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Tag: Prompt Engineering

  • Sam Altman on Trust, Persuasion, and the Future of Intelligence: A Deep Dive into AI, Power, and Human Adaptation

    TL;DW

    Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, explains how AI will soon revolutionize productivity, science, and society. GPT-6 will represent the first leap from imitation to original discovery. Within a few years, major organizations will be mostly AI-run, energy will become the key constraint, and the way humans work, communicate, and learn will change permanently. Yet, trust, persuasion, and meaning remain human domains.

    Key Takeaways

    OpenAI’s speed comes from focus, delegation, and clarity. Hardware efforts mirror software culture despite slower cycles. Email is “very bad,” Slack only slightly better—AI-native collaboration tools will replace them. GPT-6 will make new scientific discoveries, not just summarize others. Billion-dollar companies could run with two or three people and AI systems, though social trust will slow adoption. Governments will inevitably act as insurers of last resort for AI but shouldn’t control it. AI trust depends on neutrality—paid bias would destroy user confidence. Energy is the new bottleneck, with short-term reliance on natural gas and long-term fusion and solar dominance. Education and work will shift toward AI literacy, while privacy, free expression, and adult autonomy remain central. The real danger isn’t rogue AI but subtle, unintentional persuasion shaping global beliefs. Books and culture will survive, but the way we work and think will be transformed.

    Summary

    Altman begins by describing how OpenAI achieved rapid progress through delegation and simplicity. The company’s mission is clearer than ever: build the infrastructure and intelligence needed for AGI. Hardware projects now run with the same creative intensity as software, though timelines are longer and risk higher.

    He views traditional communication systems as broken. Email creates inertia and fake productivity; Slack is only a temporary fix. Altman foresees a fully AI-driven coordination layer where agents manage most tasks autonomously, escalating to humans only when needed.

    GPT-6, he says, may become the first AI to generate new science rather than assist with existing research—a leap comparable to GPT-3’s Turing-test breakthrough. Within a few years, divisions of OpenAI could be 85% AI-run. Billion-dollar companies will operate with tiny human teams and vast AI infrastructure. Society, however, will lag in trust—people irrationally prefer human judgment even when AIs outperform them.

    Governments, he predicts, will become the “insurer of last resort” for the AI-driven economy, similar to their role in finance and nuclear energy. He opposes overregulation but accepts deeper state involvement. Trust and transparency will be vital; AI products must not accept paid manipulation. A single biased recommendation would destroy ChatGPT’s relationship with users.

    Commerce will evolve: neutral commissions and low margins will replace ad taxes. Altman welcomes shrinking profit margins as signs of efficiency. He sees AI as a driver of abundance, reducing costs across industries but expanding opportunity through scale.

    Creativity and art will remain human in meaning even as AI equals or surpasses technical skill. AI-generated poetry may reach “8.8 out of 10” quality soon, perhaps even a perfect 10—but emotional context and authorship will still matter. The process of deciding what is great may always be human.

    Energy, not compute, is the ultimate constraint. “We need more electrons,” he says. Natural gas will fill the gap short term, while fusion and solar power dominate the future. He remains bullish on fusion and expects it to combine with solar in driving abundance.

    Education will shift from degrees to capability. College returns will fall while AI literacy becomes essential. Instead of formal training, people will learn through AI itself—asking it to teach them how to use it better. Institutions will resist change, but individuals will adapt faster.

    Privacy and freedom of use are core principles. Altman wants adults treated like adults, protected by doctor-level confidentiality with AI. However, guardrails remain for users in mental distress. He values expressive freedom but sees the need for mental-health-aware design.

    The most profound risk he highlights isn’t rogue superintelligence but “accidental persuasion”—AI subtly influencing beliefs at scale without intent. Global reliance on a few large models could create unseen cultural drift. He worries about AI’s power to nudge societies rather than destroy them.

    Culturally, he expects the rhythm of daily work to change completely. Emails, meetings, and Slack will vanish, replaced by AI mediation. Family life, friendship, and nature will remain largely untouched. Books will persist but as a smaller share of learning, displaced by interactive, AI-driven experiences.

    Altman’s philosophical close: one day, humanity will build a safe, self-improving superintelligence. Before it begins, someone must type the first prompt. His question—what should those words be?—remains unanswered, a reflection of humility before the unknown future of intelligence.

  • AI Breakthrough: Large Language Model GPT-4.5 Passes the Turing Test, Often Appearing ‘More Human’ Than Humans

    In a landmark study suggesting a significant leap in artificial intelligence capabilities, researchers from the University of California San Diego have provided the first robust empirical evidence that a large language model (LLM) can pass the standard Turing test. The study found that OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 model, when guided by a specific prompt to adopt a humanlike persona, was judged to be the human conversational partner 73% of the time, significantly more often than actual human participants were selected.

    The Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as the “imitation game,” is a benchmark for machine intelligence. In its classic three-party form, a human interrogator holds simultaneous text-based conversations with two unseen witnesses – one human, one machine. Both witnesses try to convince the interrogator they are human. If the interrogator cannot reliably distinguish the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.

