This is a linkpost for this article from AI Impacts.

[This page is out of date and its contents may have been inaccurate in 2015, in light of new information that we are yet to integrate.]

Computing capacity worldwide was probably around 2 x 1020 – 1.5 x 1021 FLOPS, at around the end of 2015.

 

According to different estimates, the human brain performs the equivalent of between 3 x 1013 and 1025 FLOPS. The median estimate we know of is 1018 FLOPS.

Based on this figure, it looks like the global computing capacity of all hardware will exceed that of all humans somewhere between now and the end of the 22nd century. So, if one thinks computing capacity is a decent proxy for utility, artificial sentience can be super important. It is actually one of 80,000 Hours' most pressing problems.

Relatedly, I liked the article Why Your Laptop May Be Marginally Sentient by Brian Tomasik.

12

0
0

Reactions

0
0
Comments


No comments on this post yet.
Be the first to respond.
Curated and popular this week
sawyer🔸
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
Note: This started as a quick take, but it got too long so I made it a full post. It's still kind of a rant; a stronger post would include sources and would have gotten feedback from people more knowledgeable than I. But in the spirit of Draft Amnesty Week, I'm writing this in one sitting and smashing that Submit button. Many people continue to refer to companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind as "frontier AI labs". I think we should drop "labs" entirely when discussing these companies, calling them "AI companies"[1] instead. While these companies may have once been primarily research laboratories, they are no longer so. Continuing to call them labs makes them sound like harmless groups focused on pushing the frontier of human knowledge, when in reality they are profit-seeking corporations focused on building products and capturing value in the marketplace. Laboratories do not directly publish software products that attract hundreds of millions of users and billions in revenue. Laboratories do not hire armies of lobbyists to control the regulation of their work. Laboratories do not compete for tens of billions in external investments or announce many-billion-dollar capital expenditures in partnership with governments both foreign and domestic. People call these companies labs due to some combination of marketing and historical accident. To my knowledge no one ever called Facebook, Amazon, Apple, or Netflix "labs", despite each of them employing many researchers and pushing a lot of genuine innovation in many fields of technology. To be clear, there are labs inside many AI companies, especially the big ones mentioned above. There are groups of researchers doing research at the cutting edge of various fields of knowledge, in AI capabilities, safety, governance, etc. Many individuals (perhaps some readers of this very post!) would be correct in saying they work at a lab inside a frontier AI company. It's just not the case that any of these companies as
 ·  · 11m read
 · 
My name is Keyvan, and I lead Anima International’s work in France. Our organization went through a major transformation in 2024. I want to share that journey with you. Anima International in France used to be known as Assiettes Végétales (‘Plant-Based Plates’). We focused entirely on introducing and promoting vegetarian and plant-based meals in collective catering. Today, as Anima, our mission is to put an end to the use of cages for laying hens. These changes come after a thorough evaluation of our previous campaign, assessing 94 potential new interventions, making several difficult choices, and navigating emotional struggles. We hope that by sharing our experience, we can help others who find themselves in similar situations. So let me walk you through how the past twelve months have unfolded for us.  The French team Act One: What we did as Assiettes Végétales Since 2018, we worked with the local authorities of cities, counties, regions, and universities across France to develop vegetarian meals in their collective catering services. If you don’t know much about France, this intervention may feel odd to you. But here, the collective catering sector feeds a huge number of people and produces an enormous quantity of meals. Two out of three children, more than seven million in total, eat at a school canteen at least once a week. Overall, more than three billion meals are served each year in collective catering. We knew that by influencing practices in this sector, we could reach a massive number of people. However, this work was not easy. France has a strong culinary heritage deeply rooted in animal-based products. Meat and fish-based meals remain the standard in collective catering and school canteens. It is effectively mandatory to serve a dairy product every day in school canteens. To be a certified chef, you have to complete special training and until recently, such training didn’t include a single vegetarian dish among the essential recipes to master. De
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
The belief that it's preferable for America to develop AGI before China does seems widespread among American effective altruists. Is this belief supported by evidence, or it it just patriotism in disguise? How would you try to convince an open-minded Chinese citizen that it really would be better for America to develop AGI first? Such a person might point out: * Over the past 30 years, the Chinese government has done more for the flourishing of Chinese citizens than the American government has done for the flourishing of American citizens. My village growing up lacked electricity, and now I'm a software engineer! Chinese institutions are more trustworthy for promoting the future flourishing of humanity. * Commerce in China ditches some of the older ideas of Marxism because it's the means to an end: the China Dream of wealthy communism. As AGI makes China and the world extraordinarily wealthy, we are far readier to convert to full communism, taking care of everyone, including the laborers who have been permanently displaced by capital. * The American Supreme Court has established "corporate personhood" to an extent that is nonexistent in China. As corporations become increasingly managed by AI, this legal precedent will give AI enormous leverage for influencing policy, without regard to human interests. * Compared to America, China has a head start in using AI to build a harmonious society. The American federal, state, and municipal governments already lag so far behind that they're less likely to manage the huge changes that come after AGI. * America's founding and expansion were based on a technologically-superior civilization exterminating the simpler natives. Isn't this exactly what we're trying to prevent AI from doing to humanity?