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Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

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Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#51

Post by voltaireodactyl »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #32

AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…

On the other hand, we and we alone live in a time where a grapefruit-sized weapon could obliterate a reasonably sized town, AND when such weapons are increasingly in reach of non-state entities. I would imagine the chance of apocalypse rises as fewer people in agreement would be required to enact it.

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#52

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

yanderekko wrote: post #20
elmomle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing that reference. I started out being intrigued, but he totally lost me with some pretty unsubstantiated absolutist statements, e.g. "anyone smart and independent-minded will have views on race and sex well outside the liberal mainstream" and "men are sure to be a disproportionate share of leaders for biological reasons". The first statement is categorically false or otherwise implies the author's en…

>how he can disentangle biological from cultural and social causes with such absolute conviction is mystifying. He doesn't have to disentangle the two completely, he just strongly believes that there's a non-trivial biological contribution to these outcomes. Which already puts his views "well outside the liberal mainstream".

He didn't comment on (just) his views being "well outside the liberal mainstream"; he claimed that "anyone smart and independent-minded will [ ... ]

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#53

Post by Animats »

dangond wrote: post #40
js8 wrote: post #11

I have always felt that the embrace of "AI can be dangerous" comes from an elitist fear of capitalist class that the "unwashed masses" will have too much access to technology and will make capital, as well as labor, obsolete. I mean if everybody has a super-smart personal assistant in their home, who thinks independently, why would they need or want a ruling class, when we can simply have democratic socialism?

This seems a bit too cynical of a take to match what I've seen. I see mainly two distinct "AI can be dangerous" camps: the EA-adjacent camp centered around LessWrong and Eliezer Yudkowsky, and the anti-generative-art camp worried about the threat to artists' livelihoods. The latter seems to be the closest to wanting an outright ban on the technology despite not being anywhere near the capitalist class. The former see…

> anti-generative-art camp

They have a business model problem. A century ago, recorded music obsoleted low-level musicians. Over the last two decades, the World Wide Web obsoleted most journalists and printers. Artists now face a similar problem.

An insight from ChatGPT is that "creative" is easy, but "accurate" is hard.

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#54

Post by [deleted] »

qsi wrote: post #30
yanderekko wrote: post #6

[flagged]

>>Every AI safety researcher knows about the paper clip maximizer. Few seem to grasp the ways this subculture is mimicking that tunnel vision. >Lol really?? You're comparing some bad PR incidents to the literal unintentional destruction of life on Earth Your reply is a perfect example of the blind spot the quote from the article is referring to. "some bad PR incidents" being sexual harassment and assault, facilitated…

[deleted]

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#55

Post by yanderekko »

joe_the_user wrote: post #38
yanderekko wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Caring about one thing substitutes for caring about other things. Shocking. Most charitable foundation on the left and the right may focus on one problem but make nods to it's connections to others. I know a lot of lesswrong people acknowledge climate change is real and Covid is a problem but raise the point that "this is so important we have to ignore other potential problems" but by doing this they alien those who…

>Yet these people have burned all bridges with those who are generally concerned about corporate behavior.

Well, because there's the obvious risk that EA/rationalists just become another blue tribe identity group if the focus on actual effective altruism is replaced with unquestionable dogmas, which is really the only way you get stuff like people believing that climate change is going to lead to civilizational collapse by the end of the century or that donating to BLM is a good use of charity dollars or whatever. I don't know where the margin of optimal pandering is here, but I'm pretty sure that bending the knee to whatever the blue tribe's moral panic du jour is is going too far.

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#56

Post by [deleted] »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #32

AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…

[deleted]

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#57

Post by rvz »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #32

AI safety is an apocalypse cult and we should recognize that everyone who has ever been in an apocalypse cult thinks that "no, this time it's really the end of the world". Everyone who believes crazy shit thinks they're being reasonable, so just because we're super sure we're being reasonable doesn't mean what we believe isn't crazy. Do we believe that we alone, of all people who have believed in the coming end, have…

I don't think there is anything safe about ChatGPT regurgitating and hallucinating false information about someone's business based on real legal proceedings that it had been trained on. [0]

As long as it cannot also explain its own decisions transparently [1], then there there will always be a need for AI safety.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063005

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35060285

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#58

Post by qsi »

yanderekko wrote: post #46
qsi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Every AI safety researcher knows about the paper clip maximizer. Few seem to grasp the ways this subculture is mimicking that tunnel vision. >Lol really?? You're comparing some bad PR incidents to the literal unintentional destruction of life on Earth Your reply is a perfect example of the blind spot the quote from the article is referring to. "some bad PR incidents" being sexual harassment and assault, facilitated…

>So we have real, actual harm hand-waved away by reference to a hypothetical. Yes, because that harm is not even close to the same order of magnitude as the harm that rationalists are focused on, even if you discount it by a moderate likelihood factor. It doesn't matter if the "real world" sees AI doom as a "quaint and somewhat interesting hypothetical about a far off future" - unless you're actually agreeing with me…

And yet again, you reinforce the same point!

With more words and more eloquently, but still a perfect example of the same blind spot.

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#59

Post by operatingthetan »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #52
yanderekko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how he can disentangle biological from cultural and social causes with such absolute conviction is mystifying. He doesn't have to disentangle the two completely, he just strongly believes that there's a non-trivial biological contribution to these outcomes. Which already puts his views "well outside the liberal mainstream".

He didn't comment on (just) his views being "well outside the liberal mainstream"; he claimed that "anyone smart and independent-minded will [ ... ]

>; he claimed that "anyone smart and independent-minded will [ ... ]

How does this kind of talk not set of fallacy alarm bells for everyone? Claiming someone is smart and therefore right is like sophistry 101.

Re: Effective Altruism’s obsession with AI safety helps bury bad behavior

#60

Post by operatingthetan »

qsi wrote: post #58
yanderekko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So we have real, actual harm hand-waved away by reference to a hypothetical. Yes, because that harm is not even close to the same order of magnitude as the harm that rationalists are focused on, even if you discount it by a moderate likelihood factor. It doesn't matter if the "real world" sees AI doom as a "quaint and somewhat interesting hypothetical about a far off future" - unless you're actually agreeing with me…

And yet again, you reinforce the same point! With more words and more eloquently, but still a perfect example of the same blind spot.

It's like "the ends justify the means" except the means have nothing to do with the ends at all. The supporters just keep repeating themselves about saving the world or something.
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