Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

1a3orn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 405 posts

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

#331

Post by nvm0n2 »

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…

Progress in AI is one way. It doesn’t go backwards in the long term.

Not necessarily. AI has gone through a winter before.

Elon Musk has made this point, that progress isn't a monotonic ratchet. Progress in rocketry went backwards for years. Progress in top speed of commercial flight went backwards. Keeping current tech levels requires constant effort.

In the software industry, many argue that UI quality went backwards with the shift to web apps for an example of cases where progress isn't obviously one way.

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

#332

Post by upwardbound »

flir wrote: post #154
upwardbound wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted for the honesty, and yikes

I was being lighthearted, but I've seen a partner through chemo. Sell state secrets, assassinate a president, bring on the AI apocalypse... it all gets a big thumbs up from me if you can guarantee she'll die quietly in her sleep at the age of 103. I guess everyone's got a deal with the devil in them, which is why I think 70% might be a bit low.

I'm so sorry your partner went through that.

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

#333

Post by upwardbound »

kugla wrote: post #168
upwardbound wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted for the honesty, and yikes

That is why I believe that this debate is pointless. If AGI is possible, it will be made. There is no feasible way to stop it being developed, because the perceivable gains are so huge.

On the contrary, all we have to do is educate business leaders to show them that the gains are illusory because AGI will wipe us out. Working on AGI is like the story of the recent DOOM games where the foolish Union Aerospace Corporation is researching how to permanently open a gate to Hell through which to summon powerful entities and seemingly unlimited free "clean" energy. Obviously, this turns out to be stupid when Hell's forces rip the portal wide open into a full-fledged dimensional rift and attempt to drag our entire world into Hell. Working on AGI has the exact same level of perceived gains vs actual gains..

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

#334

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

tsimionescu wrote: post #330
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's worked fine with tobacco. Unlike illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco consumption have been gradually dropping over time(or moved to less harmful methods than smoking). Heroin already is openly accessible. As much as one can try to argue this is an accessibility issue, it really isn't. Anyone who is motivated to can get their hands on some heroin. The only thing that's made harder to access is high quali…

No, heroin is not "openly accessible". Massive corporations are not profiting off pushing heroin. You'd see a massive increase in heroin use if it was fully legal. And that's not a good thing jn any possible way.

You're not making an argument, just stating a disagreement.

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

#335

Post by tsimionescu »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #334
tsimionescu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, heroin is not "openly accessible". Massive corporations are not profiting off pushing heroin. You'd see a massive increase in heroin use if it was fully legal. And that's not a good thing jn any possible way.

You're not making an argument, just stating a disagreement.

Do you have any doubt that, say, Coca Cola Company could push heroin more effectively than someone on a street corner, if it were legal to do so?

Do you think heroin is more or less commonly used than tabacco or alcohol?

We've already seen from the opioid epidemic that drug companies at least are both willing and able to push massive amounts of an opioid drug on patients if it is even slightly legal to do so. Why do you think it wouldn't be much much worse if it was fully legal?

Note, I am not against decriminalizing heroin and any other drug. I fully agree that the war on drugs is a massive problem. But that doesn't mean that full legalization of hard drugs, especially the most addictive of them, is the same.

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

#336

Post by shkkmo »

lannisterstark wrote: post #91
shkkmo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of FOSS software basically designed to violate copyright law (comic readers, home media center servers/clients, torrent clients) The key difference is that those projects don't violate copyright themselves, but facilitate users doing so. If training without a license is infringement then projects that are doing so will struggle to host code/models publicly or access other parts of internet infrastruc…

>struggle to host code/models publicly or access other parts of internet infrastructure. To be fair, IPFS/Torrents/Usenet exists.

Yes, there are workarounds that are already used in other areas of copyright infringement. It won't stop the activity completely but will curtail the scale of that activity.

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

#337

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #182
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the reason to believe that LLMs are an evolutionary step towards AGI at all? In my mind there is a rather large leap from estimating a conditional probability of a next token over some space to a conscious entity with its own goals and purpose. In my highly-summarized opinion? When you have a challenging problem with tight constraints, like flight, independent solutions tend to converge toward the same anal…

Flight is actually a perfect counterexample to x-risk nonsense. When flight was invented, people naturally assumed that it would continue advancing until we had flying cars and could get anywhere on the globe in a matter of minutes. Turns out there are both economic and practical limits to what is possible with flight and modern commercial airplanes don't look much different than those from 60 years ago. AGI/x-risk a…

If we lived in a world were hypersonic birds flying anywhere on the globe in a matter of minutes, then I think it would be quite reasonable to anticipate airplanes catching up to them.

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

#338

Post by apapapa »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #90
tehjoker wrote: post #9

standard capitalist play to set up a moat by instilling fear

You mean exactly like these pro-regulation organizations are doing?

These pro-regulation orgs are lobbying/bribbing for new regulations... Not sure what you mean

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

#339

Post by apapapa »

pmontra wrote: post #19
gdfgsdf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many AI safety orgs have tried to __criminalize__ currently-existing open-source AI standard socialist play to use the government's hand to achieve their own objectives

Don't everybody use the government to do what they want? It's kind of the definition of government, in any country and in any political system.

Mostly the people with the money do

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

#340

Post by reissbaker »

gjm11 wrote: post #327
reissbaker wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article — and my statements — are not about "is this interesting and worth a bit of effort to look into." The article is about how current AI safety orgs have tried to make current open-source models illegal. That's a much stronger position than just "this is interesting, let's look into it." Sure! By all means look into whatever seems interesting to you. But claiming that it should be banned, to me, seems like…

You made an analogy between AI x-risk and e.g. cold fusion . I pointed out that there's an important disanalogy here: no one is claiming or has claimed that cold fusion poses an existential threat. Hence, the nearest cold-fusion claim to any AI x-risk claims is "cold fusion is worth investigating" (which it was, once, and isn't now). It looks to me as if (1) you made an analogy that doesn't really work, then (2) when…

If you want to make a research avenue illegal, IMO you need evidence that it's harmful. If there isn't evidence — minus circular claims that already assume it's harmful — I don't think it should be illegal. Very simple. This isn't an "analogy," it's what is happening in reality and is what the article is about.
Post reply on HN