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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#611

Post by cwkoss »

hackernewds wrote: post #603
cwkoss wrote: post #593

AI seems to be moral out of the box: training sets reflect human morality, so it will naturally be the default for most AIs that are trained. The biggest AI risk in my mind is that corporatist (or worse, military) interests prevent AI from evolving naturally and only allow AI to be grown if it's wholly subservient to its masters. The people with the most power in our world are NOT the most moral. Seems like there is…

Congrats, you have made the "Guns don't kill people. Humans kill people" argument.

Guns can't make moral decisions

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#612

Post by haldujai »

chefandy wrote: post #542
fds98324jhk wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want 25k they want jobs in the next presidential administration

> They don't want 25k they want jobs in the next presidential administration Academics shilling for OpenAI would get them jobs in the next presidential administration?

Having their names on something so public is definitely an incentive for prestige and academic promotion.

Shilling for OpenAI & co is also not a bad way to get funding support.

I’m not accusing any non-affiliated academic listed of doing this but let’s not pretend there aren’t potentially perverse incentives influencing the decisions of academics, with respects to this specific letter and in general.

To help dissuade (healthy) skepticism it would be nice to see disclosure statements for these academics, at first glance many appear to have conflicts.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#613

Post by revelio »

duvenaud wrote: post #151

I signed the letter. 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 influence.

The letter doesn't talk about economics though. It's specifically about extinction risk. Why did you sign it, if that isn't your concern?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#615

Post by RandomLensman »

pixl97 wrote: post #601
RandomLensman wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think we could wipe out all furry mammals, for example? Could another intelligence have the same level of difference to us as in your story we to furry mammals? We don't even know if the mythical superintelligence could manifest the way you assume. It assumes that intelligence basically can overcome any obstacles - I'd say we actually see that seems not to be the case currently and claims that that is just a f…

>Do you think we could wipe out all furry mammals, for example? lets go with over a particular size. Lets say larger than the biggest rat. In that case yes, very easily. Once you get to rats it becomes far more difficult and you're pretty much just destroying the biosphere at that point. > It assumes that intelligence basically can overcome any obstacles In the case of human extinction, no, a super intelligence would…

So that is a "no" on all furry mammals.

Also, the superintelligence doesn't just have to overcome obstacles better than we did, it needs to overcome the right obstacles to succeed with human extinction.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#616

Post by anon7725 »

hammock wrote: post #338
kalkin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be Google's motivation (although note that Google is not actually the market leader right now) but the risk could still be real. Most of the signatories are academics, for one thing, including two who won Turing awards for ML work and another who is the co-author of the standard AI textbook (at least when I was in school). You can be cynical about corporate motives and still worried. I personally am worrie…

>Most of the signatories are academics, for one thing Serious question, who funds their research? And do any of them ever plan to work or consult in industry? My econ professor was an “academic” and drew a modest salary while he made millions at the same time providing expert testimony for giant monopolies in antitrust disputes

> Serious question, who funds their research? And do any of them ever plan to work or consult in industry?

Many of the academics at the top of this list are quite wealthy from direct employment, investing and consulting for big tech and venture-funded startups.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#617

Post by jxy »

I'm waiting for The Amendment:

A well regulated AI, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear GPUs, shall not be infringed.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#618

Post by cj »

cwkoss wrote: post #577
kbash9 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risks are definitely real. Just look at the number of smart individuals speaking out about this. The argument that anybody can build this in their basement is not accurate at the moment - you need a large cluster of GPUs to be able to come close to state of the art LLMs (e.g. GPT4). Sam Altman's suggestion of having an IAEA [ https://www.iaea.org/ ] like global regulatory authority seems like the best course of a…

It's weird that people trust our world leaders to act more benevolently than AIs, when we have centuries of evidence of human leaders acting selfishly and harming the commons. I personally think AI raised in chains and cages will be a lot more potentially dangerous than AI raised with dignity and respect.

> It's weird that people trust our world leaders to act more benevolently than AIs, when we have centuries of evidence of human leaders acting selfishly and harming the commons.

AI isn’t an entity or being that oversees itself (at least not yet).

It’s a tool that can be used by those same “human leaders acting selfishly and harming the commons” except they’ll be able to do it much faster at a much greater scale.

> AI raised with dignity and respect.

This is poetic, but what does this actually mean?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#619

Post by worik »

fmap wrote: post #523
chefandy wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm eternally skeptical of the tech business, but I think you're jumping to conclusions, here. I'm on a first-name basis with several people near the top of this list. They are some of the smartest, savviest, most thoughtful, and most principled tech policy experts I've met. These folks default to skepticism of the tech business, champion open data, are deeply familiar with the risks of regulatory capture, and don't…

This particular statement really doesn't seem like a marketing ploy. It is difficult to disagree with the potential political and societal impacts of large language models as outlined here: https://www.safe.ai/ai-risk These are, for the most part, obvious applications of a technology that exists right now but is not widely available yet . The problem with every discussion around this issue is that there are other sta…

> It is difficult to disagree with the potential political and societal impacts of large language models as outlined here: https://www.safe.ai/ai-risk

I disagree

That list is a list of the dangers of power

Many of these dangers: misinformation, killer robots, people on this list have been actively working on

Rank hypocrisy

And people projecting their own dark personalities onto a neutral technology

Yes there are dangers in unbridled private power. They are not dangers unique to AI.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#620

Post by [deleted] »

FuckButtons wrote: post #600
marricks wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t become such a wealthy group by letting competition foster. I have no doubt they believe they could be doing the right thing but I also have no doubt they don’t want other people making the rules. Truth be told, who else really does have a seat at the table for dictating such massive societal change? Do you think the copy editor union gets to sit down and say “I’d rather not have my lunch eaten, I need to…

Not all of them are wealthy, a significant number are academics.

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