[ExI] online engineering schools: was RE: ChatGPT 'Not Interesting' for creative works

[spike at rainier66.com]

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From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Gadersd via extropy-chat
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Subject: Re: [ExI] online engineering schools: was RE: ChatGPT 'Not Interesting' for creative works




>...I am interested in any details you have about young Eliezer, especially the fun ones...

Recommend going back and checking the archives.  Eliezer had shown up on ExI at age 16 writing about singularity theory, but he sure didn't sound at all like a teenager, certainly not like any teenager I knew.  His grammar was perfect, free of slang, his lines of reasoning tight and disciplined, extremely well informed, up to speed on all the latest singularity theory.

We couldn't find any digital signature for him anywhere, which was consistent with his being a teen, but most of us thought we were being set up for a huge elaborate gag.  His father was a science fiction writer, so I theorized Eliezer was a sock puppet for his father.  Jeff Davis thought he was a Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn.  Nobody really knew but we accepted him face value, some of us discussed his area of expertise offlist.

I don't recall what year it was, but probably about 1997.  Christine Peterson was having a Foresight Institute conference in Sunnyvale California.  Jeff Davis, Robert Bradbury and I agreed to go over to the San Jose Airport to pick him up, knowing that it might be a huge gag and we would be the fall guys, but hey, it's the chance you take.  I was cool with it, as were the others.  Christine accepted him face value and had invited him to speak at her conference, bought his plane ticket and hotel room.

I got a call from the office at the last minute and couldn't go, so those guys went on, and were of course astonished to find Eliezer was an actual literal teenager.  The joke was on us: he really was exactly what he said he was.  I finished up at the office and returned to the conference, listened to his pitch.  Sure enough he spoke exactly the way he wrote.  He had fooled us by telling it exactly the way it is.

We started suggesting to him that he move to California, set up a singularity think tank, which he eventually did a few years later.  He has been based in the neighborhood for about the last 20 years or so.  Peter Thiel is his patron last time I heard, helps keep Less Wrong going.

You can find some excellent fun Eliezer posts in the ExI archives.

spike