how would this help smaller labs? would it put more burdens on them when trying to compete with trillion-dollar companies or would it help?
Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
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Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#22Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#23These people who read too many scifi books and confused them with reality are royally annoying. There is real and potential harm from AI, but the more someone talks/write abut AI safety, the less they care about actual harm to real people, economy and what not.
If in 2020 I had sent you a book about the LLM achievements of 2026, you would probably have thought it was a science fiction book with no relation to reality, wouldn't you?
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#24Not exactly a "plan" - he's just saying we should have a standards body that assesses models for safety.
At this point I'd say the societal risk of AI isn't models gone wild, or used by the bad guys. Regulation will take care of itself, and it seems the AI companies will not only welcome it, but lobby for it to shift responsibility to the government.
The real risk of AI is societal disruption due to job displacement, and maybe other structural changes, and this is far harder to solve, and likely will not be solved, or even seriously addressed, until/unless politicians feel like their own jobs and well-being depends on them addressing it.
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#25The premise is "Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a system that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities the brain has, is probably only a few short years away". If this is true, establishing an institution to ensure things like "publishing model cards with technical details, maintaining strong internal cybersecurity, vetting key personnel, and providing sufficient resourcing for safety and security research" is…
> what sorts of new economic models will be needed to help everyone thrive in a post-scarcity world What sort of new economic models did we come up with to help everyone thrive in a post-X world? Like, food production is really a solved technical problem. We can feed anyone on the planet if we wanted to. Another example: we could put everyone who's homeless into some sort of a house. Have we done that yet?
Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world.
Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the limited availability of land zoned for housing.
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#26All that would happen from what he's proposing is such a watchdog would just be an explicit formal declaration of the US's national interests as being somehow the most legitimate, which in the context of current international relations is basically putting up a sign saying: "reject this!"
I find it mind boggling that someone could be this tone-deaf to the current situation. No "ally" of the US is going to (willingly) agree to this governance structure given the current US administration's "might makes right" proclamations and threats on sovereignty of its continental neighbours.
And non-allies would just ignore. Unless forced by said "might makes right", which in the long run will have no staying power.
Apart from its completely delusional formulation, what is most concerning about this blog post is that it indicates that all 3 major US labs have formally submitted to boot-licking Trump/Bessent/Lutnick. I had I guess vainly held out hope that Google might be more reticent to do so.
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#27"It will help us solve some of the biggest problems society faces from accelerating drug discovery to developing new clean energy sources to creating novel advanced materials" — but these are not the real problems plaguing modern developed societies, are they? What developed societies really need to figure out right now is how to distribute the already available resources without making people miserable, and so far AI hasn't been helpful.
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#28how would this help smaller labs? would it put more burdens on them when trying to compete with trillion-dollar companies or would it help?
If they are not a frontier-lab, they would not need to submit their models for safety test before release. At least that is the proposal.
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what sorts of new economic models will be needed to help everyone thrive in a post-scarcity world What sort of new economic models did we come up with to help everyone thrive in a post-X world? Like, food production is really a solved technical problem. We can feed anyone on the planet if we wanted to. Another example: we could put everyone who's homeless into some sort of a house. Have we done that yet?
Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the lim…
> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones.
How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?
Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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On the STEM side, yes no doubt he is a lot smarter than me. But as per the documentary of his life, he is wholly focused on AGI and will remain unfulfilled if he, or indeed anyone else, doesn't achieve it within his lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinking_Game
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