Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 264 posts

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#231

Post by frozenseven »

nkrisc wrote: post #224
frozenseven wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading some of the outraged comments here, I'm even more excited.

I’m not surprised, that’s exactly the kind of person who would want this kind of technology. Remember, society as a whole will decide what's acceptable, there are no objective, natural laws that decide that. My gut feeling is that this is starting to cut close to what most people will find objectionable.

>the kind of person

Yes, I'm interested in this. Yes, I think that comments like "dehumanizing and revolting" are a signal. I'm not going to feel bad about exploring this tech. So, yes, I am that person and will continue to be that person.

>society as a whole will decide what's acceptable

So, how would you describe the past few months? Years? You keep saying that we need to reject AI, yet adoption and the gamut of use cases keep ever expanding.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#232

Post by frozenseven »

Planktonne wrote: post #230
frozenseven wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unusually spiteful >hurt others >malevolence The irony here, of course, is that you are casually insulting me for being interested in this tech in the first place and refusing to apologize or back down. Like how the other guy needed to chime in with "dehumanizing and revolting", even though nobody is forcing him to use any of this.

Nonsense. You were very clear. I wouldn't have any problem with you being interested in this tech if it wasn't driven by spite. Lots of people manage this. But you said > After reading some of the outraged comments here, I'm even more excited. The reason you gave for excitement was the upset it causes others. There are people who like AI who aren't driven by malevolence, but you're not one of them.

>the upset it causes others

So, what's the "upset"? Why is anybody here upset about what we're doing/I'm doing? I'm not backtracking on anything, I'm doubling down.

>malevolence

lol. lmao even.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#233

Post by e12e »

strangegecko wrote: post #145
majormajor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they ca…

The overseas person didn't work out because of time zone and cultural and language barrier friction that wasn't anticipated in the idea. This isn't analogous to the threat of AI.

You say that as if the culture difference with a truly alien intelligence is insignificant compared to the culture difference with an "overseas person".

(Even assuming "intelligent" is a sensible label to apply to an LLM holding hands with a shell script in an infinite loop)

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#234

Post by zaphirplane »

jodrellblank wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #18

(I'm not a part of GA.) I've known gwern for the better part of a decade. Working with him has been great. We've done quite a few projects together, including being the first ones to demonstrate that GPT-2 could play chess (or rather, can be used for actual useful work instead of just being an autocomplete). He's a great person. I've wanted to do a writeup on it for some time, but what surprised me the most is his hu…

> " How much would you pay to have access to a smarter version of yourself? " How much would I pay to rent my fucking self from a landlord? No, bodylord? Mindlord? Poe's Law. But looking at the post, they argue that big AI labs have an incentive problem which stops them from personalising, but Guardian Angel will make agents which are "Genuinely yours". In what sense is it genuinely mine if someone else owns it and r…

Selling something desirable has been an incentive since year dot

But this reminds me of the black mirror episode of a female that needs a subscription to live and the company keeps increasing and restricting the subscription

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#235

Post by Planktonne »

frozenseven wrote: post #232
Planktonne wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You were very clear. I wouldn't have any problem with you being interested in this tech if it wasn't driven by spite. Lots of people manage this. But you said > After reading some of the outraged comments here, I'm even more excited. The reason you gave for excitement was the upset it causes others. There are people who like AI who aren't driven by malevolence, but you're not one of them.

>the upset it causes others So, what's the "upset"? Why is anybody here upset about what we're doing/I'm doing? I'm not backtracking on anything, I'm doubling down. >malevolence lol. lmao even.

People are upset for lots of reasons, but that's not actually important for this discussion, which is about the fact that your support for AI is apparently conditional on them being upset rather than any positives about AI.

