Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#351

Post by righttoolforjob » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #18

oifjsidjf wrote: post #9

The cat is out of the box. You really think eg China will also pause this? Myopic thinking: the country that will have the most powerful AI first will be the leader in everything. >> If the policy starts with the U.S., then China needs to see that the U.S. is not seeking an advantage but rather trying to prevent a horrifically dangerous technology which can have no true owner and which will kill everyone in the U.S.…

I dunno, the end goal (a pseudo AGI) is more like a nuclear weapon than the advent of electricity. The concern is real, even if we are farther away than the author realizes and the risk (like the risk if nuclear war) is not totally insurmountable even if it is extremely difficult. The first nuclear bombs couldn't end life on Earth either, but it wasn't long before they could, and the scientists working on them saw th…

This is nothing like a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb doesn't choose to explode itself, nor can it replicate itself.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#352

Post by righttoolforjob » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #348

righttoolforjob wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody says that it necessarily follows, but it's a quite trivial step once you have the AGI, hence pointless that you bring up it as an argument.

While I appreciate you find my argument persuasive - imo this style of comment will do more to alienate those replying to me that disagree than to persuade them.

They're likely irrelevant anyway. We're all shouting into the void.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#353

Post by gonehome » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

etienne618 wrote: post #343

gonehome wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a narrower argument that I'm making - it's not about LLMs or implementation (can put those details aside), it's about possibility that a superintelligent AGI could be created, there's nothing magical about biological intelligence that would prevent it. How or how difficult, or when are all questions that follow from that first premise (that it is possible). I don't really make strong claims about any of the impl…

I hear you - its just that I dont think that it neccesarily follows that an AGI in whatever form will necesarily be unconstrained or free to improve itself. I also happen to think that the biological systems are in-fact rather special and hard to replicate - especially in terms of efficiency and resillience. Just because some implementation of a universal turing machine can simulate intelligence doesn't mean it can d…

Yeah - it doesn't necessarily follow, but the behavior of people working on the technology doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Even if people were trying to constrain its access seriously I think that's unlikely to work (hard to contain a superintelligence that wants to not be contained - it's possible to trick a chimp to go into a room and the delta in intelligence between a human and a superintelligence is way bigger than us and chimps).

Instead I mostly observe people not really understanding the e-risk argument, focused mostly on small stuff that doesn't matter as much (AI language, bias). The people developing the tech connecting it to the internet and expanding capabilities, giving it access to code/training ability to write code, preparing massive datacenters for it, etc.

All of this without really understanding how to align it or what it's actual internal goals really are.

> "Just because some implementation of a universal turing machine can simulate intelligence doesn't mean it can do it well enough to survive the real world."

This could be true, but I would bet against it - and the downside risk of being wrong (potentially complete extinction) means it seems worth being way more cautious about it than we (humanity broadly) are observed being.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#354

Post by gonehome » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

righttoolforjob wrote: post #314

gonehome wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the dismissals are a lot more handwavy. The simplified argument is: - Superintelligent AGI that can modify itself in pursuit of a goal is possible. - If that AGI is not aligned with human goals it very likely ends in the end of humanity. - We have no idea how to align an AGI or even really observe what it's true state/goals are. Without this capability if we stumble upon creating an AGI capable of improving…

I can't find a flaw in this argument. That is a bit scary actually.

With downcast eyes and heavy heart, Eliezer left Sam Altman

Some years go by, and AGI progresses to assault man

Atop a pile of paper clips he screams "It's not my fault, man!"

But Eliezer's long since dead, and cannot hear Sam Altman.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/turing-test

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#355

Post by sn9 » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:23 PM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #339

gonehome wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a smart human and speed up their thinking a billion times, you get the time for free. What takes humanity a decade of effort could happen in a day (or faster) that's the nature of thinking faster. People often mistakenly model a smart human compared to a dumb human, but the actual spectrum of capability is way wider than that. Lack of knowledge could be another way of saying "not aligned" which is the core issue…

that's the thing though, I don't believe superintelligence can possibly work like that. I think it's a logical fallacy to treat superintelligences like hypercomputers. they're constrained by existing on classical computers. like, as a trivial counterexample, I can speak at 500 wpm. let's say that ChatGPT can generate 500 words per second for a single thread of conversation - I think that's a generous overestimate. no…

The comparison shouldn't be to individual humans, but to societies of all scales.

AIs can scale horizontally as well as vertically.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#356

Post by labrador » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

famouswaffles wrote: post #346

labrador wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they should. I just like them to be up front about them if they are far enough outside the mainstream that they might be somewhat surprising and we should consider how those beliefs inform the opinions they put forth. Peter Thiel is open about his and I respect him more for that. I worry about hidden agendas. https://www.google.com/search?q=peter+thiel+religious+belief...

What an absurd paragraph i've just read lol. Many, Many things influence a person's opinions, religious or not. Why don't you tell me all about your life so i don't know you have some hidden agenda ? Like lol what exactly are you expecting here ? Why should that be some special announcement call you have to make with every article instead of the myriad of things that may influence a person's opinions ? If you don't l…

I'm a person of little or no influence an no pretense to such. Here in America, it would have been nice if the last 3 Supreme Court justices had been honest about their agenda to overturn Roe v Wade because of their religious beliefs. Maybe you're a nihilist and think that someone with many followers can say whatever they want with no responsibility to others. You'd have a lot of company.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#357

Post by _jall » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 10:59 PM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #263

_jall wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The AI does not love you, nor hate you, but you are made of atoms it can use for something else"

What use does it have for use

depending on whether you think this AI works like a human:

  - it's like a pebble rolling down a hill; category error
  - exactly same sense of "use" as the regular ol' human one

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#358

Post by famouswaffles » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #356

famouswaffles wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an absurd paragraph i've just read lol. Many, Many things influence a person's opinions, religious or not. Why don't you tell me all about your life so i don't know you have some hidden agenda ? Like lol what exactly are you expecting here ? Why should that be some special announcement call you have to make with every article instead of the myriad of things that may influence a person's opinions ? If you don't l…

I'm a person of little or no influence an no pretense to such. Here in America, it would have been nice if the last 3 Supreme Court justices had been honest about their agenda to overturn Roe v Wade because of their religious beliefs. Maybe you're a nihilist and think that someone with many followers can say whatever they want with no responsibility to others. You'd have a lot of company.

You're not getting my point. This fear of a "hidden agenda" is ridiculous. Did you want roe v wade to be overturned ? Did you agree with any of the arguments supporting it that came forth ? I'm guessing no

Evaluate what people are saying on what they are saying. If someone being religious (or insert anything here because lots of things influence opinions) would change your stance completely on something you already agree on then well there's a word for that and i think you can figure it out.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#359

Post by ChatGTP » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 11:18 PM UTC

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #317

_skel wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EY's arguments aren't really possible to engage with because they don't have much of a causal basis. Nobody who says AI is likely to kill us all can demonstrate a plausible sequence of events, with logical causality linking the events together, that leads to mass extinction. It's all very handwavy. Steven Pinker said it pretty well: > The AI-existential-threat discussions are unmoored from evolutionary biology, cogni…

> Nobody who says AI is likely to kill us all can demonstrate a plausible sequence of events, with logical causality linking the events together, that leads to mass extinction. It's all very handwavy. EY frequently does propose possible sequences of events, but he also very correctly points out, every time, that any specific and detailed story is very unlikely to be correct because P(A*B*C*D) So here's one method, ju…

It's interesting to watch those creating the systems start to grapple with the consequences now, even though they were warned for a long time this is likely where we'd end up, with very difficult hard to solve problems.

Look at MidJourney, now they've had to remove the free tier due to Deepfakes causing too much trouble.

Ultimately, the simplest thing to do would be to stop building uncontrollable dangerous systems and weapons. That is what any "intelligent" species would do. Many AI Engineers think they're intelligent, I disagree. They're operating out of pure intellect and curiosity. When interviewed, someone asks them how they plan to stop these things doing immeasurable damage, they will say, "we don't know yet". That is foolish behavior.

We seem to enjoy creating crisis after crisis, anxiety after anxiety ad infinitum until we make that one mistake we don't come back from.

The combustion engine was a good idea, until it wasn't, it's a moronic invention that has caused untold damage.

Intelligent ? Hardly.

Re: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down

#360

Post by labrador » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 11:37 PM UTC

famouswaffles wrote: post #358

labrador wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a person of little or no influence an no pretense to such. Here in America, it would have been nice if the last 3 Supreme Court justices had been honest about their agenda to overturn Roe v Wade because of their religious beliefs. Maybe you're a nihilist and think that someone with many followers can say whatever they want with no responsibility to others. You'd have a lot of company.

You're not getting my point. This fear of a "hidden agenda" is ridiculous. Did you want roe v wade to be overturned ? Did you agree with any of the arguments supporting it that came forth ? I'm guessing no Evaluate what people are saying on what they are saying. If someone being religious (or insert anything here because lots of things influence opinions) would change your stance completely on something you already a…

I don't know where you're from but you don't get it. Those three judges lied and said they all believed it was settled case law and they wouldn't vote to change it. A lot of people like me suspected they were lying and we were right. I respect honest religious people like Joel Osteen who says God wants people to get rich, but this isn't the place to get into that.