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Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

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Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#311

Post by TeMPOraL »

RandomLensman wrote: post #307
edanm wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, rather, its been actively marketed by Altman as doing so, as part of his effort to buy influence with government to restrict competition. I mean, maybe sama is also doing so. But you're ignoring the many people who have been warning of these dangers for years, some before OpenAI even existed, and many with no part of OpenAI and no monetary incentive. To describe everything as "Altman is marketing this as danger…

The world is full of dangers. AI danger has gotten some attention now - whether it turns out to be warranted beyond certain levels is still unclear. While there has been some regulatory action it also feels there is some "moving on" from the more apocalyptic risk views towards more mundane risks and their management (i.e., more vanilla product and technology risk management).

> it also feels there is some "moving on" from the more apocalyptic risk views towards more mundane risks and their management (i.e., more vanilla product and technology risk management).

No surprise, when the public reception to AI x-risk was mostly, "big tech scaremonging / regulatory capture; why not focus on Real AI Dangers Right Now, like bias or offensive language". Seemingly refocusing on the mundane may be the only way now to do something about the apocalyptic.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#312

Post by jiggawatts »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #215
Dalewyn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no, and I say that as a Japanese-American who visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial numerous times and never felt anything particular from the exhibits. People die when they are killed. Likewise, if "AI" is actually intelligent then it is no worse a threat than a bumbling baby or a Vladimir Putin or a dog, among other living…

>”An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no” Atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are orders of magnitude more destructive and also produce fallout. How in the world can that difference be dismissed?

Not the original commenter, but one interpretation is that “dead is dead”. You can’t be “more killed”, so past a point, all dangerous things are equally dangerous.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#313

Post by lucubratory »

JohnKemeny wrote: post #306
mjburgess wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also keep open that these AI researchers are as delusional as they seem. ilya sutskever has said that you can obtain any feature of intelligence by brute force modelling of text data. It's quite possible these are profoundly naive individuals, with little understanding of the empirical basis of what they're doing.

There are (relatively simple) examples of what the transformer architecture is simply not able to do, regardless of training data, so that's simply not true.

Can you provide those examples?

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#314

Post by RandomLensman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #311
RandomLensman wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is full of dangers. AI danger has gotten some attention now - whether it turns out to be warranted beyond certain levels is still unclear. While there has been some regulatory action it also feels there is some "moving on" from the more apocalyptic risk views towards more mundane risks and their management (i.e., more vanilla product and technology risk management).

> it also feels there is some "moving on" from the more apocalyptic risk views towards more mundane risks and their management (i.e., more vanilla product and technology risk management). No surprise, when the public reception to AI x-risk was mostly, "big tech scaremonging / regulatory capture; why not focus on Real AI Dangers Right Now, like bias or offensive language". Seemingly refocusing on the mundane may be th…

There is a possibility that the apocalyptic risk just isn't there in a meaningful way while mundane risks from new tools actually would need attention (but might not even need new regulation).

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#315

Post by TeMPOraL »

9dev wrote: post #294
brandall10 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There absolutely is a difference. Nuclear war is considered a likely extinction level event for humanity. A war between the US/NATO and the Soviet Union could take out major cities around the globe within hours, and the resultant nuclear winter would blanket much of the planet within a month making living above ground impossible. GP's comparison is apt here.

Just a minor correction, even though I agree with your point: the Soviet Union is no longer a thing, despite Putins wishes to the contrary :)

Right, but its nukes are still around and pointed at NATO :).

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#316

Post by golol »

ramoz wrote: post #304
carliton wrote: post #259

LLMs are useful to a certain extent, but from my usage they are not ready for anything harder than very basic tasks. I feel like this megaphone about AI safety and creating a sense of doom is a strategy to increase importance of OpenAI and exaggerate the capabilities of LLMs. This era of “AI” is all about pretending that machines can think and the people working in these machines are prophets.

