Call me cynical but its hard to see this as anything but a way to create a moat for the incumbent leaders in the field.
White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
Do you think AI is capable of gobbling up "literally all the money" for its owners? If so, doesn't that suggest it's kinda dangerous?
FWIW I don't think these voluntary commitments are sufficient or address all of the important harms. But that's different than saying any government action is just "regulatory capture" and an attempt to keep open source models down. I'm only attempting to argue against the latter here, which I'm not sure is where you're coming from.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 likelihoo…
I don't want to argue about Ukraine in this thread but I guess I do respect the consistency of anyone who says both "eh risking nuclear war is no biggie if the first mechanism for it that occurs to me seems unlikely" and "eh risking losing control of the planet to AI shoggoths is no biggie if..."
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Do you think AI is capable of gobbling up "literally all the money" for its owners? If so, doesn't that suggest it's kinda dangerous? FWIW I don't think these voluntary commitments are sufficient or address all of the important harms. But that's different than saying any government action is just "regulatory capture" and an attempt to keep open source models down. I'm only attempting to argue against the latter here,…
> Do you think AI is capable of gobbling up "literally all the money" for its owners?
Not particularly without barriers to competition in the space being artificially erected so as to enable that, which is the whole point of the industry-government game of footsie.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#85Earlier 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…
> maybe it's worth updating your assessment
Nope. Because I think the White House's press release is expressing the White House's view of what's important. That the White House didn't get distracted by the chaff says nothing about the chaff or those firing it off.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think AI is capable of gobbling up "literally all the money" for its owners? If so, doesn't that suggest it's kinda dangerous? FWIW I don't think these voluntary commitments are sufficient or address all of the important harms. But that's different than saying any government action is just "regulatory capture" and an attempt to keep open source models down. I'm only attempting to argue against the latter here,…
> Do you think AI is capable of gobbling up "literally all the money" for its owners? Not particularly without barriers to competition in the space being artificially erected so as to enable that, which is the whole point of the industry-government game of footsie.
You're not the commenter I was addressing, but it sounds like your position is: AI will eat the entire economy but that's going to go fine as long as it's entirely unregulated so that the magic of the free market can fix any problems. Is that right? Or maybe you're not endorsing "literally all" in the literally-literally sense, in which case it would be helpful to spell out what value you think AI will capture (for monopolists or otherwise).
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> maybe it's worth updating your assessment Nope. Because I think the White House's press release is expressing the White House's view of what's important. That the White House didn't get distracted by the chaff says nothing about the chaff or those firing it off.
There's nothing in this release that companies didn't agree to as well. Which doesn't prove that they're fundamentally motivated by what's best for humanity but does maybe indicate that it wouldn't be hard for them to just stick to PR about shorter term safety concerns if no one working there (or externally) was genuinely concerned about longer term "x-risk" etc.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a Hollywood style big red emergency stop button protected by plastic shield to prevent accidental pressing that is also protected by a lock where the person in charge has the key around their neck. Or a giant knife switch on the wall that makes that huge clunk noise when turned to the off position, and everyone hears the sound effect of the power shutting down. We've had computers in charge of so much for so lon…
You can't fit a manual override to these systems any more than you can a person.
what? if a computer control is installed to a physical anything, you can always add cutoffs to the control at the physical point so that even if the computer is telling it to do something the physical thing no longer receives those controls/signals. designing it without those safety precautions would be 100% asinine. it'd be like allowing openai to design everything with no controls. even Musk allows the drivers to take control away when FSD is engaged.
you're bonkers if you think we can't make manual overrides like this.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#89This 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.
I'm a cynic but even so I've been surprised by how the tone of confident dismissal of x-risk as "nonsense" has been completely unaffected by the change in messenger from LW weirdos to Turning Award winners. Like people don't even feel the need to gesture at an argument, it's just supposed to be obvious. What's really going on is good open source vs evil corporate control, a lot of commenters are sure, and the governm…
Why should the tone have changed? The billionaires and AI godfathers talking about it now all were inspired by LW and scifi, and it's the same narrative: no need to care about people living today or real problems in the world when there's a scifi story about trillions of people in the future for whom we must sacrifice anything (except the billionaires and AI godfathers comfort, status, or money) in the present to protect.
Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a cynic but even so I've been surprised by how the tone of confident dismissal of x-risk as "nonsense" has been completely unaffected by the change in messenger from LW weirdos to Turning Award winners. Like people don't even feel the need to gesture at an argument, it's just supposed to be obvious. What's really going on is good open source vs evil corporate control, a lot of commenters are sure, and the governm…
Why should the tone have changed? The billionaires and AI godfathers talking about it now all were inspired by LW and scifi, and it's the same narrative: no need to care about people living today or real problems in the world when there's a scifi story about trillions of people in the future for whom we must sacrifice anything (except the billionaires and AI godfathers comfort, status, or money) in the present to pro…
> "all were inspired by LW"
Evidence?
> "no need to care about people living today or real problems in the world"
Nobody says this.
> "trillions of people in the future"
Weird longtermists who talk about this are a small minority even among AI doomers.
> "AI godfathers comfort, status, or money"
I'm not suggesting anyone feel sorry for Geoff Hinton but quitting your Google job does seem like a pretty obvious sacrifice of money.
But I dunno you packed so much confusion into two sentences that I doubt you're going to let any messy details get in the way of picking a side based on an attempt at populism (including the fact that you're aligning yourself with Marc Andreesen and Zuckerberg).