Daily Tech News 24 September 2024

• AI superintelligence will be here in 20 years says Sam Altman who would never ever lie about such a thing. (Ars Technica)

  "It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I'm confident we'll get there," he wrote.

  Wanna bet, Sam?

  It's easy to criticize Altman's vagueness here; no one can truly predict the future, but Altman, as CEO of OpenAI, is likely privy to AI research techniques coming down the pipeline that aren't broadly known to the public.

  No. He's not.

  So even when couched with a broad time frame, the claim comes from a noteworthy source in the AI field-albeit one who is heavily invested in making sure that AI progress does not stall.

  No. It doesn't.

  Elsewhere in the essay, Altman frames our present era as the dawn of "The Intelligence Age," the next transformative technology era in human history, following the Stone Age, Agricultural Age, and Industrial Age. He credits the success of deep learning algorithms as the catalyst for this new era, stating simply: "How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words: deep learning worked."

  The problem with that is that "deep learning" hasn't worked, and can't. There's no point making ever larger and more expensive models - if there ever was - because we've run out of data to feed them.

  Not everyone shares Altman's optimism and enthusiasm. Computer scientist and frequent AI critic Grady Booch quoted Altman's "few thousand days" prediction and wrote on X, "I am so freaking tired of all the AI hype: it has no basis in reality and serves only to inflate valuations, inflame the public, garnet [sic] headlines, and distract from the real work going on in computing."

  Yes.

• Redis users are considering jumping ship. (The Register)
  
  Redis used to be open source. Now it isn't.
  
  Which is a problem for Redis.
  
  
  
• Because now Valkey exists. (Valkey)
  
  It only exists because Redis used to be open source, but Redis did use to be open source.
  
  Meaning that Valkey could take the last open source version of Redis, and create its own version.
  
  And then add features that Redis never had (like multi-threading) and then ship it as open source.
  
  The only thing Valkey can't do is stop being open source, which is a feature rather than a bug.
  
  
  
• The Arc browser: Why you need a better browser than Chrome. (The Verge)
  
  Chrome used to be the best. Now it's... Meh.
  
  Arc is designed to be an operating system for web applications. Should you try it?

  So, the origin of The Browser Company is I was a political appointee in the Obama White House and after the 2016 election, I was personally devastated by the result. I felt like technology and the technology industry had an impact on the things I didn't like, and I was very motivated to try to do something about it.

  No.
  
  
  
• Intel's Razer Lake CPUs will follow after Nova Lake now that the Arrow Lake Refresh has been cancelled. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Look, I follow this stuff every single day, and if you told me that Veronica Lake was now set to follow Swan Lake because Rose Madder Lake had been cancelled I would have no idea whether that was real or not.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:17 AM

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