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TODAY IN MINDSTREAM:
📖 THE LONG READ: WHEN WILL THE AI SINGULARITY OCCUR?
📚 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
💰 NEW AI STARTUP RAISES $1.3B
💡AI-NSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE DAY
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📸 AI IMAGE OF THE DAY
📖 THE LONG READ: WHEN WILL THE AI SINGULARITY OCCUR?
Rewind and imagine a world before smartphones. Where computing was stuck on big desktop PCs and the average person had no idea about how the explosion of smartphones was about to change our lives forever.
Back then, little did we know that they would become a point of 'singularity' - a point where our lives change so dramatically it’s almost as if we have entered a different timeline.
Back to the present - you use them in the morning for alarms. You use them for messaging everyone you know. Taking photos, sending emails, playing games, watching movies and almost everything in-between. From morning until night, we have become slaves to the convenience and power of our mobile phones.
Now apply this to the context of AI. At present, we are still in the unknown. Unsure how near we are to the AI singularity - the point where AI becomes more capable than humans in its entirety. Many scientists, futurists, and thinkers have been pondering what will follow.
The moment of Singularity. Credit to Hubspot.
Andrew Ng believes we have more than 100 years until it occurs, however, he said this way back in 2019. Did you know that in 1903 the New York Times predicted it would take 10 million years for humans to develop manned flight? then just NINE WEEKS later, the Wright brothers achieved flight.
That’s surely the worst prediction of all time, and with the rate AI is advancing, the singularity moment may be around the corner, just as human flight was.
In a tweet from 2018, Elon Musk stated that the likelihood of the singularity happening in the next 10 years is "just not likely," emphasizing the complexity and challenges involved in achieving human-level AI. Does Elon still believe this I wonder?
In January 2017, an agreement was signed by a diverse group of AI researchers, industry leaders, and thinkers including Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and several other prominent figures in the AI community. The signatories committed to promoting the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies, emphasising the importance of ensuring that AI benefits all of humanity and avoiding uses that could harm or unduly concentrate power.
Delivering on their promise, they called on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. It was quoted, "We believe that powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. Our societies need time to adapt.”
So, does that mean they’re worried the singularity moment is right around the corner? Perhaps. I think it will take a little while longer, because at the moment. we only really have generative, number-crunching AI, which is just a fraction of human capability. But with the exponential growth of AI, maybe it won’t be long until they’re in charge around here.
I for one welcome our new AI masters.
📚 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
Go further with books that delve deeper into AI and its implications.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.
Nick Bostrom delves into the potential risks and implications of advanced artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence, discussing the challenges of aligning AI goals with human values, the impact on society, and proposing strategies to ensure a beneficial outcome for humanity.
💰 NEW AI STARTUP RAISES $1.3B
A new AI startup called Inflection AI has just raised over $1B, with investments from major players such as Microsoft and Nvidia.
The company has existed for a year but launched its AI chatbot “Pi” just two months ago. That didn’t seem to deter some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names from ploughing $1.3B in a new round of fundraising. It looks like we’re officially in the AI boom people.
It’s just the latest chunk of cash thrown in the direction of AI companies after OpenAI raised $10B earlier this year.
CEO Mustafa Suleyman said: “I think people can see that it’s just the tip of the iceberg, there’s so much further to go after [Pi] validates the core thesis, which is that conversation is the new interface.”
It looks like we have another competitor at the table folks. This won’t be the last AI company to get a $1B injection, I assure you.
💡AI-NSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE DAY
Let your heart be the compass that guides your actions, for it knows the true path to your purpose.
Your daily pearl of wisdom from ChatGPT.
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📸 AI IMAGE OF THE DAY
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That’s a wrap this fine Friday.
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