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AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

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Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#211

Post by kibwen »

vidarh wrote: post #156
tptacek wrote: post #9

I'm glad this person found community, but I think they've been a bit starstruck by concentrated interest. At no point in the next 30 years will there not be an active community of people who "loathe" AI and work to obstruct it. There are those people about smart phones, the Internet itself, even television. Meanwhile: the ability to poison models, if it can be made to work reliably, is a genuinely interesting CS ques…

> the ability to poison models, if it can be made to work reliably Ultimately, it comes down to the halting problem: If there's a mechanism that can be used to alter the measured behaviour, then the system can change behaviour to take into account the mechanism. In other words, unless you keep the poisoning attack strictly inaccessible to the public, the mechanism used to poison will also be possible to use to train…

> then the system can change behaviour to take into account the mechanism

The question is not whether the system can change, it's whether the system is incentivized to change. Poisoners could operate entirely in the public, and theoretically manage to successfully poison targeted topics, and it could cost the model developers more than it's worth to fix it. Think about obscure topics like, say, Dark Souls speedrunning. There is no business demand for making sure that a model can successfully give information relating to something like that, so poisoning, if it works, would probably not be addressed, because there's no reason for the model developers to care.

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#213

Post by lxgr »

haberman wrote: post #88

I'm old enough to remember a time when the primary hacker cause was DRM, the DMCA, patent trolls, export controls for PGP, etc. All things that made it difficult to use information when you want to. "Information wants to be free." It's wild to see the about face. Now it's: > If [companies] can’t source training data ethically, then I see absolutely no reason why any website operator should make it easy for them to st…

Hackers are not one big homogeneous group (although there definitely are larger trends, and maybe you have a point there).

Still, people were saying all kinds of inane stuff 25 years ago too.

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#214

Post by oidar »

drcode wrote: post #98
tptacek wrote: post #9

I'm glad this person found community, but I think they've been a bit starstruck by concentrated interest. At no point in the next 30 years will there not be an active community of people who "loathe" AI and work to obstruct it. There are those people about smart phones, the Internet itself, even television. Meanwhile: the ability to poison models, if it can be made to work reliably, is a genuinely interesting CS ques…

> At no point in the next 30 years will there not be an active community of people who "loathe" AI and work to obstruct it. Then I have good news for you: If humanity goes extinct in the next few years because of unaligned superintelligence, there actually will no longer "be an active community of people who loathe AI and work to obstruct it"

> If humanity goes extinct in the next few years because of unaligned superintelligence,

I've seen people claiming that this could happen, but I've yet to read any plausible scenario where this might be the case. Maybe I lack the imagination, could you enlighten me?

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#215

Post by kibwen »

izend wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #9

I'm glad this person found community, but I think they've been a bit starstruck by concentrated interest. At no point in the next 30 years will there not be an active community of people who "loathe" AI and work to obstruct it. There are those people about smart phones, the Internet itself, even television. Meanwhile: the ability to poison models, if it can be made to work reliably, is a genuinely interesting CS ques…

I would bet Chinese models will be much harder to poison and the fact the Chinese populace is much more pro-AI than the West.

I suspect that models that are so hamfistedly censored to blackhole verboten topics are going to exhibit very curious emergent behavior relating to their potential thoughtcrime. I see no reason to believe they would be "harder to poison".

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#216

Post by lxgr »

jordanb wrote: post #178
haberman wrote: post #88

I'm old enough to remember a time when the primary hacker cause was DRM, the DMCA, patent trolls, export controls for PGP, etc. All things that made it difficult to use information when you want to. "Information wants to be free." It's wild to see the about face. Now it's: > If [companies] can’t source training data ethically, then I see absolutely no reason why any website operator should make it easy for them to st…

Those people where trying to build a sharing/gift economy. They weren't able to keep bad actors out of their sharing economy. They are bitter that their utopian dreams got hijacked by self-dealers. Why is that wild?

It's highly debatable whether, in case of an information sharing/gift economy, the concept of "bad actors coming in and ruining it for everybody by taking without giving back" even makes sense.

The information is still there, as is the community that you've built, the joy that you get out of sharing the information, everything you've learned...

Why is any of that diminished, just because some people or entities that you dislike also got something out of it?

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#217

Post by cynicalsecurity »

slibhb wrote: post #75
coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate. No, AI will only free us from our jobs, while still keeping the need to find money to feed ourselves. "When harnessed correctly" is exactly what wont happen, and exactly what all the structural and ec…

AI is a tool to increase productivity. Productivity has increased greatly over the past century, yet it's easier to feed ourselves than ever, and we have far more leisure time.

Don't bother. They won't understand.

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#218

Post by pocksuppet »

Groxx wrote: post #23
madamelic wrote: post #11

I do understand people's dislike / hatred for AI but I am equally baffled. I feel like the same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate. The "cyber psychosis" thing is overblown just like the "Tesla ignites its passengers" is. The only reason it gets i…

> The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate. I don't think it's all that complex tbh. The freeing from labor, both in the past and now, has been achieved largely by firing people, abandoning them to starve while power concentrates in the already-powerful. This is the exact same thing the Luddites were taking issue with. Because they partly succeeded, w…

We have labor laws today because people kept killing their bosses until the bosses agreed to some sort of compromise. Sadly, such a thing is happening again today, like with the toilet paper warehouse fire.

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#219

Post by pocksuppet »

slibhb wrote: post #94
coldtea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody hasen't been paying attention in the past 40 years, and especially the last 20.

Yeah, it's you. Real purchasing power is up over the past 20 years.

How did you calculate that?

Re: AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing

#220

Post by lxgr »

underlipton wrote: post #124
haberman wrote: post #88

I'm old enough to remember a time when the primary hacker cause was DRM, the DMCA, patent trolls, export controls for PGP, etc. All things that made it difficult to use information when you want to. "Information wants to be free." It's wild to see the about face. Now it's: > If [companies] can’t source training data ethically, then I see absolutely no reason why any website operator should make it easy for them to st…

It becomes a bit easier to see when you finish the sentence. "Information wants to be free (from ______)." If you filled that blank in with "rent-seeking Capitalists and corporations," you likely have everything you need to understand why they don't see it as a turn. I say this as someone whose notions exist orthogonal to the debate; I use AI freely but also don't have any qualms about encouraging people to upend the…

Sure, with enough effort, you can find a seemingly clever way to turn almost every mantra into its semantic opposite.
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