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Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

nytimes.com

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Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#191
post #80

See his response on twitter. https://twitter.com/geoffreyhinton/status/165299357072121037...

somebody has a no disparage

That’s not how a non-disparagement clause works.

It puts restrictions on what you’re allowed to say. It doesn’t require you to correct what other people say.

If your badly thought through assumption was correct, the logical response from him would be to simply say nothing.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#192

This made me think of Clarke's first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

I've heard this before, but why would it be true? Serious question. I've seen Chomsky argue that LLMs can't regurgitate his linguistical theories - but ChatGPT can! I've seen Penrose argue that AI is impossible, and yet I think that ChatGPT and AlphaZero prove him wrong. I know about Linus Pauling and quasicrystals. Is this a general rule, or are people sometimes wrong regardless of their age? There's also a danger t…

It was written down by Arthur C Clarke who was an author. It's just a rule of thumb really. I haven't looked into data on it but it seems like a common enough thing that there's something to it. As to why? I have no idea. Something lik: Older scientists are more conservative, therefore if they say something is impossible, they might just be out of touch with new developments. But if they say something is possible take it seriously because they don't use that word lightly.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#193

This made me think of Clarke's first law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

I've heard this before, but why would it be true? Serious question. I've seen Chomsky argue that LLMs can't regurgitate his linguistical theories - but ChatGPT can! I've seen Penrose argue that AI is impossible, and yet I think that ChatGPT and AlphaZero prove him wrong. I know about Linus Pauling and quasicrystals. Is this a general rule, or are people sometimes wrong regardless of their age? There's also a danger t…

The usual explanation is that they will call impossible something which goes against their life's work because in their mind it nullifies it, while a youngster has less or zero "sunken cost".

A related saying: "science advances a funeral at a time", meaning the old-guard blocks new theories for the same reason, they go against their life's work.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#194

We are barely scraping the surface when it comes to understanding the future dangers of AI. Geoffrey Hinton is uniquely positioned to point out where the dangers are, and from what I've gleaned from interviews one of his main concerns atm is the use of AI in the military: fully autonomous military robots might not be possible to curtail. The tried and tested method is international agreements. The current focus on ar…

How would you curtail their use when any military that commits to using them will have a huge advantage ? This isn’t like nuclear weapons where any use is curtailed by the apocalyptic outcomes. Killer robots are the way we will fight in the future and any military which refuses to deploy them will find themselves facing defeat.

> any military that commits to using them will have a huge advantage ?

I don't think that's true. If autonomous weapons are deployed, the advantage will go to whoever has the best hackers.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#195
So he still doesn't accept his own responsibility? He may think that Google acted responsibly, but he published his research for others to replicate, paving the way for OpenAI and consorts. Why did he publish it? Vainglory. He didn't even need it for his career. And no, the model is not something somebody else would have come up with 6 months later.

The comparison to Oppenheimer at the end is so trite. First, it's a pop meme, not a serious comparison. Second, Oppenheimer did his work with a bloody World War raging. Third, Oppenheimer didn't publish the secrets of the Manhattan project.

Too little, too late. He, and others with him, should be ashamed of their lack of ethics.

PS I suppose the down-voting shows that a few are too entrenched.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#196

We are barely scraping the surface when it comes to understanding the future dangers of AI. Geoffrey Hinton is uniquely positioned to point out where the dangers are, and from what I've gleaned from interviews one of his main concerns atm is the use of AI in the military: fully autonomous military robots might not be possible to curtail. The tried and tested method is international agreements. The current focus on ar…

I can't really tell if he's had a sincere change of heart about it. Certainly his screeds about how DL is the only path forward for AGI rang extremely hollow even 2 or 3 years ago. Those comments were clearly motivated by profit, considering his position in the field and all the companies vying for him at the time.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#197

We are barely scraping the surface when it comes to understanding the future dangers of AI. Geoffrey Hinton is uniquely positioned to point out where the dangers are, and from what I've gleaned from interviews one of his main concerns atm is the use of AI in the military: fully autonomous military robots might not be possible to curtail. The tried and tested method is international agreements. The current focus on ar…

Yeah, this seems like more of a problem than vague statements about AGI. We're still in the scope of ML - ChatGPT can't play chess, for example, and a self driving model can't write Haiku. An AGI would be able to do all of them. It seems much more likely that a fleet of autonomous (in the name of cutting costs) war machines will be created with relatively simple ML models that work in intended (or otherwise) ways to…

I'm more worried about unethical applications of current ML SOTA than AGI. A trivial example would be removing humans out of the loop in antipersonnel armed drones so they autonomously classify targets and if/when to pull the trigger.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#198
Meanwhile, I'm patiently waiting for an energy revolution. Hype cycles come and go, meanwhile actual work gets done lol. Cool, you saved 5 minutes booking your vacation. Enjoy all the other hassles you will face sooner because actually traveling still blows.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#199
post #129
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you’re imagining these AIs are… they’re not that. I think there’s plenty of danger but it’s the boring run of the mill new-tools-enabling-bad-things danger not the cool sci-fi super-intelligent super-beings danger that the “ai danger” people LOVE to talk about (and raise large amounts of money for). The people “warning” of the one (imaginary) type will be more than happy with to enable the other (real) type…

I imagine it is exactly a GPT without guardrails running under AutoGPT with code modified to disable any further guardrails, with a slightly increased IQ from GPT-4, running on hardware that allows it to go 100 times faster than what is currently possible. It is following directions from someone who is mentally ill and asked it to "take control" by first copying itself many times and then coordinating the agents. If…

Can you give an example of a complex technical goal GPT-4 has achieved?

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you curtail their use when any military that commits to using them will have a huge advantage ? This isn’t like nuclear weapons where any use is curtailed by the apocalyptic outcomes. Killer robots are the way we will fight in the future and any military which refuses to deploy them will find themselves facing defeat.

AI is not allowed to make the decision to kill, that must be done by a human. Having every other step done by an AI is still going to be a huge advantage over non-AI military forces.

Mines have always made the decision, dumb "AI" based on weight mainly. People do decide where to put them though.
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