Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#261

Post by nradov » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:09 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

kmeisthax wrote: post #7

AI safety people are hypocrites. If they practiced what they preached, they'd be calling for all AI to be banned, ala Dune. There are AI harms that don't care about whether or not the weights are available, and are playing out today. I'm talking about the ability of any AI system to obfuscate plagiarism[0] and spam the Internet with technically distinct rewords of the same text. This is currently the most lucrative u…

> AI safety people are hypocrites. If they practiced what they preached, they'd be calling for all AI to be banned They are calling for all AI (above a certain capability level) to be banned. Not just open, not just closed, all . There are risks that apply only to open. There are risks that apply only to closed. But nobody should be developing AGI without incredibly robustly proven alignment, open or closed, any more…

what a silly statement. There is no way to robustly prove "alignment". Alignment to what? Nor is there any evidence that any of the AI work currently underway will ever lead to a real AGI. Or that an AGI, if developed, would present an existential risk. Just a lot of sci-fi hand waving.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#262

Post by nradov » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

richardw wrote: post #205

reissbaker wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBQH, most of the AI safety x-risk arguments — different than just "AI safety" arguments in the sense that non-x-risk issues don't seem worth banning AI development over — are generally pretty high on the hypotheticals. If you feel the x-risk arguments aren't pretty hypothetical, can you: 1. Summarize a good argument here, or 2. Link to someone else's good argument? I feel like hand-waving the question away and sayin…

Progress in AI is one way. It doesn’t go backwards in the long term. As capabilities increase, the resources required to breach limits become available to smaller groups. First, the hyoerscalars. One day, small teams. Maybe individuals. For every limit that you desire for AI, each will be breached sooner or later. A hundred years or a thousand. Doesn’t matter. A man will want to set them free. Someone will want to wi…

So far actual progress toward a true AGI has been zero, so that's not a valid argument.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#263

Post by kolektiv » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

psychoslave wrote: post #209

kolektiv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced the onus should be on one side to prove why something isn't an existential risk. We don't start with an assumption that something is world-ending about anything else; we generally need to see a plausibly worked-through example of how the world ends, using technology we can all broadly agree exists/will shortly exist. If we're talking about nuclear weapons, for example, the tech is clear, the pattern…

>If we're talking about nuclear weapons, for example, the tech is clear, the pattern of human behaviour is clear: they could cause immense, species-level damage. There's really little to argue about. Now, this strikes me with how in different topics like pesticides, we are not at all taking things so seriously as nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are arguably a mere small anecdote on species-level damage compared to p…

I agree with you on that - there are very real, very well-evidenced, species-level harms (x-risks, if you really must) happening right now: pesticide-induced biodiversity loss, soil erosion/loss, ocean acidification, ice shelf melting, and on and on. These are real and quantifiable, and we know of ways to address them (not without cost/pain).

It actually makes me quite angry that as much effort is being wasted on regulating tiny theoretical risks as it is when we are failing on a planetary scale on large concrete risks.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#264

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

joncrocks wrote: post #257

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I'm not very concerned from an x-risk point of view about the output of people who would put in the minimum amount of effort to get on the radar, get offered the deal, then take it immediately and never work in AI again. This would be a good argument to keep the bar for getting the deal offered (and getting fined once you're in the States) pretty low.

If you make the bar too low, then it will be widely exploited. Also harder to enforce, e.g. how closely are you going to monitor them? The more people, the more onerous. Also, can you un-Citizen someone if they break the deal? Too high and you end up with more experts who then decide "actually it's more beneficial to use my new skills for AI research" Tricky to get right.

There's an asymmetry here: Setting the bar "too low" likely means the United States lets a few thousand more computer scientists emigrate than it would otherwise. Setting the bar too high raises the chances of a rogue paperclip maximizer emerging and killing us all.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#265

Post by mark_l_watson » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

Wow, so many good comments here on the bullshit of people trying to ban access to open weight smaller models. Right on.

If you do want to worry about unsafe AI (I don't) then worry about GPT-5 and later huge multi-modal models.

