The thing that I keep coming back to is that intelligence and energy are the two inputs to wealth creation. And we have, in AI, a way to potentially radically expand the amount of intelligence available to humanity. If we can do that, and if we can find a way to get cheap, abundant energy, I think the world looks totally different in 20 to 30 years than most people are imagining.
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If you would have told me that AI would create a more fractured internet, with a more hollow and disappointing experience, hurting human culture, literacy (we read less), a force for white collar deskilling, and detrimental to human well-being with questionable economic benefits, I probably wouldn't have believed you. But there's a weight in pretending and a nagging feeling that this isn't it.
Michael Spencer
Intelligence is a conversion ratio, with an optimality bound. Increasing intelligence is not so much like "making the tower taller", it's more like "making the ball rounder". At some point it's already pretty damn spherical and any improvement is marginal.
Francois Chollet
I think it comes down to whether you think AI is more Oil or God, more 'an economically useful commodity that can be scaled and refined to act as a multiplier on everything we do' or 'supremely intelligent and powerful being that's going to wake up and make humanity subservient (if we're lucky).'
Packy McCormick