Karen Hao on the Empire of AI, AGI evangelists, and the cost of belief

At the center of each empire is an ideal, a belief system that moves the system forward and justifies the expansion – even if the expenditure of this expansion directly deny the mission described in the ideal.

For European Colon Poisoning Power, it was a promise to save lives while lifting Christianity and resources. For today’s AI Empire, “to benefit all humanity” is artificial general intelligence. And the Open is the main preacher, spreading initiatives throughout the industry in such a way that AI rejected how AI was built.

“I was interviewing people whose voices were shaking from the encouragement of their faith in AGI,” Karen Howo, journalist and best -selling author Karen Howo “AI’s Empire“Techcunch told A. Episode Of EquityThe

In his book, Howo generally compared the AI ​​industry and especially the Openai to an empire.

“Opina’s behavior is the only way to understand the behavior and the scale is the only way to understand the truth … in fact, they recognize that they have already become more powerful than any nation in the world and they have united not only economic power, but also political power,” said Howo. “They are spreading the earth they are our geo -politics, rebuilding all our lives and so you can only describe it as an empire.”

Openly describes AGI as “as a highly autonomous system that exceeds people in the most economically valuable work,” in any way “increases abundance, turbocharging the economy and helps discover new scientific knowledge that changes the limitations of possibilities.”

These unreasonable promises encouraged the significant growth of the industry – the demand for its huge resources, the scraped data is the sea, the strained energy grid and the willingness to publish the unopposed systems in the world. All experts in future services that many experts say that they can never come.

Howo says that this path was not inevitable, and scaling is not the only way to make further progress in AI.

“You can also develop new strategies in the algorithm,” he said. “To reduce the amount of data and calculations you need to use you can improve existing algorithms”

However, that strategy must mean to renounce speed.

“When you accept all the Victor, the Victor defines the search for the creative AGI creating – what the openness did – but the most important thing is the speed than anything else,” said Howo. “Speed ​​on skill, speed on protection, motion on searching research.”

On behalf of the Openai, he said that the best way to guarantee speed was to adopt existing strategies and “simply do the cheap thing, which is more data, pumped more supercomputer into those existing strategies.”

Open the stage and other technology companies have decided to read in line instead of reading the stage.

“And the AI ​​industry has successfully captured most of the world’s top AI researchers, and those researchers no longer exist in academia, then you now have completely discipline that is composed by these agencies instead of real scientific search,” said Howo.

The cost has been and will be astronomical. Last week, Openai said that it hoping that it could burn $ 115 Billion in cash By 2029 Meta said in July that it would spend $ 72 billion This year about the construction of AI infrastructure. Hope Google will hit $ 85 billion At the capital expenditure of 2025, most of which will be spent on expanding the AI ​​and cloud infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the target posts keep running and the highest “benefit of humanity” has not yet been implemented, even as the damage mounted. Decrease in jobs, density of assets and damage like it AI Chatbotts that gives fuel to confusion and psychosisThe In his book, Hawo has enrolled workers in developing countries like Kenya and Venezuela who came in contact with disturbing materials, including sexual abuse material and paid very low wages – about an hour to 2 dollars – a role like content and data labeling.

Howo said that achieving AI’s progress against current loss is a false trade off, especially when other forms of AI give the actual benefits.

He pointed toward the Nobel Prize-winning of Google Dipmind AlphabholdWhich is trained on the amino acid sequence data and complex protein folding structure and can now properly predict the 3D structure of protein from their amino acids – deeply effective for drug discovery and understanding.

“These are the types of AI systems that we need,” Howo said. “Alfafold does not create a mental health crisis in people. [the datasets don’t have] When you were scraping the Internet, all the poisonous bakzka hoowe. ”

There was a description of the importance of racing as well as the quasi-religious promise towards the AGI Defeat China in AI RESSSSo that the Silicon Valley can have a generous impact on the world.

“Literally, the opposite happened,” said Howo. “This gap between the United States and China is closed and the Silicon Valley has a generous impact on the world … and the only actor that came out of it, you can argue, Silicon Valley itself.”

Of course, many will argue that OpenAI and other AI companies have benefited humanity by publishing ChatGPT and other large language models, which promises a huge profit in productivity by automatic work, composition, research, customer support and other knowledge work.

However, the way OpenAI is structural-part is non-profit, part for profit-how it defines its impact on humanity and complicates it. And this is more complicated this week Opina has reached an agreement with Microsoft It eventually brings closer to becoming universal.

Two former Open Open Researchers told TechCrunch that they feared that the AI ​​lab began to confuse its profitable and non-profit missions-because people enjoy using ChatGPT and other products made in LLMS, it ticks the benefit of humanity.

Howo echoed these concerns, describing the dangers of being so consumed by the mission that the reality is ignored.

“Even the evidence that they are making is actually damaging people, even the evidence that they are making, the mission has continued all these paper,” said Howo. “There’s something really dangerous and dark about [being] So the faith system you created in the system that you will lose contact with reality. “