The DeepMind Institute

(institute.deepmind.com)

66 points | by vertigoruntime 4 hours ago

6 comments

  • nsagent 1 hour ago
    They are simply looking to steer AI policy discussions. It's basically an in-house think tank. It has all the trappings, especially with ominous prognostications like:

      Today’s AI systems have impressive capabilities and the rapid pace of innovation suggests we’re now approaching artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities of the human brain.
    
    Not sure we are anywhere close to all the cognitive capabilities of the human brain... not even a severely lobotomized one.
    • Eueudhsbsj32 38 minutes ago
      > Not sure we are anywhere close to all the cognitive capabilities of the human brain...

      In which capabilities are AI not already close to or beyond that of a human brain?

      • idiotsecant 7 minutes ago
        The ability to solve general problems previously insoluble using only experiential data and modification to internal world models.
      • jkuli 9 minutes ago
        politics
    • pixl97 1 hour ago
      Exactly how many cognitive capabilities are needed before it becomes a problem?
      • verdverm 1 hour ago
        Just one, the ability to use language, it's causing all sorts of problems for us because we evolved to recognize other humans as the only ones having this capability.

        Ai separated humans from language, like the writing did for memory and the printing press for knowledge distribution.

        "AI does to us what American Cheese did to food" by Opus 23

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CbmC2aWhjY

        (still the best Ai video I have seen, also a work of art)

        • ozgrakkurt 44 minutes ago
          > like the writing did for memory and the printing press for knowledge distribution

          This blob of text seems to mean nothing

          • pixl97 34 minutes ago
            I'm not actually sure how you could come to that conclusion.

            Maybe you need to learn more about the language uplift.

          • verdverm 36 minutes ago
            What happened to the knowledge in the elder's mind when they died, prior to writing? What changed about that once we had writing?
    • bossyTeacher 11 minutes ago
      > They are simply looking to steer AI policy discussions. It's basically an in-house think tank.

      For a guy who spent his life imagining and realising dreams in video games and cognitive abilities in artificial neural networks, it has to be very soul destroying for Demis to spend his time doing something as frivolous as this.

  • ACV001 56 minutes ago
    I wonder if they could make the font even greyer on that website. MORE GREY because I am still able to read it (bearly).
  • 0gs 1 hour ago
    wow i thought the attributions were for the vector graphic things and was like "ok demis is in his illustrator bag too!"
  • chrisjj 57 minutes ago
    Just a new shop front. Nothing to see here.
  • sicktriple 50 minutes ago
    Google citing Mark Fisher was not on my Postmodern-hell-world bingo card.
  • ipsum2 2 hours ago
    Tl;DR: It's not a new organization, or non-profit institute. It's a Substack/blog.

    > DMI is a platform for researchers and thinkers from across Google DeepMind, Google, and the wider global research community to work on and publish creative, deeply informed ideas about a world with AGI. They will not always agree, and they will likely change their minds, as more data and information comes to light at the fast-moving frontier. We created this institute precisely because broad-based intellectual discussion and debate are required to arrive at a consensus about how to address the challenges and opportunities we face as a society.

    • trollbridge 1 hour ago
      Nonetheless, there are great articles up on there, such as:

      https://institute.deepmind.com/essays/the-case-for-reasoning...

      (Hiding chains of thought is one of the most harmful things I think OAI/Anthr. has done, altough Google Gemini also encrypts its chains of thought, so it's interesting to see the DeepMind Institute crticising this.)

      • ppaattrriicckk 1 hour ago
        My read is that they're criticizing moving the reasoning (more) into the latent space, such that not even researchers/safety-evaluators can actually see what's going on.

        Of course this still then has a 'trust me, bro' feel to it, but making it outright impossible to reasonably inspect the CoT is a significantly larger and riskier step, IMO.

    • bix6 57 minutes ago
      How can they even pretend to distance themselves from Google…
    • dgellow 1 hour ago
      So, a think tank, to lobby governments

      > We created this institute precisely because broad-based intellectual discussion and debate are required to arrive at a consensus about how to address the challenges and opportunities we face as a society.

      Something tells me that consensus will never arrive to the conclusion that we should shut down that whole industry

    • dude250711 1 hour ago
      The word "institute" gives an aura of credibility without some boring accreditation. Though not sure every country allows that.