Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, Eric Horvitz, believes artificial intelligence will allow future humans to flourish, but he’s apparently hedging his bets.
Horvitz published a post entitled “Reflections on AI and the future of human flourishing” on the official Microsoft blog on May 30. The article discusses the future of artificial intelligence and announces a series of essays written by AI experts who were given early access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 before its public launch.
Per the blog post, Horvitz was surprised by the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4 when he was given such access in 2022:
“I observed unexpected glimmers of intelligence beyond those seen in prior AI systems. When compared to its predecessor, GPT-3.5 — a model utilized by tens of millions as ChatGPT — I noticed a significant leap in capabilities.
Specifically, Horvitz touted GPT-4’s “ability to interpret my intentions and provide sophisticated answers to numerous prompts,” which he said “felt like a ‘phase transition,’ evoking imagery of emergent phenomena that I had encountered in physics.”
Horvitz writes that, while testing GPT-4, it became “increasingly evident that the model and its successors […] hold tremendous potential to be transformative.”
Microsoft and OpenAI gave a litany of experts early access to GPT-4 and solicited essays from them…
