The cure for our ills?

Regular readers will already know I'm an evangelist for AI. And, yes, I'm aware there are risks, as with any new technology, but we are going to keep rubbing lamps and letting genies out. We just have to be careful how we deal with them. When he was setting up DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis was fond of propounding the vision: "Solve intelligence. Use intelligence to solve everything else." By everything he meant curing disease, solving the problem of controlled fusion, and all the other things that could make life on Earth a utopia.

Perhaps you are cynical about experts and/or multi-millionaires, but don't make the mistake of dismissing every member of a group on account of some bad apples. I know Demis personally (I used to work for him) and I assure you that he is motivated by a genuine vision of a better future. His delight in the workings of the universe, his ever-youthful curiosity, his humour, his intelligence, and his focus are the qualities that I think show human beings at their very best. For such men and women, the human adventure is just beginning.

I mention all this because there is a biography of Demis Hassabis just out. That's The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby. Hassabis is likely to be admired by future generations as a pioneer of a new era -- long after the likes of Musk and Trump are forgotten -- and, though I think the key to AGI might lie more in the work of Yann LeCun, and though I believe we should celebrate discoveries, not discoverers, anyone who is interested in the lives of those who shape history should take a look.

There is a depressing note. (It's the 2020s, so how could there not be?) Recently Demis seems to be cooling on the grand vision. “I’ve satiated that scientific desire for the moment…I’ve always been fine either way,” he says, justifying the shift in emphasis from AGI research to the LLMs that are where the money is now. It figures that Google isn't interested in idealistic research; it just wants commercial product. If it were me, I'd walk away. Demis is probably reasoning that maybe he can do more good with 1% of Google's focus than with 100% of the resources of an obscure research lab. Such compromises with the inevitable never work out. You never even get that 1%. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

AGI, superintelligence, and the keys to a utopian future are all achievable in theory. Of that I'm almost certain. But whether the societies and institutions humans have created will ever allow us to reach that goal remains an open question. The fault is not in our science but in ourselves.