Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fairly easy to cure cancer by repairing DNA, but Big Pharma isn't interested because they can't patent it. They want to sell us some kind of "miracle cure" medicine that earns them trillions. The future is being held back by profit motives.
[citation needed]
On AI regulation and messaging
311–320 of 573 posts
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#312> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…
> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…
Do you not think that Amodei, who worked on research about cancer biomarkers at Stanford, knows a thing or two about how to apply AI to the problem?
What he is saying makes sense to me.
Is it that you don't trust a single word he says and that he lies for financial gain?
Or do you think he is wrong and that applying AI to this kind of research cannot possibly produce a breakthrough and lead to a cure?
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#313> Overall my view is that AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power, for reasons that have nothing to do with regulation (more to do with the extreme implications of the scaling laws). Open-weights do help some with this but are nowhere near a sufficient solution because they simply shift the concentration somewhat to those with the most compute and chips (which are roughly the frontier labs plu…
It's a good point but the solution isn't the regulation of AI itself that Dario keeps pushing, he just wants to lock out competitors.
The AI labs don't matter. It's the hardware that matters. Everyone should have access to local AI capable hardware, not just these trillion dollar corporations. We just need to ensure consumers continue to get powerful hardware somehow.
I propose taxing the hell out of these hyperscalers and giving subsidies to individuals and small business to foment local and decentralized AI capabilities. Also ban these "we bought the entire chip production all the way through 2030" deals.
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLM are not murderbots simply because its a very niche use case. They provide some kind of general intelligence, that many of us use daily to vibe code HTML. If the fact that LLMs are also sometimes used to automate killing then humans should be considered murderbots as well, since few of us engage in the activity of killing (and are autonomous & intelligent). Send the blame to our "creator" then?
You didn't answer my question
Sorry of it wasn't clear. I put the blame on the creator/seller of any murderbot, regardless of its autonomous or intelligence levels. I disagree that what were talking about, Claude, is a murderbot or anything close to it.
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…
Do you not think that Amodei, who worked on research about cancer biomarkers at Stanford, knows a thing or two about how to apply AI to the problem? What he is saying makes sense to me. Is it that you don't trust a single word he says and that he lies for financial gain? Or do you think he is wrong and that applying AI to this kind of research cannot possibly produce a breakthrough and lead to a cure?
Not the OP.
> Do you not think that Amodei, who worked on research about cancer biomarkers at Stanford, knows a thing or two about how to apply AI to the problem?
It certainly shows he is ambitious.
> Is it that you don't trust a single word he says and that he lies for financial gain?
Yes.
> Or do you think he is wrong and that applying AI to this kind of research cannot possibly produce a breakthrough and lead to a cure?
It is possible, but both could be true, that's not an exclusive or situation.
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
The effective altruist and longtermist crowd are into it as a religion. They would happily sacrifice anything human to satisfy their dreams of AI. They care way more about what the AI needs than their what their fellow humans need. We will end up with an AGI having better living and working conditions than humans and the whole AI industry will be clapping
I think you mean effective accelerationist, not effective altruist, whose position is pretty much the exact opposite.
Effective altruism may have had a positive reputation at some point, but it's definitely jumped the shark and almost everyone influential who invokes in the context of AI it seems to have fallen into the trap of the "bottomless pit of suffering" of utilitarianism.
Just like the utilitarians in the thought experiment tossing everything positive in their life into the bottomless pit of suffering, the effective altruist AI thought leaders are tossing our entire economy to the gambit that the singularity will bring about the end of human suffering.
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because 7.5 billion people with nothing to lose would quickly turn chaotic and mass-murdery. 90% of humanity in idle poverty is impossible to justify, at least today they do something of value that can be used as a retort by the morally unscrupulous. A black-and-white situation where a few get everything, most get nothing and do nothing for anybody else is beyond justifying, so the self-defense argument wouldn't work…
It's already been here for much of the 20th century, and everyone seems to have just accepted it. We're just going to have Europe and America join sub-saharan Africa. I think it's inevitable.
The moral justification for the existence of poverty is one of purpose and worth through contribution to society. The family member of an ultrarich baron can sleep at night mostly due to the idea that those who are rich contribute value to humanity as a whole, ergo those who are poor simply aren't working hard enough or contributing in a meaningful way ("just world fallacy" etc)
When AGI becomes reality, that reasoning disappears. When everyone's worthless, no one is. Thus the scenario you speculate about would need everyone in the upper echelons of society to be consciously, openly sadistic power-hungry people, which is not the case even when taking into account the higher dark triad rates among them.
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#318> Overall my view is that AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power > Open-weights do help some with this but are nowhere near a sufficient solution Which is exactly why Anthropic contributes nothing to, and actively pushes for roadblocks and regulations for open weight models. Can't allow any hope to the masses. Only people with $$$$$ are allowed to touch Fable. Which of course we have have agg…
> something dangerous like AI model developement
It's very dangerous to Anthropic's bottomline!
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…
Do you not think that Amodei, who worked on research about cancer biomarkers at Stanford, knows a thing or two about how to apply AI to the problem? What he is saying makes sense to me. Is it that you don't trust a single word he says and that he lies for financial gain? Or do you think he is wrong and that applying AI to this kind of research cannot possibly produce a breakthrough and lead to a cure?
> Is it that you don't trust a single word he says and that he lies for financial gain?
You don't become a CEO of a company like Anthropic (or any sufficiently large company) without lying for financial gain
Re: On AI regulation and messaging
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they had AGI, why would they need consumers anymore? Just use your drone army to secure all natural resources and produce whatever you need for yourself. Other humans are just pets.
If AGI had a drone army, why would it need them? Can't help wondering if they've really thought this through.
I'm reminded of the scene in Independence Day with the people on top of the tower welcoming the alien spaceships. Except instead of celebratory fanatics holding poster boards saying "Welcome", it's all the singularity AI thoughtleaders holding hands in a circle chanting about Roko's basilisk like some new-age spirituality retreat.