I remember when there was a guy at Google years a few years ago that was convinced that they had an internal, sentient creature in their labs (I think maybe 4 years ago?)
replyIf I’m not mistaken, after the media cycle, he lost his job for breaking confidentiality.
That was the opposite of marketing, Google really didn’t get how to turn this into a product until ChatGPT happened.
They most likely understood that it wasn't viable for anything. OpenAI just yolo'd it and now we're dealing with the fallout. I'm fairly certain that any management layer at google isn't going to say yes to "invest 5 billion to make 10 million" scheme that OpenAI, Anthropic, are currently running.
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reply"it can almost like write 2 paragraphs!" "It might be conscious" "this is basically AGI, we had to fire someone who spilled the beans"
replyI always thought he was fired for making crackpot statements to the press in reference to his professional capacity, and thus creating bad PR and embarrassing spectacle for his employer. Seems like legitimate reasons to me.
replyAn interesting question now is whether he had standard mental health issues, or if he was an early example of AI psychosis or whatever we call people who are falling in love with their AI chatbots because they tell them how smart they are.
replyConsidering Richard Dawkins has recently succumbed to the same delusion it is a reminder that no matter how intelligent someone may otherwise be, we are all human and have certain tendencies and blind spots; anthropomorphizing non-entities being one of those.
replyRichard Dawkins is 85 to be fair, just like Bernie Sanders is 84 when he made similar comments.
replyThe other guy worked on Google's AI safety team where one would expect he'd have a basic grasp of how the technology works before making outlandish claims.