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Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

futureoflife.org

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Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#121

Post by kelseyfrog »

tazjin wrote: post #101
kelseyfrog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI is a break-capitalism lottery ticket I'm willing to entertain. If the marginal cost of labor collapses to zero then either we'll get robot police or finally be free to pursue lives of leisure.

Take the time to read a very pessimistic take like (like [0]) and see if you reconsider. [0]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a...

I wish it was more convincing.

As it stands, it says more about the author's egoistic view of humanity than of AI. Imagine for a second taking Feuerbach's The Essence of Religion and applying it to Descartes' rationality and Plato's nous. We'd get a critique of the rational human's construction of his own ideal - the essence of intellect.

AI threatens this ideal and ego-threats get sublimated into existential threats by those unable to understand themselves well enough to express themselves directly.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#122

Post by musicale »

Animats wrote: post #65
christkv wrote: post #53

Can an AGI be controlled, and if it is, who will dictate its actions and to whom will the benefits accrue. What happens to the service economy and the political stability when the middle class paper pushed get decimated.

> Who will dictate its actions and to whom will the benefits accrue? Corporations, of course. Capitalist society has never achieved a consensus on the proper limits of corporate power. There is a school of thought, popularized by Milton Friedman, that says the only duty of corporations is to their stockholders. This is about to backfire. If we treat AIs as a component of corporate power, there are few limits on what…

Outperforming CEOs seems like a very low benchmark in many cases.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#123

Post by dougmwne »

kajaktum wrote: post #21
dougmwne wrote: post #3

[flagged]

So do you agree that nations should be able to freely develop/discover nuclear production? Edit: We actually don't want people to develop something "too good". There are some things in the past century that have been "too good". Plastics are too good. So are nuclear weapons. Completely powerful AIs and machines that can displace jobs of millions of people are too good. If there's an AI tomorrow that can replace every…

Sure, the powerful countries all have them, which cancels out their threat. Should the US not develop this tech and let the Chinese be the sole AI superpower?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#124

Post by ChatGTP »

zirgs wrote: post #50
ChatGTP wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is out in the open now. The methods, the algorithms, heck even powerful base model weights from Meta. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is clearly visible for all. The capabilities are emerging. The race is on. It’s not going to stop till there’s a winner. You laugh but I think your view is flawed because your belief is, “we have to create an AGI because everyone else will if we don’t” The definiti…

You can't even convince Russia to stop a war that they are clearly losing. Good luck convincing them to stop working on AI research.

I don't for a minute support what Russia is doing but I think if we lived in a less hostile, conflict focused, conquer all share little world, that conflict wouldn't happen.

As an American I know you think Russia is wrong, but it doesn't take a LLM to see that the invasion of Iraq was not all that different, the excuse for that war was that they had access to weapons of mass destruction so they needed to be wiped out.

Did you ever see any weapons of mass destruction?

The world is too small for these mindsets now. We need to grow up.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#125

Post by pdonis »

sp527 wrote: post #77
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #67

I'm really disappointed to see the HN reaction of straight up scoffing at this like it's irreversible and so let's just step on the gas. It's some weird combination of techno-utopianism and nihilism and good old elitism.

Almost everyone here will be fine in a world in which only certain non-renewable scarce resources have any value, combined with impending massive currency deflation. Even a rank and file tier 2/3 engineer will manage to live a princely life in that new reality assuming (s)he saved up enough. Hardly anyone in the tech community is capable of truly empathizing with the vast majority of people, who are born with none of…

> a world in which only certain non-renewable scarce resources have any value

If you think this is the world "AI" is leading us toward, I think you need to think again. There are a huge range of skills that only humans can provide, and that will continue to be true. GPT-3 can't fix your plumbing or your HVAC when it breaks. It can't fix your car. It can't build houses. It can't build roads. It can't build computers. And on and on and on...

Nor are AI enthusiasts trying to get "AI" to do any of these things.

Humans are real-world creatures with real-world needs that we supply to each other by free markets, specialization, and trade. The "tech community" might take all this for granted, but that doesn't mean it just happens by magic. It happens because real humans do real work. "AI" is not going to take that over any time soon.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#127

Post by jakeinspace »

JohnFen wrote: post #88
jakeinspace wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to the politics that would come out of 10-20% of the previously middle class becoming instantly redundant and out of (middle-salary) work. That’s the fast path to fascism, unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

> unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls. Which are not going to happen.

Something more approachable would be dropping payroll taxes to zero, or even making them negative for some positions, and significantly increasing corporate and capital gains.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#128

Post by dougmwne »

shamino wrote: post #6
dougmwne wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I mean, yeah, same thought after seeing the signatories. What are some of the cliches being used around here ? Toothpaste is out of the tub? Arrow has left the bow. The dye is cast. The ship has sailed. (Thanks ChatGPT).

The pee is in the pool. The black swan has left the barn.

And yeah, I had a laugh at the signatories. Of course my heart goes out to the non-billionaires that might be out of a job. Or maybe us lucky duckies are going to travel the world on our new basic income trust funds?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#129

Post by paulryanrogers »

pineaux wrote: post #70
jakeinspace wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to the politics that would come out of 10-20% of the previously middle class becoming instantly redundant and out of (middle-salary) work. That’s the fast path to fascism, unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

This is isn't speculating, this is truthing.

Truthing as in theory quakery, not backed by evidence?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#130

Post by pdonis »

petilon wrote: post #68

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? You don't necessarily need jobs because you don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that cou…

> AI/robots will generate wealth at an unprecedented scale. Food, clothing and shelter will be plentiful.

How is this going to work? "AI" can't make any of these things. "AI" is not the magic machine PG describes. It's not even close.

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