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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#61

Post by sebzim4500 »

a_bonobo wrote: post #59
sebzim4500 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is this a 'biased statement' exactly? If a dozen of the top climate scientists put out a statement saying that fighting climate change should be a serious priority (even if they can't agree on one easy solution) would that also be 'biased'?

Climate change is a generally accepted phenomenon. Extinction risk due to AI is not a generally accepted phenomenon.

Now it is, when climate scientists were first sounding the horn they got the same response that these people are getting now. For example:

"This signatory might have alterior motives, so we can disregard the whole statement"

"We haven't actually seen a superintelligent AI/manmade climate change due to CO2 yet, so what's the big deal?"

"Sure maybe it's a problem, but what's your solution? Best to ignore it"

"Let's focus on the real issues, like not enough women working in the oil industry"

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#62

Post by JoeAltmaier »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #61
a_bonobo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change is a generally accepted phenomenon. Extinction risk due to AI is not a generally accepted phenomenon.

Now it is, when climate scientists were first sounding the horn they got the same response that these people are getting now. For example: "This signatory might have alterior motives, so we can disregard the whole statement" "We haven't actually seen a superintelligent AI/manmade climate change due to CO2 yet, so what's the big deal?" "Sure maybe it's a problem, but what's your solution? Best to ignore it" "Let's foc…

That's curiously the standard crackpot line. "They doubted Einstein! They doubted Newton! Now they doubt me!" As if an incantation of famous names automatically makes the crackpot legitimate.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#63

Post by wongarsu »

sycamoretrees wrote: post #41
circuit10 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t really have a good solution, I guess that’s why we need more research into it Companies might argue that giving them control might help but I don’t think most individuals working on it think that will work

Is more research really going to offer any true solutions? I’d be genuinely interested in hearing about what research could potentially offer (the development of tools to counter AI disinformation? A deeper understanding of how LLMs work?), but it seems to me that the only “real” solution is ultimately political. The issue is that it would require elements of authoritarianism and censorship.

A lot of research about avoiding extinction by AI is about alignment. LLMs are pretty harmless in that they (currently) don't have any goals, they just produce text. But at some point we will succeed in turning them into "thinking" agents that try to achieve a goal. Similar to a chess AI, but interacting with the real world instead. One of the big problems with that is that we don't have a good way to make sure the goals of the AI match what we want it to do. Even if the whole "human governance" political problem were solved, we still couldn't reliably control any AI. Solving that is a whole research field. Building better ways to understand the inner workings of neural networks is definitely one avenue

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#65

Post by crmd »

“We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI” - Google

They’re attempting to build a regulatory moat.

The best chance humanity has at democratizing the benefits of AI is for these models to be abundant and open source.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#66

Post by ChatGTP »

shafyy wrote: post #32

The issue I take with these kind of "AI safety" organizations is that they focus on the wrong aspects of AI safety. Specifically, they run this narrative that AI will make us humans go extinct. This is not a real risk today. Real risks are more in the category of systemic racism and sexism, deep fakes, over reliance on AI etc. But of course, "AI will humans extinct" is much sexier and collects clicks. Therefore, the…

If you were to take a look at the list of signatories on safe.ai, that's basically everyone who is everyone that works on building AI, what could Emily B Bender a professor of computer linguistics possibly add to the conversation and how would she be able to talk more about the "real AI safety" than any of those people?

Edit: Sorry if it sounds arrogant, I don't mean Emily wouldn't have anything to add, but not sure how the parent can just write off basically that whole list and claim someone who isn't a leader in the field would be the "real voice"?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#67

Post by stodor89 »

skepticATX wrote: post #37

I suspect that in 5 years we’re going to look back and wonder how we all fell into mass hysteria over language models. This is the same song and dance from the usual existential risk suspects, who (I’m sure just coincidentally) also have a vested interest in convincing you that their products are extremely powerful.

Yep. I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but seeing "AI experts" try to reason about superintelligence makes me feel really good about myself.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#68

Post by sycamoretrees »

wongarsu wrote: post #63
sycamoretrees wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is more research really going to offer any true solutions? I’d be genuinely interested in hearing about what research could potentially offer (the development of tools to counter AI disinformation? A deeper understanding of how LLMs work?), but it seems to me that the only “real” solution is ultimately political. The issue is that it would require elements of authoritarianism and censorship.

A lot of research about avoiding extinction by AI is about alignment. LLMs are pretty harmless in that they (currently) don't have any goals, they just produce text. But at some point we will succeed in turning them into "thinking" agents that try to achieve a goal. Similar to a chess AI, but interacting with the real world instead. One of the big problems with that is that we don't have a good way to make sure the g…

I see. Thanks for the reply. But I wonder if that’s not a bit too optimistic and not concrete enough. Alignment won’t solve the world’s woes, just like “enlightenment” (a word which sounds a lot like alignment and which is similarly undefinable) does not magically rectify the realities of the world. Why should bad actors care about alignment?

Another example is climate change. We have a lot of good ideas which, combined, would stop us from killing millions of people across the world. We have the research - is more “research” really the key?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#70

Post by anonydsfsfs »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62
sebzim4500 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it is, when climate scientists were first sounding the horn they got the same response that these people are getting now. For example: "This signatory might have alterior motives, so we can disregard the whole statement" "We haven't actually seen a superintelligent AI/manmade climate change due to CO2 yet, so what's the big deal?" "Sure maybe it's a problem, but what's your solution? Best to ignore it" "Let's foc…

That's curiously the standard crackpot line. "They doubted Einstein! They doubted Newton! Now they doubt me!" As if an incantation of famous names automatically makes the crackpot legitimate.

The signatories on this are not crackpots. Hinton is incredibly influential, and he quit his job at Google so he could "freely speak out about the risks of A.I."
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