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The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

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Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#121

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

zozbot234 wrote: post #95
robot-wrangler wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell that broad alignment between people is natural just by looking at the effort that corporations and governments make to undermine it. Alignment between people is perhaps not a state of nature , but it really is a pretty normal consequence of a fairly small amount of education and of middle-class existence that is left to itself (i.e. without brain-washing and deliberately working to create out-groups). If…

> You can tell that broad alignment between people is natural It really isn't. The whole point of the market system is to collectively align people's actions towards a shared target of "Pareto-optimized total welfare". And even then the alignment is approximate and heavily constrained due to a combination of transaction costs (which also account for e.g. externalities) and information asymmetries. But transaction cos…

Please read David Graeber.

What you describe is factually not how human society formed.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#122

Post by _DeadFred_ »

dns_snek wrote: post #100
zozbot234 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can tell that broad alignment between people is natural It really isn't. The whole point of the market system is to collectively align people's actions towards a shared target of "Pareto-optimized total welfare". And even then the alignment is approximate and heavily constrained due to a combination of transaction costs (which also account for e.g. externalities) and information asymmetries. But transaction cos…

Broad alignment =/= Wealth maximization.

The market aligned us with children working in sweat shops after we outlawed it by convincing us it was OK if it was foreign kids and we got to share in pocketing the savings not just the evil factory owner.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#123

Post by bigbadfeline »

zozbot234 wrote: post #101
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting you single out commercial and government entities but not people. What defines the difference? Bureaucracy? Concentration of resources? Legal theory? Not OP, but for me, kind family and friends, and various feel-good pieces of fiction and other writing, at least let me envision the possibility of a perfectly kind/dedicated/innocent/naieve individual who is truly on my side 100%. But even that is mostly…

> each party's profit is necessairly limited by the other party's Profit is obtained by maximizing traded benefits and minimizing costs. None of this requires taking anything away from any other party.

> Profit is obtained by maximizing traded benefits and minimizing costs.

Gain is obtained by the easiest means available. Your narrow definition of profit is seldom the easiest, cheating is far "superior" especially when it's legal for some.

> None of this requires taking anything away from any other party.

"required" and "preferred" (e.g. because it's far easier) are different like night and day.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#124

Post by seizethecheese »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #46

"Alignment" In what world would I ever expect a commercial (or governmental) entity to have precise alignment with me personally, or even with my own business? I argue those relationships are necessarily adversarial, and trusting anyone else to align their "AI" tool to my goals, needs, and/or desires is a recipe for having my livelihood completely reassigned into someone else's wallet.

Why would relationships with a commercial entity be "necessarily adversarial"? A commercial relationship depends on the product providing more utility than the cost (for the consumer) and providing more revenue than cost (for the commercial entity). This means that while some components of the relationship may be adversarial in some areas, it cannot really be entirely adversarial.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#125

Post by zozbot234 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #121
zozbot234 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can tell that broad alignment between people is natural It really isn't. The whole point of the market system is to collectively align people's actions towards a shared target of "Pareto-optimized total welfare". And even then the alignment is approximate and heavily constrained due to a combination of transaction costs (which also account for e.g. externalities) and information asymmetries. But transaction cos…

Please read David Graeber. What you describe is factually not how human society formed.

AIUI David Graeber famously pointed out that people in small groups can form the equivalent of a "market" simply by exchanging favours ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine") in an informal gift economy, without any money-like token or external unit of account. That's quite in line with what I said.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#126

Post by a_t48 »

bitwize wrote: post #106
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting you single out commercial and government entities but not people. What defines the difference? Bureaucracy? Concentration of resources? Legal theory? Not OP, but for me, kind family and friends, and various feel-good pieces of fiction and other writing, at least let me envision the possibility of a perfectly kind/dedicated/innocent/naieve individual who is truly on my side 100%. But even that is mostly…

> But even that is mostly imagination and fiction... although convincing others of that isn't necessairly an argument worth making. There was a Japanese visual novel in the 2000s about a girl who was your personal maid, and was so devoted would always take your side in any conflict, accept and support you just the way you are, even if you were a horrid person to your friends. It turns out she was a ghost, or a kind o…

Which VN is this?

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#127

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

zozbot234 wrote: post #125
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read David Graeber. What you describe is factually not how human society formed.

AIUI David Graeber famously pointed out that people in small groups can form the equivalent of a "market" simply by exchanging favours ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine") in an informal gift economy, without any money-like token or external unit of account. That's quite in line with what I said.

You understanding is mistaken. Graeber's "everyday communism" is not a market, and his whole larger point is that contorting everything to the lens of markets is simply ahistorical and unempirical.

I'd strongly suggest reading his books. They profoundly changed my understanding of how human institutions and society form.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#128

Post by zozbot234 »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #127
zozbot234 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI David Graeber famously pointed out that people in small groups can form the equivalent of a "market" simply by exchanging favours ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine") in an informal gift economy, without any money-like token or external unit of account. That's quite in line with what I said.

You understanding is mistaken. Graeber's "everyday communism" is not a market, and his whole larger point is that contorting everything to the lens of markets is simply ahistorical and unempirical. I'd strongly suggest reading his books. They profoundly changed my understanding of how human institutions and society form.

Unless it's some sort of complete post-scarcity, it has to be understandable in market terms. What happens if people try to free-ride on the whole "communist" system? If they get excluded from its benefits, that's equivalent to enforcing some bundle of property rights.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#129

Post by themafia »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #98
themafia wrote: post #53

> They also build secondary LLMs which double-check that the core LLM is not telling people how to build pipe bombs Such a fear mongering position. You can learn to build pipe bombs already. Take any chemical reaction that produces gas and heat and contain it. Congratulations, you have a pipe bomb. Meanwhile.. just.. ask an LLM if you can mix certain cleaning chemicals safely. > I see four moats that could prevent th…

> Meanwhile.. just.. ask an LLM if you can mix certain cleaning chemicals safely. the cost of the wrong answer to this question is so incredibly high that I hope nobody is sincerely asking an LLM for this information. The things people trust to "machine that gives convincing answers that are correct 90% of the time" continue to shock me

> is so incredibly high that I hope nobody is sincerely asking an LLM for this information

Google trumps the search results with it's LLM box. There's only one reason to do that. They know their audience is not engaging in discretion.

> The things people trust to "machine that gives convincing answers that are correct 90% of the time" continue to shock me

People are having intimate relationships with chat bots. There's a deeper sociological problem here.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#130

Post by dgb23 »

sigbottle wrote: post #52
jagged-chisel wrote: post #46

"Alignment" In what world would I ever expect a commercial (or governmental) entity to have precise alignment with me personally, or even with my own business? I argue those relationships are necessarily adversarial, and trusting anyone else to align their "AI" tool to my goals, needs, and/or desires is a recipe for having my livelihood completely reassigned into someone else's wallet.

Interesting you single out commercial and government entities but not people. What defines the difference? Bureaucracy? Concentration of resources? Legal theory? I guess I'm trying to wonder why this line of thinking (in theory) doesn't turn to paranoia about everybody. I don't know much ethics or political theory or anything.

The issue is power.

I'm not an expert in political theory or ethics either, but in my worldview, power relationships matter in these discussions. I believe power and responsibility should go hand in hand, and I hold entities to a standard that is proportional to their power to influence others lives.

If an entity's power is decentralized, for example when it is democratically organized to some degree, then that disperses both power and responsibility.

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