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Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

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Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#72
post #3

[flagged]

So do you agree that nations should be able to freely develop/discover nuclear production? Edit: We actually don't want people to develop something "too good". There are some things in the past century that have been "too good". Plastics are too good. So are nuclear weapons. Completely powerful AIs and machines that can displace jobs of millions of people are too good. If there's an AI tomorrow that can replace every…

> If there's an AI tomorrow that can replace every single physical job out there, what do you think will happen? Riot and chaos in the street after about 1-2 years.

I don't think you even need to replace every physical job out there for that to be the result. I think all the ingredients needed exist right now, and I'm worried that unless the discourse about LLMs changes significantly, the perceived threat of them is enough to bring those riots and chaos.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#74
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 900 signatures already..

900 signatures vs... probably more than 900 people who use ChatGPT daily. And 4 million people watched a remixed GameCube boot screen with fart sounds that I made in middle school.

More like 100 millions people though.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/02/chatgpt-1...

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#75
post #68

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? You don't necessarily need jobs because you don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that cou…

> The industrial revolution didn't make human lives miserable, it made it better.

I think this is a point that is genuinely debatable. At least, it's pretty easy to argue both sides of that proposition.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#76
post #68

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? You don't necessarily need jobs because you don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that cou…

> AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale, and humans will reap the benefits, the same way Alaskans reap the benefits of their natural resources.

Vast wealth will certainly be delivered to owners of the robots and AI systems.

What reason is there to believe that they would share the wealth with ordinary citizens?

A typical alternative to the Alaska model is one where oil companies extract all of the wealth and resources and citizens get nothing.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#77

I'm really disappointed to see the HN reaction of straight up scoffing at this like it's irreversible and so let's just step on the gas. It's some weird combination of techno-utopianism and nihilism and good old elitism.

Almost everyone here will be fine in a world in which only certain non-renewable scarce resources have any value, combined with impending massive currency deflation. Even a rank and file tier 2/3 engineer will manage to live a princely life in that new reality assuming (s)he saved up enough.

Hardly anyone in the tech community is capable of truly empathizing with the vast majority of people, who are born with none of the advantages that they had (genetic, parental, cultural, geographic, etc).

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#78
post #55
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think laughing at people for their concerns is helpful. Especially when you don't seem to be bothered by the possibility that this is a civilization-ending development. For the record, I don't think it is, personally. But people are terrified, and not taking their fear seriously and dealing with it compassionately is a recipe for serious, and unnecessary disaster.

A civilization-ending development, no. A job-ending development for many people, yes. The chattering classes see themselves becoming obsolete. Fast. They're freaking out. From professors of English literature to op-ed writers, word slingers are in trouble. Not novelists, though; none of these systems can hold a story together for any great length. If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in…

>If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.

So… almost everyone who posts here?

Not sure why everyone here is so excited to be out of a job. I guess they all think that UBI will fall out of the sky. I think they’ll be in for a rude awakening.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#80
I was a bit baffled my Elon Musk's (apparent) signature on this letter, as I thought he still had a connection to Open.ai. Then I did some basic research and realized that this is likely just jealously and frustration from his failed takeover of Open.ai.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23654701/openai-elon-musk...

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