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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#261

Post by oldgradstudent »

randomdata wrote: post #219
trebligdivad wrote: post #38

There are a bunch of physicists signed up on there; (e.g. Martin Rees) - they don't seem relevant to it at all. There's been a long history of famous physicists weighing in on entirely unrelated things.

Musical artist Grimes is also a signatory. It would seem the real purpose of this is to train an AI agent on appeal to authority.

> It would seem the real purpose of this is to train an AI agent on appeal to authority.

I hope the real purpose is to train an AI agent to understand why appeal to authority was always cosidered to be a logical fallacy.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#262

Post by deltaninenine »

Infernal wrote: post #227
duvenaud wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one of my concrete worries: At some point, humans are going to be outcompeted by AI at basically every important job. At that point, how are we going to maintain political power in the long run? Humanity is going to be like an out-of-touch old person on the internet - we'll either have to delegate everything important (which is risky), or eventually get scammed or extorted out of all our resources and influenc…

“Humans are going to be outcompeted by AI” is the concrete bit as best I can tell. Historically humans are not outcompeted by new tools, but humans using old tools are outcompeted by humans using new tools. It’s not “all humans vs the new tool”, as the tool has no agency. If you meant “humans using old tools get outcompeted by humans using AI”, then I agree but I don’t see it any differently than previous efficiency…

>Historically humans are not outcompeted by new tools, but humans using old tools are outcompeted by humans using new tools. It’s not “all humans vs the new tool”, as the tool has no agency.

Two things. First LLMs display more agency then the AIs before it. We have a trendline of increasing agency from the past to present. This points to a future of increasing agency possibly to the point of human level agency and beyond.

Second. When a human uses ai he becomes capable of doing the job of multiple people. If AI enables 1 percent of the population to do the job of 99 percent of the population that is effectively an apocalyptic outcome that is on the same level as an AI with agency taking over 100 percent of jobs. Trendline point towards a gradient heading towards this extreme, as we approach this extreme the environment slowly becomes more and more identical to what we expect to happen at the extreme.

Of course this is all speculation. But it is speculation that is now in the realm of possibility. To claim these are anything more than speculation or to deny the possibility that any of these predictions can occur are both unreasonable.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#263

Post by brookst »

Planktonne wrote: post #106
ChatGTP wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She's a professor of computer linguistics; it's literally her field that's being discussed. The list of signatories includes people with far less relevant qualifications, and significantly greater profit motive. She's an informed party who doesn't stand to profit; we should listen to her a lot more readily than others.

How are fame, speaking engagements, and book deals not a form of profit?

She's intelligent and worth listening to, but she has just as much personal bias and motivation as anyone else.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#264

Post by veerd »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #7

Slightly underwhelming a statement, but surely that's just me.

Boiling it down to a single sentence reduces ambiguity. Also, given that AI x-risk analysis is essentially pre-paradigmatic, many of the signatories probably disagree about the details.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#265

Post by oldgradstudent »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #156
randomdata wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doomsday prepper Sam Altman[1], for one. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...

I think in order to use the plural form you really need to have two examples. Sam Altman is of course the least convincing signatory (except for the random physicist who does not seem to have any connection to AI).

> I think in order to use the plural form you really need to have two examples.

Eliezer Yudkowsky.

At least they had the decency to put him under "Other Notable Figures", rather than under "AI Scientists".

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#266

Post by deltaninenine »

notahacker wrote: post #196
alasdair_ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of critiquing Bulverism as a concept, not by attacking the idea itself, but instead by assuming it is wrong and attacking the character of the author, is staggeringly hilarious.

I'm replying in agreement with someone who already pointed out the obvious flaw in labelling any questioning of the inspirations or motivations of AI researchers as "Bulverism": none of the stuff they're saying is actually a claim that can be falsified in the first place! I'm unconvinced by the position that the only valid means of casting doubt on a claim is through forensic examination of hard data that may be inac…

Logical Induction has been successful in predicting future events.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#267

Post by blazespin »

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…

the issue with hacker news comments these days is people don't actually do any due diligence before posting. center for ai safety is 90% about present AI risks and this ai statement is just a one off thing.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#268

Post by Veen »

mefarza123 wrote: post #258
apsec112 wrote: post #51

A lot of the responses to this seem like Bulverism, ie., trying to refute an argument by psychoanalyzing the people who argue it: "Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit do…

CS Lewis's quote highlights the importance of addressing the logical validity of an argument before attempting to explain the psychological reasons behind it. This approach is essential to avoid committing the fallacy of Bulverism, which involves dismissing an argument based on the presumed motives or biases of the person making the argument, rather than addressing the argument itself. In the context of AI and decisi…

Are you laboring under the misapprehension that ChatGPT is a better writer than C.S. Lewis?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#269

Post by baerrie »

Google and OpenAI are shaking in their boots from open source ai and want to make their moat however they can. Positioning with a moral argument is pretty clever I must admit

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#270

Post by brookst »

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…

> How can it not be obvious

You have succinctly and completely summed up the AI risk argument more eloquently than anyone I've seen before. "How can it not be obvious?" Everything else is just intellectual fig leaves for the core argument that intuitively, without evidence, this proposition is obvious.

The problem is, lots of "obvious" things have turned out to be very wrong. Sometimes relatively harmlessly, like the obviousness of the sun revolving around the earth, and sometimes catastrophically, like the obviousness of one race being inherently inferior.

We should be very suspicious of policy that is based on propositions so obvious that it's borderline offensive to question them.

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