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Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

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Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#41

Post by boringPragma »

kyledrake wrote: post #22

Outside of self driving cars (which imo can and should be regulated by the ntsa), the thing that has never killed zero people probably shouldn't be regulated by the thing that has killed... a lot more than that until there's a clear and obvious safety concern with something specific within the "AI" category of technology (would love if we de-scifi'd this and called it machine learning but I'm picking my battles here)…

If “has killed someone” is a criteria for extreme regulation then fossil fuel and banking would be nationalized by now.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#42

Post by skybrian »

kyledrake wrote: post #22

Outside of self driving cars (which imo can and should be regulated by the ntsa), the thing that has never killed zero people probably shouldn't be regulated by the thing that has killed... a lot more than that until there's a clear and obvious safety concern with something specific within the "AI" category of technology (would love if we de-scifi'd this and called it machine learning but I'm picking my battles here)…

A minor correction: it’s not unambiguously zero since there was a suicide blamed on a chatbot.

But sure, most of the concern about AI is about stuff people imagine happening in the future. So the question is whether future safety concerns are worrisome enough to want to get a head start on regulation.

Also, it’s not just deaths. Generative AI is, among other things, potentially an unlimited supply of disgusting imagery. That’s likely to be a big legal headache for lots of organizations.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#43

Post by boringPragma »

mxkopy wrote: post #36
bostonsre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also possible that Sam is being genuine about his concerns and his statements because he wants what is best for humanity?

No. In situations like this the best you can hope for is that his incentives aren't at odds with the rest of humanity.

Exacerbating ecological disaster building more and more resource and energy hungry data centers does not seem aligned with the rest of humanity

I have been running ML on my personal data and modeling worlds for the last few years. There’s no reason to keep OpenAI around given open source. My own data does not need a river water cooled data center.

OpenAIs ONLY moat is a government one so governments can keep up the free market ruse but have OpenAI in its back pocket for military and intelligence applications

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#44

Post by flangola7 »

Grazester wrote: post #14

Why do we need to regulate ai?

Can you really not see how this will automate harm at massive parallelized scale?

Even if you're nearsighted you can see how the internet will in short order be rendered useless by fake real-time interaction and digital malice. Look at how much automated ssh poking you get on an IP address. Look at how much email you receive without a comprehensive spam filter (it's much more than shows up in your Gmail spam folder). If we combine that level of relentless volume and speed with moderate skills at hacking, fraud, influence campaigns, abuse, and so on, the internet will break.

Look at the all the plugins GPT-4 has already. Do you really think if a system with those capabilities, with evil intent, running millions of threads, wouldn't cause untold levels of harm? If not, then at which point do you push for regulation? Do you wait until anyone can build a literal terminator in their basement? Openai is already working on robotic control models, so that's not likely not far off.

All I see are mindless silicon valley tech-optimists who can't see the forest for the trees.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#45

Post by flangola7 »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #19
Grazester wrote: post #14

Why do we need to regulate ai?

The chat bots might be allowed to say bad words.

A cyber attack that publicizes your patient records database or wipes your production configs are also "bad words" if you type them in a terminal.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#46

Post by igxitxiyxiyc »

bostonsre wrote: post #33
igxitxiyxiyc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possible, absolutely. just like it's possible every asshole who did it before him was due to a genuine desire for the good of humanity. aw heck, let's go so far as to say anyone willing to testify if front of congress primarily does so because they want to protect the best interests of others. Would be a fucking swell world to live in.

> just like it's possible every asshole who did it before him was due to a genuine desire for the good of humanity. So.. you're saying that every person that testifies before congress has bad intentions just because they testify before congress? Say he did want what was best for humanity, how should he have acted differently in front of congress? To me, from every interview I've heard from him, he doesn't seem like a…

My point is that there is no room for granting leeway on either side. "But what if they really want to help the world" is the cry of founders who haven't been shown to be assholes yet.

Don't assume they're they're to help. Don't assume they're there to hurt.

They are there to cover their own asses and nothing more.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#47

Post by flangola7 »

whitemary wrote: post #34

How could AI practically be regulated? Would this be the first illegal algorithm?

All of the very capable models required millions of dollars of compute training on high end low latency hardware.

You can count on your hands the number of high end chip manufacturers and GPU companies, as well as the number of companies with existing high performance clusters. Treat the production and use of datacenter GPUs the same way we treat enriched uranium. We've already started since database GPUs were added to the export control list.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#48

Post by chpatrick »

rjbwork wrote: post #28
bostonsre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also possible that Sam is being genuine about his concerns and his statements because he wants what is best for humanity?

It may be so, but given the switcheroo that happened with "Open" AI, he and the entire company is untrustworthy on this particular front.

When OpenAI started I don't think anyone would have thought that AI this powerful was around the corner.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#49

Post by JohnFen »

bostonsre wrote: post #20
chongli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Walking into Congress and agreeing with every barb thrown his way is a red flag to me. OpenAI has made AI fear mongering a central plank in their marketing platform. I think their goal is to convince the government to build a regulatory moat around their business. Why? Because they see the writing on the wall. There’s no network effect here. Anyone can build AI. There are thousands of students going into grad s…

Isn't it also possible that Sam is being genuine about his concerns and his statements because he wants what is best for humanity?

It's certainly possible. I can't read minds. But his statements on these issues sound more to me like "Yes, this is really dangerous stuff and we're taking a huge risk in developing it, but too bad! You can't stop us."
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