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Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

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Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#121

Post by I_am_uncreative »

coryfklein wrote: post #118

If you think there is even a 5% chance that super-human level artificial general intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity, then the recipe for how to make AGI is of itself an infohazard far worse than the recipe for methamphetamines/nuclear weapons/etc, and precedent shows that we do in fact lock down access to the latter as a matter of public safety. No, GPT-4 is not AGI and is not going to spell the end of t…

This is such a stupid take. Even if there was a 5% chance of super-human level AGI destroying the world, we're not going to reduce that risk by restricting general computation. If it is possible to create AGI, it will happen, regardless of what the law stipulates.

This is unlike pseudoephedrine or nuclear weapons in that literally anyone with a computer could potentially create it.

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#122

Post by coryfklein »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #55
jph00 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not at all true that "AI is no different than proliferating nuclear weapons". The project manager for the Nuclear Information Project said ( https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/3/23779794/artific... ) : """ But what we are seeing too often is a calorie-free media panic where prominent individuals — including scientists and experts we deeply admire — keep showing up in our push alerts because they vaguely…

Furthermore, there is little or no defense against a full scale nuclear attack, but a benevolent AI should be sufficient defense against a hostile AI. I think the true fear is that in an AI age, humans are not "useful" and the market and economy will look very different. With AI growing our food, clothing us, building us houses, and entertaining us, humans don't really have anything to do all day.

And the best path to a benevolent AI is to do what? The difficulty here is that making an AGI benevolent is harder than making an AGI with unpredictable moral values.

Do we have reason to believe that giving the ingredients of AGI out to the general public accelerates safety research faster than capabilities research?

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#123

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

imiric wrote: post #107
ayakang31415 wrote: post #79

I still don't have any sense of urgency to create and to regulate AI safety protocols. AI that we call is just software with tuned parameters. You input data into it, and it does some computation on chips, and it spits out data. That is all it needs. My sense is that no harm can come from it, but some harm can be inflicted by people who use it.

> My sense is that no harm can come from it, but some harm can be inflicted by people who use it. The concern is not that AI is harmful on its own, and that it will unleash a Skynet scenario. It's precisely that it will be abused by humans in ways we can't even predict yet. The same can be said about any technology, but AI is particularly concerning because of its unlimited potential, extremely fast pace of developme…

The thing you say the concern is not, is exactly what my primary concern is!

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#124

Post by akira2501 »

coryfklein wrote: post #118

If you think there is even a 5% chance that super-human level artificial general intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity, then the recipe for how to make AGI is of itself an infohazard far worse than the recipe for methamphetamines/nuclear weapons/etc, and precedent shows that we do in fact lock down access to the latter as a matter of public safety. No, GPT-4 is not AGI and is not going to spell the end of t…

> could be catastrophic for humanity,

I do not. How does super human intelligence, on it's own, represent any sort of risk for "humanity?"

> then the recipe for how to make AGI is of itself an infohazard [...] nuclear weapons

I know how to make nuclear weapons; however, I cannot enrich the fuel enough to actually produce a working version.

> and yet we regulate its access

Does that actually achieve what it claims to achieve?

> Do I trust OpenAI to make all the morally right choices here?

OpenAI has a language model. They do not have AGI or anything approaching AGI.

> No, but I think their incentives are in fact more aligned with the public good

We could debate that, but for your assertions to hold any water, we'd have to agree that they're incapable of making mistakes as well. Far easier to skip the lofty debate and recognize the reality of the world we live in.

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#125

Post by drdaeman »

coryfklein wrote: post #118

If you think there is even a 5% chance that super-human level artificial general intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity, then the recipe for how to make AGI is of itself an infohazard far worse than the recipe for methamphetamines/nuclear weapons/etc, and precedent shows that we do in fact lock down access to the latter as a matter of public safety. No, GPT-4 is not AGI and is not going to spell the end of t…

> but neither is pseudoephedrine itself a methamphetemine and yet we regulate its access

I don't think it's a correct argument.

