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Policy on the AI Exponential

darioamodei.com

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Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#121

Post by interestpiqued »

TobyTheCamel wrote: post #109
tripleee wrote: post #8

My god this guy is insufferable. Stop mis-using the term exponential

Looks pretty exponential to me [1]. From a fully independent, non-profit research group. [1] https://metr.org/time-horizons/

Release date seems like a terrible x axis with how much more compute they are using. Not to mention while I like what METR is trying to measure, it is an uber specific metric. And frankly, me just complaining, they’re prompts I feel do most of the work for the AI. I’ve never gotten as detailed instructions as they give the AI for the task

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#122

Post by polishTar »

patcon wrote: post #38

The comments here. They make me feel that we are so doomed. We all want to nuclear codes so badly. We are addicted to intelligence and labour so badly that we simply can't concieve that a pro-social actor might want us all not to have it, and for good reason. I mean... Obviously, insiders like Oppenheimer (who dedicated their lives to considering the implications of the technology under discussion), they just feared…

Look - it's WAY more fun to just call Dario a goober than engage with the actual substance of the essay. Duh!

Sure, this may be the most important invention ever with near certainty to reshape society over the next few years, but meh. We should probably just immediately dismiss the concerns of anyone working on it without addressing their arguments at all. It's easy, we can justify ignoring their warnings by saying they're self-interested or too self-important or whatever.

Life is more fun when you live it with your eyes closed! You should try it out too.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#123

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

anothermathbozo wrote: post #106
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You’re conflating firm level taxable income with the national income.

No I'm not? Current American tax policy does not guarantee that any fixed percentage of the national income will be received by the government as revenue. If the advent of powerful AI pushes corporations away from dividends and buybacks towards expansion and research, then tax revenues may flatten or even decrease even as the national income spikes. (Sales taxes are more likely to track aggregate economic activity, but US sales taxes are both not very high and don't flow to the federal government.)

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#124

Post by gck1 »

These last few days, I can't help but think that we're now at crossroads that future people will remember as one of two:

- And this were the first steps of Anthropic establishing worldwide corporate technocracy.

- And this is when Anthropic lost and everyone got access to AI.

Similar to how IBM's defeat allowed us to have PCs.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#125

Post by kingstnap »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #86
kingstnap wrote: post #60

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 deve…

Can you explain how this is attempted regulatory capture? To start a lab now which can actually compete for the frontier (i.e. and pass the "Threshold of compute" needed to get regulated) a lab / company would need a ton of money. Surely a well funded operation of that kind can deal with the regulations.

Well he explicitly calls for regulations that ban open weight models, which of course hugely threaten Anthropic's API business model. If we got a open weight model actually around as good as Opus 4.6 that would be extremely bad for them.

Regulating competitors out of existence like that is textbook regulatory capture.

Dario is also huge on regulations banning Chip exports to China, who are the only other real competitors to US Labs, open weight or not.

Also invariably, such corporations always create regulations that are easier for them and harder for competitors.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#126

Post by myhf »

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…

lol sure buddy, keep telling yourself that

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#127

Post by pixl97 »

nemomarx wrote: post #19
pixl97 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well obviously he'll have the AI 'dispose' of the poor and live a life as a king with a select few farmed humans and have the world as a play thing. Really the entire future of AI at this point seems like "Don't worry about it, we'll figure out when we get there". Works a lot better if you're extremely rich and can afford your own private security.

I never understood why people setting up bunkers expect the security to still be loyal after whatever happens.

Why are some people loyal to corrupt governments?

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#128

Post by cadamsdotcom »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #90
TobyTheCamel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is very reasonable, and I agree that that is something Dario would likely be more opposed to. However, my point isn't that I think Dario is our saviour who we should follow the every word of. As with everyone, his opinions should be filtered through the lens of his incentives. That said, I don't understand the knee-jerk reaction by many commenters to completely disregard the many important points he'…

You write well & HN is better when there are more well-written people on the opposite side of the consensus

This 100%. It’s great to hear diverse perspectives!

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#129

Post by jgil »

> As a company, Anthropic always does as much as it can to work with customers to find creative new use cases and new sources of revenue that allow them to do more with their existing workforce, rather than focusing solely on cost savings (which often means reducing the workforce).

Without direct workforce or policymaker representation on the boards of private entities, the private sector will seek to maximize shareholder value even if that means workforce reductions.

It's not clear that any country could realistically ensure that incredibly powerful industries/private sector entities operate perfectly aligned with national interests, short of nationalization.

Large tech companies are already quasi-state actors. In theory, international law and regulations can be binding and enforceable. We see how well that works in practice.

Re: Policy on the AI Exponential

#130

Post by simianwords »

oudlys wrote: post #117
aspenmartin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice that people are genuinely curious about this. - All of your observations are absolutely dead on - Yet, we have very very very robust scaling laws that as Dario points out we've had and validated for over a decade. This extends to downstream measures like METR time horizon and compsosite benchmarks like the epoch capability index. - If you look at where you're at now, which is again dead on, you're looking a…

Are we plotting against cost? How is the capability advancement vs dollars paid for development? By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capabi…

>By my read of the (very sparse) data, we're getting linear improvements in capability for super-linear increases in costs. [1] Indicates that by 2027 models will cost $1 billon to train. Dario estimates that model runs will cost $10 billion in 2026 [2]. That to me indicates costs are potentially growing faster than capability. Maybe by quite a bit.

This is true and well established.

As long as you get any improvement whatsoever, it is worth spending to train since it pays off during.

Imagine training was not $1 billion but $100 billion but the performance improved by just 10%. This is still worth it because you can squeeze out the profits across years and years right? The improvement is ever lasting.

> The best data shows that LLM use might be destroying value [3].

This is basically a conspiracy theory and if you really believed this, you should not have led with "How is the capability advancement vs dollars paid for development?" because if there were no value, it doesn't really matter how much you invest.

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