White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks • Hacker News Board

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#71

Post by yottron » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

localplume wrote: post #10

asimpleusecase wrote: post #2

Looks like the companies all agreed to do what they were doing already. Nothing about training data transparency , nothing about a common definition of risk or standards for compliance. The public have all heard “AI is going to destroy humanity” but those statements have been short on specifics. I have been asked by many people to explain how AI could kill us all. How about some clarity for common people.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

[dead]

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#72

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

throwaway72762 wrote: post #20

This strikes me as the best outcome as long as it stops here. This lets the White House move on from the nonsense AI x-risk discussion without being attacked for not doing anything about it, and also doesn't let the companies use fake x-risk to kill off open source models.

But it doesn't address the actual, real risks. It looks to me like they're just talking about the fake ones.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#73

Post by ilaksh » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

ke88y wrote: post #23

localplume wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

> What the fuck even is "AI" anyway? Indeed. For most lay people I've talked to -- family, friends, and acquiescence outside of tech -- the answer ultimately boils down to "automation that can do my job or can do the job of people I care about or can do the job of people who would then compete for my job". Sometimes also "algorithms" a la social media feeds and so on. Ie, the lay answer to "what is AI?" has recently…

Please read and study my comments in this thread carefully. Superintelligence is not Hollywood bullshit.

AI doesn't need to be alive or animal-like to be superintelligent. We have many examples getting more and more general purpose. Look at AlphaGo, AlphaStar. Both are superintelligent in a somewhat narrow way (but trending towards less narrow).

GPT-4 is superintelligent in some ways already such as it's breadth of knowledge. And we have to anticipate that it will continue to get smarter and better at reasoning and much, much faster. Over the last ten years AI performance has increased by 100000 to 1000000 depending on how you measure it. It will continue to accelerate.

BTW, as far as internships etc., I started programming 38 years ago when I was 7. I've built a ton of software with numerous technologies, including recently some things like: a multilayer perceptron (from scratch). And a data analysis tool that uses GPT to write complex SQL and create charts on the fly to answer user requests. Also software to automatically create custom websites (including imagery) based on short descriptions, or automatically write, test and debug scripts on servers. And all of that outputs at superhuman speed already. And before that I worked on dozens of other complex projects.

Point being, I understand technology and AI, and it is ludicrous to view superintelligence as "stupid bullshit".

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#74

Post by lukifer » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

hgsgm wrote: post #54

localplume wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

AI safety is corporation safety, or government safety, or software safety AI has the same powers and risks of organizations -- meta/mega human actors.

Corporations are arguably a form of AI, executing on top of human agents and the code of law: https://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre...

The difference is that machine learning technology can potentially operates at orders of magnitude of higher speeds, and potentially without humans in the loop. (The threat model is less "flip the on switch and everybody immediately dies"; but "flip the on switch, it works so well it gets woven into our infrastructure", until a critical threshold is met, and some seemingly-innocuous Make Number Go Up algo leads to humanity having a Very Very Bad Day.)

So all the same perverse incentives (orthogonality) of human-org AIs, but iterating thousands or millions of times faster.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#75

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #60

hgsgm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is really bad at plugging itself in after it is unplugged.

That is like a gorilla grunting that humans are weak and will die after it hits us with its fist. Which is to say, that is completely true. But if you're up against an opponent who is smarter than you it might never come down to a fistfight. Every big gorilla on the planet could kill me. None of them can outcompete me for something, because I'm not stupid enough to challenge a big gorilla to a fistfight. There won't…

[deleted]

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#76

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #73

ke88y wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the fuck even is "AI" anyway? Indeed. For most lay people I've talked to -- family, friends, and acquiescence outside of tech -- the answer ultimately boils down to "automation that can do my job or can do the job of people I care about or can do the job of people who would then compete for my job". Sometimes also "algorithms" a la social media feeds and so on. Ie, the lay answer to "what is AI?" has recently…

Please read and study my comments in this thread carefully. Superintelligence is not Hollywood bullshit. AI doesn't need to be alive or animal-like to be superintelligent. We have many examples getting more and more general purpose. Look at AlphaGo, AlphaStar. Both are superintelligent in a somewhat narrow way (but trending towards less narrow). GPT-4 is superintelligent in some ways already such as it's breadth of k…

