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Pacing the frontier

pacingthefrontier.com

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Re: Pacing the frontier

#11

Post by GhastBartender »

> It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.

This is just the standard AI "doomer" talking point. The dangers of AI just used as a compliment sandwich. "AI is so cool and awesome and that's why we need to slow down."

The real risks are much more boring and much less considered. For just one example:

AI is set to completely upset the Software Development industry. There are 1 to 3 million software developers in the US, depending on how you draw the line exactly. A low-few hundred thousand of those are visa workers.

With AI set to significantly cut into tech employment, what's going to happen to those visa workers? ... The Trump admin is not particularly subtle, even openly talking about retroactively revoking birthright citizenship.

AI & Tech companies love to talk about how their AI is going to hack everything if they're not careful. But not a peep about these ethics concerns.

Even if you [the reader] consider deporting visa workers the ethical move if the amount of jobs shrink, that's not something to be done unprepared or out of nowhere.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#12

Post by mofeien »

fuddle wrote: post #3

> We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development. This is quite vague to me, what exactly do you mean?

It means that they request the structures needed to navigate the event horizon of recursive self improvement be put into place. Probably: International agreements, verifiability of an AI pause on the level of graphic cards as well as through physical inspections of datacenters. Like it's done with nuclear energy.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#13

Post by OutOfHere »

joshuaS98 wrote: post #9
OutOfHere wrote: post #8

Pacing is a really bad idea because China will not slow it down for you.

That's the point. Do you see any concerns by these companies? They just want to slow down pace NOW because they're losing the race

All they have to do to stay in the race is to keep the price and token efficiency competitive with China.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#14

Post by jryle70 »

joshuaS98 wrote: post #9
OutOfHere wrote: post #8

Pacing is a really bad idea because China will not slow it down for you.

That's the point. Do you see any concerns by these companies? They just want to slow down pace NOW because they're losing the race

Huh, that's really mental gymnastics you have there :-)

Re: Pacing the frontier

#15

Post by fidotron »

Anyone serious about this should participate in pacing the frontier by quitting their job so as to not potentially contribute to the problematic progress. Be the change you want to see!

Curious how that isn't what happens.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#16

Post by bluegatty »

fuddle wrote: post #3

> We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development. This is quite vague to me, what exactly do you mean?

'Regulatory Capture' if we were cynical.

I think a lot of these guys mean it though.

'The Fear' - is not some magic intelligence will come alive and be Skynet, these people are ridiculous.

People will use the compute power to do nasty things, we'll be overwhelmed with bots, regular companies will use them for dark patterns, political actors will use them to cheat.

It will be 100% humans using it for bad stuff, and in not very novel ways.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#17

Post by mofeien »

fidotron wrote: post #15

Anyone serious about this should participate in pacing the frontier by quitting their job so as to not potentially contribute to the problematic progress. Be the change you want to see! Curious how that isn't what happens.

That's an application of the "Tragedy of the commons": One person stopping to push the frontier just means that this person will lose their job, the frontier will be pushed by the others. The solution is to push for a binding rule instead that will make everyone slow down in the racing towards artificial superintelligence.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#18

Post by fidotron »

mofeien wrote: post #17
fidotron wrote: post #15

Anyone serious about this should participate in pacing the frontier by quitting their job so as to not potentially contribute to the problematic progress. Be the change you want to see! Curious how that isn't what happens.

That's an application of the "Tragedy of the commons": One person stopping to push the frontier just means that this person will lose their job, the frontier will be pushed by the others. The solution is to push for a binding rule instead that will make everyone slow down in the racing towards artificial superintelligence.

And this is how we absolve people of all personal responsibility. Such companies would not pay people that well if they were so fungible.

There is no such possible binding rule either, a point that is so obvious that any smart person claiming otherwise is clearly up to something.

Re: Pacing the frontier

#19

Post by sleepingreset »

GhastBartender wrote: post #11

> It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems. This is just the standard AI "doomer" talking point. The dangers of AI just used as a compliment sandwich. "AI is so cool and awesome and that's why we need to slow down." The real risks are much more bori…

[flagged]

Re: Pacing the frontier

#20

Post by cindyllm »

bluegatty wrote: post #16
fuddle wrote: post #3

> We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development. This is quite vague to me, what exactly do you mean?

'Regulatory Capture' if we were cynical. I think a lot of these guys mean it though. 'The Fear' - is not some magic intelligence will come alive and be Skynet, these people are ridiculous. People will use the compute power to do nasty things, we'll be overwhelmed with bots, regular companies will use them for dark patterns, political actors will use them to cheat. It will be 100% humans using it for bad stuff, and in…

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