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Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

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Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#421

Post by time_to_smile »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #413
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, "h…

There are plenty of bigger "human ending" concerns on the table right now than AI and we certainly aren't pausing anything for those.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#423

Post by nbar1 »

braingenious wrote: post #398
nbar1 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the nicknames for people on HN has this place feeling like Reddit lately. What happened to mature conversations on interesting topics?

I’m not really sure what there is to gain from making sure not to poke fun at a guy that spends all day posting wojack memes and rambling about the “woke mind virus”, but ok, here’s some “mature conversation”. Upon perusal of the gentleman's penned expressions, it is my solemn conviction that his faculties of intellect and comprehension are, regrettably, of the most inferior order. It is with utmost eloquence that I…

> has this place feeling like Reddit lately.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#424

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

tgv wrote: post #281
labrador wrote: post #245

Elon thought AI would enslave us, but turns out it empowers us. Now he wants to shut it down and have it all to himself. It's getting to be that whatever the opposite of what Musk wants is the correct course of action for the people.

> Elon thought AI would enslave us, but turns out it empowers us. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. GPT3 is 2 years old. It has ample time to enslave us. I'm also still waiting for the "empowering" bit. Haven't really noticed it, I must say. Or are you referring to a few code completion tricks?

To be honest, I feel enslaved at the present time by the elites. Maybe AI won't help, maybe it will. Worth a shot. Also, I'd prefer being enslaved by a rational AI than by humans driven by greed and laziness. At the very least, I'd hope for higher political decisions to be taken by AI, or that it may have a say for everyone to see.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#425

Post by janalsncm »

petilon wrote: post #81
musicale wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

A lot of people are already benefiting from ChatGPT. I know I am, and I am only paying $20 a month for a digital assistant that is expert in everything.

That’s very nice until your company also realizes that for $20 a month they get a computer program that’s an “expert at everything” including your job.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#426

Post by yreg »

pc_edwin wrote: post #250

I've been a staunch supporter of Elon throughout all his scandals, especially the Twitter ones but I'm unable to come up with any justification for this. Everything leads to him (and others) pressuring OpenAI to pause so they could catch up. It doesn't take much smarts to deduce the cats already out of the bag. There is no stopping this, only pressuring/slowing-down/targeting certain players (OpenAI) as a competition…

Doesn't Elon continue to hold a stake in OpenAI? Do you think Tesla wants to compete with OAI in building an LLM? Make use of Dojo?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#427

Post by mrguyorama »

permo-w wrote: post #303
tgv wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon thought AI would enslave us, but turns out it empowers us. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. GPT3 is 2 years old. It has ample time to enslave us. I'm also still waiting for the "empowering" bit. Haven't really noticed it, I must say. Or are you referring to a few code completion tricks?

the comment you're replying to is pretty delusional to say the least, but I disagree that they aren't empowering now . ChatGPT is an extremely useful source of education that bypasses the mess that is Google, and it's much more than just code completion tricks. gpt-4 can literally write long, complex programs that generally work the first time you run them

Ah good, let's encourage people to "learn" from the text generator that can't even be forced to not lie and misinform. I've seen plenty of cases where that "long and complex program" includes things like libraries that don't exist

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#428

Post by nuancebydefault »

rumdonut wrote: post #400
Quarrel wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget countries? How will you stop me? I have models on my local computer. I can and will use them. They will get better. You don't put tech genie's back in their bottles, that's not how it works.

It wouldn’t be hard to stop. Chip fabrication is a concentrated industry with a high barrier to entry (indeed there are only a few companies in the world producing high performance silicon using technology made by probably even fewer companies). Restrict AI chip making and the materials needed, and you’ll restrict AI. I can see global treaties between large nations effectively controlling production in the same way t…

AI chip making? I can train an AI on my intel laptop if I whish. If I need more CPU power, i can rent some. The genie is out of the bottle and the only way is forward. The latest worldwide race.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#429

Post by dang »

braingenious wrote: post #408
dang wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey can you please recalibrate your comments so that you're making substantive points thoughtfully? We're trying to avoid flamewar here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful. Note these: " Don't be snarky. " " Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. "

Elon Musk has publicly spoken at length about his ongoing struggle with the “woke” crowd https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-wading-into-p... https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2021/12/22/elo... https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/elon-musk-says-woke-progressiv... And has publicly voiced his support for a language model that supports his political views https://www.theinformation.com/articles/fighting…

I'm not arguing with you about Elon Musk or any of the underlying topics. I'm saying that your account has been breaking the site guidelines by posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait.

Those things create and fuel flamewars, which is destructive of everything we're trying for HN to be. We want a place on the internet that doesn't inexorably burn itself to a crisp. Since that's the direction of internet entropy, we expend a lot of energy trying to go the other way. We need users like you to help with that, and when accounts don't help with that and instead continue to post destructively, we have to ban them, regardless of their ideological orientation or political positions.

I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, I'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#430

Post by jmull »

Not sure why people think AI development can’t be paused.

A letter alone probably won’t do it, but a movement — perhaps coalescing around the principles laid out in letter signed by influential people — can.

Governments can regulate it. Consumers and companies can, if they want, punish companies that keep moving forward on AI.

People can keep making AIs but would have difficulty releasing them, which greatly reduces their impact.

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