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Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

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Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#41

Post by bad_haircut72 »

Arodex wrote: post #32
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they wor…

We already have the ressources to solve world hunger. We - as a whole - refuse to do so, because it would be inconvenient to special interests. As I already wtote in a previous comment months ago, they speak of AI finding ways to solve this and that grand problem, but never do they wonder if we are ready to listen to the answer. Solve global warming? Burn less petrol. Solve cancer? Eat less meat. Not only we won't li…

if they asked their latest and greatest model "how do we solve climate change?" and it answered "humanity should deprioritise growth for 2-3 generations to transition to renewables, and AI development should be paused until then" they literally wouldnt listen anyway - so its all bunch of BS

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#42

Post by _pdp_ »

> They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised.

I am not sure how anyone even remotely familiar with how LLMs work can say this. This is a fine-tune job.

> The first is our duty to the global poor.

I don't think they are affected by AI as much as low and middle class but I am not economist.

> How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally?

Opensource?

> We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease.

Such an Anthropic thing to say. LLMs experience joy and grief?

> We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing

I don't think anyone is as informed as they think they are. Obviously nobody has been through this before so it is safe to assume that even experts are dead wrong.

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#43

Post by skybrian »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they wor…

Even if most are farmers, I imagine there are some urban dwellers who work in call centers.

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#44

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #2

> And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words—and, as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious even to those of us who train them I love how he's framing AI as some new and fascinating form of consciousness... when in fact it is a cold, calcula…

I'll never understand it when people quote a primary source and then summarize it in a way that completely ignores the original quote.

Olah's quote (edit - originally misidentified this as Pope Leo's) makes a lot of sense to me. He is saying, accurately, that modern AI (i.e. primarily LLMs) is created as essentially a mashup of our own language, and they are still a bit of a black box (or at least a gray box) to even their creators.

I don't know how you get from that to "he's framing AI as some new and fascinating form of consciousness".

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#45

Post by Gregaros »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #26
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they wor…

I’m not sure what you mean, there’s a lot of people talking about farming automation and its effects on working farmers.

The poorest of the poor, subsistence farmers are barely producing enough to feed themselves; they trade and barter the little bit they can manage but it is not much and has little impact that goes beyond a tiny village-level radius. Nobody is displacing that because nobody needs to compete with that.

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#46

Post by catigula »

> The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models—what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment

Very interesting because it feels like the rudiments of an “AI rights” argument.

If we can produce artificial minds with rights and dignity, there is no need for humans, and their voices will quickly drown out to obscurity. It is a fairly obvious doomsday scenario.

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#47

Post by kwanbix »

> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions.

We already have poors that are really suffering, and the "elite" (or oligarchs depending on your point of view) have done very little to help them.

Why should we trust them they will do anything for us if we are all displaced by AI?

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#48

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

Philpax wrote: post #37
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they wor…

His argument is not that the existing global poor are going to be automated by AI, but that a great many people are going to join the global poor as their current livelihoods are automated.

A statistically average representative of the "Global Poor" -- e.g. the farmer working a smallholding in India or the DRC -- is unlikely to have his day-to-day activities affected by AI on any foreseeable time horizon, nor is his wealth likely to meaningfully increase or decrease.

The speech should have referenced the poor in industrialized nations, who are very likely to be affected, though I doubt they'll join the ranks of the global poor in most circumstances.

Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"

#49

Post by BearOso »

zugi wrote: post #14

LLMs are software. They take inputs and produce outputs. What humans choose to do with those inputs and outputs is up to us. Getting the pope involved makes it all seem more mystical and magical than it is. And these remarks only further feed that delusion. Regardless of intent, it seems to just feed the AI marketing and hype.

I agree. The pope seemed to take the opportunity to talk about the ethics in good faith, no pun intended. But Olah just used the association to aggrandize AI for marketing sake.
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