That's weird; fans of [almost anything] don't do that.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#236

Post by wpietri »

Planktonne wrote: post #219
qlte wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LessWrong/“rationality” crowd gwern is part of like to pat themselves on the back for identifying the trend and resulting harms from super intelligent AI going back decades. And yet, the main tangible contribution emerging from this early recognition (and obsession) was to inspire a lot of brilliant CS/math types and billionaires like Peter Thiel or Jaan Tallinn to build and fund companies like OpenAI and Anthrop…

The LessWrong/"rationality" crowd aren't compromising their values; they just have bad values that lead to negative outcomes, masked by high-minded rhetoric that they themselves only half believe. It's a popular movement that has wound its way through out society, and the fruits are clear: surveillance capitalism, eugenics, fraud. It's honestly quite impressive how consistently you can look at [recent negative trend]…

Even setting that crowd aside, almost every time I see somebody puffed up about how "rational" they are it turns out to involve a vigorous avoidance of the values they're working from.

I know somebody who says that doing debate in high school and college was terrible for him because it trained him to always argue his point but never to question it. For example, at the time he thought of himself as supremely rational even as he'd make a strong case for why he shouldn't quit smoking. It was only much later that he could admit that was his addiction and his ego talking.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#237

Post by wpietri »

nl wrote: post #162
xhevahir wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit. I can't make any sense of that.

You can tell someone in native on LessWrong by their ability to use incredibly obtuse language to say simple things. It's just in-crowd signalling. > cunningham-esque laws Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." > post-dwarkesh clout He went on the Dwarkesh podcast. That's maximal in-crowd for some AI-pilled people.

> You can tell someone in native on LessWrong by their ability to use incredibly obtuse language to say simple things. It's just in-crowd signalling.

Do you have a sense of what shapes this? There are so many people in that orbit whose writing I find both exhausting and suspect. I work hard to write clearly, which forces me to think a bit more clearly. The in-group thing makes sense, but there's an element of obliqueness or roundaboutness that makes me think of how a squid deploys ink.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#238

Post by wpietri »

frozenseven wrote: post #232
Planktonne wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You were very clear. I wouldn't have any problem with you being interested in this tech if it wasn't driven by spite. Lots of people manage this. But you said > After reading some of the outraged comments here, I'm even more excited. The reason you gave for excitement was the upset it causes others. There are people who like AI who aren't driven by malevolence, but you're not one of them.

>the upset it causes others So, what's the "upset"? Why is anybody here upset about what we're doing/I'm doing? I'm not backtracking on anything, I'm doubling down. >malevolence lol. lmao even.

This sort of faux incomprehension does an excellent job proving Planktonne's point.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#239

Post by e12e »

I found a lot of the points in the full post interesting - but I'm not sure I agree with everything.

In particular, I'd love access to:

> ... high-quality dedicated tamper-proof cloud servers, with trusted hardware root of trust (eg. “Verifiable Compute AI”)

for all my hosting needs. Meanwhile we see the typical information leaks of private ai chats ending up in Google searches etc.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#240

Post by nkrisc »

frozenseven wrote: post #231
nkrisc wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not surprised, that’s exactly the kind of person who would want this kind of technology. Remember, society as a whole will decide what's acceptable, there are no objective, natural laws that decide that. My gut feeling is that this is starting to cut close to what most people will find objectionable.

>the kind of person Yes, I'm interested in this. Yes, I think that comments like "dehumanizing and revolting" are a signal. I'm not going to feel bad about exploring this tech. So, yes, I am that person and will continue to be that person. >society as a whole will decide what's acceptable So, how would you describe the past few months? Years? You keep saying that we need to reject AI, yet adoption and the gamut of us…

I think there are good use cases for AI, I never said otherwise. Creating simulacra of real people is not one of them, I believe.

> yet adoption and the gamut of use cases keep ever expanding.

I don't see how that's evidence in favor of AI, as many harmful technologies and products became very popular. In fact, that's exactly why I think a slower, more measured approach is necessary. Otherwise once the harms become apparent everyone wants to shrug their shoulders and say, "well it's too late now, everyone's using it."

Post reply on HN