Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

futureoflife.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#411

Post by lannisterstark »

tgv wrote: post #277
Jayakumark wrote: post #253

For Sake of Argument lets say you pause US from doing anything on AI, how will you control China, Germany or other Countries.. This will only lead to US Lagging behind other countries.

Stop/slow down publications. It's what motivates researchers. They need them for tenure, and it's how the tech improves. Companies keep their methods more private.

Why stop here? Why not apply this logic to the internet too? "Oh no it's too dangerous, we cant give billions access to the internet. Better shut it down."

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#412

Post by lannisterstark »

reasonableklout wrote: post #190
juancn wrote: post #156

Stopping now would be extremely dangerous and borderline stupid. If you stop now, you're just left behind, because there's no way everyone will stop. At this point the only logical course of action in an adversarial situation is to double down and keep researching, otherwise some other country or culture with different (and possibly worse) values ends up dominating the technology and you're left behind in the dust. T…

I don't agree at all. It's totally fair for rival "countries or cultures with different values" to coordinate on matters that threaten everyone's survival. There are many examples of international agreements on technologies that fit this description. For example: - International treaties to avoid nuclear proliferation and development, as other commenters have pointed out - National moratoriums on gain-of-function res…

"International treaties to avoid nuclear proliferation and development, as other commenters have pointed out"

...you do realize that countries haven't signed that right, and nothing stops them from pulling out either, right?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#413

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

puma_ambit wrote: post #365

The virtue signal of all virtue signals. We do not live in a society where an article like this will have any impact. This is merely an attempt to buy time because they're behind and want to have a chance to catch up. Work will progress whether they like it or not. Finally someone other than Ol' Musky is in the news more than him. Don't get me wrong he's doing and leading great work, but for once in more recent times…

"Virtue signalling"? Please. There are a lot of very smart experts on that signatory list who definitely don't need to, or care about, virtue signalling. Fine, ignore Musk's signature, but I don't think luminaries like Stuart Russell, Steve Wozniak, Jaan Tallinn or John Hopfield are doing this for "virtue signalling".

You can fairly argue that this will be ineffective, but a lot of experts in this field have real, "humanity ending" concerns about AI, and I think it's a bit of a cop out to say "Well, genie's out of the bottle, nothing we can do as we barrel towards an unknown and scary future." Even Sam Altman has been yelling about the need for AI regulation for a long time now.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#414

Post by w0m »

breakpointalpha wrote: post #374
puma_ambit wrote: post #365

The virtue signal of all virtue signals. We do not live in a society where an article like this will have any impact. This is merely an attempt to buy time because they're behind and want to have a chance to catch up. Work will progress whether they like it or not. Finally someone other than Ol' Musky is in the news more than him. Don't get me wrong he's doing and leading great work, but for once in more recent times…

His name is third on the signatories...

OPs point being Musk is trying to stall AI because it's taking 'his' headlines.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#415

Post by mrguyorama »

zarzavat wrote: post #183
JohnFen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And the comparison with the industrial revolution is a poor analogy because the industrial revolution never proposed as a goal to automate humanity in totality, merely to automate human drudgery . AI is an anti-industrial revolution, because it proposes to start with the most fulfilling aspects of human existence: writing, the arts, and to automate people engaged in those jobs, and to only later come to automate huma…

Also it will be fucking terrible at those things. In a thousand years middle schoolers will learn about this era of vacuous, meaningless, copycat art as a dark age.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#416

Post by lannisterstark »

thomasahle wrote: post #103

People are talking like it's impossible to do slow things down. In fact, simple measures like forbidding deployments of models with more than a certain number of parameters would probably slow things down a lot. Sure, people and companies could still continue development in secret, but without the funding and experience from products like ChatGPT, it would be harder. People also say China wouldn't follow, but general…

Ah yes, the alternative is to be totalitarian. Exactly what I expected lol.

When in doubt, call for regulations.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#417

Post by yreg »

dmarcos wrote: post #272
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #265

If you replace "AI" with "self-driving" throughout the open letter [0] then it still makes a surprising amount of sense (and of course any the incoherent bits can be smoothed out by ChatGPT if you prefer). However I doubt Musk would have signed that version... [0] https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experime...

Noticed Sam Altman was in the list yesterday too. Now removed. Has any of the high profile signatories confirmed publicly?

The Verge says it wasn't real Sam Altman.

>[…] though new names should be treated with caution as there are reports of names being added to the list as a joke (e.g. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, an individual who is partly responsible for the current race dynamic in AI).

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/29/23661374/elon-musk-ai-res...

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#418

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

Jayakumark wrote: post #253

For Sake of Argument lets say you pause US from doing anything on AI, how will you control China, Germany or other Countries.. This will only lead to US Lagging behind other countries.

In hindsight, it could be a good thing so that they catch up. concentrating all the power to one country could be more dangerous than all countries having the same weapon.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#420

Post by time_to_smile »

puma_ambit wrote: post #365

The virtue signal of all virtue signals. We do not live in a society where an article like this will have any impact. This is merely an attempt to buy time because they're behind and want to have a chance to catch up. Work will progress whether they like it or not. Finally someone other than Ol' Musky is in the news more than him. Don't get me wrong he's doing and leading great work, but for once in more recent times…

I think this is more marketing copy than virtue signaling.
Post reply on HN