Post
  1. Portrait of Onur Solmaz

    Compute is fuel waiting for a spark

    @onusoz · /2026/09/10 · View on
    This is the mental model I have of AI since years and have used this metaphor in discussions I imagine compute as barrels of gasoline, and we are all in a room, piling up more and more compute, waiting for something to light it up You can also imagine a dried up forest to be closer to Taleb's antifragility argument At some point, it might go boom (I won't say foom, to not imply fast take-off, but rather, a shock to the world system) Aiming for more frequent, smaller, controlled booms in the forms of accidents like OpenAI's would arguably let the world to adapt better to changes, than a single, delayed boom I am not yet sure what position I lean into. But the world's governments + industry are a complex system and should not be treated as something to be controlled easily
    @kellerjordan0 ·
    If I wanted to maximize AI risk, I would pursue the following policy: 1. Immediately pause⏸️ the algorithmic progress coming from the labs, while continuing to allow compute from the hardware companies to exponentially pile up. 2. Focus really hard on safety, so as to avoid spooking the public with the sort of industrial accidents that even the current level of algorithms+compute can produce. This policy will minimize the number of AI accidents that occur in the next five years, causing the public+govt to not freak out about AI, all while a massive amount of hardware accumulates on the planet. That way, once algorithmic progress gets eventually restarted, there’ll be enough compute built up for a huge unexpected FOOM that no one can control. On the other hand, if I wanted to minimize AI risk, I would do approximately the opposite of this.