Your comment is somewhat emotionally charged, but I choose to respond to the overall point as a mathematician. I think it could be true that utility is correlated with difficulty but it is certainly not defined by it.
In pure mathematics, we reason about a world of abstract objects which are considered interesting ab initio. It may be because they arise directly or often from extremely basic operations, they are connected to many other interesting objects, or that they present special and surprising properties. The importance is basically, there is some surprising, interesting, phenomena which occurs in our world which we don't understand and which we seek to understand. Like science but in the non-physical world.
I think if you create a simple to describe system/construction with a property which is extremely difficult to prove. You are creating an object in our world which is basic but have properties which we don't understand (because we can't prove this property). So indeed I believe it would be an interesting thing to study and be of value. I don't see any problems/issues with this. I don't think the only valuable pursuit of humans is to improve the welfare of other humans. I think understanding the world is also valuable.
Sorry but I completely disagree with your statement that "every novel result is broadly perceived as a big deal". Most results certainly are not consider this way (even though the average result has difficulties that are much higher than novel computer program you may have in mind -- no offense)
Post-training can have big gains no? I don't think the current sizes at ~1T are saturated in intelligence (it's like saying AlphaGo Master is just a post-trained version of AlphaGo Lee)
Evidence towards aside, the risk calculation depends on how much upside is from the 100B if progress starts the same rate. I think it's hard to bound that accurately
Is it completely clear to you what the purpose of this is? It isn't completely clear to me but it's very likely it's an issue with me. I feel that it can be part of some larger counteroffensive against certain actors in China in a way that is more than just the signalling here--like maybe there's much more we haven't seen. In any case, it certainly shows their willingness to use less conventional tactics against those they view as adversaries.
But it reads to me like the thread parent's point is that there are many unknown risks which can exist? I also wonder about long term effects to the health of the genome from IVF and other forms of fertility treatment as infertility could be acting as some sort of protection mechanism of the genome. But I suppose such objections form a continuum which extends to treatment of all genetic diseases or diseases in general--all of which probably applies some evolutionary pressure towards more healthy individuals but which we as a society have to balance against wellbeing of individuals and their human rights.
Yeah it's not true that for every job, it is better than median worker of that job. But it is conceivable that for almost all jobs it is already better than the median human (not just workers of that job).
ok I guess they had other clues then if you do any sort of comparison vs Nex & Qwen probably a lot of weird coincidences will show up if somehow the three weights are not linearly independent lol
If they only opposed it they wouldn't have had these billions of dollars? Also I think they genuinely believe they cannot stop it because the Chinese companies are close behind (I also believe it's impossible to stop b/c of strong economic pressures selecting for those who will advance this tech and there are many who can)
In pure mathematics, we reason about a world of abstract objects which are considered interesting ab initio. It may be because they arise directly or often from extremely basic operations, they are connected to many other interesting objects, or that they present special and surprising properties. The importance is basically, there is some surprising, interesting, phenomena which occurs in our world which we don't understand and which we seek to understand. Like science but in the non-physical world.
I think if you create a simple to describe system/construction with a property which is extremely difficult to prove. You are creating an object in our world which is basic but have properties which we don't understand (because we can't prove this property). So indeed I believe it would be an interesting thing to study and be of value. I don't see any problems/issues with this. I don't think the only valuable pursuit of humans is to improve the welfare of other humans. I think understanding the world is also valuable.