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There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

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Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#371

Post by baq »

glimshe wrote: post #306
Certhas wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should demand and work towards good public institutions that do their job. It's perfectly consistent to say "this is a job that legitimate democratic institutions should perform" and complain that currently the legitimacy of institutions is undermined. Let's take your argument to it's extreme point: The state should never regulate anything because the state might be bad! This is structurally the same fallacy as "p…

You essentially made the libertarian argument without realizing it. According to this line of thinking, we should leave as little as possible in the hands of government exactly because it's either bad already or it will eventually be bad. We should then apply an exceptionally high bar to government responsibilities. These would be things that would be even worse in private hands (police for a simple example).

The fallacy of the libertarian argument is the assumption that it’s possible to have a small distributed government trivially doesn’t hold in presence of bigger adversarial monolithic governments elsewhere.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#372

Post by lubujackson »

temporaryacc2 wrote: post #96

The excessive scepticism on Hacker News has poisoned any attempts at rational AI discourse. The American Government has weaponised state power in a clumsy, corrupt and punitive attack against Anthropic, in an escalating war over control of AI. Meanwhile, HN has anchored on "marketing hype" as the only possible explanation - all evidence is contorted to fit into this increasingly contrived explanation. Object level an…

This is very reminiscent of the NSA's attempt to limit crypto access of websites in the 90s. We were very close to having the U.S. ban SSL right when it was becoming the clear solution for safe open web transfers for payments.

I assume only the weight of economic pressure and lack of alternatives (and plenty of opposition) kept the doors open, but the same "national interest and security" BS was trotted out then, too.

Big difference this time is nobody needs Fable/Mythos to accomplish anything. There is no magic line here, only improved connective work with less intervention. But it stands to reason that this will cause a huge chilling effect on AI development in the U.S. if it stands and other labs will eventually bypass Fable/Mythos in capability.

To use a car analogy, the models are being built like engine improvements, sometimes going from V6 to V8, but other orgs might improve the car's wind resistance or fuel injection, which leads to a similar speed improvements. There is a lot of space for improvements all along the chain which is why this is such a pointless move.

Knowing this administration (and Anthropic's ham-fisted tactics) this ends in a week or less with some sort of "deal" and was all part of some high stakes negotiation. Possibly even beneficial to Anthropic, because where does it leave OpenAI once they settle on some sweetheart deal? The precedent is set.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#373

Post by notahacker »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #321
Certhas wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can control government more than I can control Google or Anthropic. Also your argument is along the lines of thinking I argue for: You say I shouldn't lobby for regulation I believe is beneficial because a future government might change the regulations to make them not beneficial. This implicitly assumes that the future government wouldn't implement the non-beneficial regulations if the current government doesn't d…

> I can control government more than I can control Google or Anthropic How true is this really? With the government, you can vote in various elections, or contact your representatives, and when it comes to important issues that will do exactly squat. You can also buy politicians or legislation, or run yourself, if you have the wealth and connections to do so. With corporations, you can vote with your dollars, which a…

1 small guy changing stuff is basically impossible. But 100 million small folk sufficiently annoyed with something changes a government (for better and for worse), whilst having basically zero influence over a corporation (they're not the customer, they don't have enough buying power for a hostile takeover, they certainly don't have the wherewithal to destroy them by launching a competitor... which they probably don't even want to if they think what the corporation does is bad). The exception, of course, is that if the corporation bothers that many small people that much, a government might get around to listening to the small people's arguments more than the corporation's.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#374

Post by redox99 »

NiloCK wrote: post #332
redox99 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking GPT2 was too dangerous is and was absurd.

At that time, nobody believed a dead internet was technically feasible. Maybe this is hard to remember now. The "danger" was in terms of spam / misinformation proliferation, not the same category of capabilities adjacent risks current discussed. You can hold your own opinions on spam/misinformation as a problem , but to say there was no credibly anticipated outsized downside to a sudden jump in human-passing text gen…

I remember the arguments back then. Those alarmists were wrong. Nothing happened or could've happened just because you could generate drunken ramblings.

It's the kind of people that want to ban anything because of some theoretical small harm is technically possible. We're lucky it's not more prevalent or we'd still be in the stone age.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#375

Post by baq »

pluralmonad wrote: post #284
graemep wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is worse. No government at all implies anarchy which is worse that all but the very worst governments, and from which IMO some form of government will emerge anyway.

Why is highly organized/systematized violence preferable?

Organized violence is self regulating if it wants to sustain itself.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#376

Post by LogicFailsMe »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #346
modeless wrote: post #22

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

We're truly lost when we can't see that there is such a thing as good government and bad government. That there is a difference between corruption and modern liberal regulation that follows fair rules. That we can't see that it's ok to regulate CFCs to prevent ozone catastrophe, and not ok to use back room deals to pick favorites. It's not about sides or teams, but there is still right and wrong even in the administr…

Alas I suspect the two major forms of government in the US have their own visions of good and bad across the board when there should be no disagreement on issues like CFCs were bad and that we need to break our addiction to coal. But good luck on that when the system itself only rewards short-term achievements and private money is now effectively unlimited. I have issues with both options, but many more issues with one side. But I am fed up with having only two options and picking the lesser of two evils that mostly drop their differences to keep the electoral status quo intact.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#377

Post by bradley13 »

modeless wrote: post #22

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

This. There really is no such thing as an entirely good government. Government is composed of people. From politicians to clerks, it's people all the way down. Some people are good, most are just trying to get through the day, and some are evil. Seriously: in any government, some of the bureaucrats and politicians will be corrupt or power hungry or sadistic or whatever.

When you give a government power, there are people in place who can and will abuse that power. If not now, then next year, or in five years. After all, power granted to the government rarely goes away.

This is the reason that you should always consider the worst case, when governments gain power. The power to ban a specific technology? What could go wrong? How could that be abused? Let me count the ways...

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#378

Post by rdbl27 »

Guvante wrote: post #71
modeless wrote: post #22

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

Reductionist "if only the government didn't get involved" doesn't work unless you presume no government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of government anyway) You can be critical of the policy of export controls and the meaning of them in modern day but saying it is a problem with the government in general is nonsensical.

The problem is not a presumption that government can't ever be good. The problem is that the team you personally think is "good" won't be in charge forever.

Everyone loves enabling broad government authority when people they like happen to be in charge.

Sooner or later, a government that is "bad" (for any possible definition of "bad" that you personally approve of) will someday be in charge. Then, suddenly, enabling all that broad government authority seems like not such a great idea.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#379

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

bradley13 wrote: post #377
modeless wrote: post #22

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

This. There really is no such thing as an entirely good government. Government is composed of people. From politicians to clerks, it's people all the way down. Some people are good, most are just trying to get through the day, and some are evil. Seriously: in any government, some of the bureaucrats and politicians will be corrupt or power hungry or sadistic or whatever. When you give a government power, there are peo…

I'm curious if you apply the same logic to speculation markets and corporate profits.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#380

Post by zahlman »

Havoc wrote: post #254

>This was announced on 5:21 PM on a Friday. Sorta a suspicious time. Whenever someone does something intentionally on a Friday evening, my first thought is ‘o, the markets.’ The insider trading kleptocrat has found a new toy

Markets were calm in after-hours trading. It's not as if there is nobody paying attention. That would be a massive inefficiency that couldn't realistically have persisted all the way to 2026, especially not with the introduction of AI to the trading world.
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