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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#131

Post by silverlake »

wongarsu wrote: post #54
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…

A good way to categorize risk is look at both likelihood and severity of consequences. The most visible issues today (racism, deep fakes, over reliance) are almost certain to occur, but also for the most part have relatively minor consequences (mostly making things that are already happening worse). "Advanced AI will make humans extinct" is much less likely but has catastrophic consequences. Focusing on the catastrop…

This doesn’t work either. The consequence of extinction is infinity (to humans). Likelihood * infinity = infinity. So by hand-waving at a catastrophic sci-fi scenario they can demand we heed their demands, whatever that is.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#132

Post by lb4r »

endisneigh wrote: post #121

AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why AI should be regulated, but not math in general. After all, that dangerous Linear Al'ge'bra clearly is terrorizing us all. They must be stopped!11 Give me a break.

> AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future.

You are probably thinking of AI as some idea of a complete autonomous being as you say that, but what about when 'simply' used as a tool by humans?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#133

Post by whinenot »

endisneigh wrote: post #121

AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why AI should be regulated, but not math in general. After all, that dangerous Linear Al'ge'bra clearly is terrorizing us all. They must be stopped!11 Give me a break.

Isn't the threat that we become so trusting of this all-knowing AI that WOPR convinces us a missile strike is imminent and the US must launch a counter strike thus truly beginning the Global Thermonuclear War?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#134

Post by sanderjd »

sovietmudkipz wrote: post #124

Build that moat! Build that moat! It’s a win/win/lose scenario. LLM AI businesses benefit because it increases the effort required to compete in the LLM space (the moat). Governments benefit because it increases the power of daddy/mommy government. Consumers and small businesses lose out due to (1) the more friction the less innovators entering the space and (2) the less innovators in the space the fewer companies ge…

Oh come now, it's way less ridiculous than that.

But I do agree that the current generation of industry leaders clamoring for this smells like the classic regulatory strategy of incumbents.

I just think both things are true at once. This is a space that deserves thoughtful regulation. But that regulation shouldn't just be whatever OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google say it should be. (Though I'm sure that's what will happen.)

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#135

Post by endisneigh »

lb4r wrote: post #132
endisneigh wrote: post #121

AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why AI should be regulated, but not math in general. After all, that dangerous Linear Al'ge'bra clearly is terrorizing us all. They must be stopped!11 Give me a break.

> AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future. You are probably thinking of AI as some idea of a complete autonomous being as you say that, but what about when 'simply' used as a tool by humans?

Same could be said about the internet at large, no?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#136

Post by endisneigh »

whinenot wrote: post #133
endisneigh wrote: post #121

AI has risks, but in my honest to god opinion I cannot take anyone seriously who says, without any irony, that A.I poses a legitimate risk to human life such that we would go extinct in the near future. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why AI should be regulated, but not math in general. After all, that dangerous Linear Al'ge'bra clearly is terrorizing us all. They must be stopped!11 Give me a break.

Isn't the threat that we become so trusting of this all-knowing AI that WOPR convinces us a missile strike is imminent and the US must launch a counter strike thus truly beginning the Global Thermonuclear War?

This is already true today with politicians.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#137

Post by jvanderbot »

aceon48 wrote: post #128
b3nji wrote: post #77

Nonsense, the industry giants are just trying to scare the law makers to license the technology. Effectively, cutting out everyone else. Remember the Google note circulating saying "they have no moat", this is their moat. They have to protect their investment, we don't want people running this willy nilly for next to no cost on their own devices, God forbid!

That moat document was published by a single software engineer, not some exec or product leader. Humans dont really grasp exponential improvements. You wont have much time to regulate something that is improving exponentially.

Single software engineers writing influential papers is often enough how a exec or product leader draws conclusions, I expect. It worked that way in everywhere I've worked.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#138

Post by wongarsu »

silverlake wrote: post #131
wongarsu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good way to categorize risk is look at both likelihood and severity of consequences. The most visible issues today (racism, deep fakes, over reliance) are almost certain to occur, but also for the most part have relatively minor consequences (mostly making things that are already happening worse). "Advanced AI will make humans extinct" is much less likely but has catastrophic consequences. Focusing on the catastrop…

This doesn’t work either. The consequence of extinction is infinity (to humans). Likelihood * infinity = infinity. So by hand-waving at a catastrophic sci-fi scenario they can demand we heed their demands, whatever that is.

At the extremes you get into the territory of Pascal's Mugging [1]. Which is a delightfully simple example of how our simple methods of stating goals quickly goes wrong

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#140

Post by valine »

patrec wrote: post #58
valine wrote: post #17

I have yet to see a solution for “AI safety” that doesn’t involve ceding control of our most powerful models to a small handful of corporations. It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously when the organizations blowing the whistle are simultaneously positioning themselves to capture the majority of the value.

> It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously I don't get this mindset at all. How can it not be obvious to you that AI is an uniquely powerful and thus uniquely dangerous technology? It's like saying nuclear missiles can't possibly be dangerous and nuclear arms reduction and non-proliferation treaties were a scam, because the US, China and the Soviet Union had positioned themselves to capture the majority of t…

It's not clear at all that we have an avenue to super intelligence. I think the most likely outcome is that we hit a local maximum with our current architectures and end up with helpful assistants similar in capability to George Lucas's C3PO.

The scary doomsday scenarios aren't possible without an AI that's capable of both strategic thinking and long term planning. Those two things also happen to be the biggest limitations of our most powerful language models. We simply don't know how to build a system like that.

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