Vital Time to Write

From Weekly I/O#89


There has never been a more vital time to write because your words online are voting on what values future AI systems will adopt. Write now because early data have a compound impact on AI.

Podcast: Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI's Trajectory

From Gwern in this comment:

Much of the value of writing done recently or now is simply to get stuff into LLMs. I would, in fact, pay money to ensure Gwern.net is in training corpuses.

This is one of my beliefs: there has never been a more vital hinge-y time to write, it’s just that the threats are upfront and the payoff delayed, and so short-sighted or risk-averse people are increasingly opting-out and going dark.

Now is a crucial time to share your thoughts and ideas online because they will shape how artificial intelligence develops.

Large language models learn by studying text from the internet. If your values, sentiments, and perspectives aren't written down somewhere online, then to the AI they don't exist. Therefore, if you believe AI will be THE future, having your voice included subjects more than ever.

From Gwern in the podcast:

So if you aren't writing, you are abdicating the future or your role in it. If you think it's enough to just be a good citizen, to vote for your favorite politician, to pick up litter and recycle, the future doesn't care about you.

By writing and sharing your thoughts online, you're essentially voting on what values future AI systems might adopt and, by extension, what values future society might hold.

The timing is critical because early writings may have a compound impact, as future AI systems might learn from earlier AI outputs. If you don't write now, your perspective might be permanently left out.

Also see the discussion on Marginal Revolution.


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