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Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

reuters.com

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Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#101

Post by RandomLensman »

kypro wrote: post #42
srslack wrote: post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

Even if you're correct about the capabilities of LLMs (I don't think you are), there are still obvious dangers here. I wrote a comment recently trying to explain how even if you believe all LLMs can (and will ever) do is regurgitate their training data that you should still be concerned. For example, imagine in 5 years we have GPT-7, and you ask GPT-7 to solve humanity's great problems. From its training data GPT-7 m…

You have a very strong hypothesis about the AI system just being able to "think up" such a bioweapon (and also the researchers being clueless in implementation). I see doomsday scenarios often assuming strong advances in sciences in the AI etc. - there is little evidence for that kind of "thinkism".

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#102

Post by revelio »

kypro wrote: post #42
srslack wrote: post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

Even if you're correct about the capabilities of LLMs (I don't think you are), there are still obvious dangers here. I wrote a comment recently trying to explain how even if you believe all LLMs can (and will ever) do is regurgitate their training data that you should still be concerned. For example, imagine in 5 years we have GPT-7, and you ask GPT-7 to solve humanity's great problems. From its training data GPT-7 m…

> so instead it uses its training data to seek other ways to reduce human populations without extermination.

This is a real problem, but it's already problem with our society, not AI. Misaligned public intellectuals routinely try to reduce the human population and we don't lift a finger. Focus where the danger actually is - us!

From Scott Alexander's latest post:

Paul Ehrlich is an environmentalist leader best known for his 1968 book The Population Bomb. He helped develop ideas like sustainability, biodiversity, and ecological footprints. But he’s best known for prophecies of doom which have not come true - for example, that collapsing ecosystems would cause hundreds of millions of deaths in the 1970s, or make England “cease to exist” by the year 2000.

Population Bomb calls for a multi-pronged solution to a coming overpopulation crisis. One prong was coercive mass sterilization. Ehrlich particularly recommended this for India, a country at the forefront of rising populations.

In 1975, India had a worse-than-usual economic crisis and declared martial law. They asked the World Bank for help. The World Bank, led by Robert McNamara, made support conditional on an increase in sterilizations. India complied [...] In the end about eight million people were sterilized over the course of two years.

Luckily for Ehrlich, no one cares. He remains a professor emeritus at Stanford, and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology. He has won practically every environmental award imaginable, including from the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations (all > 10 years after the Indian sterilization campaign he endorsed). He won the MacArthur “Genius” Prize ($800,000) in 1990, the Crafoord Prize ($700,000, presented by the King of Sweden) that same year, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. He was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes about the importance of sustainability; the mass sterilization campaign never came up. He is about as honored and beloved as it’s possible for a public intellectual to get.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#103

Post by dmreedy »

lm28469 wrote: post #88
Yajirobe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to say that brains aren't just regression based function approximators?

The problem is that you have to bring proofs Who's to say we're not in a simulation ? Who's to say god doesn't exist ?

You're right, of course, but that also makes your out-of-hand dismissals based on your own philosophical premises equally invalid.

Until a model of human sentience and awareness is established (note: one of the oldest problems out there alongside the movements of the stars. This is an ancient debate, still open-ended, and nothing anyone is saying in these threads is new), philosophy is all we have and ideas are debated on their merits within that space.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#104

Post by cheeseomlit »

microjim wrote: post #52

Seems like one of the benefits you get with a state is to regulate powerful technologies. Is this not commonly agreed upon?

Sure, but not all regulation is created equal. Sometimes it's created in good faith. But many times, particularly when the entity being regulated is involved in regulating its own industry, it's simply a cynical consolidation of power to erect barriers to potential competition. The fact that it masquerades as being for the public good/safety makes the practice that much more insidious.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#105

Post by wahnfrieden »

alpineidyll3 wrote: post #3
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

Regulatory capture and monopolies are now as American as apple pie.

This is so disgusting and enraging. I hope the whole startup community blackballs @sama for this.

Folks like to lick a boot

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#106

Post by nmfisher »

api wrote: post #87
srslack wrote: post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

The whole story of OpenAI is really slimy too. It was created as a non-profit, then it was handed somehow to Sam who took it closed and for-profit (using AI fear mongering as an excuse) and is now seeking to leverage government to lock it into a position of market dominance. The whole saga makes Altman look really, really terrible. If AI really is this dangerous then we definitely don't need people like this in contr…

Open AI has been pretty dishonest since the pivot to for-profit, but this is a new low.

Incredibly scummy behaviour that will not land well with a lot of people in the AI community. I wonder if this is what prompted a lot of people to leave for Anthropic.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#107

Post by EnragedParrot »

srslack wrote: post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

I'm not sure that the regulation being proposed by Altman is good, but you're vastly misstating the actual purported threat posed by AI. Altman and the senators quoted in the article aren't expressing fear that AI is becoming sentient, they are expressing the completely valid concern that AI sounds an awful lot like not-AI nowadays and will absolutely be used for nefarious purposes like spreading misinformation and committing identity crimes. The pace of development is happening way too rapidly for any meaningful conversations around these dangers to be had. Within a few years we'll have AI-generated videos that are indistinguishable from real ones, for instance, and it will be impossible for the average person to discern if they're watching something real or not.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#108

Post by iliane5 »

api wrote: post #96
iliane5 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it so hard to hear this perspective? Like, genuinely curious. Because people have different definition of what intelligence is. Recreating the human brain in a computer would definitely be neat and interesting but you don't need that nor AGI to be revolutionary. LLMs, as perfect Chinese Rooms, lack a mind or human intelligence but demonstrate increasingly sophisticated behavior. If they can perform tasks bet…

I have a chain saw that can cut better than me, a car that can go faster, a computer that can do math better, etc. We've been doing this forever with everything. Building tools is what makes us unique. Why is building what amounts to a calculator/spreadsheet/CAD program for language somehow a Rubicon that cannot be crossed? Did people freak out this much about computers replacing humans when they were shown to be goo…

> Why is building what amounts to a calculator/spreadsheet/CAD program for language somehow a Rubicon that cannot be crossed?

We've already crossed it and I believe we should go full steam ahead, tech is cool and we should be doing cool things.

> Did people freak out this much about computers replacing humans when they were shown to be good at math?

Too young but I'm sure they did freak out a little! Computers have changed the world and people have internalized computers as being much better/faster at math but exhibiting creativity, language proficiency and thinking is not something people thought computers were supposed to do.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#110

Post by wahnfrieden »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #40

At some point Sam has started give me E. Holmes vibes and I really don't like it. There's a level of odd/ridiculous/hilarious/stupid AI hype that he feels so comfortable leaning into that part of me starts to begin to suspect that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

Forget the words and look at where the money is: regulatory capture, which they’re racing toward
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