    Despite numerous attempts over 75 years, no AI system had previously passed a standard, controlled three-party Turing test. While modern AI benchmarks often focus on narrow, static tasks, the Turing test provides a dynamic, interactive, and adversarial evaluation of an AI’s ability to mimic general human conversational behavior and potentially deceive.

    Researchers Cameron R. Jones and Benjamin K. Bergen conducted two pre-registered, randomized, controlled experiments using independent populations (UCSD undergraduates and online Prolific workers). Participants engaged in 5-minute conversations, acting as the interrogator comparing an AI witness against a human witness. Four AI systems were evaluated: the classic 1960s chatbot ELIZA, OpenAI’s GPT-4o (an earlier model), Meta’s LLaMa-3.1-405B, and OpenAI’s GPT-4.5.

    Crucially, the study tested the impact of prompting. In a baseline “NO-PERSONA” condition, LLMs received minimal instructions. In the key “PERSONA” condition, LLMs (GPT-4.5 and LLaMa-3.1) were prompted to act like a specific type of young, introverted person familiar with internet culture.

    The results were striking:

    1. GPT-4.5 (PERSONA): Achieved a 73% “win rate,” meaning interrogators identified it as human 73% of the time. This was significantly above the 50% chance level and notably higher than the rate at which actual human participants were identified.
    2. LLaMa-3.1 (PERSONA): Achieved a 56% win rate. This was statistically indistinguishable from chance (and thus indistinguishable from the human win rate), meeting the criteria for passing the test.
    3. Baseline Models (ELIZA, GPT-4o NO-PERSONA): Failed significantly, with win rates of only 23% and 21% respectively. This confirmed that participants were not simply guessing randomly or easily fooled by any AI.
    4. NO-PERSONA LLMs (GPT-4.5, LLaMa-3.1): Performed much worse than their PERSONA counterparts (36% and 38% win rates overall), failing to robustly pass the test across both study populations. This highlights the critical role of prompting in achieving humanlike imitation.

    The researchers noted that interrogators often focused more on linguistic style, social, and emotional cues (like tone, humor, or personality) rather than purely factual knowledge or logical reasoning when making their judgments. Interestingly, sometimes demonstrating a lack of knowledge contributed to an AI seeming more human.

    These findings indicate that current leading LLMs, when appropriately prompted, can successfully imitate human conversational partners in short interactions to the point of indistinguishability, and even appear more convincing than actual humans. The authors argue this demonstrates a high degree of “humanlikeness” rather than necessarily proving abstract intelligence in the way Turing originally envisioned.

    The study carries significant social and economic implications. The ability of AI to convincingly pass as human raises concerns about “counterfeit people” online, facilitating social engineering, spreading misinformation, or replacing humans in roles requiring brief conversational interactions. While the test was limited to 5 minutes, the results signal a new era where distinguishing human from machine in online text interactions has become substantially more difficult. The researchers suggest future work could explore longer test durations and different participant populations or incentives to further probe the boundaries of AI imitation.

  • The AI Revolution Unveiled: Jonathan Ross on Groq, NVIDIA, and the Future of Inference

    TL;DR

    Jonathan Ross, Groq’s CEO, predicts inference will eclipse training in AI’s future, with Groq’s Language Processing Units (LPUs) outpacing NVIDIA’s GPUs in cost and efficiency. He envisions synthetic data breaking scaling limits, a $1.5 billion Saudi revenue deal fueling Groq’s growth, and AI unlocking human potential through prompt engineering, though he warns of an overabundance trap.

    Detailed Summary

    In a captivating 20VC episode with Harry Stebbings, Jonathan Ross, the mastermind behind Groq and Google’s original Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), outlines a transformative vision for AI. Ross asserts that inference—deploying AI models in real-world scenarios—will soon overshadow training, challenging NVIDIA’s GPU stronghold. Groq’s LPUs, engineered for affordable, high-volume inference, deliver over five times the cost efficiency and three times the energy savings of NVIDIA’s training-focused GPUs by avoiding external memory like HBM. He champions synthetic data from advanced models as a breakthrough, dismantling scaling law barriers and redirecting focus to compute, data, and algorithmic bottlenecks.

    Groq’s explosive growth—from 640 chips in early 2024 to over 40,000 by year-end, aiming for 2 million in 2025—is propelled by a $1.5 billion Saudi revenue deal, not a funding round. Partners like Aramco fund the capital expenditure, sharing profits after a set return, liberating Groq from financial limits. Ross targets NVIDIA’s 40% inference revenue as a weak spot, cautions against a data center investment bubble driven by hyperscaler exaggeration, and foresees AI value concentrating among giants via a power law—yet Groq plans to join them by addressing unmet demands. Reflecting on Groq’s near-failure, salvaged by “Grok Bonds,” he dreams of AI enhancing human agency, potentially empowering 1.4 billion Africans through prompt engineering, while urging vigilance against settling for “good enough” in an abundant future.

