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Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

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Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it should be a fundamental mission of people who DO have technical knowledge to spread the word on both the negative and positive effects of AI. If WE have the knowledge, WE have the responsibility to go out there and let people know. But as far as I know, most technical people are happy to discuss it amongst themselves and not even say one word to people who have no technical knowledge. Not one word. We need mo…

If you are actually interested in that you can promote voices like this (Why We Must Resist AI w/ Dan McQuillan): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38362498

Thanks, I'll look into it!

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#82
This article fuels the idea of "deceptive Sam Altman" pointed out by the board and echoed at least by an ex-employee [1]:

> But this weekend we saw perhaps saw [sic] another side to the 38-year-old, a flicker of arrogance that gave a glimpse as to the dynamic with OpenAI’s board of directors. Visiting the company’s offices on Sunday, Altman took a moment to share a picture on social media of him holding a “guest” pass. “First and last time I ever wear one of these,” he wrote1.

I'm not sure if being two-faced internally (to employees, the board) is a trait of the prototypical "trailblazing cofounder", I feel that Jobs or Musk experience joy in being straight-to-your-face bastards which is very different of a compartmentalizing CEO that tweets with lower-case first-person pronouns and puts on a show that is sometimes reminiscent of Elizabeth Holmes.

[1] https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397...

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#83

Meh. The fundamental mistake the board made was to give MS an in perpetuity licence to OpenAI IP. What a terrible negotiation mistake.

They did that so that they could get $14 billion dollars without giving Microsoft any real ownership. People who actually understand the deal think it was very good for OpenAI.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I for one am speaking out against it (and against AI in general). I have a blog, Twitter, newsletter, and I even post warnings on my YouTube channel from time to time. I was part of a discussion that led my employer to commit to NOT using generative AI. No Twitter mob is going to stop me. They can descend all they want and pretend to be brave in front of a keyboard and screen. As far as I'm concerned, they're c…

"against AI safety" You speak against AI and against AI safety? In what way? Wouldn't be speaking against AI enough? Or would AI safety mean laws to prevent AI existence? Like in the Algebraist? (though it is funny in that book how the powerful use AI when it suits them).

I speak out against both. I am strongly against AI. But I am also against AI safety in general because I think AI safety is:

(1) A false amelioration that cannot prevent the dangers of AI

(2) A false promise to people that AI can be made safe

(3) A weak on-the-fence position to take of people who think they can have their cake and eat it too.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's a marketing tactic in the case of artificial intelligence. AI promoters all want to make people believe that it is far more advanced than it actually is. Although, I'm sure that many people who work in the industry also fall for the hype, as many of them seem to exhibit cultish behavior.

The marketing tactic was a not unique to AI and is being actively weaponized in modern times

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#86
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be gaslighting yourself if you can't see the actual, tractable, current practical applications of this tech (and that includes local models you can run yourself).

That's the thing: there is no actual and tractable use of this tech. It's probabilistic so every answer it can give can only resemble the real one and only accidentally be the real one so you need to fact check it anyways and then why bother? Do consider the AI written mushroom hunting guides being sold on Amazon. Would you trust these literally with your life?

If you use an LLM as a mere fact dispenser, then yes, they're quite susceptible to hallucinations. That said, there are search enabled LLMs, there is RAG to inject grounding truth into the LLMs context, there are LLMs that use their own code execution environments to validate code and output, all of which severely reduce hallucinations.

Also, I would not rely on a single (online) source for matters of life and death (medicine, finding non-poisnonous mushrooms, etc.) so why would LLM output be any different?

LLMs are not knowledge bases by themselves, they are text/language transformers, treat them as such or augment them with additional knowledge.

Or don't, if you think millions of people are gaslighting you and LLMs are just a parlor trick, then I don't know what to tell you.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#87

Complete tin hat theory here so do not take it as anything more than a hypothetical what if but… how do we know that the board weren’t secretly in receipt of an under the table payment to do exactly this? Again, complete hypothetical hyperbole, please do not take this as anything else.

Who watches the Politburo?

Sorry I don’t get the reference

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people have yet to realize that this whole AI Safety thing is complete BS. It's just another veil, like Effective Altruism, to get good PR and build a career around. The only people who truly believe this AI safety stuff are those with no technical knowledge or expertise.

Then it should be a fundamental mission of people who DO have technical knowledge to spread the word on both the negative and positive effects of AI. If WE have the knowledge, WE have the responsibility to go out there and let people know. But as far as I know, most technical people are happy to discuss it amongst themselves and not even say one word to people who have no technical knowledge. Not one word. We need mo…

The problem with AI has never been the technology that composes AI, the problem has always and will forever be the immature yet powerful humans that take advantage of less advantaged humans using whatever means they have, which today can include AI. The issue is not a technology issue, it's a human psychology and sociology issue, it's our immature humans in society that is the issue. Technologists cannot speak about that in any meaningful manner.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#89

Am I the only one who thinks that AI accountability is a fool's errand? The genie is out of the bottle and we know how to build these things now. I assume that AI will be put to every unethical/evil purpose possible (as humans often do) and it is only a matter of time. Maybe it's still worth trying?

I don't understand what you mean by "accountability", I understand the word to mean the concept of actors paying a price if they don't take reasonable actions to protect others from potential future harm and compensate those that they have already harmed.

Why would Microsoft creating an AI to help local authorities identify gay people in Chechnya and releasing it as open source mean Microsoft does not need to be held accountable?

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#90
Isn't the other problem that even if their intentions are good, their abilities are lacking?

That is - if they cannot align a bunch of humans, need to do a boardroom coup, and are now 5 days into a very messy public airing of laundry... how are they going to align an AI?

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