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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#351

Post by duvenaud »

enord wrote: post #314
duvenaud wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you mean - for a while, the best chess was played by humans aided by chess engines. But that era has passed, and now having a human trying to aid the best chess engines just results in worse chess (or the same, if the human does nothing). But whether there a few humans in the loop doesn't change the likely outcomes, if their actions are constrained by competition. What abilities do humans have that AIs wil…

Chess is many things but it is not a tool. It is an end unto itself if anything of the sort. I struggle with the notion of AI as an end unto itself, all the while we gauge its capabilities and define its intelligence by directing it to perform tasks of our choosing and judge by our criteria. We could have dogs watch television on our behalf, but why would we?

This is a great point. But I'd say that capable entities have a habit of turning themselves into agents. A great example is totalitarian governments. Even if every single citizen hates the regime, they're still forced to support it.

You could similarly ask: Why would we ever build a government or institution that cared more about its own self-preservation than its original mission? The answer is: Natural selection favors the self-interested, even if they don't have genes.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#352

Post by olalonde »

brookst wrote: post #259
olalonde wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good person to follow on real AI safety is Emily M. Bender (professor of computer linguistics at University of Washington): https://mstdn.social/@emilymbender@dair-community.social - Pronouns - "AI bros" - "mansplaining" - "extinction from capitalism" - "white supremacy" - "one old white guy" (referring to Geoffrey Hinton) Yeah... I think I will pass.

Odd that you lump a person's choice of their own pronouns into a legitimate complaint that all she seems to have is prejudice and ad hominems.

I have no issue with her choice of pronouns. I just find it odd that she states them when ~100% of the population would infer them correctly from her name Emily (and picture). My guess is she put them there for ideological signaling.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#353

Post by nico »

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!

> scare the law makers to license the technology

You mean scare the public so they can do business with the lawmakers without people asking too many questions

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#354

Post by qt31415926 »

Planktonne wrote: post #315
qt31415926 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her field has also taken the largest hit from the success of LLMs and her research topics and her department are probably no longer prioritized by research grants. Given how many articles she's written that have criticized LLMs it's not surprising she has incentives.

LLMs are in her field; they are one of her research topics and they're definitely getting funding. We absolutely should not be ignoring research that doesn't support popular narratives; dismissing her work because it is critical of LLMs is not reasonable.

In her field doesn't mean that's what she researches, LLMs are loosely in her field but the methods are completely different. Computational linguistics != deep learning. Deep learning does not directly use concepts from linguistics, semantics, grammars or grammar engineering, which is what Emily was researcing for the past decades.

It's the same thing as saying a number theorist and a set theorist are in the same field cause they both work in the Math field.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#355

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #331
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #243

The statement should read: Mitigating the risk of extinction from climate change should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. The fantasy of extinction risk from "AI" should not be placed alongside real, "societal scale" risks as the ones above. Well. The ones above .

I'm all in favour of fighting climate change, but I'd be more inclined to agree with you if you provide some kind of supporting argument!

Do you mean you're not aware of the arguments in favour of stopping climate change?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#357

Post by boredumb »

olalonde wrote: post #235
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 person to follow on real AI safety is Emily M. Bender (professor of computer linguistics at University of Washington): https://mstdn.social/@emilymbender@dair-community.social - Pronouns - "AI bros" - "mansplaining" - "extinction from capitalism" - "white supremacy" - "one old white guy" (referring to Geoffrey Hinton) Yeah... I think I will pass.

Reads like a caricature of the people leading these causes on AI safety. Folks that are obsessed with the current moral panic to the extent that they will never let a moment go by without injecting their ideology. These people should not be around anything resembling AI safety or "ethics".

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#358

Post by luxuryballs »

ericb wrote: post #273
SanderNL wrote: post #114

I'm not sure they can keep claiming this without becoming concrete about it. Nuclear weapons are not nebulous, vague threats of diffuse nature. They literally burn the living flesh right off the face of the earth and they do it dramatically. There is very little to argue about except "how" are we going to contain it, not "why". In this case I truly don't know "why". What fundamental risks are there? Dramatic, loud, l…

Agreed that it should be spelled out, but... If a superintelligence can be set on any specific task, it could be any task. - Make covid-ebola - Cause world war 3 You may have noticed that chatgpt is sort of goal-less until a human gives it a goal. Assuming nothing other than it can become superintelligent (no one seems to be arguing against that--I argue that it already is ) which is really an upgrade of capability,…

to me it almost looks like they want to be able to avoid blame for things by saying it was the AI, because an AI can’t create viruses or fight wars, people would have to give it a body and weapons and test tubes, and we already have that stuff

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#359

Post by sebzim4500 »

juve1996 wrote: post #329
MrScruff wrote: post #188

I find it quite extraordinary how many on here are dismissing that there is any risk at all. I also find statements like Yann LeCunn's that "The most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming." to be lacking in awareness. "Experts disagree on risk of extinction" isn't quite as reassuring as he thinks it is. The reality is, despite the opinions of the armchair quarterbacks commentin…

What's more realistic: regulatory capture and US hegemony on AI or general intelligence destroying the world in the next 20 years? Go ahead and bet. I doubt you're putting your money on AGI.

Probably yeah but those aren't equally bad.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#360

Post by MrScruff »

juve1996 wrote: post #329
MrScruff wrote: post #188

I find it quite extraordinary how many on here are dismissing that there is any risk at all. I also find statements like Yann LeCunn's that "The most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming." to be lacking in awareness. "Experts disagree on risk of extinction" isn't quite as reassuring as he thinks it is. The reality is, despite the opinions of the armchair quarterbacks commentin…

What's more realistic: regulatory capture and US hegemony on AI or general intelligence destroying the world in the next 20 years? Go ahead and bet. I doubt you're putting your money on AGI.

I think it very unlikely you could call a coin flip ten times in a row, but I wouldn't want to bet my life savings on it.
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