Book Chapter on AGI

If you happen to visit this site from time to time, you probably will have noticed that I have not been posting many updates. There’s a reason for that: I have been primarily focused on writing my book about AI. It has been a few months, but writing a non-fiction book is extremely difficult. In fact, almost everyone who starts writing a serious non-fiction book later will say that they underestimated how difficult and long it would be. I figured I could handle it, because I’m a good writer. Like everyone else, I underestimated how hard it would be.

The book I am writing has a sense of urgency to it, because as AI is being adopted so widely, we are seeing unprecedented misinformation and mythology being presented in the media and taken seriously by adults, who truly should know better.

What is far worse is the AI fear movement (AI Doom) which has become one of the most ridiculously unhinged parts of the effort pushing myths and stupidity about AI. Of course, machines do not have desires, do not act on their own accord and are not capable of being gods. Superintelligence is a fictional construct that does not even make sense once you start to ask serious questions about what it means. Intelligence in and of itself is rarely a trump card when someone else has resources or knowledge you do not. LLMs are linear and have inherent limitations.

The idea that machines will gain bad intentions is complete nonsense, and yet we see increasingly unhinged and dangerous rhetoric saying the opposite. Take this Youtube video I came across recently, The braindead nature of AI doom isn’t really what we have to fear. If people truly believe that the human race is in danger, is violence even unreasonable?

Yudkowsky, a junior high dropout who has no background in almost anything, and is one of the most celebrated profits of the cult of doom has made statements about bombing data centers. A splinter group of AI doom has already committed murders. Sam Altman’s house was shot at, and a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. A mentally disturbed AI protestor went missing causing major concerns by police. None of this is surprising at all.

And then I see yet another post, this time on YouTube, celebrating a terrorist who had an unhinged fear of technology driven by literal schizophrenia.

And this is why I am writing the book. It’s an urgent plea for sanity, and an attempt to dispel myths about AI and provide all the supporting evidence so that people can truly understand how AI works and what it is and is not.

AGI (Whatever the hell that is) is a major topic of confusion and misinformation, so I have decided to present my core chapter on AGI. Bear in mind that this chapter does not really stand on its own. By the time a reader gets to this chapter (the 14th) they will have fully learned about: The history of AI, machine learning, deep learning networks, neural network dynamics, how training works, the transformer architecture, vector embeddings, attention mechanisms, catastrophic forgetting, neural compression, scaling laws and alike. If it seems like “This point assumes the audience already knows..” that is likely because it is the 14th chapter.

This is presented as is. It is a draft. It will almost surely be very refined and revised before the book is finalized. Also, keep in mind that, as an early draft, it is likely to have a few typographical or formatting errors, sub-optimal wording and similar. Normally, I might hesitate to make public such a work in progress. However, with the increasing nonsense and dangerous degeneration of understanding about what AI is and how it works, I have decided to try to get as much out as soon as possible.

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Preview of Another Book Chapter

I have decided to publish a second rough draft of a book chapter. One of my primary reasons is to get the content out as soon as possible, since my motivation is to help with the extreme misinformation being circulated about AI.

The idiotic “doom” movement continues to operate with seeming credibility despite the childish message that superintelligence will take over the world, like some kind of cartoon villain. Unfortunately, refuting this is hard, because adherents have a completely wrong understanding of how the technology works.

It is clear that to resist this lunacy, along with the equally stupid idea that models might be conscious or have feelings, you simply need to know how this actually works. That’s what “Understanding AI” is all about. That’s why I’m writing the book. It’s a decidedly not dumbed down primer on AI. It explains the theory, early evolution, why things are done as they are, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing and generative AI.

This unapologetic adult and broad primer will help make anyone immune to the extreme cultish nonsense that has surround the subject. It does not go into depth more than it needs to, but it assures all relevant concepts are covered in a computer way that does not insult the readers intelligence.

This is not the second chapter of the book, but rather the 7th. It is, of course, subject to change, as it is a draft. But, putting it out there, if nothing else, holds my feet to the fire, to get it done. I’m sure it will receive at least three major revisions, but so far I have not seen such a comprehensive account of the dawn of generative AI from anyone inside the industry.

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First Draft of First Chapter of My Book “Understanding AI”

So I have decided to write a book. Crazy, perhaps. It is something I have wanted to do for years and faced many false starts. I think a lot of people have been through that. It’s not easy, but I knew that. It’s actually harder than you’d ever imagine, at least for me, but then again, this is the first time I have truly committed to the pursuit.

The reason I choose to write this is that AI is the most poorly understood topic I have ever seen, and has been wrapped in mythology. This is especially true with “AI Doom.” The problem with these beliefs is that they are difficult to refute without teaching a full lesson on AI. So, I guess that’s what I’m going to have to do! I’m not complaining, however. The fact is, there is really no in-depth guide for smart people who want to truly understand the concept of artificial intelligence.

I want to be clear that this is a first draft of the first chapter. It will be revised, probably several times. It currently lacks citations, but those will be added. Citations will be minimal because this is not a scholarly work, but should still have basic source credibility. Additionally, this chapter contains assertions which some might call bold or unsupported. There’s a reason for that and the reason is that this is just the first chapter.

Subsequent chapters will explore the history of AI as a concept and technology, including the pre-history and how formal logic rules, early computers and language itself set the stage for a new form of data processing, which we call artificial intelligence. It goes on to explain the theory of deep learning and neural networks, why this approach won out, and will take readers all the way to understanding natural language processing.

It’s not designed to be easy or dumbed down. However, it is intended to be fully complete for any lay person to fully understand why AI is the way it is, how we got her and where it is likely to go next. It is also not entirely technical. It features historic concept, public perception, regulatory issues and economic realities.

I also want to add that there are a number of people out there who are writing hot takes on AI that are completely uninformed, and this is intended to be the opposite of that. It’s down to earth, skeptical and presents the truth about artificial intelligence.

The working title is “Understanding AI.”


AND HERE IT IS!

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