#78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress

#78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress

Companies use about 300,000 times more computation training the best AI systems today than they did in 2012 and algorithmic innovations have also made them 25 times more efficient at the same tasks.

These are the headline results of two recent papers — AI and Compute and AI and Efficiency — from the Foresight Team at OpenAI. In today's episode I spoke with one of the authors, Danny Hernandez, who joined OpenAI after helping develop better forecasting methods at Twitch and Open Philanthropy.

Danny and I talk about how to understand his team's results and what they mean (and don't mean) for how we should think about progress in AI going forward.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

Debates around the future of AI can sometimes be pretty abstract and theoretical. Danny hopes that providing rigorous measurements of some of the inputs to AI progress so far can help us better understand what causes that progress, as well as ground debates about the future of AI in a better shared understanding of the field.

If this research sounds appealing, you might be interested in applying to join OpenAI's Foresight team — they're currently hiring research engineers.

In the interview, Danny and I (Arden Koehler) also discuss a range of other topics, including:
• The question of which experts to believe
• Danny's journey to working at OpenAI
• The usefulness of "decision boundaries"
• The importance of Moore's law for people who care about the long-term future
• What OpenAI's Foresight Team's findings might imply for policy
• The question whether progress in the performance of AI systems is linear
• The safety teams at OpenAI and who they're looking to hire
• One idea for finding someone to guide your learning
• The importance of hardware expertise for making a positive impact

Chapters:

  • Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
  • The interview begins (00:01:29)
  • Forecasting (00:07:11)
  • Improving the public conversation around AI (00:14:41)
  • Danny’s path to OpenAI (00:24:08)
  • Calibration training (00:27:18)
  • AI and Compute (00:45:22)
  • AI and Efficiency (01:09:22)
  • Safety teams at OpenAI (01:39:03)
  • Careers (01:49:46)
  • AI hardware as a possible path to impact (01:55:57)
  • Triggers for people’s major decisions (02:08:44)

Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell
Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq

Avsnitt(326)

Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame

Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride.Links to learn more, highl...

27 Sep 20241h 36min

#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the n...

19 Sep 20242h 20min

#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet

#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map of where everything is in space. It’s just very difficult. And I know that sounds surp...

13 Sep 20242h 1min

#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks

#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks

"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think thi...

4 Sep 20242h 49min

#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy

#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels ...

29 Aug 20241h 12min

#198 – Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours

#198 – Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t s...

26 Aug 20243h 48min

#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task

#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach...

22 Aug 20242h 29min

#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter

#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaign...

15 Aug 20242h 1min

Populärt inom Utbildning

rss-bara-en-till-om-missbruk-medberoende-2
historiepodden-se
det-skaver
alska-oss
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
nu-blir-det-historia
not-fanny-anymore
rss-foraldramotet-bring-lagercrantz
roda-vita-rosen
johannes-hansen-podcast
rss-viktmedicinpodden
sektledare
sa-in-i-sjalen
i-vantan-pa-katastrofen
rss-max-tant-med-max-villman
rss-sjalsligt-avkladd
rib-podcast
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet
allt-du-velat-veta
rss-relationsrevolutionen