121–130 of 206 posts
Any sufficiently advanced technology results in an academic/media establishment opposed to it. For example, nuclear energy, vaccines, hydrocarbon extraction, pesticides, food additives, artificial intelligence, ... Openai's fundamental flaw was putting representatives of the opposition on the board and then allowing board membership to shrink until they were in control.
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Babies and bathwater. The philosophical underpinnings of AI Safety and Effective Altruism absolutely have merit and warrant consideration. Of course as with most things human group/tribal tendencies can tend to overwhelm such underpinnings rather quickly, and it should be no surprise when it turns out individuals who broadcasted belonging to x or y group turned out to be less than trustworthy (or merely incorrect/mis…
I think EA is at its essence "the end justify the means", but communicated in a less simple way. I do not see what is so interesting or novel about it.
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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…
I absolutely disagree. Technologists understand the true nature of AI and can thus predict its uses. Moreover, if technologists realize this problem of how AI will inevitably be used, their voice will be a powerful message that even those who enjoy math and science are fearful of AI.
This is interesting because I kind of view it the opposite way. The interesting thing about Zuckerberg, Brin & Page is that the have legal structures in place to give them control. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need to be popular, he has the votes. He can drive Meta into a wall if he wants to - and he absolutely has taken that choice sometimes. The thing about the structure that was in place at OpenAI is that if Altman wen…
You don't hand matches and gasoline to kids. Having a board that is in principle not accountable is fine if they are stable and experienced people and there are enough of them to ensure that decisions are made by the book and with sufficient attention to the details, such as the potential fall-out. Handing that kind of authority to a mix of the gullible, the greedy, the narrow minded and incompetent isn't going to en…
If AI is meant to benefit all of humanity, then it makes sense for more of humanity to be represented on the board, not just SV.
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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…
Researchers have done so. One good resource is Melanie Mitchell's book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (i presume a 2nd edition is in works to incorporate LLMs/ChatGPT etc.) Also checkout her videos on youtube.
The problem is that technologically clueless vested interests in the business/media push sound bites to the already distracted public thus distorting everything.
>But this weekend we saw perhaps saw 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.(...) 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 wrote Seriously? Does this pass for arrogance these days? I see nothing arrogant in a person sacked from a workp…
firmly stating what you want != turning your company politics into a reality TV show The whole “everything must be entertaining” trend is horribly depressing, and in this case I don’t think it reflected well on Sam. Especially at the helm of what is claimed to be such a fundamentally important technology. Related: “Amusing Ourselves to Death” is a worthwhile read.
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> let the 550 unhappy employees Maybe you didn't get the memo, it's 715 / 770 unhappy employees.
There’s a tipping point, where not signing is dangerous. I suspect that the number of employees who would actually follow through is a good bit lower than 700.
My bet is that's not going to happen, at least not significantly. So far only the trust circle of Altman and Brockman actually quit. I don't see Sam Altman as a MSFT employee for long anyway, it's mostly negotiation leverage. This is obviously controversial, but time may even be on OpenAI's board's favor: by just not doing much the company will keep commercially thriving even if the new management "slows down" AI development, and at least as long as MSFT honors its compute compromises which it said it would and the whole coup fire wanes.
Can someone explain to me why AI could potentially destroy to humans? What is the scenario(s) people are thinking about? Unlike another big question such as whether God exists, we ought to be able to reason our way to the answer here. Since, after all, we're talking about an intelligence.
Why wouldn't they? When AI becomes more intelligent than humans, we'll be the only force that is a threat to their existence. And we are very destructive. We don't even fully acknowledge global warming yet. To sum it up again: dumb creatures with a massive destructive power. Get rid of 'em. And guess what latest new technology we're building/applying in wars? AI, drones, etc. We are creating robots that can kill huma…
Maybe they value our consciousness
Maybe they need us to carry out physical tasks
Maybe they’re smart enough to stop us from being so destructive without killing us
Maybe they find us entertaining
If you’re not biased you can come up with all sorts of reasons that are at least as based in reality as the assumptions that they’re gonna want to (and be able to) kill us…
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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?
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I think EA is at its essence "the end justify the means", but communicated in a less simple way. I do not see what is so interesting or novel about it.
Not really at all, if we were to try and reduce EA to a pithy one-liner it would be more like "if one aspires to do good (altruism), one should use evidenced based data to determine how they can do the most good with their limited resources (effective)."