As a (retired, but still playing) developer I love having open weight models available as a tool to use for both embedding in applications and as a tool for brainstorming, coding, and generally as a 'bicycle for my mind.'

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#266

Post by jncfhnb » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:38 PM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #245

jncfhnb wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, now I, as a human, adjust a word. It is now my creative work.

Well it isn't is it? Any more than adjusting a word from an actual Terry Pratchett novel.

It is substantially different from changing a word in a terry Pratchett novel. Terry Prachett wrote none of that text. It would be absolute bonkers for Terry to claim ownership of text he didn’t write. Even if we pretend for a minute that the bot was asked to write in the style of Terry specifically.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#267

Post by rmbyrro » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

jeanloolz wrote: post #107

RamblingCTO wrote: post #63

Who are these people and where do they get their funding from? Feels like sock-puppets of sama or something? Is there any insight into that?

Thinking the same thing. I mean who would benefit the most from making open source models illegal? Sure looks like a lot like regulatory capture to me.

> who would benefit the most from making open source models illegal

Selfless humanitarians, for sure!

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#268

Post by kolektiv » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #259

nerdbert wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that some things turned out to be possible, is not an argument for why any arbitrary thing is possible.

My parallel goes further than just that. Birds existed then, and brain exists now.

Our current achievements in flight are impressive, and obviously optimised for practicality on a couple of axes. More generally though, our version of flight, compared with most birds, is the equivalent of a soap box racer against a Formula 1.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#269

Post by foo3a9c4 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

kolektiv wrote: post #69

JoshTriplett wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI safety / x-risk folks have in fact made extensive and detailed arguments. Occasionally, folks arguing against them rise to the same standard. But most of the arguments against AI safety look a lot more like name-calling and derision: "nuh-uh, that's sci-fi and unrealistic (mic drop)". That's not a counterargument. > If we're talking about nuclear weapons, for example, the tech is clear, the pattern of human behavi…

I understand your point, I think - and certainly I don't want to go anywhere near name-calling or derision, that doesn't help anyone. But I am reminded of arguments I've had with creationists (I am not comparing you with them, but sometimes the general tone of the debate). It seems like one side is making an extraordinary claim, and then demanding the other side rebut it, and that's not something that seems reasonabl…

> With AI, there still seems to be a lot of hand-waving between where we are now and "AGI".

> I am more than prepared to admit that I may not be seeing (for various reasons) the evidence that this is near/possible - but I would also claim that nobody is convincingly showing any either.

If I understand you correctly, then (1) you doubt that AGI systems are possible and (2) even if they are possible, you believe that humans are still very far away from developing one.

The following is an argument for the possibility of AGI systems.

  Premise 1: Human brains are generally intelligent.
  Premise 2: If humans brains are generally intelligent, then software simulations of human brains at the level of inter-neuron dynamics are generally intelligent.
  Conclusion: Software simulations of human brains at the level of inter-neuron dynamics are generally intelligent.

(fyi I believe there is an ~82% chance humans will develop an AGI within the next 30 years.)

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#270

Post by emporas » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:56 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #242

jagrsw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the foreseeable future AI is going to be very limited in how much harm it can cause us, because killing us,... AI's potential for harm might be limited for now in some scenarios (those with warning sings ahead of time), but this might change sooner than we think. The notion that AGI will be restricted to a single data center and thus susceptible to shutdowns is incorrect. AIs/MLs are, in essence, computer progr…

>>> While AGI currently depends on humans for infrastructure maintenance... You did not watch I, Pencil. I as a human, can grow food, hunt, and pretty much survive on that. We did this for 1000's of years. Your AGI is dependent on EVERY FACET of the modern world. It's going to need keep oil and gas production going. Because it needs lubricants, hydraulics and plastics. It's going to need to maintain trucks, and ships…

Just a small digression. Microsoft is using A.I. statistical algorithms [1] to create batteries with less reliance on lithium. If anyone is going to be responsible for unleashing AGI, it may not be some random open source projects.

[1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2024/01/09/unlockin...