Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I often wonder about super-intelligence, mostly in terms of what one would actually want, but the chatbots of today often make me wonder what it is that people want of them. I doubt that LLMs are this today, and perhaps they never will be, but what if there was such a system that you could ask any question of, and it would give you an absolute and true answer? What would people want to know from it? Would you really want to know if there is some sort of life after death? Would you want to know if humanity is bound for extinction?

I don't think that we humans deal too well with the realities of our existence, and if one thinks minor issues like bad words or pictures of humans without clothing on are objectionable, I wonder how that same one will do with meaningful, existential questions.



> Would you want to know if humanity is bound for extinction?

The answer to this question is 100%, "yes". It's just a matter of time.

A better question would be, "How long before humanity goes extinct?" or, "How long before humanity evolves into new species?"

AI might actually be able to give some decent hallucinated answers for those!


I think we want Star Trek. Something highly "intelligent", trustworthy, and fast.

But we're getting LLMs trained on cat memes and our own foolishness, and that leads to me agreeing with:

>I don't think that we humans deal too well with the realities of our existence

Yup, it's particularly upsetting.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: