Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead • Hacker News Board

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#141

Post by kranke155 » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

stareatgoats wrote: post #137

We are barely scraping the surface when it comes to understanding the future dangers of AI. Geoffrey Hinton is uniquely positioned to point out where the dangers are, and from what I've gleaned from interviews one of his main concerns atm is the use of AI in the military: fully autonomous military robots might not be possible to curtail. The tried and tested method is international agreements. The current focus on ar…

How would you curtail their use when any military that commits to using them will have a huge advantage ?

This isn’t like nuclear weapons where any use is curtailed by the apocalyptic outcomes. Killer robots are the way we will fight in the future and any military which refuses to deploy them will find themselves facing defeat.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#142

Post by ncr100 » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #111

CartyBoston wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

somebody has a no disparage

I've always thought about leaving a little text file buried somewhere on my website that says "Here are all of the things that Future Me really means when he issues a press statement after his product/company/IP is bought by a billion-dollar company." But then I remember I'm not that important.

Do it for other reasons such as inappropriate treatment and abnormal terminations driving from misbehaving coworkers

Date stamped

Weird & very uncool coworkers do get hired.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#143

Post by qumpis » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

yowzadave wrote: post #88

politician wrote: post #81

After reading the NYT interview, I don’t understand why he still chose to invent, in his words, a dangerous technology and publish the results openly. Not a criticism of the man, but of the article.

I have this same question about the (apparently many) AI researchers who believe it poses significant risks to humanity, yet still push forward developing it as fast as they can.

Because they believe the future is uncertain and possible upside exceeds the downside?

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#144

Post by ttul » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

CartyBoston wrote: post #100

ec664 wrote: post #80

See his response on twitter. https://twitter.com/geoffreyhinton/status/165299357072121037...

somebody has a no disparage

More like HR said, “Well, there is option A where you leave and are free to do what you wish. And then there is option B (points at bag of cash) where you pretend none of this ever happened…”

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#145

Post by revelio » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

nologic01 wrote: post #4

> the average person will not be able to know what is true anymore We barely held things together as society without AI unleashing cognitive noise at industrial scale. Somehow we must find ways to re-channel the potential of digital technology for the betterment of society, not its annihilation.

Society will be fine, actually AI will make things much better, just as the internet did. People have been making these kind of extreme predictions for decades and it was always wrong. The only people still upset about better communications tech are the people who pine for the days when all that was expected of respectable people was automatically trusting anyone working for the government, a university or a newspaper that claimed to be trustworthy.

What have we got now? ChatGPT is trained to give all sides of the issue and not express strong opinions, which is better than 90% of journalists and academics manage. Their collective freakout about the "dangers" of AI is really just a part of the ongoing freakout over losing control over information flows. It's also just a kind of clickbait, packaged in a form that the credentialed class don't recognize as such. It's en vogue with AI researchers because they tend to be immersed in a culture of purity spirals in which career advancement and prestige comes from claiming to be more concerned about the fate of the world than other people.

Meanwhile, OpenAI control their purity spirals, get the work done and ship products. The sky does not fall. That's why they're winning right now.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#146

Post by ecocentrik » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

archerx wrote: post #36

There is part of me that thinks that this A.I. fear-mongering is some kind of tactic by Google to get everybody to pause training their A.I.s so they can secretly catch up in the background. If I was to do some quick game theory in my mind this would be the result. Imagine being Google, leading the way in A.I. for years, create the frameworks (tensorflow), create custom hardware for A.I. (TPUs), fund a ton of researc…

"You release Bard and it is an embarrassing disaster, a critical fail leading to an almost 50% reduction of Google's stock price"

This didn't happen so maybe you need to reexamine your entire premise.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#147

Post by KeplerBoy » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

greatpostman wrote: post #98

My honest take is a lot of these famous academics played almost no part in the developments at openai. But they want the limelight. They aren’t as relevant as they want to be. In many cases, they were directly wrong about how ai would develop

Reminds me of a press release by Hochreiter last week.

He claims to have ideas for architectures that could surpass the capabilities of GPT4, but can't try them for a lack of funding in his academic setting. He said his ideas were nothing short of genius..

(unfortunately german) source: https://science.orf.at/stories/3218956/

https://science.apa.at/power-search/11747286588550858111

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#148

Post by flippinburgers » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

lancesells wrote: post #22

nologic01 wrote: post #4

> the average person will not be able to know what is true anymore We barely held things together as society without AI unleashing cognitive noise at industrial scale. Somehow we must find ways to re-channel the potential of digital technology for the betterment of society, not its annihilation.

Ending the internet would probably do it. Noise goes way down when you only have x amount of news sources and outlets. We could still have things like maps, messages, etc. that are all very beneficial.

Who is to say that any news stream will be remotely truthful anymore?

I think we are doomed. It is possible that only horrifically authoritarian societies that already control the narrative will survive this.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#149

Post by ncr100 » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

yogthos wrote: post #118

How is this different from what we have now? His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” maybe it's just me, but seems like this isn't a problem with technology but rather with how we organize society He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots lik…

Apparently Indian politics is rife with false generated news stories about opponent political parties

(This is according to a news article I skimmed this year, sorry I don't have any links or reference.)

So it's happening, now

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#150

Post by red-iron-pine » Mon, May 01, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

lancesells wrote: post #22

nologic01 wrote: post #4

> the average person will not be able to know what is true anymore We barely held things together as society without AI unleashing cognitive noise at industrial scale. Somehow we must find ways to re-channel the potential of digital technology for the betterment of society, not its annihilation.

Ending the internet would probably do it. Noise goes way down when you only have x amount of news sources and outlets. We could still have things like maps, messages, etc. that are all very beneficial.

What you propose would require radical changes, practically back to the 1980s, and wouldn't even really free you from anything.

Who cares if there is no internet if your cellphone can track you? If your car runs on connected apps? If your credit card & POS systems are networked? Security cameras and facial recognition are still things.

Just cuz you're not getting spammed via website ads doesn't mean it's not tracking you constantly and jamming subtle things to change your world view. Means their attack surface is smaller; sniping instead of loudspeakers. And if their only option is sniping then they'll get really good at it.