Consider this: There are people much much smarter than you RIGHT NOW that you do not listen to or refuse to agree with. There are clear statistics RIGHT NOW about things that you choose to disbelieve. If you don't think this is true, then it is even more the reality. The idea that a very smart "AI" can magically convince anyone of anything is completely unsubstantiated and made entirely up, by people basically inventing a new god and religion. Everything about the human brain is built around rationalizing what you already want into whatever system you pretend to believe in and use, and an AI could tell you something completely true, completely accurate, completely right from a magical objective morality and you STILL would not choose to believe it.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#77

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:00 PM UTC

kalkin wrote: post #65

wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think it's important to note that hype about "existential risk" is coming from people who stand to profit from "AI": https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/31/ai-poses-human-extinction-ri... So it seems like the playbook is something like: 1) play up non-problems that, thanks to 50+ years of sci-fi killer AI, will seem real to the rubes; 2) breeze on past the numerous actual problems; 3) solve as few actual problems as p…

> people who stand to profit from "AI" Some of them, sure, but that doesn't seem to be true of plenty of signatures to the open letter. > the contents of this press release focus mostly on actual problems Given that this is a set of entirely voluntary commitments made by the companies who you had thought were hyping x-risk in order to distract from actual problems... maybe it's worth updating your assessment of what…

Pretending to play along with "requests" to "keep AI safe" while ignoring the harms it will cause in other ways as the companies that own it try and gobble up literally all the money is 100% in line with the Sam Altman style of "I deserve to be the richest motherfucker on the planet" thinking

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#78

Post by johngladtj » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #76

ilaksh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read and study my comments in this thread carefully. Superintelligence is not Hollywood bullshit. AI doesn't need to be alive or animal-like to be superintelligent. We have many examples getting more and more general purpose. Look at AlphaGo, AlphaStar. Both are superintelligent in a somewhat narrow way (but trending towards less narrow). GPT-4 is superintelligent in some ways already such as it's breadth of k…

Consider this: There are people much much smarter than you RIGHT NOW that you do not listen to or refuse to agree with. There are clear statistics RIGHT NOW about things that you choose to disbelieve. If you don't think this is true, then it is even more the reality. The idea that a very smart "AI" can magically convince anyone of anything is completely unsubstantiated and made entirely up, by people basically invent…

Given that we already have AI convincing people to kill themselves or that they are aware, I'd say the chance that a more advanced ai is capable of convincing humans to do certain actions that the human may not fully understand the totality of the consequences is pretty high.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#79

Post by jazzyjackson » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #64

jazzyjackson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to find a different preacher than Yud, he has zero capacity to explain himself to skeptics.

Robert Miles is a much more effective communicator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMLKbhY0ji0

Thanks, I'm a half hour in and will keep listening; he's more soft spoken and relatable sure but he still strikes me as a vague doomer who's not trying to explain why he's confident humans will lose, just that he's confident.

@30:24, on what solutions might be realistic to help, if not a 6 month sanction, Miles says:

"Maybe what we should be asking for is just an enormous amount of money to do alignment research with"

Sounds like a classic doomsday cult, end is nigh, deposit your checks to this account...

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#80

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

kalkin wrote: post #70

localplume wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

Personally I don't think AI is very likely to destroy humanity in the next couple of decades. I also don't think that the Ukraine war is very likely to end in a global thermonuclear exchange. But I don't think worrying about nuclear war is insanity. What strikes me as insane in the Ukraine case, or at the very least dangerously irrational, is calling for a no-fly zone without thinking about the consequences. And I fe…

At the same time, I think it's pretty clear that a no fly zone could have been done with few American casualties, and Putin would still have no ability to respond because they physically cannot. Putin, and more importantly all the rich assholes under him who like being rich assholes, don't like the idea of being rich assholes in a post nuclear exchange Russia, will likely not hit the button. Add to that the likelihood that most of the Nukes would not go off, or blow up on the launch pad even (Most of Russia's nukes are liquid fueled ICBMs, which are terrible in terms of staying reliable for cheap, and Russia spends less on it's entire military than the US spends on just it's solid fueled missiles). Russia has had at least one nuclear test fail since the war started.

We have been holding back equipment because "what if we need it" (to fight who?), or "but they'll retaliate!" (with the one tank they could afford to spare for the parade?) or "but it costs so much money" (only when you calculate it with the price we paid in 1980 instead of the negative value these old machines that need to be sold or decommissioned currently have) or "We can't send cluster munitions because the UXO risk!" while every day Russia is still in Ukrainian territory is actual Russians purposely shooting at Ukrainians and RUSSIANS HAVE LITERALLY USED CLUSTER MUNITIONS ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS!

The actual insanity is sending Ukraine 100 Bradleys instead of 500 and then bitching when their offensive is mediocre.