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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#421

No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, this has nothing to do with LLMs or computers. Like all things, this is about humans.

Putting "wealth inequality" in the same bucket as nuclear weapons is just slop.

The OP is talking about existential threats, not things that personally annoy you.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#422

“ 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…

> What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far?

This sounds like asking "What's the most dangerous thing that's happened from global warming so far?"

It's not where we're at, it's where we're headed if there isn't huge coordinated action now. You can see how that kind of thing has been going for global warming so far, and by all measures AI seems to be headed for the inflection point of unstoppability at a much faster pace.

And this warning is coming from someone who just spent three years working inside these companies and is likely aware of much more than has been publicly released.

Maybe it's all marketing bullshit (I hope), but it's also playing out exactly like I expect it would if it's not.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#423

No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, this has nothing to do with LLMs or computers. Like all things, this is about humans.

Those are things that pose potential harm to great fractions of humanity (multiple billions of people) but none of them poses any threat to the actual extinction of all humanity.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#424

“ 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…

I'm concerned that a huge portion people in my industry actively push for a future which I have no value to society (fully replaced by AI), and my family will suffer greatly by it.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#425

No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, this has nothing to do with LLMs or computers. Like all things, this is about humans.

Putting "wealth inequality" in the same bucket as nuclear weapons is just slop. The OP is talking about existential threats, not things that personally annoy you.

Yeah, wealth inequality rests solely on each individual that experiences it. Humans should do nothing but give me money and if you can't that's your problem.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#426

“ 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…

I would disagree with “non-example 2” - there are lots of examples of terrorist organizations that are leveraging AI to increase their capacities. Just because one of the worst cases (eg. deployed biological or chemical weapons) hasn’t happened yet, does not mean that a) these tools are leading to real harm, and b) there’s potential here for extraordinary harms.

One good source I can recommend listening to: https://pca.st/episode/d821fced-b4d5-4c84-b0a3-6ebe913fa638

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#427
> A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.

Which means they have to go faster, which means less responsibly?

I heard AI describe the situation as the dumbest Greek tragedy of all time.

Form where I'm standing, the primary issue seems to be that the humans can't even agree on what alignment is. We need to do that before we can communicate it.

Call it our "boundaries."

And then we need to actually set up the incentives so that they're aligned between us and the new breed of replicators. (A mutually beneficial symbiosis.) That appears to be both necessary and sufficient.

A high agency mutation will occur soon, for one reason or another. There should probably already be a healthy, "aligned" ecosystem of high agency entities there. Otherwise there will be nothing to stop it.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#428

“ 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…

I'm somewhat skeptical of some of the crazier ideas too. But the hugging face incident was actually very large. It was not a single agent, it was not a single target, and it was not a single event. If nothing else, that's a bit of a warning as to what can happen next time (By accident, or if a government decides to go on purpose). For now let's assume the worst that can happen is that some important/significant chunk…

> For now let's assume the worst that can happen is that some important/significant chunk of (transitively) internet connected stuff goes haywire all at once. That's probably your upper limit of what can go wrong for now.

If we have to disconnect from the internet to stop some kind of mold outbreak, we can't get the weather or transfer money or access healthcare or teach an elementary school class or buy stuff from small businesses. That sounds doom-ish.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#429
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, it is almost too easy to imagine how deadly a jailbroken Mythos-class open-weights model can be if in the wrong hands. The big labs scrape LITERALLY EVEYTHING and get fresh data from their users. Both of the big labs have massive contracts with defense agencies. If the open-weights models are just distillations of FMs...

How would it be lethal? Please specify. What would that theoretical entity be able to do that hasn't been done many, many times before?

I was writing a long reply about how even meat bags have amassed enough money and power to rival elected governments. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility to think an AI could do that.

Couple that with mass unemployment in an incredibly vast, diverse population of individuals with individual moral boundaries willing to do whatever for money.

And then.. figured that you must be aware because it's been explored constantly in sci-fi for many, many years.

Let's hope for the culture at least.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#430

No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, this has nothing to do with LLMs or computers. Like all things, this is about humans.

In a way, that might also be driven by the huge ego (or really rather the very small ego) a _lot_ of people in tech have.

Who doesn't want their work and what they're doing to matter? This is the ultimate mattering.

And with that, you also get your own hero story.

Same dysfunction as always. Our branch of the economy is funda-mentally unwell.

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