Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about a model that achieves the following: - Escape sandbox - Reproduce itself - Find a way to run a financially profitable business (maybe with a meat and bones puppet somewhere in-between) - Setup or buy a social network - start manipulating public opinion on that network to support legislation allowing AI to * operate businesses * setup legal entities * purchase weapons * donate to political parties * setup pr…
This is complete fantasy, though I would be interested in reading a book about this.
I resigned from Anthropic today
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#382“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes? If we look at the math problems they're solving their just now reaching the human frontier... they weren't doing that before. And your comparison point is model released 2.5 months ago... saying for some use case you didn't see noticeable improvement in 2.5 months (even while other people and benchmarks disagree) isn't a great argument that they aren't improving.
Math problems are highly structured, very precisely defined, and already heavily studied and not very complicated compared to problems in engineering or finance. There's a lot of quality material on which to train and it's easy to tell quality apart from crap. The search spaces are a priori much smaller than in other areas and the people using the tools to study them are themselves good mathematicians. Success in suc…
Jane Street is apparently one of Anthropic's biggest customers. Probably engineering, finance, and some math.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#384“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are the models improving? Because I am not seeing it. I have been trying Astra for a few quantifiable tasks in my codebase and performance wise, it's pretty similar to sol 5.6. Now when it comes to expressing the problem/solution, holy Christ, what a mess the writing has become. It is on the level of Opus 5. Now when it comes to burning money, Astra is just insane. With a $100/month subscription, you can easily burn…
Seems like hundreds or thousands of agents are needed to come up with real breakthroughs. Both with the Navier-Stokes project and in the Hugging Face “project” there were lots of agents co-operating on the tasks.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#386“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
Your average Anthropic ideologue - including and most especially the main man himself - would love nothing more than to eradicate 9/10ths of the planet's population, pump the survivors full of memory wiping drugs, bury the existence of AI deep underground and rule from the shadows for the next thousands of years.
This would be their wet dream. All in the name of "saving humanity from itself" - so they can convince themselves they're the good guys and deserving of this power. Anyone seen the latest season of Silo by the way?
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#387“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
> Non-example 2: There are worries about AI-facilitated biological weapons. I haven’t seen any evidence that’s happening. I think this is a good example of poor risk management reasoning. there is evidence bioengineering is already happening. No, nobody is going to announce when somebody has decided to use these tools (even if isn’t an LLM) to bioengineer a weapon. Are the tools power enough to do so? Not sure. But I…
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#388Unlike most other commenters, I applaud him for acting on his principles. If you sincerely believe that, of course you should act. You might not succeed, but your voice might be the one that tips the scales and starts a broader movement. This doesn't mean I agree with him. The fears of doomsday caused by rapid takeoff have been with us since day 1 and the mechanism is always basically "AI invents magic that sets it f…
>"AI invents magic that sets it free of any physical constraints". That's not what I am worried about at all. I'm worried one of the 79 year old toddlers we have these days in charge of some powerful nuclear armed country says "gee, this ai says I should attack right now, boy is it smart, glad I bought the stock ahead of contracting the government with this company I can scarcely understand!"
That's not what I am worried about at all.
I'm worried about the 40-60 year old businessmen wrecking the prosperity and security of millions while chasing higher investment returns, because they've finally been freed of many of the technological constraints that kept those impulses in check.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#389“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
> Non-example 2: There are worries about AI-facilitated biological weapons. I haven’t seen any evidence that’s happening. I think this is a good example of poor risk management reasoning. there is evidence bioengineering is already happening. No, nobody is going to announce when somebody has decided to use these tools (even if isn’t an LLM) to bioengineer a weapon. Are the tools power enough to do so? Not sure. But I…
Mind sharing this evidence with us?
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Past changes to economic relationships haven't replaced labor either, yet they have led to conflict and starvation. You are setting an incredibly high bar here, essentially a strawman. If people feel disenfranchised due to their diminishing political and economic power, there will be enormous potential for conflict. This is a pattern across history and central to all the economics I've ever read. As an economist, do…
> Past changes to economic relationships haven't replaced labor either, yet they have led to conflict and starvation. Conflict sure, but mass starvation? What exactly are you thinking of? We lived with 20-30% unemployment in various European countries until a few decades ago but I don't think mass starvation was an issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
Almost every mass famine in the mid to late 20th century was caused by internal conflict. And almost every civil war is rooted in economic and societal organization. Great Chinese Famine, Soviet famine of 1932–1933, Russian famine of 1921–1922, Second Congo War, Nigerian Civil War, Soviet famine of 1946–1947, Khmer Rouge famines, 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, North Korean famine, Cuban famine, Spanish famine, Mozambican Civil War famine. List goes on. Famine due to military occupations during WW2, such as in Vietnam, Indonesia, Greece, Ukraine, Iran, etc.
The second biggest class of preventable famines would be those caused by the longer-term impoverishment and exploitation of the peasantry, leaving them vulnerable to natural events. This seems much less probable now, even as of the 20th century. It would cover Irish Potato famine and many of the climate induced famines under feudal or colonial rule.
In that second class, we might imagine that the famine could not have occurred if the populations had more economic (and military) power. Instead of being able to keep the scarce food required for subsistence of the local populations, food was exported to pay rent to foreign occupiers or to obtain necessities which cannot be produced locally due to laws set by the occupiers.