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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#931

Post by SepiaSapient »

dinfinity wrote: post #850
ericmay wrote: post #843

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

#932

Post by LarsDu88 »

nullbio wrote: post #825
wallst07 wrote: post #810

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

#933

Post by bigyabai »

rurban wrote: post #690
rcxdude wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drones are obviously very important but they only work in the context of everything else on and around the battlefield, especially people. You aren't holding the line with drones alone, and on the whole they are not autonomous.

They are holding the lines with drones alone nowadays. That's why it's called the deathzone, no humans survive. Some drones have FPV operators, some weapons use AI only already.

I think you're painting a slightly misleading picture. The drone AI, computer vision and autonomous fire-control systems existed (and were used in combat) before LLMs/AI was a hot topic.

There are applications of modern LLMs and recent AI advances on the front-lines, but they are not the majority contributor to enforcing the death zone. Without modern LLMs, I would bet that the frontlines would look very similar to how they are today.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#934

Post by theamk »

rurban wrote: post #620
skybrian wrote: post #241

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)

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#936

Post by watwut »

jimmytucson wrote: post #428
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Elementary school dont need internet at all. You can happily live without weather app. Most of healthcare does not require internet, altrought the organization would be lwss effective.

So, you are loosing transfers, basically.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#937

Post by glimshe »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ 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…

Nuclear Weapons is a great example because, unlike AI, it is a real and present danger. Civilization could be catastrophically diminished, if not completely wiped out, literally today.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#938

Post by watwut »

sampullman wrote: post #317
skew-aberration wrote: post #256

Earlier 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…

Is the core of your argument that the industrial revolution and other such changes should have been aborted due to their downstream negative affects? They also lead to great advancements in quality of life, and the capability of sustaining much more human life. We can't predict the long term outcome of new technologies, so the best we can do is blindly forge ahead and try to mitigate the obvious short term problems.

Yes, industrial revolution should have been managed differently and yes the world would be better if it was.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#939

Post by joe_the_user »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ 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…

No other human activity poses this level of danger

I'd say that's an unfortunate choice of words since it invites debate between which very problematic situation is worst rather than on ways to deal with each of them. Of course, it's also unfortunate to latch onto those particular words as the most important part of the statement.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#940

Post by ericmay »

dinfinity wrote: post #923
ericmay wrote: post #892

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is unreasonable because nobody can know 100% certain that the AI built at Anthropic will kill everyone. It is also a big-ass strawman because the author never claimed he was 100% certain that AI will kill all humans. Ok then stop arguing about my hypothetical if you don't want to engage with it. Those of us who are interested in talking about it can do so in peace without distracting comments. > change into mu…

I'm not the one reacting to reasonable behavior with some edgy comment containing broken logic. The author of the Twitter thread is not some egotistical attention seeker and never said "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone". His logic for quitting his job and not acting like a psychopath is sound. Yours is not.

I've already explained the matter to my satisfaction.
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