I believe it's not a secret how metamphetamine is made (though I don't know it myself, but I'm too lazy to research for a sake of argument), and it's known pseudoephedrine is a precursor chemical. Thus, the regulation.

No one - I believe - knows how to build an AGI. There is no recipe. It is unknown if transformer models, deep learning or something else is a component, and if that's even a correct path or a dead end. What is known that neither of those is an AGI, and there's no known way to make those AGI. Thus, I'd say the comparison is not correct.

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#126

Post by coryfklein »

jph00 wrote: post #30
chakalakasp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. AI is no different than proliferating nuclear weapons or deciding to burn all the fossil fuels -- on an individual competitive level, it makes sense to do this more and more to remain competitive. On a systems-whole level it leads to catastrophe. The whole tragedy of the commons thing, or, more recently described, the Moloch problem. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation... Yann LeC…

It is not at all true that "AI is no different than proliferating nuclear weapons". The project manager for the Nuclear Information Project said ( https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/3/23779794/artific... ) : """ But what we are seeing too often is a calorie-free media panic where prominent individuals — including scientists and experts we deeply admire — keep showing up in our push alerts because they vaguely…

Color me surprised that that the project manager for the Nuclear Information Project is in fact a subject matter expert for nuclear power and not AGI x-risk. Why would they be working on nuclear information if they didn't think it the most important thing?

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#128

Post by hackinthebochs »

chasd00 wrote: post #106
hackinthebochs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to know how a chess computer will beat me to know that it will beat me. If the only way you will entertain x-risk is to have a specific scenario described to you that you personally find plausible, you will never see any risk coming that isn't just a variation of what you are already familiar with. Do not constrain yourself to considering only that which can be thought up by your limited imagination.

> Do not constrain yourself to considering only that which can be thought up by your limited imagination. Don't let your limited imagination constrain you're ability to live in fear of what could be. Is that what you mean? So it's no longer sufficient to live in fear of everything, now you need to live in fear even when you can't think of anything to be afraid of. No thanks.

Instead of taking the most obtuse reading of my point, how about you try to engage intelligently? There are some manner of unmaterialized risk that we can anticipate through analysis and reasonable extrapolation. When that risk has high negative utility, we should rationally engage with its possibility and consider ways to mitigate it.

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#129

Post by jairuhme »

coryfklein wrote: post #118

If you think there is even a 5% chance that super-human level artificial general intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity, then the recipe for how to make AGI is of itself an infohazard far worse than the recipe for methamphetamines/nuclear weapons/etc, and precedent shows that we do in fact lock down access to the latter as a matter of public safety. No, GPT-4 is not AGI and is not going to spell the end of t…

When you say 'catastrophic for humanity', what exactly do you think would happen? And how would regulating models thwart this? Bad actors who are motivated surely will get around US restrictions. I'd imagine when the internet first came around that there was similar sentiment. "People will have access to information on how to create bombs, we need to regulate this so that doesn't happen!"

Re: Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

#130

Post by skybrian »

pdonis wrote: post #41
skybrian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree entirely. We shouldn't be hoping for a complex ecosystem of small, shady companies nobody ever heard of, like happened with ad networks [1]. Or worse, a scam-filled ecosystem like cryptocurrency. Or worse, an underground ecosystem like the criminals who share cracked passwords and credit card numbers. Big companies are easier to regulate. [1] https://lumapartners.com/lumascapes/

> Big companies are easier to regulate. But the problem isn't regulating the big companies, or the smaller companies, or underground entities. The problem is state-level adversaries like China who might misuse a technology, whether it's AI or anything else. Such adversaries can't be regulated by laws or executive orders or UN declarations; they have proven that many times in the past. The only way to control them is…

State-level actors are one problem. People defrauding the elderly are a different problem. Ransomware is a third problem. They are all problems.

The idea that there's only one important problem is a fallacy.

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