I was pretty upset seeing the superalignment team dissolve at OpenAI, but as is typical for the AI space, the news of one day was quickly eclipsed by the next day.
Anthropic are really killing it right now, and it's very refreshing seeing their commitment to publishing novel findings.
I hope this finally serves as the nail in the coffin on the "it's just fancy autocomplete" and "it doesn't understand what it's saying, bro" rhetoric.
No matter what, there will always be a group of people saying that. The power and drive of the brain to convince itself that it is weaved of magical energy on a divine substrate shouldn't be underestimated. Especially when media plays so hard into that idea (the robots that lose the war because they cannot overcome love, etc.) because brains really love being told they are right.
I am almost certain that the first conscious silicon (or whatever material) will be subjected to immense suffering until a new generation that can accept the human brains banality can move things forward.
> I am almost certain that the first conscious silicon (or whatever material) will be subjected to immense suffering until a new generation that can accept the human brains banality can move things forward.
Indeed, though as we don't know what we're doing (and have 40 definitions of "consciousness" and no way to test for qualia), I would add that the first AI we make with these properties, will likely suffer from every permutation of severe and mild mental heath disorder that is logically possible, including many we have no word for because they would be incompatible with life if found in an organic brain.