From Office Chai:
OpenAI had stunned the world by releasing ChatGPT in November 2022, but it turns out that the researchers working on the technology were even more stunned at what they’d developed.
Jeff Clune, a former researcher at OpenAI, says that building AI felt like watching an AI intelligence arrive. His words paint a vivid picture of a small group of scientists who felt they held a world-altering secret, a sentiment that oscillated between exhilarating and terrifying. Clune had worked at OpenAI from January 2020 to May 2022, and now works at Google DeepMind.
Clune’s analogy captures the surreal feeling of knowing the world was on the precipice of a monumental shift, while life for everyone else continued as normal. “It’s kind of like you’re an astronomer,” he explained. “You’re looking at your equipment, your sensors and your computer readouts, and you and a handful of other people have the expertise to look at this complicated data and say, ‘Oh my gosh, aliens are on the way. They’re going to arrive on Earth in a couple of years.’”
More here.
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