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Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

xeiaso.net

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Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#51

They are talking about slowing down the public facing AI development. Because then nation states can create a capabilities gap between them and the public. Why does nobody seem to be pointing out this obvious explanation? It explains why the “we need to race China” concern suddenly vanished in the discussion. The government can simply gag Sam, Dario, Musk on national security basis, getting them all behind the public…

idk why you think "nation states" are any better at corporate governance than poster examples of bad like f/ex Boeing. Or Facebook. Or Microsoft. Or Enron for that matter.

I assure you, in "nation states", that is in gov agencies it's an order or two of magnitude worse.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#52
post #10

I have to wonder if some us are just much more inured to salespeople and thus also to "AI Safety" propaganda. I've yet to have a logical discussion with anyone who thinks the "AI Safety" people should be in charge and I think they just truly don't that what most them actually want is to be the one holding the keys to power.

The problem is the "AI Safety" people seem entirely focused on a sci-fi "the computer is a vengeful god" plot and not at all on the AI talking people into suicide or ruining children's educations. This makes them seem unserious and out of touch.

I am worried about those things too.

But those things fall in a category of "things that are awful and I'd like to see solved", which is different than "existential risks which could see my kids dead, and there's nothing I can personally do to shield them from it".

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#53
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured they're just admitting AI models have plateaued and are coming up with some fake story about self restraint so they don't lose VC money

Not sure about the level of irony here, but I keep hearing models have plateaued since a while now, but I keep being impressed with the latest model performance.

Really? My employer rolled back to opus 4.8 because 5 was expensive AND crap. Didnt even consider fable because it didn’t add any additional value.

For most software eng and design work opus 4.6-4.8 just works fine. For everyday joe asking ai to plan a trip or home diy work even sonnet works fine.

Any cybersecurity or other areas are niches that cannot support trillion $ valuations. What am I missing? Genuinely curious

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#54
post #47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your point, but I did read a post by Sean Goedecke[1] (whose opinions on the world of LLM-stuff I've generally come to respect) that I found relevant. It's not that the second-order effects don't matter to them, it's more that both the cat's probably out of the bag on those negative externalities regardless of the progress of frontier models, and that they are truly, sincerely, in-their-bones wo…

OK understood. But you understand this makes them sound like the type of person who doesn't believe any of the "worldly concerns" are worth addressing because "the end is near" right?

There's no logical error here if the end is actually near.

So it all hinges on an empirical disagreement you have with them. There's nothing particularly unserious about that.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#55
post #10

I have to wonder if some us are just much more inured to salespeople and thus also to "AI Safety" propaganda. I've yet to have a logical discussion with anyone who thinks the "AI Safety" people should be in charge and I think they just truly don't that what most them actually want is to be the one holding the keys to power.

The problem is the "AI Safety" people seem entirely focused on a sci-fi "the computer is a vengeful god" plot and not at all on the AI talking people into suicide or ruining children's educations. This makes them seem unserious and out of touch.

And the real threats are mostly economic and environmental - the concentration of the means of production in the hands of few who use it to exploit us all, and a surge in energy usage accelerating climate change.

Even the sci-fi scenario assumes there is a discrepancy of capability between attacker or defender. If the 'attacking' system is (by some reasonable measure), 1000% as capable as a human, and the 'defending' systems are 60%, then it is a problem. If the 'attacking' system is 1000% as capable as a human, but there are hundreds of thousands of systems that are 900% as capable as a human, it's probably not going to take over everything successfully.

So unequal distribution of AI technology, and lax regulation and opacity of the biggest companies which actually make the risks the worst.

I don't think the "AI Safety" people are "unserious and out of touch" - I think they are actively making AI Safety problems worse by being advocates for consolidation of AI development and lack of transparency.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the context: - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49672510 - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678211 - the blogpost author thinking they're like, so funny and original, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678683

Pretty sure it's supposed to be parody.

Yes, it's supposed to be.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#57
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an AI Safety Person and I want the government to nationalize or have a significant stake in the frontier labs and to have democratic control of the development of the technology. The AI Safety movement is not a monolith. I do not think Eliezer Yudkowsky nor his acolytes should hold the reins, but a lot of folks sure like to create a strawman that anyone who wants to regulate OpenAI is somehow an EA/MIRI weirdo

to have democratic control of the development of the technology Not super interested in what the people who elected Donald Trump POTUS twice think about AI. (Of course, with Musk and Brockman in the C-suites at two of three major labs, that's what we'll get either way.)

Is Greg Brockman right wing?

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to have democratic control of the development of the technology Not super interested in what the people who elected Donald Trump POTUS twice think about AI. (Of course, with Musk and Brockman in the C-suites at two of three major labs, that's what we'll get either way.)

Is Greg Brockman right wing?

He's the largest single private donor to the Trump 2024 campaign, as I understand it, at $25 million.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Greg Brockman right wing?

He's the largest single private donor to the Trump 2024 campaign, as I understand it, at $25 million.

Interesting, I did not know this.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#60
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the level of irony here, but I keep hearing models have plateaued since a while now, but I keep being impressed with the latest model performance.

Really? My employer rolled back to opus 4.8 because 5 was expensive AND crap. Didnt even consider fable because it didn’t add any additional value. For most software eng and design work opus 4.6-4.8 just works fine. For everyday joe asking ai to plan a trip or home diy work even sonnet works fine. Any cybersecurity or other areas are niches that cannot support trillion $ valuations. What am I missing? Genuinely curio…

If Fable doesn't add additional value in your workplace, it means you aren't being ambitious enough in how you integrate agents into your workstream.

Yes, it's probably comparable to 4.8 if you are just using it to write code and put up a couple pull requests. That's not where things are now.

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