Comment by minimaxir

7 hours ago

I remember when AI labs coordinated so they didn't push major announcements on the same day to avoid cannibalizing each other. Now we have AI labs pushing major announcements within 30 minutes.

The labs have fully embraced the cutthroat competition, the arms race has fully shed the civilized facade of beneficient mutual cooperation.

Dirty tricks and underhanded tactics will happen - I think Demis isn't savvy in this domain, but might end up stomping out the competition on pure performance.

Elon, Sam, and Dario know how to fight ugly and do the nasty political boardroom crap. 26 is gonna be a very dramatic year, lots of cinematic potential for the eventual AI biopics.

  • >civilized facade of mutual cooperation

    >Dirty tricks and underhanded tactics

    As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers.

    • > As long the tactics are legal ( i.e. not corporate espionage, bribes etc), the no holds barred full free market competition is the best thing for the market and the consumers.

      The implicit assumption here is that we have constructed our laws so skillfully that the only path to win a free market competition is by producing a better product, or that all efforts will be spent doing so. This is never the case. It should be self-evident from this that there is a more productive way for companies to compete and our laws are not sufficient to create the conditions.

    • Yes, but not cutthroat competition that implies unsustainable, detrimental competition that kills off the industry.

    • in the short term maybe, in the long term it depends how many winners you have. If only two, the market will be a duopoly. Customers will get better AI but will have zero power over the way the AI is produced or consumed (i.e. cO2 emission, ethics, etc will be burnt)

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This goes way back. When OpenAI launched GPT-4 in 2023, both Anthropic and Google lined up counter launches (Claude and Magic Wand) right before OpenAI's standard 10am launch time.

I wish they’d just stop pretending to care about safety, other than a few researchers at the top they care about safety only as long as they aren’t losing ground to the competition. Game theory guarantees the AI labs will do what it takes to ensure survival. Only regulation can enforce the limits, self policing won’t work when money is involved.

  • As long as China continues to blitz forward, regulation is a direct path to losing.

    • Define "losing."

      Europe is prematurely regarded as having lost the AI race. And yet a large portion of Europe live higher quality lives compared to their American counterparts, live longer, and don't have to worry about an elected orange unleashing brutality on them.

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