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Policy on the AI Exponential

darioamodei.com

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Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#51

Post by TobyTheCamel »

woah wrote: post #41
TobyTheCamel wrote: post #30

I feel completely baffled by the other responses on this thread. People viewing this purely as a marketing stunt, regulatory capture or attack on their freedoms, with seemingly no appreciation of the real threat that AI could pose to society and even humanity given its current rate of progress. I'm not going to claim that the CEO of pre-IPO company has no incentive to bolster the claims of his tech, but to completely…

In terms of aeronautics, went from the Wright brothers to the moon in 40 years. After that, everyone understandably thought that we'd be living in space and flying everywhere with personal jet packs in another couple years. Little did they know, it was the top of the S-curve, not the middle. In the 60 years since, we've barely been able to adapt the 737 to fly longer routes.

Sure, I have no doubt that AI progress will follow an S-curve. The question is, where are we on it and is the plateau at a level safe for humanity? That's a very difficult thing to estimate without a crystal ball and not a risk I want to take.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#52

Post by slopinthebag »

thewebguyd wrote: post #9
slopinthebag wrote: post #4

How predictable. The company currently on top wishes to use the regulatory power of the state to prevent competitors from encroaching on their market dominance. It’s a tail as old as time, although their CEO’s rarely publish blog posts about it.

Yep > "Models above a threshold of compute should undergo mandatory testing by a qualified third party for their level of risk in four specific areas: cybersecurity, biological weapons, loss of control of AI systems, and automated R&D that could accelerate these other risks." AKA: Make it as expensive and untenable as possible for any open source model to jump through the regulation red tape so we can pull the ladder…

Yeah, they know their moat is evaporating as the Chinese models continue to catch up, and at a much cheaper price.

Also, why has my comment been flagged? It is sitting at positive votes but has suddenly been flagged for no apparent reason?

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#53

Post by famouswaffles »

TobyTheCamel wrote: post #30

I feel completely baffled by the other responses on this thread. People viewing this purely as a marketing stunt, regulatory capture or attack on their freedoms, with seemingly no appreciation of the real threat that AI could pose to society and even humanity given its current rate of progress. I'm not going to claim that the CEO of pre-IPO company has no incentive to bolster the claims of his tech, but to completely…

Humans just aren't very good at dealing with threats that aren't immediate concerns. 'Safety regulations are written in blood' is a saying for a reason. A significant chunk of the population shrugs off climate change, and nearly all fertility rate crises threads are filled with dumb 'hurr lower population good' and/or 'See what Capitalism gets you!' rhetoric - They fundamentally don't even understand what the problem is. So is it really all that surprising that a technology like this would be shrugged off until it's too late ? Especially one with such existential issues for humanity? Some people are still too loathe to admit the clearly intelligent machine is intelligent, devolving into increasingly nonsensical and absurd (and ironically more human demeaning) arguments as model capabilities get better. I'm afraid you're asking for too much.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#56

Post by tptacek »

iamniels wrote: post #20

I like that he comes up with new laws and regulations for AI companies. Can I suggest some more? - You shall not embed copyrighted material in your models. - You shall not bombard every little website in existence with 1 million scraping queries per day. - You shall not use your political influence to pump and dump your AI (or rocket?) company. - You shall not imperill the whole IT sector by buying all CPU and memory…

It is normal, expected, and healthy for stakeholders in a regulatory environment to offer proposals about regulations. What's unhealthy is the proposition that the deliberation process is so fragile that a stakeholder needs to cover every angle, lest they corrupt the outcome.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#57

Post by anematode »

verandaguy wrote: post #29
fnoef wrote: post #17

[flagged]

LOTR is easy to love. It's a classic story arc, well told, and well adapted for mass consumption. It's also a very thinly veiled metaphor for the ceaseless pursuit of industrialization in every aspect of life chipping away at the humanity and metaphorical magic of the human experience, and the perils of embarking on that endeavour to the exclusion of everything else. Personally, I find some humour in this situation.

Maybe Dario should have cited The Lorax.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#58

Post by reducesuffering »

TobyTheCamel wrote: post #30

I feel completely baffled by the other responses on this thread. People viewing this purely as a marketing stunt, regulatory capture or attack on their freedoms, with seemingly no appreciation of the real threat that AI could pose to society and even humanity given its current rate of progress. I'm not going to claim that the CEO of pre-IPO company has no incentive to bolster the claims of his tech, but to completely…

It's denialism, same as climate change, the subconscious fear to really grapple with the actual "what if" alternative scenario. Anthropic are true believers. They got to $1T in 5 years by being exceptionally smart and ahead of the curve here. Meanwhile HN just continually devolves into reactionary cynicism. "must be marketing, they just want to be rich, impossible AI advances much further." Meanwhile at every step of the way, Anthropic and X-riskers / "doomers" are vindicated in their correct predictive beliefs. We're headed to a future far dangerous than nukes very soon. We're in an arms race to detonate one 100x the size

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#59

Post by dang »

slopinthebag wrote: post #52
thewebguyd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep > "Models above a threshold of compute should undergo mandatory testing by a qualified third party for their level of risk in four specific areas: cybersecurity, biological weapons, loss of control of AI systems, and automated R&D that could accelerate these other risks." AKA: Make it as expensive and untenable as possible for any open source model to jump through the regulation red tape so we can pull the ladder…

Yeah, they know their moat is evaporating as the Chinese models continue to catch up, and at a much cheaper price. Also, why has my comment been flagged? It is sitting at positive votes but has suddenly been flagged for no apparent reason?

If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481131, users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things. Perhaps it was because they thought the comment broke the site guidelines by being snarky and/or fulminatey?

I don't think it was an extreme case of that, so I've turned off the flags now.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#60

Post by kingstnap »

Its hard to read the first half of this as anything other than regulatory capture propaganda. It really all ties together as:

> AI has become a major commercial technology

>Frontier AI models, like airplanes, should be required to go through technical testing and auditing, and their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety

> AI companies that develop advanced AI models must have strong security standards that protect their model weights

Anyway Dario's financial interests aside. This is an interesting breakpoint for me.

> Second, any response to AI-driven job displacement needs to address both the need to provide for everyone economically, and the need for people to find meaning, purpose, and agency. The latter is ultimately more important

To me this reads as an out of touch statement. I think the majority of people on earth work to keep a roof over their heads. Of course work can be a source of meaning, purpose, and agency, but to call it the more important aspect on a societal level is a sort of rich person like Dario statement to make.

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