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Policy on the AI Exponential

darioamodei.com

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Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#91

Post by mountainb »

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 a guy asking to make an end-run around the constitution and the APA regulatory framework based on a flimsy sci fi premise. Naturally it provokes a negative reaction.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#92

Post by BrenBarn »

This was slightly more thoughtful than I feared it would be. However, what I still do not see in any posts from any of these AI pushers is any genuine consideration of the possibility that the best thing might be for them to do less of what they are currently doing. Not to do it differently. Not to mitigate it. Not to do something else in addition. But to actually reduce their current activities.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#93

Post by observationist »

>> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

-C.S. Lewis

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#94

Post by david_shaw »

> Members of the trusted coalition should freely share chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) with each other, while working together to deny it to adversaries. US export controls on frontier chips and SME to China have been a major contributor to the US’s overall lead in AI, and these policies need to be expanded, tightened, and coordinated with other likeminded states.

I understand why Dario thinks this is crucial, but it's a very dystopian view of the medium-term future.

I'm not an optimist to the point that I believe that AI will lead to global Star Trek-style utopia (although it theoretically could), but ongoing disparity between "allied" and "enemy" powers relating to hardware technology and software models is both not really possible to enforce in the long term, and a pretty dismal state of global affairs even if successful.

I'd be interested in an expert geopolitical opinion on what the long tail of this would really look like in any sort of reasonable reality.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#95

Post by TobyTheCamel »

ofjcihen wrote: post #34
snaking0776 wrote: post #23

I know this is likely just for IPO hype but when I read things like this I sometimes wonder if I must be missing something. I use agents everyday and find them really useful and they save me a lot of headache. At the same time I find that if I let it self-direct at a high level at all it generally makes bad choices that cause me headaches later so I can’t really give them autonomy. Enough people seem to believe this…

N+1. This is my experience and for the most part the people that I work with share the same feeling. A highly enthusiastic concussion enthusiast with 10 hands is how one person put it. These are people in different fields but highly accomplished so I’m feeling comfortable sharing their assessment.

You're talking quite statically though. I don't think anyone is worried about today's models being a serious threat, but next year's, three years' time? Just three years' ago these models were useful bumbling fools and it's hard to judge where on the S-curve we currently are.

I'd rather be thinking about these issues in advance rather than waiting until the problem becomes real.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#96

Post by margalabargala »

snaking0776 wrote: post #23

I know this is likely just for IPO hype but when I read things like this I sometimes wonder if I must be missing something. I use agents everyday and find them really useful and they save me a lot of headache. At the same time I find that if I let it self-direct at a high level at all it generally makes bad choices that cause me headaches later so I can’t really give them autonomy. Enough people seem to believe this…

I've experienced the same.

That said Claude Code has a million features like loops that I know exist but never use.

I imagine that spending a lot more time creating an initial spec goes a long way towards independence, I just don't usually do that.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#97

Post by david_shaw »

AgentME wrote: post #49
snaking0776 wrote: post #23

I know this is likely just for IPO hype but when I read things like this I sometimes wonder if I must be missing something. I use agents everyday and find them really useful and they save me a lot of headache. At the same time I find that if I let it self-direct at a high level at all it generally makes bad choices that cause me headaches later so I can’t really give them autonomy. Enough people seem to believe this…

If we already were at the point that AI could self-direct effectively, then the world would already be very different (eg AI-driven technological progress and unemployment) in a way that we might have wished we prepared for more.

> we might have wished we prepared for more

Do you mean policy-wise (like Dario is talking about), or more broadly?

I wonder about broad preparedness, but unfortunately there's not a lot that we "normal" people can do to prepare. Hoard savings and food? Learn physical trades?

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#98

Post by gck1 »

While I do understand the risks, I don't understand the solution. Essentially, Dario is saying that powerful model weights can't be distributed (ban open weights), and governments should coordinate and agree on standards, and block any dangerous model from being used at all, with government deciding what dangerous means.

Okay, I don't understand how legitimate access is granted then. Surely, Dario isn't saying to ban Sonnet, because I can definitely make it do cyber harm, as most exploits that I've seen in the wild with my own eyes were trivial.

So the only way I see his proposal working is:

- No open weights, AI is centralized in the hands of few

- We get AI-FAA that sets the rules and monitors

- If I want to do a security scan of my codebase, I get a time and scope limited license from AI-FAA that I upload to claude that will allow it to run the security scan in cloud with their models - Claude Mythos Scanner(TM).

Dario's proposal ultimately requires that people lose direct access to inference via API. Is this why they've been building SaaS clones with AI bolted on?

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#99

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

anothermathbozo wrote: post #36

> A wide range of pro-employment policy incentives can help to slow or reduce job displacement, including: wage insurance policies that compensate people when they have to take a lower-paying job, retention tax incentives to encourage employers not to make layoffs, workforce training grants, or infrastructure to facilitate matching of employers to employees to speed the rate of labor market adaptation. While the part…

> If this technology truly unlocks a holy panacea of productivity with a commensurate drop in employment then capital’s share of the national income can and should provide for a wider and deeper welfare state.

This isn't guaranteed in the tax system as it exists today, because reinvestments into further growth are often treated as expenses which cancel out the income for tax purposes.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#100

Post by ofjcihen »

dang wrote: post #59
slopinthebag wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean it’s pretty tame and actually adds to the conversation.

It feels somewhat obvious that someone just disagreed and flagged it.

Is there a system for holding people accountable who abuse flags?

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