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Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

openphilanthropy.org

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Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#31

Post by nojvek »

mankash666 wrote: post #9
davmre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are always going to be more important causes, under any particular person's view of "more important", which depends very strongly on both subjective values and (in the case of AI alignment work) on precise probabilities of far-future outcomes. A dollar given to the Against Malaria Foundation will do a lot more good, in QALY terms, than the same dollar spent in Flint. And both dollars will do more (direct) good…

OK - I should have not mentioned Flint, MI. My intention is not to play-down funding for fundamental research. But really, I think the NSF would agree with the non-urgent nature of funding "reducing potential risks from advanced AI". They probably get proposals for things that are much more immediate, say algebraic geometry research that produces quantum-resistant cryptography at the similar computational complexity…

I don't think they are just using the money for preventing Apocalypse. As Andrew Ng says worrying about this is kin to worrying about overpopulation on Mars.

Openai will probably use the money to hire world class researchers and give them tools necessary to advance AI in a meaningful way that benefits humanity.

The other big labs from Google, Facebook and MS seems to be driven by gathering as much data as possible from users, learning from it and presenting click bait ads to make more money.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#32

Post by cbr »

seagreen wrote: post #11

" When OpenAI launched, it characterized the nature of the risks - and the most appropriate strategies for reducing them - in a way that we disagreed with. In particular, it emphasized the importance of distributing AI broadly; our current view is that this may turn out to be a promising strategy for reducing potential risks, but that the opposite may also turn out to be true (for example, if it ends up being importa…

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#33

Post by jaibot »

rspeer wrote: post #18
vpontis wrote: post #2

That's awesome! Open Philanthropy reminds me of https://80000hours.org/ . In their relationship disclosure: > OpenAI researchers Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano are both technical advisors to Open Philanthropy and live in the same house as Holden. In addition, Holden is engaged to Dario’s sister Daniela. This is so tangled. I don't mean it as a criticism as I'm sure a lot of SV investments would have a much longer R…

Well, I would use it as a criticism. This is a tangled web of like-minded people giving money to each other and calling it charity. Some people conflate this with Effective Altruism, which I think sucks. Compared to the rigorous work done by GiveWell, there's no way to tell if this is effective, or even altruistic. It's just people assuming that the world will be a better place if more people who think like them have…

Holden's dedicated a huge chunk of his career to moving hundreds of millions of dollars to alleviating poverty and disease. He's one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. You may disagree with his decision here, but to dismiss his efforts, saying it "sucks" and isn't "effective, or even altruistic", while ignoring the extensive public writing he's done on the subject that led him to these views and strawmanning his position as nepotism, is just awful.

"I disagree with the arguments presented, for these reasons" - cool. If you think the grant isn't a good idea, make an argument for that.

"This person who has dedicated their life to doing as much good as possible is close to other people who also want to do as much good as possible, and their work has led to convergent viewpoints, therefore this isn't altruism" is cheap character assassination.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#35

Post by jaibot »

mankash666 wrote: post #3

I think there are more important causes than "reducing potential risks from advanced AI". Honest to god, $30M will go a long way in saving lives TODAY. Flint, MI anyone?

"We have to defuse this bomb or it will destroy the city in one hour!"

"But there are people suffering right now!"

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#36

Post by robbensinger »

acgourley wrote: post #19
rspeer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Pascal's Wager. What makes you think that OpenAI is doing anything that has any meaningful impact on AGI? We have no idea what AGI looks like.

You've brought up Pascal's Wager twice in this thread, as if it really can end an argument by itself. Just because you don't like what high impact / low probability EV calculations do in Theology doesn't mean you can wave away high impact / low probability EV calculations in other domains.

I agree that "that's Pascal's wager!" isn't a reasonable response to someone arguing that, say, a 1% or 10% extinction risk is worth taking seriously. If you think the probability is infinitesimally small but that we should work on it just in case, then that's more like Pascal's wager.

I think the whole discussion thread has a false premise, though. The main argument for working on AGI accident risk is that it's high-probability, not that it's 'low-probability but not super low.'

Roughly: it would be surprising if we didn't reach AGI this century; it would be surprising if AGI exhibited roughly human levels of real-world capability (in spite of potential hardware and software improvements over the brain) rather than shooting past human-par performance; and it would be surprising if it were easy to get robustly good outcomes out of AI systems much smarter than humans, operating in environments too complex for it to be feasible to specify desirable v. undesirable properties of outcomes. "It's really difficult to make reliable predictions about when and how people will make conceptual progress on a tough technological challenge, and there's a lot of uncertainty" doesn't imply "the probability of catastrophic accidents is <10%" or even "the probability of catastrophic accidents is <50%".

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#37

Post by nbouscal »

Avshalom wrote: post #25
acgourley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've brought up Pascal's Wager twice in this thread, as if it really can end an argument by itself. Just because you don't like what high impact / low probability EV calculations do in Theology doesn't mean you can wave away high impact / low probability EV calculations in other domains.

>>high impact / low probability EV calculations in other domains Yeah but there isn't a calculation of the risk/probability of AGI there's just the appeal to the idea.

That's… not at all true? There have been numerous thorough attempts at coming up with as reasonable an estimate as possible, involving in-depth conversations with most of the experts in the field. Maybe it's not strictly a "calculation", but it's a hell of a lot more than just an appeal to the idea of AGI.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#38

Post by [deleted] »

Avshalom wrote: post #25
acgourley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've brought up Pascal's Wager twice in this thread, as if it really can end an argument by itself. Just because you don't like what high impact / low probability EV calculations do in Theology doesn't mean you can wave away high impact / low probability EV calculations in other domains.

>>high impact / low probability EV calculations in other domains Yeah but there isn't a calculation of the risk/probability of AGI there's just the appeal to the idea.

[deleted]

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#39

Post by nbouscal »

technotony wrote: post #28
AJ007 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human species extinction is something almost everyone agrees shouldn't happen.

I one person who isn't sure about that. I don't see why it wouldn't be good for us to evolve into something more advanced. Whether that's through melding with AI or advanced genetic engineering that outcome could be fantastic (assuming the transition is well managed, broadly distributed and happens through choice etc). It could lead to elimination of disease, aging, reduced ecological footprint, all kinds of benefits…

Pretty sure AJ007 wasn't including transhumanism in the things they were calling "human species extinction", so I doubt you actually disagree.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#40

Post by pmichaud »

technotony wrote: post #28
AJ007 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human species extinction is something almost everyone agrees shouldn't happen.

I one person who isn't sure about that. I don't see why it wouldn't be good for us to evolve into something more advanced. Whether that's through melding with AI or advanced genetic engineering that outcome could be fantastic (assuming the transition is well managed, broadly distributed and happens through choice etc). It could lead to elimination of disease, aging, reduced ecological footprint, all kinds of benefits…

I don't think people are primarily concerned about this outcome. They are more concerned about outcomes like "all the matter and energy in our light cone have been repurposed to maximize the total number of paperclips".
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