    The Big Questions Raised—and Answered

    Ross’s insights provoke profound metaphorical questions about AI’s trajectory and humanity’s role. Here’s what the discussion implicitly asks, paired with his responses:

    • What happens when creation becomes so easy it redefines who gets to create?
      • Answer: Ross champions prompt engineering as a revolutionary force, turning speech into a tool that could unleash 1.4 billion African entrepreneurs. By making creation as simple as talking, AI could shift power from tech gatekeepers to the masses, sparking a global wave of innovation.
    • Can an underdog outrun a titan in a scale-driven game?
      • Answer: Groq can outpace NVIDIA, Ross asserts, by targeting inference—a massive, underserved market—rather than battling over training. With no HBM bottlenecks and a scalable Saudi-backed model, Groq’s agility could topple NVIDIA’s inference share, proving size isn’t everything.
    • What’s the human cost when machines replace our effort?
      • Answer: Ross likens LPUs to tireless employees, predicting a shift from labor to compute-driven economics. Yet, he warns of “financial diabetes”—a loss of drive in an AI-abundant world—urging us to preserve agency lest we become passive consumers of convenience.
    • Is the AI gold rush a promise or a pipe dream?
      • Answer: It’s both. Ross foresees billions wasted on overhyped data centers and “AI t-shirts,” but insists the total value created will outstrip losses. The winners, like Groq, will solve real problems, not chase fleeting trends.
    • How do we keep innovation’s spirit alive amid efficiency’s rise?
      • Answer: By prioritizing human agency and delegation—Ross’s “anti-founder mode”—over micromanagement, he says. Groq’s 25 million token-per-second coin aligns teams to innovate, not just optimize, ensuring efficiency amplifies creativity.
    • What’s the price of chasing a future that might not materialize?
      • Answer: Seven years of struggle taught Ross the emotional and financial toll is steep—Groq nearly died—but strategic bets (like inference) pay off when the wave hits. Resilience turns risk into reward.
    • Will AI’s pursuit drown us in wasted ambition?
      • Answer: Partially, yes—Ross cites VC’s “Keynesian Beauty Contest,” where cash floods copycats. But hyperscalers and problem-solvers like Groq will rise above the noise, turning ambition into tangible progress.
    • Can abundance liberate us without trapping us in ease?
      • Answer: Ross fears AI could erode striving, drawing from his boom-bust childhood. Prompt engineering offers liberation—empowering billions—but only if outliers reject “good enough” and push for excellence.

    Jonathan Ross’s vision is a clarion call: AI’s future isn’t just about faster chips or bigger models—it’s about who wields the tools and how they shape us. Groq’s battle with NVIDIA isn’t merely corporate; it’s a referendum on whether innovation can stay human-centric in an age of machine abundance. As Ross puts it, “Your job is to get positioned for the wave”—and he’s riding it, challenging us to paddle alongside or risk being left ashore.

  • Mastering Prompt Engineering: Essential Strategies for Optimizing AI Interactions

    TLDR: OpenAI has released a comprehensive guide on prompt engineering, detailing strategies for optimizing interactions with large language models like GPT-4.

    OpenAI has recently unveiled a detailed guide on prompt engineering, aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of interactions with large language models, such as GPT-4. This document serves as a valuable resource for anyone looking to refine their approach to working with these advanced AI models.

    The guide emphasizes six key strategies to achieve better results: writing clear instructions, providing reference text, and others. These techniques are designed to maximize the efficiency and accuracy of the responses generated by the AI. By experimenting with these methods, users can discover the most effective ways to interact with models like GPT-4.

    This release is particularly notable as some of the examples and methods outlined are specifically tailored for GPT-4, OpenAI’s most capable model to date. The guide encourages users to explore different approaches, highlighting that the best results often come from combining various strategies.

    In essence, this guide represents a significant step forward in the realm of AI interaction, providing users with the tools and knowledge to unlock the full potential of large language models​​.

    Prompt engineering is a critical aspect of interacting with AI models, particularly with sophisticated ones like GPT-4. This guide delves into various strategies and tactics for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of these interactions. The primary focus is on optimizing prompts to achieve desired outcomes, ranging from simple text generation to complex problem-solving tasks.

    Six key strategies are highlighted: writing clear instructions, providing reference text, specifying the desired output length, breaking down complex tasks, using external tools, and testing changes systematically. Each strategy encompasses specific tactics, offering a structured approach to prompt engineering.

    For instance, clarity in instructions involves being precise and detailed in queries, which helps the AI generate more relevant and accurate responses. Incorporating reference text into prompts can significantly reduce inaccuracies, especially for complex or esoteric topics. Specifying output length aids in receiving concise or elaborately detailed responses as needed.

    Complex tasks can be made manageable by splitting them into simpler subtasks. This not only increases accuracy but also allows for a modular approach to problem-solving. External tools like embeddings for knowledge retrieval or code execution for accurate calculations further enhance the capabilities of AI models. Systematic testing of changes ensures that modifications to prompts actually lead to better results.

    This guide is a comprehensive resource for anyone looking to harness the full potential of AI models like GPT-4. It offers a deep understanding of how specific prompt engineering techniques can significantly influence the quality of AI-generated responses, making it an essential tool for developers, researchers, and enthusiasts in the field of AI and machine learning.