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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

#201
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so sure we are that far from AGI? Looking at current capabilities, and rate of improvement I would be surprised if it is more than a few years off.

People told me the same thing about self driving cars 10 years ago.

Waymo works pretty well today in the Bay Area. Self driving cars are here. They’re just not evenly distributed.

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

#202
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ridiculous. This is just sci-fi bullshit without a shred of logic or scientific evidence. You would have just as much credibility claiming that we are at risk of an alien invasion. I mean I can prove that it's impossible.

Here's an example: our dear Czar uses the AGI to discover a 16 shell company chain in order to get resources and tech that are under sanctions. Or, he has it use real-world conditions from large batches or real-time uncurated battlefield data and intelligence reports to run simulation after simulation to inform his generals where it is likeliest that the next counterattack would be concentrated.

Lawyers and narrow systems are much more efficient at it.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original topic was whether Artifical General Intelligence is far away or not, and I'm saying you can't say for sure it's far away when even ChatGPT-level intelligence was considered science fiction a few years ago.

Yes, they same way there is no certainty that it is close by. History suggests that predictions about technological and socia-economic futures are tough.

I agree but I wouldn't bet on it being far either based on how far we've come on the last few years.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We don't know if we'll have time travel and ray guns in six months or 600 years." That's not the (only) problem, it's that no one can describe what AGI will really look like outside of vague and circular definitions. People have an idea of what they would like it to be, but there's no evidence any of it can be built, particularly human like intelligence, which may be only possible in the human host. > "If we can m…

The best description of AGI I've seen is in Michael Crichton's Prey. He describes in a fairly plausible detail how AGI rises from the building blocks. The emotion he captures is that of dealing with a psychopath -- goal oriented with no empathy -- to the infinite degree. That said, I think ChatGPT and LLMs trick us into seeing intelligence where there is none because we are evolutionarily wired to look for signs of i…

> goal oriented with no empathy

We'll know we have discovered AGI when it gives us a prompt instead of us providing one.

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

#205

[flagged]

What would you suggest can be done about it? People like Sam Altman exist, and they will get funding and support from other people who (1) like money or (2) are doing what they enjoy.

They're lucky that a random crazy person hasn't killed them yet. This is not a suggestion that any particular individual should engage in violence, it's just an observation. (Violence is bad mmk?)

I'm staying well the fuck away from SFO right now because the Californians are so far out of touch they don't even understand that they deserve the hatred they receive.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs can integrate new information but they only remember what you told them up to the context length. If they could remember longer then you would have agents with a lot of new knowledge.

I guess what I am getting at is: When I ask ChatGPT 4 Turbo to "search for the article by Eric Berger from Sep 10th 2023, and summarize it," it does, and responds including that new information because it is now in the context. The next step would seem to be to integrate those search results into its training data - while somehow filtering bunk data which is the tough part - and when the next user asks that question…

What I mean is if context length wasn't a limit, you could have your own AI agent that remembers that article forever, along with everything else you've ever discussed with it.

If it generated text on its own, without human interaction, and developed its "personality", then you could say it's more like what we consider an intelligent being.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if that’s the definition of AGI we’re going by, we’re in no danger of it murdering us all. Imagine thinkjng GPT4 was somehow capable of really any harm at all. It’s also just incredible failure of risk assessment. Global warming is the real and pressing threat, and it’s here right now. Not sentient murderous AI. But it’s easier to dream about a threat that doesn’t exist than one that does because you can still im…

> Imagine thinkjng GPT4 was somehow capable of really any harm at all. There’s plenty of new ways you could use chatgpt to mess with society. For example, apparently you only need 8% of people to be talking about something for it to seem like a mass movement. It would be pretty easy for a malicious actor to use LLMs to flood the internet with some new - but fake - story or motivated point of view and kickstart a “mas…

It would also be easy for a benevolent actor to counter-flood etc.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People told me the same thing about self driving cars 10 years ago.

Waymo works pretty well today in the Bay Area. Self driving cars are here. They’re just not evenly distributed.

On days with perfect weather, with heavy reliance on extremely detailed pre-computed maps, with constant internet access, on paved roads, in scenarios it has encountered before. Getting from where we are to what is promised is not trivial at all.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're so far away from AGI Although I personally suspect this is correct, the issue seems to be that there are a lot of people who feel otherwise, whether right or wrong, including some of the people involved in the research and/or running these companies. I've seen several prominent people say things to the effect of "We just don't know if we're six months or 600 years from AGI,", which to me is a little like sayi…

> the issue seems to be that there are a lot of people who feel otherwise They're self-serving. It's virtue signaling and doom-pandering for their own attention and benefit. It's the same reason the online ad industry loves the infamous quote about how their generation's best and brightest are wasting their time building ad systems and trying to figure out how to drive higher click rates. It's not true (the best and…

Anyone remember grey goo from the nanotechnology apocalypse?

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

#210

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

How is GPT-4 not AGI? It is generally intelligent and passes the Turing test. When did AGI come to mean some godlike being that can enslave us? I think I can have a more intellectualy meaningful conversation with ChatGPT than I could with the vast majority of humanity. That is insane progress from where we were 18 months ago.
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