The call for AI safety has existed since before we broke through the Turing test with LLMs. And I personally wouldn’t call things like code generation or content-generated learning experiences for advanced topics “basic”. Not to mention where we’re headed with multimodal integration. Many have argued for safety for decades. They’ve predicted and built the AI trajectory, they’ve been right, and we should listen. > If…

The Turing test has not been passed

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#317

Post by Dalewyn »

komali2 wrote: post #241
Dalewyn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no, and I say that as a Japanese-American who visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial numerous times and never felt anything particular from the exhibits. People die when they are killed. Likewise, if "AI" is actually intelligent then it is no worse a threat than a bumbling baby or a Vladimir Putin or a dog, among other living…

Can you explain, with your worldview, why the nature of geopolitics turned abruptly and completely upon the invention and proliferation of nuclear bombs? What was it about the nuclear bomb that caused it to be the defining structure of the cold war? Do you believe MAD can exist without nuclear bombs?

>What was it about the nuclear bomb that caused it to be the defining structure of the cold war?

The only difference is you can kill more humans for a given span of time. The end result is the same: Cities are leveled, people are killed. Is it more comforting to have been killed by a conventional bomb than a nuke? I certainly don't think so. So practically speaking, there is no difference.

>Do you believe MAD can exist without nuclear bombs?

Yes. I think you're all vastly underestimating just how much destructive power conventionals can deliver already. You will need more ordnance on standby, but you absolutely can suffer from MAD without nukes.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#318

Post by Sharlin »

fzeindl wrote: post #310
corry wrote: post #62

In any sufficiently large tech company, the "risk mitigation" leadership (legal, procurement, IT, etc) have to operate in a kind of Overton window that balance the risks they are hired to protect the corp from vs. the need or desire of the senior leadership to play fast and loose when they want or feel they need to. Either the risk-mitigator 'falls in line' after repeatedly seeing their increasingly strident exhortat…

> Either the risk-mitigator 'falls in line' after repeatedly seeing their increasingly strident exhortations are falling on deaf ears (or even outright contradicted)... or they leave because it violates their sense of ethics. Or both continue to work together in a healthy, never ending discussion, that has temporary victories on both sides and ultimately benefits all, because nothing happens and the company strives.

That would be awfully nice, wouldn’t it?

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#319

Post by TeMPOraL »

dylan604 wrote: post #162
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They let the safety team run the show and the resulting product was universally hated for it. Yes though Google is extra cautious because the “Google” brand is worth over $100B a year in revenue, and they want to make sure nothing ever tarnishes their reputation. So it’s not clear to me that safety always means what it means for Gemini. OpenAI would still have a lot of flexibility to do safety their own way.

> they want to make sure nothing ever tarnishes their reputation In the spirit of where you want the conversation to go, I see the point you want to make. However, they are willing to tarnish their reputation just as long as it's not ruined. Their reputation on support is rubbish. Their reputation on YouTube's automated violation handling is rubbish. Their reputation on releasing a pet project long enough to just sta…

Sure. But then in all the areas you mention, Google having rubbish reputation does not lead the masses to ask their respective representatives if Maybe Something Needs To Be Done About It. Closest here is the EU vs. Big Tech privacy and interoperability fight, which they see as a serious issue, but it doesn't quite have this magic outrage-inducing quality an AI insulting sensibilities of various groups of people would have.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#320

Post by Dalewyn »

jiggawatts wrote: post #312
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no” Atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are orders of magnitude more destructive and also produce fallout. How in the world can that difference be dismissed?

Not the original commenter, but one interpretation is that “dead is dead”. You can’t be “more killed”, so past a point, all dangerous things are equally dangerous.

This. I don't see nuclear weapons as any worse than conventional weapons because ultimately people die. Is it comforting or otherwise somehow better for people to be killed by conventional weapons instead of nuclear weapons? I find such a proposition preposterous.

All bombs are bad, whether they're conventional or nuclear is irrelevant. For that matter, all wars are bad and should be avoided unless no other options remain.

Likewise, "AI" is just as much a threat as any other intelligent being or computer program depending on which line of thought you subscribe to. "AI" is not a "gravest of dangers".

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