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Elon Musk, Others Fund $1B Non-Profit To Advance AI Research, Ethics (openai.com)
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, The Verge, and many others (including this widely run Reuters story), a heavily backed non-profit group called OpenAI on Friday introduced itself and its utopian-sounding goals of open sourcing a great deal of AI research and, as The Verge puts it, "to stop AI from ruining the world." Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are two of the backers, along with Y-combinator president Sam Altman and other Silicon Valley luminaries, so the group starts out with a war chest big enough to support a wide range of research -- a billion dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal, The idea for OpenAI crystallized last summer as a result of ongoing discussions between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman over the future of AI. Mr. Musk has warned in the past that the future of the Earth is at risk if AI develops in the wrong ways. Tesla, one of the companies he leads, is adding autonomous capabilities to its cars that require AI technology such as image recognition. ... OpenAI intends to collaborate with the academic and for-profit worlds, but it also wants to give researchers the freedom to pursue lines of enquiry without pressure to achieve an immediate pay-off. “Our focus is not only doing the right thing for today, but also doing the right thing for 50 years from now,” Mr. Brockman said.
Elon must love terrifying himself with all his talk of AI lately.
Computers, 3D printing and AI are all super, major developments. Any major development in human history has carried a certain amount of chaos, pain and suffering along with it. AI is going to cause a total shift in the nature of human affairs and existence. But in theory, we have an advantage. We can see it coming and we can buffer the negative consequences if we choose to do so. Obviously human employment will become quite rare in the near future. People without jobs must be well supported by governments. They must have all that is needed to get by plus more so that they can consume products produced by industry. Taxes can only come from people who can afford to pay them and that translates into the wealthy and businesses paying the tax load for the rest of us. I know the knee-jerk reaction that some people will have when i mention this. And just maybe that is the area that we need to spend money on. We need to make people aware that a huge change is upon them and that there is no choice but to eliminate many long-held beliefs in order to have a smoother transition into the new era. Imagine the chaos that went on when we went from the horse to the car. That was nothing compared to what Ai has in store for us.