Eli Pariser at Second Thoughts:
I attended The Curve, a conference of ~350 top AI lab leaders and scientists, safety activists and alarmists, political advisors and lobbyists, journalists, and civil society leaders. The event took place in Lighthaven, a quirky cluster of houses in Berkeley that have been retrofitted into small conference spaces. Many sessions were in living room-sized spaces, so it was all very personable and informal — an impressive feat by the organizing team.
Many participants seemed thrilled, awed, and also deeply worried. Someone described it as “snorting pure San Francisco.” At 45 I was one of the older participants — the average age was mid-30s, but many of the most powerful people were in their late 20s. Pretty much every single person I talked to was smart, relatively humble, and pleasant. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting someone with a large Substack following.
There was broad consensus that the pace of progress in AI models will continue to accelerate, though lots of debate about how quickly.
More here.
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