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FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

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Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#111

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this. Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

Maybe he's just a CEO doing the ethically responsible thing and not the purely self-serving thing for the sake of shareholders? (though as humans, the shareholders have some stake in humanity too)

> Maybe he's just a CEO doing the ethically responsible thing

But he's not. As Scott Galloway put it, he's raising a gun to grandma's head and screaming "stop me before I shoot her!" He's saying ethically-responsible things. But simultaneously acting in contrast to his words.

Altman is doing an excellent job as a CEO. But that doesn't make him an angel. Just look at Worldcoin, his crypto project, and tell me you see the marks of a humanitarian.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what about them? Are nuclear weapons not "harmful or a risk to humanity"?

I think it's an over simplification an unwise comparison. Everyone keeps bringing up Russia and China...they like nuclear weapons because they give them power. AI can take it away, especially if a super intelligent AI was to come into being. Have you ever noticed how dictators like to be in control? If they actually are aware there is little chance they'd be able to control these things, they're much less likely to w…

> only thing we have in common here is they can both be dangerous and cause a lot of harm, but so can fire

I think the previous comment's point was this.

You said "if AI does indeed turn out to be harmful...[you] don't think other countries will be...eager to deploy it" [1]. The comment responding to you said there is no precedent for that. Before you get super-intelligent humanity-destroying AI you may get merely-intelligent enemy-destroying AI. If the second evolves into the first, and we don't know when, everyone is incentivized to develop the second out of military necessity.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36720159

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#113

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this. Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

I think something that's increasingly clear is that OpenAI's only moat is time. Every other company, and even completely independent models, are rapidly catching up. And this is happening at the same time that OpenAI is already making claims that they're hitting diminishing returns on model size [1], as happens in literally every single neural net based field. If Sam's Gambit succeeded, OpenAI could have potentially…

> If Sam's Gambit succeeded, OpenAI could have potentially been granted a near absolute monopoly

I don't think this was ever realistic. (I don't think Altman is that politically naive.) Instead, it was marketing. It's saying you've got something so powerful it's dangerous and should be treated carefully. While everyone's debating how to treat it carefully, they concede in public that it's powerful.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or LLMs aren’t involved at all. After all LLMs work at the level of word tokens … how fundamental really are words to AGI level intelligence; the human brain doesn’t operate on the level of words, words are something we picked up, that a more fundamental mechanism at play deals with.

Humanity wasn't doing anything significant before words.

Words help communicate ideas between people, allowing society to advance greatly, but it isn’t necessary for thinking.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an over simplification an unwise comparison. Everyone keeps bringing up Russia and China...they like nuclear weapons because they give them power. AI can take it away, especially if a super intelligent AI was to come into being. Have you ever noticed how dictators like to be in control? If they actually are aware there is little chance they'd be able to control these things, they're much less likely to w…

> only thing we have in common here is they can both be dangerous and cause a lot of harm, but so can fire I think the previous comment's point was this. You said "if AI does indeed turn out to be harmful...[you] don't think other countries will be...eager to deploy it" [1]. The comment responding to you said there is no precedent for that. Before you get super-intelligent humanity-destroying AI you may get merely-in…

I don't think this is true, if international co-operation can happen, not everyone will try to build these systems.

My point is, everyone sits on the internet and screams but Russia, but China, but no one really knows what they think about the situation because no serious discussions have begun.

I did see an interview with Geoffrey Hinton who says that he can see Chinese researchers are concerned, he reads it in mailing lists. In my opinion that is a good start because again, I don't think the CCP is stupid and they also have a lot of influence in the world.

My point is, trying to do nothing and maintaining the status quo won't end well either.

I think most people have just given up, climate change now this, it's too much for people.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#116
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument goes back and forwards forever, but if AI does indeed turn out to be harmful or a risk to humanity, I don't think other countries will be just immediately eager to deploy it, do you? People aren't stupid. Humans generally want to live and hope their children flourish and not be destroyed by some type of horrific event. Even...c..cc.communists. If enough top researchers agree of the dangers, and switch f…

I think that other countries will happily explore the AI topic further, independent from the US. Regarding stupidity and hope, see how well we're doing with climate change, or environmental regulations.

I think instead of being pessimistic about the inevitability of disasters, we should try and prevent them. We're doing better than nothing about climate change, and we can keep trying to do more even though the damage is already great.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that other countries will happily explore the AI topic further, independent from the US. Regarding stupidity and hope, see how well we're doing with climate change, or environmental regulations.

I think instead of being pessimistic about the inevitability of disasters, we should try and prevent them. We're doing better than nothing about climate change, and we can keep trying to do more even though the damage is already great.

I think these are separate concerns. On one hand, yes, we should try to do what we can. On the other, when talking about things like AI development, we shouldn't be as naive to expect that everyone will play nice.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now we’re just waiting to see whether the censors or the reactionaries win If you think these are the two camps, I recommend googling the words “Republican” and “book bans.”

There's a pretty big difference in wanting sexually explicit material out of classrooms, and outright book bans... I'd argue neither side has a stellar record today, but it's the other that's more speech stifling...

Acknowledging queer people exist or even that sex itself exists is not in anyway explicit. This is just American bigotry and Puritanism run amok.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? I think true AGI super intelligence (a lot smarter than us) does have the potential to destroy humanity, and as the current leader, Open AI seems closest to achieving that. Of course superintelligence might be far away or just unachievable, but we don't know that. And I agree Altman's statement also builds OAI's moat, but that doesn't make his statement false.

But isn’t it closer in the same way that I’m closer to Japan than my dog who is sitting 1 meter to the east of me is? We are still both 10,000 km away

Right, I can get closer to the moon than you by climbing the right tree in the right part of the world at the right time. But that doesn't mean I'm any closer to inventing rocketships.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#120
post #73

This is such a great time to be a lawyer. Just play any AI like a slot machine until it gives you incorrect results and then sue. Probability is a bitch.

But dont they have clauses like. Our models sometimes hallucinate, give out wrong answers. Basically use at your own risk and cannot sue us if it hoes wrong

Exceptions exist, that's why we have courts, to figure it out.

You can't put up a sign on a rollercoaster that says it's going to kill customers if they ride and then get away scot-free when someone dies. Though it took a court to say that, I'm sure.

Same thing here. openai is saying things, and then a court is going to have to decide if that's acceptable.

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