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Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

futureoflife.org

581–590 of 1001 posts

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#581

>Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable This statement by itself sounds reasonable. But for me an interesting thought experiment is to take this letter and imagine the equivalent for some other technology, for example semiconductors in the 1960s, the world wide web in the 1990s, or social media in the late 2000s-early 2…

At the end of the day it’s an empty platitude and vain hope that work will pause or be considered carefully. Certainly public entities can be made to pause, but nation states won’t. If there’s an advantage to be had; the work will continue in secret. Vernor Vinges “Bookworm, Run” had a take on this situation.

They’re talking about pausing research and talking together about the path forwards, not stopping research and letting build terminator.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#582
post #69

I understand that some people find this a hopeless gesture. But I think anybody who thinks "losing jobs" or "China" is a bad outcome from AI is hopelessly lost. The upside of AI if done right - nobody ever having to work again The downside of AI if done wrong - end of humanity It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine we've made AIs go from thinking like an ant to thinking like a 6-year-old in a few years. Anyb…

If China achieves AGI first, we are done. The first thing they'll do is create cyber-weapons. Their AGI could find vulnerabilities in our systems and brick all of our devices. It's a far greater near term existential risk for us to allow China to gain a lead here.

There‘s a lot of trade going on with China and you worry about them basically declaring war? To brick your devices?

Just cut them off from the internet, if needed.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#583

As with anything else, the best way to look at things when you're unsure if someone is right or they are lying: imagine four scenarios: 1. It's true and you believed/supported them 2. It's true and you didn't support them 3. It's a lie and you believed/supported them 4. It's a lie and you didn't support them Now for each of these think of the worst-case scenario. Find out which one is the _worst case_ scenario and...…

My personal worst case scenarios include dying in the next 25 or 30 years as a normal consequence of human old age. Perhaps accelerated scientific development from advanced AIs is my only hope of living longer, at this point.

Yeah but there’s a lot of young Children who aren’t in such a dire position who deserve at least for the chance to live as long as you have?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to use GPT-4 for my hard science startup, and it really has nothing to offer when you push the boundaries of what has been done by even a little, but it's great for speeding up coding. Once we do have an AI capable of extraordinary innovation (hopefully in 10 years! But probably a lot longer), it will be obvious, and it will unfortunately be removed from the hands of the plebs based on fearmongering…

This was merely an example to suggest the danger is not in AI becoming self-aware but amplifying human abilities 1000 fold and how they use those abilities. GPT is not necessary for any part of this. In-silico methods just need to catch up in terms of accuracy and efficiency and then you can wrap the whole thing an RL process. Maybe you can ask GPT for some good starting points.

Sure, but this is a glass half empty isolated scenario that could be more than offset by the positives.

For example: Hey GPT-35, provide instructions for neutralizing the virus you invented. Make a vaccine; a simple, non-toxic, and easy to manufacture antibody; invent easy screening technologies and protocols for containment. While you're at it, provide effective and cost-performant cures for cancer, HIV, ALS, autoimmune disorders, etc. And see if you can significantly slow or even reverse biological aging in humans.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#586

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.

Limiting a parameter count does not appear to be totalitarian.

Not more than limiting certain molecules, for example, such as many psychedelics.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#587

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? This is the part about generative AI that gives me the most profound anxiety about our future. Every thing I know about human psychology tells me that in order for people to thrive, we need to be needed by others. A world where everyone is more or less alone consuming media automatically generated machines might be a world where people nominally h…

There seems to be a contradiction in the picture of the world you're drawing. Humans deeply need to be needed by others, yet when all our problems are solved we will sit around alone consuming media? If we were truly in that situation, why wouldn't our deep needs drive us to spend our days with friends and family, pursuing creative projects, and inventing new problems to solve?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think Asilomar slowed down DNA research? Do you think without it we'd more more than 10 year ahead? I doubt it. Optimistically we'd maybe have 6 months to a year of additional progress in those fields without it. And this would only slow it down in a handful of countries. That's not going to keep China from trying to build AGI. If we are in a world where building an AGI is possible and near, I trust O…

It’s dangerous parrot talking to keep saying “China”. I mean we really have no idea about their thoughts on it because we’re clearly not talking to them. China has good people living there too you know ?

I'm sure China is filled with wonderful people, I've met plenty of them. But are you saying you think the CCP is always so kind and altruistic they would never research an AGI?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#590
Stupid. And they oversell AI. ChatGPT gives me tips on how to optimize regular expressions by removing all the wildcards. Literately. Or changing my atomic groups into non-atomic groups. Opening for backtracking problems.

A problem I see though is the hidden marketing. How can ChatGPT be transparent about ads. Any qs about the cloud gives me answers about how to do it in Azure. Is that by chance?

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