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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#401

Post by jabradoodle »

goolulusaurs wrote: post #388

Throughout history there have been hundreds, if not thousands of examples of people and groups who thought the end of the world was imminent. So far, 100% of those people have been wrong. The prior should be that the people who believe in AI doomsday scenarios are wrong also, unless and until there is very strong evidence to the contrary. Vague theoretical arguments are not sufficient, as there are many organizations…

What constitutes strong evidence? The obvious counter to your point is that an intelligence explosion would leave you with no time to react.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#402

Post by veerd »

holmesworcester wrote: post #378
AlexandrB wrote: post #303

This reeks of marketing and a push for early regulatory capture. We already know how Sam Altman thinks AI risk should be mitigated - namely by giving OpenAI more market power. If the risk were real, these folks would be asking the US government to nationalize their companies or bring them under the same kind of control as nukes and related technologies. Instead we get some nonsense about licensing.

As others have pointed out, there are many on this list (Bruce Schneier, for example) who do not stand to benefit from AI marketing or regulatory capture. Anyone upvoting this comment should take a long look at the names on this letter and realize that many are not conflicted. Many signers of this letter are more politically sophisticated than the average HN commenter, also. So sure, maybe they're getting rolled by m…

Agreed. It's difficult for me to see how the regulatory capture arguments apply to Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (!!).

Both of them are criticizing their own life's work and the source of their prestige. That has to be emotionally painful. They aren't doing it for fun.

I totally understand not agreeing with AI x-risk concerns on an object level, but I find the casual dismissal bizarre.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#403

Post by holoduke »

holmesworcester wrote: post #378
AlexandrB wrote: post #303

This reeks of marketing and a push for early regulatory capture. We already know how Sam Altman thinks AI risk should be mitigated - namely by giving OpenAI more market power. If the risk were real, these folks would be asking the US government to nationalize their companies or bring them under the same kind of control as nukes and related technologies. Instead we get some nonsense about licensing.

As others have pointed out, there are many on this list (Bruce Schneier, for example) who do not stand to benefit from AI marketing or regulatory capture. Anyone upvoting this comment should take a long look at the names on this letter and realize that many are not conflicted. Many signers of this letter are more politically sophisticated than the average HN commenter, also. So sure, maybe they're getting rolled by m…

No. Its pretty obvious what is happening. The openai statements are pure self interest based. Nothing ethical. They lost that not a long time ago. And Sam Altman? He sold his soul to the devil. He is a lying sob.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#404

Post by rahmeero »

randomdata wrote: post #217
pixl97 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany, for example would disagree with you. They believe violent speech is an act of violence in itself. >AI is an application of math. It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. You know like robot bodies, or 3D printers. And as mentioned above, even virtual things like social media can cause enough problems. People hook AI to tools. And this is just the maybe not quite g…

> It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. But those physical things would be the danger, at least if you consider the nuclear missile to be the danger. It seems you are trying to go down the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line of thinking. Which is fine, but outside of the discussion taking place.

There are many relevant things that already exist in the physical world and are not currently considered dangers: ecommerce, digital payments, doordash-style delivery, cross-border remittances, remote gig work, social media fanning extreme political views, event organizing.

However, these are constituent elements that could be aggregated and weaponized by a maleficent AI.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#405

Post by stale2002 »

Symmetry wrote: post #148
progrus wrote: post #103

Pathetic attempt at regulatory capture. Let’s all be smart enough to not fall for this crap, eh?

That might be why Sam Altman signed it but why do you think that all the academics did so as well. Do you think he just bribed them all or something?

AI Academics have significant motivation as well to attempt to stop this new field of research.

That motivation being that all their current research fiefdoms are now outdated/worthless.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#406

Post by _a_a_a_ »

goolulusaurs wrote: post #388

Throughout history there have been hundreds, if not thousands of examples of people and groups who thought the end of the world was imminent. So far, 100% of those people have been wrong. The prior should be that the people who believe in AI doomsday scenarios are wrong also, unless and until there is very strong evidence to the contrary. Vague theoretical arguments are not sufficient, as there are many organizations…

> So far, 100% of those people have been wrong

so far.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#407

Post by AnimalMuppet »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #367
valine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limit…

We don't need an avenue to super-intelligence. We just need a system that is better at manipulating human beliefs and behaviour than our existing media, PR, and ad industries. The problem is not science fiction god-mode digital quetta-smart hypercomputing. This is about political, social, and economic influence, and who controls it.

That risk isn't about AI-as-AI. That risk is about AI-as-better-persuasive-nonsense-generator. But the same risk is there for any better-persuasive-nonsense-generator, completely independent from whether it's an AI.

It's the most persuasive actual risk I've seen so far, but it's not an AI-specific risk.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#408

Post by lxnn »

wiz21c wrote: post #12

It'd be so much more convincing if each of the signatories actually articulated why he/she sees a reisk in there. Without that, it pretty much looks like a list of invites to a VIP club...

As the pre-amble to the statement says: they kept the statement limited and succinct as there may be disagreement between the signatories about the exact nature of the risk and what to do about it.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#409

Post by cmilton »

kypro wrote: post #380
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…

You hear similar arguments from those who believe climate change is happening but disagree with current efforts to counter-act it. The logic being that right now climate change is not causing any major harm and that we can't really predict the future so there's no point in worrying about what might happen in a decade or two. I don't think anyone is arguing that right now climate change or AI is threat to human civili…

>that those trends are concerning.

Which trends would you be referring to?

>it's fairly easy to see how a slightly more advanced LLM could be a destructive force if it was given an unaligned goal by a malicious actor. For example, a slightly more advanced LLM could hack into critical infrastructure killing or injuring many thousands of people.

How are you building this progression? Is there any evidence to back up this claim?

I am having a hard time discerning this from fear-mongering.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#410

Post by AnimalMuppet »

patrec wrote: post #221
valine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limit…

> It's not clear at all that we have an avenue to super intelligence AI already beats the average human on pretty much any task people have put time into, often by a very wide margin and we are still seeing exponential progress that even the experts can't really explain, but yes, it is possible this is a local maximum and the curve will become much flatter again. But the absence of any visible fundamental limit on fu…

Right, and if someone can join the two, that could be something genuinely formidable. But does anyone have a credible path to joining the different flavors to produce a unity that actually works?
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