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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

#491

Post by Dalewyn »

vouwfietsman wrote: post #459
Dalewyn wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would say at the very least that the empire of Japan clearly evaluated them differently when it surrendered unconditionally directly after being attacked with this new technology. The atomic bombs certainly played a part in Japan surrendering, but it wasn't the only one. They were also facing a land invasion from the Soviets, had an utterly depleted military, waning support from the public, and a potentially devas…

OK, perhaps we should go back to your first statement: > If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man. Combined with: > I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters. Imagine a super-intelligent being that can invent a biological agent that is incurable to current science, spreads rapidly t…

>This being you would classify as "no worse a threat" than any living being known to man? Is that "putting aside emotional pressures and considering the results"?

I mean, any man sufficiently ill-willed can certainly do all that today. I am unbothered, to say the least; I have better things to do with my limited time.

>what other explanation is there for the mass extinction of most animals after the Anthropocene started.

You're wildly overestimating the effect humanity has on the ecosystem, many species also went extinct before we showed up. The species we see today are merely a very small handful of all the species that ever graced this planet.

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

#492

Post by Dalewyn »

komali2 wrote: post #461
Dalewyn wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 exi…

Do you believe any country has enough conventional ordinance to end human life on the entire planet? You must know more about this than me, I've never heard of something like this.

Any of the major military superpowers have more than enough conventional boomsticks to end all human life. It might take slightly longer than if nukes were used, but that's hardly comforting.

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

#493

Post by ben_w »

sensanaty wrote: post #430

The talk of AI exterminating us via paperclips is an annoying one to me that detracts from the real dangers that are currently unfolding: - scammers are having the time of their lives, and their capabilities are only going to get better and easier - people are actively getting dumber as they trust the hallucinated outputs blindly - regular communication is starting to break down because you can't trust that people ar…

Hm.

Well, I see dangers at every level. Partly because I see a whole bunch of people saying "the real danger of AI is…" and then finishing that sentence in a different way than the others.

So:

> - scammers are having the time of their lives, and their capabilities are only going to get better and easier

Yup. This is one reason why I am frustrated with all the people who keep asking for downloadable models and who criticise OpenAI for not doing that. If it's a private model, you've at least got some control over the system, some ability to see who is doing what and perhaps making your own automation to stop it or to prosecute the wrongdoers.

If the weights are downloadable, you're giving this ability away and pretending you're not responsible for the result.

If OpenAI and Facebook both get sued out of existence due to their models allowing this, the OpenAI models go offline, the Facebook models remain circulating forever.

> - people are actively getting dumber as they trust the hallucinated outputs blindly

Roll to disbelieve. People have been saying this about every new tech at least since Socrates was moping about the invention of writing.

> - regular communication is starting to break down because you can't trust that people aren't just copy/pasting some AI bullshit in lieu of an actual discussion

Yup. Been accused of that myself, here.

I'm fairly sure it's improved the content of r/HFY though. I think I can recognise the stories which are AI generated from having played around with it (and been unsatisfied with the results), but I remember how much worse it was before.

> - I've already seen AI girlfriend products which doesn't strike much confidence in our ongoing future as a species considering the numbers I've seen on some of them

I think the bigger problem is two older AIs, specifically (1) whatever Match.com uses to pair people in their dating apps and how much worse this seems to be than the original (pre-Match.com) OkCupid, and (2) everything Facebook does.

Both make real human connection much harder than endless swiping, it's just that the former is swiping sideways and the latter swiping vertically, but both make para-social relationships out of people we should be genuinely connected to.

> "Oh but UBI!", an AI sycophant will shout, as if saying the magic incantation changes the reality of the real world somehow.

I… think we need that, in step with AI making people unemployable, even if only to avoid a riot, but I'd agree UBI isn't going to fix any of the other problems you're worried about.

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

#494

Post by Nevermark »

Terretta wrote: post #464
Nevermark wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text continuation defines a task. It does not limit the sophistication of the solution. The difference between problems and solutions seems to trip up a lot of people. —- It gets even more nuanced. At its basic level all types of digital AI are “just” arithmetic, or “just” Boolean logic. But arithmetic’s and Boolean logic’s simplicity don’t limit what systems can be built with them, as they are Turing Complete. Likew…

> ... they are Turing Complete. OK, so all software must be regulated? Arguing that simple tools can be used for dangerous results and thus must be regulated or made “safe” is like saying since more murders in America are committed with hammers than long guns, you must show an ID to buy a hammer at Home Depot, and demanding "safety" training of text continuation models is like requiring hammers be redesigned to have…

I was responding directly to your comment:

> Text continuation poses "the greatest of dangers"?

