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An Alien Mind

openai.com

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Re: An Alien Mind

#161

Post by ijidak »

sho_hn wrote: post #76

One of my favorite things to do with these blog posts is to imagine an Alien Museum on the Remains of Humanity, and wonder what the little text flyouts and commentary on the screenshot of this one might say. Some ideas: "Despite a nuanced view of the complexities of what lay ahead, humanity found itself collectively unable to stop the process it had set in motion." "Despite significant progress on the mechanisms of a…

Agree. This whole alignment discussion seems so amusingly flawed in it's base assumptions about moral codes. It's almost heartwarming to see such naivete.

Maybe these guys can tackle aligning Republicans and Democrats next.

And then after that, they can help us align the Middle East.

In fact, while we're at it, let's just align all the nations, religions, and ethnic groups. This is going to be great.

Who knew the moral alignment of humanity was just a side-quest on the path to ASI.

Re: An Alien Mind

#162

Post by goatlover »

throwthrowuknow wrote: post #153
Fraterkes wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the comment you're responding to is that it is at this point hardly an arms race: The frontier of ai development is happening completely inside 2 American companies, the most significant results outside America mostly involve (impressive!) distillation, which means their progress is conditional on progress of the big closed source models. So if the race here is between 2 American companies, this is obvio…

Development and improvement of nuclear weapons was an entirely American project until the technology was exfiltrated and then it became an instant arms race. That cat is already out of the bag with LLMs. Distillation is just the fastest way to keep pace but that in no way prevents other countries and actors from doing it the hard way. An arms race doesn’t imply one side winning, it’s not a race with an end goal, it’s…

There were prominent scientists like Oppenheimer who did not think it needed to become an arms race, and campaigned against that. But there were others like Teller and the military who made it into an arms race, and kept upping the ante with more powerful nukes.

Point being humans make theses decisions. It's not an inevitability.

Re: An Alien Mind

#163

Post by allturtles »

pmontra wrote: post #147
allturtles wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have any strategic adversaries whatsoever you MUST NOT slow. What if the most dangerous strategic adversary you have is the one you are building?

What if this is true mid or long term but by not participating to the AI race one gets poor or killed in the short term? The only way out would be that all parties agree to stop. There are previous examples (e.g. nuclear proliferation treaties) but it gets hard to do it with hundreds or thousands of parties.

I don't think it requires the agreement of that many parties. How many organizations/physical sites can create chips capable of training and running frontier models? That is your bottleneck. It is equivalent to targeting uranium enichment in nuclear arms control.

Re: An Alien Mind

#166

Post by goatlover »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #86
dgellow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Such a disgusting industry. They created the arm race, push for the arm race, put themselves in position to benefit from the arm race

Just like the rest of military stuff.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Re: An Alien Mind

#167

Post by dinfinity »

Fraterkes wrote: post #121
skybrian wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defensive systems" can be interpreted broadly to include cybersecurity. But yes, it's an arms race. Saying it's not an arms race isn't going to make it not an arms race. Warning that it is an arms race isn't ethically wrong. Is participating in an arms race ethically wrong? Maybe you could ask the Ukrainians how they feel about drone R&D? Individuals can quit, but for society, getting out of an arms race is harder t…

The point of the comment you're responding to is that it is at this point hardly an arms race: The frontier of ai development is happening completely inside 2 American companies, the most significant results outside America mostly involve (impressive!) distillation, which means their progress is conditional on progress of the big closed source models. So if the race here is between 2 American companies, this is obvio…

Do you think China considers it an arms race? Do you think they are not trying to protect their digital infrastructure with and from AI? Trying to gain an offensive AI advantage?

In a geopolitical sense OpenAI and Anthropic are effectively the same entity, the entity they both serve and bow to: the USA.

Given the adversarial stance the USA has taken towards almost the entire world, it is a guarantee that China will not step on the brakes, whatever the USA decides to do.

Re: An Alien Mind

#168

Post by Calazon »

greenowl wrote: post #98
RALaBarge wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the imagination quandary, this second, RIGHT NOW is the worst these systems will ever be. They are only going to get better.

Maybe, maybe not. It's not unreasonable that these systems cap out at some point, or perhaps fizzle away entirely. The businesses that create these systems are not profitable and run at a massive historical and go-forward loss. New data centers required to operate these systems are facing increasing pushback at local levels. New construction is not guaranteed. Energy and power grid constraints exist as well. Governme…

For better or for worse, this technology isn't going away any more than search engines, smartphones, or social media have gone away.

Re: An Alien Mind

#169

Post by slopinthebag »

dgellow wrote: post #39
granzymes wrote: post #26

>I have focused in this essay only on the first point, as I believe it is by far the most urgent. However, I hold a deep hope and appreciation for the benefits that further technological progress will bring. Future aligned AI could advance science, develop new therapies, and bring about broad material abundance. Friendly and honest AI can help people navigate difficulties they face in their life and meaningfully impr…

> I want to believe that humanity is trending towards a good outcome here All the trends so far are towards a nightmarish hyper-capitalist end game. None of the AI leadership is trustworthy, and they openly discuss how they are willing to sacrifice everything humans cherish to have a shot at reaching their envisioned utopia (which would be the most obvious dystopia for anyone else)

I think it's leading towards a hyper-authoritarian end game, not hyper-capitalist. The state has the ultimate power at the end of the day, no matter how large the labs become.

Re: An Alien Mind

#170

Post by goatlover »

RALaBarge wrote: post #89
hatefulmoron wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I just lack imagination, but I don't really know how jobs are supposed to solidify around the role of giving prompts to agents and then looking at the results. I mean, engineers will be in the breadline because their role was simply to prompt the agents.. only to be superseded by managers or executives who no longer manage engineers but themselves prompt the agents? And, for this previously considered obsolete…

Regardless of the imagination quandary, this second, RIGHT NOW is the worst these systems will ever be. They are only going to get better.

Those nuclear powered flying cars envisioned in the 50s were also inevitable progress of the automobile.
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