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After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

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Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#21

Post by hackerlight »

insanitybit wrote: post #11
HDThoreaun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the ai safety arguments revolve around “once it’s powerful enough to cause damage it’ll be too late to come up with a strategy”. If you accept that it doesn’t matter that ai systems now suck, since we don’t know when they’ll improve.

What damage will it cause? I feel like there's "AI will replace jobs" level of damage, which, why would we regulate that? An insane amount of technology is developed with the purpose of improving productivity or outright replacing workers. Then there's the "AI will go rogue", which I don't think is substantiated at all. Like, one can theorize about some novel, distinct system that is able to interact with the externa…

Evil isn't required, all that's required is a misalignment of objectives. Sort of like how objectives are misaligned between us and our less intelligent animal cousins. And look how things are turning out for them as we bulldoze their forests.

My main gripe with AI existential risk types is they have their own conflict of interest which comes from their position in society. They're all from the top 1% strata of society (status & socioeconomic), and this gives them a psychological bias that makes them preoccupied with what can go wrong for their comfortable lives instead of thinking about what can go right for the bottom 20% and how AI can be steered to achieve that possible betterment.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#22

Post by gnaritas99 »

oxfordmale wrote: post #8
not_your_vase wrote: post #2

But is there a real AI-threat, that would need real AI-safety? To me it still looks like a nice bar-trick, not AI. It is very clever, very nice, even astounding. But doesn't look threatening - at some cases it is even dumb. The fear-mongering looks more like scare-marketing. Which is also clever, in my opinion. But maybe I'm just out of touch.

The current models are static, they do not get modified by self learning. Unless someone already build in a Skynet backdoor, we are safe. ...and I am hoping all nuclear missiles are air gapped anyway...

[dead]

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#24

Post by zone411 »

golol wrote: post #15

Look, there is ASI/AGI safety, and "please don't swear and scam and misinform, and be unbiased" safety. ASI/AGI safety is only a concern right now if you believe in foom , i.e. that an AGI would rapidly self improve to an ASI and extinction level threat. I think it is absurd to believe that because AI right now is compute limited and any first AGI will only be able to run on large data centers. The latter kind of saf…

No. Foom is not needed. You could make a weak argument that AI training will be compute-limited but AI inference is of course much cheaper.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#25

Post by okdood64 »

Something I see lacking in many discussions about AI Safety and Alignment is:

What does the role of China mean for AI Safety? Is there any reason to believe that they will a) adopt any standards SV, the US or some international government body will create, or b) care enough to slow down development of AI?

If AI Safety is really a concern, you can expect in the long run (not that much further behind than the US) China will catch up to the point of where they have some AI technology that is dangerous enough, and it will be up to them (their government and their tech companies) to decide what to do.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#26

Post by insanitybit »

hackerlight wrote: post #21
insanitybit wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What damage will it cause? I feel like there's "AI will replace jobs" level of damage, which, why would we regulate that? An insane amount of technology is developed with the purpose of improving productivity or outright replacing workers. Then there's the "AI will go rogue", which I don't think is substantiated at all. Like, one can theorize about some novel, distinct system that is able to interact with the externa…

Evil isn't required, all that's required is a misalignment of objectives. Sort of like how objectives are misaligned between us and our less intelligent animal cousins. And look how things are turning out for them as we bulldoze their forests. My main gripe with AI existential risk types is they have their own conflict of interest which comes from their position in society. They're all from the top 1% strata of socie…

I'm using "evil" as a vague catch all. It doesn't have to be evil, it can just not align with our goals - whatever. My points all remain.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#28

Post by cpeterso »

golol wrote: post #15

Look, there is ASI/AGI safety, and "please don't swear and scam and misinform, and be unbiased" safety. ASI/AGI safety is only a concern right now if you believe in foom , i.e. that an AGI would rapidly self improve to an ASI and extinction level threat. I think it is absurd to believe that because AI right now is compute limited and any first AGI will only be able to run on large data centers. The latter kind of saf…

Yes. The AI safety that companies care about is their brand safety. They don’t want their products going Microsoft Tay on their customers.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#29

Post by xt00 »

AI safety allows AI companies to tell governments and worried people to not worry too much while they plow ahead doing what they want. That’s not to say there is nobody at these companies actually being responsible but having to open up your company to the equivalent of nuclear watchdogs is not something companies would be excited about. Just like nuclear weapons and nuclear energy we benefit from the tech as well as get greatly exposed to a huge disaster.. so let’s just call it as it is.. somebody is going to open Pandora’s box, we should be thinking super hard about how to control it and if it’s possible.. otherwise trying to ban it—is that even a possibility?

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#30

Post by datameta »

insanitybit wrote: post #11
HDThoreaun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the ai safety arguments revolve around “once it’s powerful enough to cause damage it’ll be too late to come up with a strategy”. If you accept that it doesn’t matter that ai systems now suck, since we don’t know when they’ll improve.

What damage will it cause? I feel like there's "AI will replace jobs" level of damage, which, why would we regulate that? An insane amount of technology is developed with the purpose of improving productivity or outright replacing workers. Then there's the "AI will go rogue", which I don't think is substantiated at all. Like, one can theorize about some novel, distinct system that is able to interact with the externa…

That's the thing - we don't know. Why play it fast and loose? Nobody is recommending stoppering research and making it squeeze through obcene bureaucratic pinholes. I for one think the near-term question is rather what kinds of conglomerated effects will there be from people being proto-transhuman through a connection to pre-AGI assistants in their pockets at all times? That's even before assuming bad actors and how to deal with that whole issue.
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