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Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

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Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#191

Post by zirgs »

jpgvm wrote: post #177
zirgs wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SD doesn't default to creating black people, but it understands the n-word. Should AI understand racial slurs?

Would an AI that doesn't understand racial slurs be more useful? I don't think we should hamper the usefulness of a tool to please someones sensibilities. For most people in most of the world such words aren't relevant. I get it, these models are made in the US and they think these models should preserve and further their values but the rest of the world doesn't care. Most likely each of them have their own batch of…

Well, if entering "n-word" and "black person" leads to the same result then we could drop the "n-word". But yeah - censorship isn't going to stop there.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#192

Post by RandomLensman »

6nf wrote: post #174
nradov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that any group is capable of bringing AGI to life.

Ok so what’s your point? We can just ignore it? Or what.

AGI worries we probably could ignore until AGI exists but there is now an industry around them which has its own momentum.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#195

Post by FeepingCreature »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
anonylizard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People should understand AI safety != AI ethics. AI safety has two branches, AI ethics and AI alignment. Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. The alignment branch (responsible for developing RLHF->ChatGPT) believes AI ethics is completely trivial, and distracts attention away from existential risks. The ethics branch (responsible for all the media attention about racist AIs/bias etc) view…

> AI safety has two branches, AI ethics and AI alignment. Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. I don’t think that’s really true. Rather, the faction that sees alignment as a subordinate concern within ethics hates the faction that sees ethics as a subordinate concern within alignment. > The alignment branch (responsible for developing RLHF->ChatGPT) believes AI ethics is completely trivial, and…

Note that if you see someone bring up Roko, it's overwhelmingly somebody arguing against alignment researchers; its use is primarily as "look at this crazy thing these people believe."

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#196

Post by ETH_start »

piokoch wrote: post #171
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

These sorts of adjunct, off-to-the-side "ethics" teams are always corporate window dressing, and when push comes to shove they always get jettisoned when competition demands an increase in speed. I don't mean to start a flame war, but this is a reason why I think "Chief Diversity Officers" are such an ill-conceived notion. It's not that I don't think diversity in corporate environments is extremely valuable, but it's…

Chief Diversity Officers is a cheap PR. You can be a company that forces its employees to piss into bottle as you punish going to toilet, but if you have Chief Diversity Officer, you change your logo once a year to rainbow colors then you are considered to be a progressive, well-behaved company. I don't even blame companies for this, they are just optimizing, if public is so stupid that it is buying it then, well, wh…

It's not so much about keeping the public on its side as dispelling the notion that it has created a hostile work environment for any particular protected class, in the event that a lawsuit is brought against it by the anti-discrimination industry:

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-sta...

>>Even after the case has been litigated, we still do not know what exactly Tesla could have done to avoid the $137 million judgment (it may be reduced on appeal). Employees did in fact get in trouble for using the n-word and drawing racist cartoons. In retrospect, they probably would’ve been safer if they just fired everyone who Diaz or Di-az accused of racism, at least the non-blacks, but there’s no guarantee that would’ve worked either, as they were in an industry that required them to rely on workers who hadn’t yet internalized elite ways of thinking about race. If they had fired black people for using the n-word too, would that have helped or hurt them in trying to avoid a lawsuit? It’s difficult to say, and that’s sort of the point.

>>For next time, there’s little Tesla can do but go all in on diversity training, be as enthusiastic as possible in adopting whatever next race fad comes out of academia, and hope that the next jury isn’t as woke as the one they got this time. Until anti-discrimination laws are rolled back, or come to be based on clear and objective standards, there is no other way.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#197

Post by AstralStorm »

heretoo wrote: post #140
ketzo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is like claiming lead ethyl in gas “hasn’t caused mass harm” in 1954. There’s absolutely zero way to know that yet.

Except that lead's toxicity has been known for thousands of years.

Lead toxicity was limited due to it not being sprayed about with fumes out of the exhaust of every vehicle, and then number of those vehicles being low. It got quickly somewhat regulated away. (But not 100%.)

AI toxicity... We don't even know the risks. There's potentially no limit to the damage. We have some examples (metrics making echo chambers, automated classifiers giving people wolf ticket for no reason, amplified evil biases in conversational AI, fake news and deepfake generation) and some guesses for now. We do not even know how to begin to regulate it.

It's not even the same ballpark. Internet would be a closer comparison and it's still wild west.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#198

Post by AstralStorm »

jeremyjh wrote: post #183
heretoo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that lead's toxicity has been known for thousands of years.

Yes and the dangers of AI overlords have been known at least since the first Terminator movie /s. Seriously though, people tend to dismiss things they are know are bad if there is no immediate harm. Certainly they had no idea how incredibly pervasive the lead from gasoline would be, that it would be detectable at harmful levels in basically everyone. It is also hard to measure these harms. How much crime of the 70s a…

Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. General Motors,Standard Oil and DuPont knew for sure, they had industrial incidents and lied about them! US Surgeon General was bought, people with opposing opinions were sued.

It was instantly obvious to anyone that using leaded gas esp. in agriculture would be deadly and toxic. The risk was ignored for profit, PR handled, underplayed. Even the chronic effects were known!

We even had an early alternative of just adding more ethanol to the pettol. But no...

It took 50 years of scientists trying to convince public how deadly this thing is, with varied success. And 30 more years for the bulk of the phaseout.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#199

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #189
circuit10 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI alignment people are the group who believe “responsibly” means, centrally, bringing AGI to existence as fast as possible From what I’ve seen it’s the exact opposite? They want AI development to slow down so we can get it right and make it safe. There are people who are trying to speed it up but that seems like the opposite of alignment to me

> From what I’ve seen it’s the exact opposite? They want AI development to slow down so we can get it right and make it safe. The only way that the alignment faction wants to slow things down is in that they want to maintain tight control of models and gated access to assure “proper” use. This does have an effect of slowing certain kinds of development, as broader access to build around models without centralized con…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#200

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

swyx wrote: post #156
nradov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that any group is capable of bringing AGI to life.

no evidence? none? Google Lambda and Bing/Sydney are not at least incrementally closer to evidence?

> Google Lambda and Bing/Sydney are not at least incrementally closer to evidence?

No, in the same way that boiling water in a kettle is not incrementally closer to inventing the fuel for a rocket ship.

You can, in hidsight do a linear connection of water boiling -> steam engine -> fuel engine -> aeronautics -> space travel

But the first time someone boiled water, if you said that got you closer to being on the moon I think you would be mad. There is a non trivial chance that all our current work in AI is functionally useless in terms of creating AGI, it might take a complete breakthrough in ML, tech not invented yet, or it might not be possible at all.

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