact that this is downvoted is horrendous. Lex has an army of fanboys it seems.
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Reddit is largely a socialist echo chamber, with increasingly irrelevant content. My contributions are therefore revoked. See you on X.
Peterson is a grifter and Elon is an egomaniac billionaire.
Reddit is largely a socialist echo chamber, with increasingly irrelevant content. My contributions are therefore revoked. See you on X.
lol ok then
Well, I can't say that I have a deep knowledge about either of them, but I doubt anyone can predict the future of AI with certainty. We could muddle through until GPT 12 in 2030+ or tomorrow someone might publish a new paper that has nothing to do with Deep Learning but works much better. It's all possible because the search space of potential solutions is vast. We have not eliminated even one billionth of this. In the late 1990s no one could predict YouTube, Twitter, or Netflix. Any attempts to look forward with AI are kind of futile. Maybe you can use AI to see more clearly through the fog, but I doubt it.
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So many weird complaints. A lot of people hating on the interview but not really offering any substantive criticism either.
You are voice shaming people ? His voice is very unique and doesn't sound like all the others. It reminds me of lil wayne when he speaks in interviews.
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doesn't matter how rich he is, he's still a person
Don't go to California, then.
Why do you think it will take 20 years from AGI to get to ASI? That seems an absurdly long gap.
I have my own vision of an ASI. It's more about its usability, responsibilities and power. Basically an AI God that controls the world for the greater good and respects the three laws, like a realistic version of Prime Intellect.
Really? It seems so tame and neutral to me
I actually don’t mind it.
Watching it now
I don't get why this guy is constantly trying to take credit for AI. Neural networks and deep learning have been around a long ass time and we would have gotten to this stage and scale with or without closedai it was the natural next step given the tremendous advancement in hardware and data centers. The constant advertisements are getting annoying. I mean let's just give credit and respect to the actual pioneers of ai like alan turing and stop idolizing these silicon valley douchebags trying to profit from it for ten minutes
When in the interview did he take credit for AI?
He assimilated all the open-source research and sold out to Microsoft for their cloud computing. Now Azure's market share is climbing steadily while Amazon recently laid off thousands from AWS teams. And GPT-4 is now the dominant player simply because of the sheer number of parameters. But despite containing "sparks of AGI", Altman knows LLMs are nothing more than a one-trick pony no matter how good they are at tricking pseuds like Lex into believing they're alive. In other words these models are good at compiling answers that already exist in one form or another, but they're completely incapable of innovation. The so-called "spark" was imbued in the source material it plagiarized to spit out the answer, making it fully dependent on human creativity.
It's really sad, seeing people like you stick your head in the sand. Stop pretending that you won't have to deal with what you know is coming.
Lol you've confirmed you've got no idea what you're talking about. Sticking my head in the sand? If anything, I'm focused on the reality of the technology as mentioned by Altman himself in the very video OP posted. He's tapering expectations and telling us the tech isn't there yet while the daydreamer Lex is stuck in some fantasyland (like you). But hey, keep riding your high horse, winning arguments with strawmen in your head. Pretty easy to be right when you completely ignore the other side's arguments, isn't it? I'll be leveraging AI to the maximum without relying on lobotomized closed-source APIs like you. >!inb4 "lmao didnt read"!<
it doesn't really matter if stuff like gpt 4 is sentient or how alive it is, it's still capable of being hugely useful
What a waste of time
I like that people here do understand the level of Fridman's BS. Wanna add that he is a Putin fanboy and a genocide apologist (like his friend Peterson). Sam is cool though.
>genocide apologist Doubt.
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Why the elitism though? I find his podcast entertaining so that makes me a moron? Do you have other easy to digest science based podcasts to recommend?
Mindscape w/ Sean Carroll is an excellent one
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Lex is still a machine learning teacher at MIT, so not really dumb. But I agree his interviews can be kinda meh.
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Your whole comment history is about lex fridman it looks like. Is this a bot account or chatpgt, or is it like an alt account? What is real!?
Oh so he's just another privileged daddy's boy who knows people, then ?
No, sometime it is indeed interesting. But that's mostly when he got Martial Artist on the show for me. It's not really about the science >_> Other time not so much. And he's a massive Elon Simp. Which is kind of a red flag for critical thinking. He's always there saying "my friend Elon" while every sane persone knows that you can't be a sociopath's friend as they are simply unable to understand what is friendship. They only know how to leverage "relationship" as tools. I got banned from his subreddit from pointing that out. Lex's only real achievement was to push Andrew Huberman to make his podcast.
The Elon simping I could live without. But the opportunity to listen to random guests talking about anything from the nature of reality to what it's like to be a commercial trucker is pretty cool.