The task of text continuation is no guarantee of safety. A language model trained on pure military information, communication and actions could be quite dangerous if given an ability to direct, or contribute, to actual action.

Not arguing anything about regulation.

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

#495

Post by sroussey »

djbusby wrote: post #71
sroussey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates the day of any OS release. He was good at always saying the current version selling is the best, never a future version. And for windows 3 and windows 95, he definitely called the old versions trash. In comparison, they were.

Sam, like Bill only calls them trash after. But also, I hate looking at my old code too.

Even the old code where I thought I was clever looks bad after time. Actually, the clever code looks much worse.

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

#497

Post by ClumsyPilot »

consumer451 wrote: post #250
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are working with a contradiction - you think AI will be hugely missed moactfull( but people will put no more effort into it than they put into watching TikTok. the correct price point is like price of a car. That’s the other recent invention that was important. That buys you a lot of compute. We already successfully run torrents and crypto very democratically, and they take more than £200 Second, you don’t need t…

> the correct price point is like price of a car. >> By 2020, with 15% of 7.5 billion people projected to own an automobile [0] 15% in 2020, so let's be nice and assume 17% by 2024. Let's be super nice and assume an additional 10% can afford a car, but choose to not buy one for some reason. What happens to the other 73% of people? (5,475,000,000 human beings) [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/World-population-a…

> What happens to the other 73% of people?

Does a baby own a car? Half of all people are children or are in a care home! Huge misuse of statistics!

What about a wife using a husband's car? What about people who lease a car? They don't own it, so won't show up in your number. What about a taxi or rental car?

Again, when transformational technology appeared for transport - car - the government organised public transport. When books and educations became important, we organised public libraries. The idea that it's either UBI or we leave people to the wolves betrays a lack of thought.

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

#498

Post by esafak »

euroderf wrote: post #478
tempodox wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do believe it's going to replace every single person's job… Some may try to make that so, but since LLMs perform badly with anything that has to be ground in facts and actual reality, the hype wave will die down soon enough. When the point of a job is to generate the most amount of bullshit as quickly as possible, LLMs will excel.

So, marketing as a profession is endangered.

Only if you're doing it wrong. Marketing is about explaining your product.

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

#499

Post by comp_throw7 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #491
vouwfietsman wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, perhaps we should go back to your first statement: > If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man. Combined with: > I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters. Imagine a super-intelligent being that can invent a biological agent that is incurable to current science, spreads rapidly t…

>This being you would classify as "no worse a threat" than any living being known to man? Is that "putting aside emotional pressures and considering the results"? I mean, any man sufficiently ill-willed can certainly do all that today. I am unbothered, to say the least; I have better things to do with my limited time. >what other explanation is there for the mass extinction of most animals after the Anthropocene star…

> I mean, any man sufficiently ill-willed can certainly do all that today. I am unbothered, to say the least; I have better things to do with my limited time.

Uh, no? In fact humans do not currently have a way of causing human extinction (nukes wouldn't do it with current stockpiles). That would require scientific advancements which we have yet to make, and most possible routes seem pretty non-trivial... except, unfortunately, AI.

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

#500

Post by troupo »

ben_w wrote: post #489
troupo wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's literally no chance of OpenAI being anywhere close to AGI, and they know it. There's literally no chance of doomsday scenarios, and they know it. However, they do know that AI/ML is used in many applications where mistakes are costly, they don't know how to properly deal with it and don't care as long as they can get people to use it. So they are paying little more than lip service to safety because they know…

What you're saying is what Yann LeCun says (and therefore presumably what he thinks), and appears to be what Facebook is doing by publishing their models (just like they appear to have paid little more than lip service to content moderation leading to them being named by the UN as having played a "determining role" in the Myanmar genocide). I know people at OpenAI, who have said "we should join the 'Pause AI' protest…

Oh, some people at OpenAI may be 100% sincere. The org and leadership are anything but. After all, they need to make money somehow.
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