GPT Party 3.0. Max Sapozhnikov: How to stay sane in the era of AI-related grand changes GPT Party 3.0, the largest Russian-language networking event dedicated to artificial intelligence, took place in Silicon Valley on March 9-10. More than 450 people gathered at Plug and Play to meet leading experts, entrepreneurs, and investors, discuss the latest trends in artificial intelligence, and gain practical knowledge. At the event, Max Sapozhnikov, Senior Product Manager at Google and founder of the non-profit organization MLHappy.org, spoke on the topic “How not to go crazy in the era of enormous changes associated with AI.” Max explained why it is difficult for people to stay sober in times of change, how the future with AI may develop, and also revealed the concept of AGI and talked about his new project for finding meaning in the new world, HappyVerse.AI. Max Sapozhnikov Senior Product Manager and Head of Growth at Cloud TPU, Google’s AI infrastructure, Founder of MLHappy.org, a nonprofit with a mission to improve happiness and well-being through safe AI Why do people go crazy? I turned to Google’s Gemini system for an answer, and it came up with three causes: mental illness, excessive stress, and substance abuse. GPT 4.0, on the other hand, identified causes such as genetic predispositions, traumatic life events, and chemical imbalances in the brain. However, in my opinion, both Gemini and GPT 4.0 missed several important aspects. What makes people lose their minds? They are love, money, power, boredom, and “vuca.” “Vuca” is a concept I encounter all the time at Google, which refers to the complexity, instability, ambiguity, and uncertainty in the processes that occur in the world. The Connection Between Automation and People’s Mental Health Our world is becoming more and more complex and unpredictable. Things are changing not just every day, but every hour, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with them. Artificial intelligence is only accelerating this process of change. That is why I wanted to approach the topic of automation from the perspective of the Industrial Revolution. There were about 100 years between the first and second revolutions, the same between the second and third, and only 10 years between the fourth and fifth. The progress is simply amazing. I really like the way the Japanese define this fifth revolution. For them, it is important to understand how to use technology to take care of people’s well-being and preserve their authenticity, and to find a balance between economic progress and solving social problems. These are very important aspects that the Japanese think about. Predictions for the AGI Era from Tech Experts My fellow countryman Volodya Shakirov told me about the risks associated with artificial intelligence 10 years ago. At that time, I did not really understand him. But what he was talking about is now being discussed by Elon Musk and many other technology leaders. Volodya even published several articles on this topic later, and through him I learned about Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Ng, and Shane Legg. Shane Legg, co-founder of DeepMind Technologies, predicted the era of AGI 10 years ago. According to his schedule, the probability of AGI by 2040 is 95%. Recently, Demis Hassabis, another co-founder of DeepMind, gave an interview to New York Times journalists on the topic of AGI. He believes that the forecasts made by Shane Legg are still relevant. AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is a form of artificial intelligence that has the ability to perform any cognitive task that a human can perform. In addition to DeepMind scientists, many other experts are thinking about the possibility of AGI. Time magazine recently published an interesting article that surveyed about 2,000 experts. They predicted that there is a 50% chance that so-called “transformational AI” will appear in the next 10 years, that is, by 2030. They also made a forecast of which professions will be replaced, including operators, accountants, drivers, etc. The prospects for programmers are also not bright, since it is assumed that AI will start generating code. NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang expressed the opinion that children do not need to learn programming, because AI will do it. However, there are many who disagree with this, and I tend to support their position. Experts’ predictions published in Time magazine What if AGI really does replace almost all jobs? In my opinion, governments, businesses and other stakeholders should consider the concept of universal basic income. If artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that it can replace almost any job, this does not mean that humanity should suffer from hunger and poverty. Rather, humanity will find ways to get enough money or resources to live a decent life. I believe that there are prospects in this future. In fact, Sam Altman is even funding research on the issue of universal basic income and how we can get there. HappyVerse.AI – creating meaning in life in the new world of artificial intelligence Next, imagine a scenario for tech optimists: what if artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that humans no longer have to work? How will this affect humanity? Many of you have probably watched the cartoon “WALL-E” about a small robot. This cartoon already 15 years ago showed a hypothetical utopia where there were such creatures, which were called “axiom humans”. They did nothing, just rode in automatic chairs and looked at screens. This is such a favorable utopia that theoretically could become reality. The probability may be low, but it is not zero. Then the question arises: what will we do? How to find the meaning of life if earning money is no longer a necessity? Here I want to share a project that I have been working on for the past few months. The project is called HappyVerse.AI. The idea is simple and complex at the same time: how to create a system for life design? Based on many years of research into positive psychology, experience of cooperation with various psychologists and coaches, I developed a framework that I called Harper Flow. It consists of nine components: health, intelligence, productivity, emotions, relationships, freedom, love, employment and wealth. I believe that these nine components are fundamental to human life. With this framework, you can optimize your life so that even with any changes you feel happy.
