[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Thu Feb 23 17:45:09 UTC 2023


 

 

…> On Behalf Of Jason Resch via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

 

 

 

On Wed, Feb 22, 2023 at 11:08 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

You could certainly download it if OpenAI released it open source, but you would not be able to run it on your personal computer. These models requires VERY expensive GPUs to run. The hardware cost alone runs into the millions.

 

 

>…My understanding is that while the training of the model cost millions of dollars of computing power, that the model, once trained, can be run on a computer with perhaps several thousands of dollars of hardware (around 9 high-end graphics cards). …Jason

 

 

 

OK cool so we have available (have had for nearly 30 years) the ability to harness background computing, as was done starting in 1995 to search for Mersenne primes (the Prime95 project which continues to this day.)  SETI used volunteer background computing to search for ET signals, but in all, we never found anything profitable enough to sell our own unused background computer capacity.  

 

In chess software, we saw how good chess really can result from sufficiently powerful and plentiful calculations.  It sounds to me like AI gradually emerges (or a form of software that looks like AI (as brute force chess algorithms appear to be playing good chess)) given currently known algorithms plus massive computing power.

 

EXCELLENT!  We all have idle compute cycles currently being wasted.  So we set up a big collaborative system analogous to Prime95, sell our unused cycles, buy other people’s unused cycles, have everybody leave their computers on all the time.  A third of the planet is sleeping at any one time, so there you have plenty of available background computation available, otherwise wasted.

 

Gadersd, did we finally find after 30 years, a practical use for unused CPU cycles?  

 

spike

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