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Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

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31–40 of 873 posts

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#31

That's the thing with AI. It's so dangerous it could destroy us all. P(doom)=0.3. Anyway, that's why we're working on much large LLMs. It's important that we do this research and expand the size of the LLMs because a larger LLM could destroy us all. Listen, everyone cosplays as doomers here because it's stylish right now. But they're all trying to make this thing they think is suicide. Is this a suicide cult? No. It'…

P(doom)=0.3 according to what? How did you come up with these numbers

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#32
Yeah, it is a true risk. What happens when people start making their voting decisions with AI, asking who to vote? Nothing wrong with that per se, but it gives an ultimate power to the company who developed and hosts the AI, which means the end of democracy.

My recommendation for regulation would be to make closed & cloud-hosted AI illegal. Architecture, training data and weights should always be available, and people should only be allowed to use AI on their local machine (which might be as powerful as possible).

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#33
post #32

Yeah, it is a true risk. What happens when people start making their voting decisions with AI, asking who to vote? Nothing wrong with that per se, but it gives an ultimate power to the company who developed and hosts the AI, which means the end of democracy. My recommendation for regulation would be to make closed & cloud-hosted AI illegal. Architecture, training data and weights should always be available, and peopl…

This would make AI usage restricted to those who can afford a beefy PC, no?

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#34
post #4

It's too late for monopolizing large language models. The technology for making them is known and the cost keeps coming down. There are things to worry about, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.

Training is still very expensive.. and if it becomes cheaper, then a next-gen model with better performance will be expensive again. It may be very hard to train cutting edge models if you only have consumer hardware

Either way, it’ll get to a point where a few generations removed from cutting edge will be “good enough” for existing problem spaces to a degree models are further commoditized. Like any other tech (e.g. iPhones) Next-gen will enable new emergent use cases or continue to eke out diminishing advantages over competition.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#35
The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using "X-Risk" and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far.

Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd.

The laws we have already cover malevolent and abusive uses of software applications.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#36
post #33
post #32

Yeah, it is a true risk. What happens when people start making their voting decisions with AI, asking who to vote? Nothing wrong with that per se, but it gives an ultimate power to the company who developed and hosts the AI, which means the end of democracy. My recommendation for regulation would be to make closed & cloud-hosted AI illegal. Architecture, training data and weights should always be available, and peopl…

This would make AI usage restricted to those who can afford a beefy PC, no?

Or it would create an incentive for reducing the cost of the hardware needed to run beefier AI models and passing that reduction down to consumers.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#37
post #28
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the strong market for virtual goods and the existence of significant virtual economies[1] like those found in Roblox and Second Life lead me to believe that markets can and will always exist, regardless of how far we progress into and beyond post-scarcity (assuming humanity persists in its current form and consumption preferences remain stable). I'm less certain about the capitalist model in particular, but it to…

We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades. The problem is inequalities and the inefficiency of how we use the resources, it doesn't look like we'll change that soon, sadly. I'm more prone to think that in a "virtual" economy we'll still have miserable workers to empty the chamber-pots of the lucky ones who are plugged in the new world.

> We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades.

It's only a post-scarcity world if you define scarcity by absence of enough resources to satisfy the bare-minimum required for existence. People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#38
post #20

The moat he describes the one-percenters might aquire is government regulation. Creating an environment where only an exclusive club of companies is able to work on AI. Is that possible? Has that happened in any other industry? I can imagine it happening in a single country. But wouldn't research route around that country then? How is the situation in Europe, China, India, Canada, Japan ... ?

>Is that possible? Has that happened in any other industry?

It's absolutely happened to the nuclear weapons industry. And Big AI is lobbying for the government to treat AI development the same way it treats nuclear proliferation.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#39
post #12
post #2

some speculators say we'll enter an age of abundance and money wont matter nearly as much (or at all) but if thats the case, how do businesses transition from their current state of profit over everything into money is not important? I see it as much more likely that things become monopolized instead

Eh, the strong market for virtual goods and the existence of significant virtual economies[1] like those found in Roblox and Second Life lead me to believe that markets can and will always exist, regardless of how far we progress into and beyond post-scarcity (assuming humanity persists in its current form and consumption preferences remain stable). I'm less certain about the capitalist model in particular, but it to…

What comes to mind is when the entire metaverse and NFT craze was at its peak, there were many unironic suggestions floating around that NFTs were an important aspect of the metaverse because they would substitute for exclusive ownership of digital goods in the way physical items have to be "exclusive" to a certain quantity and quality. The vision basically being that such limitations are a feature in a world where replication is supposed to be effectively free.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#40
post #9

Is true because if one company creates something more powerful than what military can achieve, why would it not wan to overtake its powers?

I wouldn't worry about that. I'm sure the military can unplug some computers.

I’m probably getting philosophical here but my personal thought is that - at the end of the day (most if not all) people/anyone/humans like to be on top of “something” rather than to be on top of “everything but nothing meaningful (to anyone else)”. reminds of this one Superman adventures episode with Bizarro (a very uncanny anti-superman) - Superman brought him to an empty desolate place (planet) to prevent him from accidentally destroying earth since in his head he “always wanted to be” superman”. bizarro had an entire planet to himself where he was god, king, law and lawyer it - he loved it. is that normal or human? hell no. He’s Bizarro. People will go elsewhere and enjoy human things like life-satisfaction, culture, family, friend networks, etc whatever else people like . life goes on.
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