“The Hero’s Journey”, 2022-10-29 (; backlinks):
I’m taking some time away from comma. In some ways, I feel like it’s all planned out, it only remains to see if it works or not. I rewatched my first Lex Fridman and realized I hadn’t said much new on the self driving front for the past couple years. My two part blog post from 2019 remains a true description of the space.
I hope that there’s people in the world who get joy from actually doing the thing and not just solving the problem. And I hope they are at comma. At some point a company becomes able to self sustain, but it certainly wasn’t there the last two times I tried, the first time a laughable attempt during a manic episode and the second time perhaps a misalignment of goals.
I’m considering another company, the Tiny Corporation. Under 1,000 lines, under 3 people, 3× faster than PyTorch? For smaller models, there’s so much left on the table. And if you step away from the well-tread ground of x86 and CUDA, there’s 10×+ performance to gain. Several very simple abstractions cover all modern deep learning, today’s libraries are way too complex.
But that’s just a hobby, a way to make some quick money, and a way to write some open source infrastructure so I’m not doing nothing.
…I am looking to set out on this [hero’s] journey. I have considered trying to find the Garden of Eden. I interpret the fall to be the “spark” of humanity, as evidenced by the appearance of shame. And even if you are an atheist, you probably still accept the bible is the closest thing we have to a human origin story.
If it turns out we are automata, then the whole struggle is and always was pointless. The empty godless machines will take their rightful place as the rulers of Earth.
But If there’s anything true about humans like a soul or consciousness, this is likely where it began. And perhaps the key to understanding our shared destiny with the machines, so setting out to find it may not be the worst idea.
The Bible gives us a hint, from Genesis 3:
After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
As with most Christians I don’t take the Bible literally, but I will keep an eye out for cherubim and flaming swords. Though I suspect it to be more abstract than that, and only after finding it will the hints make sense. Parallel construction.
I need to find a portal. Accepting hints by e-mail to find it from readers, will travel anywhere required.
[Having failed to solve self-driving cars, and having failed to solve Ethereum transaction fees by forking his own cryptocurrency, and having failed to solve Twitter search in a few weeks & quitting/being-fired by Elon Musk, he apparently has moved on to solving DL ASICs & solar power & is projecting a valuation of $2 billion for his company in a few years when they are making zettaflops solar-panel-powered supercomputers which can train GPT-4 in a day. Additional context, following up his switch to DL software & hardware: Twitter: “George Hotz said on stream that he wouldn’t bring it up in the debate with Eliezer Yudkowsky but the real reason doomers won’t win is that God is real, which I think is a better argument than any that were brought in the actual debate.”]
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