OpenAI and Elon Musk • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#761

Post by digging » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #590

Reubend wrote: post #13

Their evidence does a nice job of making Musk seem duplicitous, but it doesn't really refute any of his core assertions: they still have the appearance of abandoning their core mission to focus more on profits, even if they've elaborated a decent justification of why that's necessary to do. Or to put it more simply: here they explain why they had to betray their core mission. But they don't refute that they did betra…

This looks like one of the steps leading to the fulfilment of the iron law of bureaucracy. They are putting the company ahead of the goals of the company. "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy…

Ironically, this is essentially the core danger of true AGI itself. An agent can't achieve goals if it's dead, so you have to focus some energy on staying alive. But also, an agent can achieve more goals if it's more powerful, so you should devote some energy to gaining power if you really care about your goals...

Among many other more technical reasons, this is a great demonstration of why AI "alignment" as it is often called is such a terrifying unsolved problem. Human alignment isn't even close to being solved. Hoping that a more intelligent being will also happen to want to and know how to make everyone happy is the equivalent of hiding under the covers from a monster. (The difference being that some of the smartest people on the planet are in furious competition to breed the most dangerous monsters in your closet.)

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#762

Post by Qwertious » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #615

FeepingCreature wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world we live in is the result of a gray goo scenario causing a global genocide. (Google Oxygen Holocaust.) So it kinda makes a poor argument that sudden global ecosystem collapses are impossible. That said, everything we have in natural biotech, while advanced, are incremental improvements on the initial chemical replicators that arose in a hydrothermal vent billions of years ago. Evolution has massive path depe…

So the AGI holocaust would be a good thing for the advancement of life, like the Oxygen Holocaust was. Anyway, the Oxygen Holocaust took over 300,000,000 years. Not quite "sudden".

We don't care about the advancement of life, we care about the advancement of people.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#763

Post by rat9988 » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #747

the_mar wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, honey. Never assume good intentions when lawyers are involved

That wasn't the point of the question. The question was a hypothetical to test if there was any possible response that would've satisfied the original poster. They're not suggesting to assume good intentions about the parties forever . They're just asking for that assumption for the purposes of the question that was asked

There is no satisfying answer if your actions before are not satisfying. The question implies that the original poster cannot be satisfied, and thus shift the blame implicitly. The problem remain not what the answer is, or how it is worded. The answer only portrays the actions, which are by themselves unsatifsying.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#764

Post by aeternum » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #149

aeternum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like Google's "Do no evil" *only applicable to certain definitions of evil

Google scrapped "Don't be evil" a long time ago. Now it's some kind of "Kiss the ring and have respect for the hand that feeds you" or something.

Agreed, but "Do no evil" shouldn't be the kind of thing you just scrap.

Isn't doing that in and of itself somewhat evil?

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#765

Post by Qwertious » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #624

WalterBright wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US became a superpower long before WW2. The US was the deciding factor in WW1, and the Germans were shocked at how well-fed and well-equipped the US soldiers were, even with having to ship everything across the ocean. The US saw the most spectacular rise in the standard of living from 1800 up to WW2 the world had ever seen. This was all due to the free market, not collectivism. During WW2, the US supplied its all…

The primary source of superiority in a war is "not being within reach of a enemy munitions". US does great in European wars for that reason, and is historically mostly free from North American wars because US dominates the whole continent.

Dominating the whole continent isn't enough, or Britain would have won WW1 much earlier due to the support of Australia - who dominate the whole continent.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#766

Post by krapp » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #764

romwell wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google scrapped "Don't be evil" a long time ago. Now it's some kind of "Kiss the ring and have respect for the hand that feeds you" or something.

Agreed, but "Do no evil" shouldn't be the kind of thing you just scrap. Isn't doing that in and of itself somewhat evil?

"Don't be evil" is a meaningless phrase, because "evil" is an entirely subjective concept.

Google was born out of NSA and CIA research grants, and they operate under capitalist incentives. Many would say they have never not been evil. But again, it's a matter of perspective.

It's obviously not a phrase any company would ever take seriously since it has no real legal implications, and it's honestly weird how many people seem surprised and offended to find this out. No one is getting fired because Raisin Bran cereal doesn't guarantee a minimum of two scoops of raisins, either.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#767

Post by chaorace » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #757

troyvit wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AGI is as transformative as its proponents make it out to be, would it both attract and create those enormous egos though?

“I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.” — Claude Shannon

A fellow Code Report viewer, I assume?

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#768

Post by 8organicbits » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #196

Jensson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they are basically saying that they called themselves OpenAI as a recruitment strategy but they never planned to be open after the initial hires.

Why do tech people keep falling for this shtick? It's happened over and over and over with open source becoming open core becoming source available being becoming source available with closed source bits. How society organizes property rights makes it damn near impossible to make anything commons in a way that can't in practice be reversed when folks see dollar signs. Owner is a non nullable field.

Thankfully the code as it was during the open source stage can be forked, maintained, and developed further if another party is interested.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#769

Post by mgiannopoulos » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

billiam wrote: post #209

Reubend wrote: post #13

Their evidence does a nice job of making Musk seem duplicitous, but it doesn't really refute any of his core assertions: they still have the appearance of abandoning their core mission to focus more on profits, even if they've elaborated a decent justification of why that's necessary to do. Or to put it more simply: here they explain why they had to betray their core mission. But they don't refute that they did betra…

As the emails make clear, Musk reveals that his real goal is to use OpenAI to accelerate full self driving of Tesla Model 3 and other models. He keeps on putting up Google as a boogeyman who will swamp them, but he provides no real evidence of spending level or progress toward AGI, he just bloviates. I am totally suspicious of Altman in particular, but Musk is just the worst.

“he provides no real evidence of spending level” In the mails he mentions that billions per year are needed and that he was willing to put up 1 billion to start.

Re: OpenAI and Elon Musk

#770

Post by polygamous_bat » Wed, Mar 06, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #695

tcgv wrote: post #595

This post is a lame PR stunt, which will only add fuel to the fire. It tries to portray openAI as this great bennefactor and custodian of virtue: > “As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science...” > I've seen you (and Sam and other OpenAI people) d…

Assume good intentions and nothing of substance being hidden: Is there any way to be transparent here that would have satisfied you or are you essentially asking for them to just keep to themselves or something else?

A great way to be transparent would be to admit that some enormous egos prevented work that should be open from being open, and counterfactually opening them up. Sure, it may piss off microsoft, but statistically things that piss off microsoft also has been great for the world at large.

But that will never happen, will it?