Live data from Hacker News

I resigned from Anthropic today

twitter.com

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#891
post #859

“ 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…

To quote another reply that is very relevant here (Please update your worldview immediately that there is no evidence of ai and biorisk): """ One thing quietly slipped into the OpenAI Hugging Face breach technical report, not the blog post summary or interviews in the news, was that some of the agents that broke out or at least tried the same mechanisms to break out were working on bio: > On May 12, during another tr…

> These people don't give a shit and aren't taking things seriously at all.

would you say these big tech bro types are... "careless people"?

cuz that's been extensively documented, and you're right

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#892

“ 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…

The statement becomes very true and very real once LLMs are applied to physical objects in the physical realm such as anthropomorphic robots.

LLMs are too weak security-wise to be contained.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#893
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's clearly no intelligence task that AIs can't do due to some magic fundamental constraint. Yes there is: write an English paragraph that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out. LLMs are not better than human mathematicians (or security researchers) in all respects, just some specific ways (e.g. not having to take a lunch break) that make them good at exhaustively searching for an answer, given the right con…

> write an English paragraph that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out. LLMs are very much capable of that. Your belief in the opposite has two causes. Firstly the toupee fallacy. You don't notice LLM written text that doesn't make you claw your eyes out. Second is defaults. The huge majority of people who writes text with LLMs just uses default Claude/GPT models, and put near zero effort in making it sound human…

Sure, it might take more than a single paragraph for that grating feeling to sink in, but none of the entries from the Un-Slop Fiction Prize[1] impressed me.

[1] https://www.hyperstitionai.com/unslop

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#894
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also baffled. AI that is substantially smarter than us is a very potential threat to us - and we won't even be able to comprehend what most of those threats may be.

It's head-in-sand denial because actually facing the threat (and our total inability to stop it, imo) is terrifying, and people don't like feeling that. So they're just angry and cynical instead. Plus it makes them feel smarter for whatever reason.

What, substantively speaking, are you doing differently from someone facing the threat, or are you just on the other side of the checkbox?

There are quite a few existential risks on the table. Are you even sure you've sort ordered them correctly?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not rewriting. I am saying AI is not more dangerous in my opinion that Nuclear Weapons.

You are wrong. A teenager with enough GPUs could never dream of making a nuke but they are absolutely able to run capable AIs in their moms basement. Totally different class of danger

And do what with it ?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#896
post #432

“ 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…

Do you think people should continue developing AI up until the point that there is evidence that AI is facilitating biological weapons development? I think we should stop before then. But that necessarily means that there will not be evidence at the time that we stop.

We also need to stop before the AI opens a portal to hell. There's no evidence of that happening... but by the time there's any indication it's possible, it's too late.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#897

I’m not advocating for this. ~~~~~~ If you really believed these labs were going to result in the extinction of humanity and you saw it first hand, don’t you have a moral obligation not to quit your job but to go and try and kill everyone working on said project, blow it up, or otherwise stop it? I take these resignations with a grain of salt precisely for that reason. If I worked at a job and I saw some crazy guy or…

> I’m not advocating for this. You're not advocating for it because murdering people is highly immoral and illegal. That answers your question for the most part. You also have to remember that the magnitude and speed of this stuff is very new to pretty much everybody . It's not exactly trivial to go from "I'm just doing my job" to "I need to kill everybody in my company to save the world" in a year or two, especially…

This is a non sequitur. Yes, if someone doesn't actually believe in imminent AI doomsday they are not going full Sarah Connor on Anthropic. Yes, HN will not like if someone pipe bombs the office. What does it have to do with @ericmay's point?

He directly says "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives", that's a claim of imminent threat to humanity. If he truly believes that, direct action shouldn't be off the table nor even be immoral. Obviously he might not have the temperament or simply be a pacifist, that's totally normal but the point is that tweets are weird even then.

Why just make some tepid tweets if you think humanity is at risk? Why doesn't he leak documents and messages with the unfiltered opinions of leadership? Why isn't screaming "we are going to die" in CNBC? You'know, try anything?

That's where the "take it with a grain of salt" is important, maybe this is just a jumping point to a better job in the next super safe AI lab (for realsies this time)

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

It's a long story. If you're immersed in this world and aware of the movements all of the major AI players (in particular, Anthropic) have been doing over the last 3 years it paints a very clear picture. The patterns of behavior (the lying, cheating, stealing, the gaslighting, the virtue signalling, the grandstanding) speak for themselves.

Evidence? Are you Grok bot?

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#899
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mathematics research results are certainly impressive, but I don't see what that has to do with robotics. Waymo is getting somewhere, but it's been a long slog. There doesn't seem to be much progress on, say, package delivery. For more, see: https://secondthoughts.ai/p/14-reasons-robotics-is-hard

Didn't you follow the robotics advances in the Ukrainian - Russian battlefield? There is now a death zone of 50km, only controlled by drones and automatic weapons.

Those drones can only stay up for a few hours at most. Then they need refueling and relaunch, with plenty of human-only steps.

Even if you have terminator-style AI uprising, all you need to do to be safe from those drones is to wait a day.

(The automated weapons can probably last longer, but they still need electricity, and there are still a lot of human steps there)

Post reply on HN