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Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

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Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#191

Post by matheusmoreira »

pas wrote: post #177
matheusmoreira wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure. "Oversight". Funny how that only ever seems to benefit governments and entrenched corporate interests. Can't let normal citizens have free computing, lest they start encrypting things or violating copyright at massive scales. Now the new boogeyman is "unrestricted" AI. Can't let people have that, it might provide people instructions about sarin gas manufacturing or something. The government intelligence a…

funny, yet false. there are clear benefits to having the FDA, SEC, FTC, EPA and so on around. there's a clear benefit to having fire inspectors, and there's a clear benefit to the mandate of 2 stairs per multi-story building. there's a clear benefit to the requirement of demonstration of efficacy in front of the FDA. there's a clear benefit to having clean air. of course there are clear drawbacks too. most of Europe…

> but these are arguments for reform, not for scorched earth

We're never going to "reform" this system. We're up against trillion dollar industries with unlimited lobbying power, governments bold enough to ignore the constitutional rights of their own citizens.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#192

Post by Gud »

bsenftner wrote: post #123
vouaobrasil wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely disagree. Technologists understand the true nature of AI and can thus predict its uses. Moreover, if technologists realize this problem of how AI will inevitably be used, their voice will be a powerful message that even those who enjoy math and science are fearful of AI.

Nope, nope. Technologists do not understand the true nature of AI . What technologists know they can rarely communicate, and even less so to a general public. Technology developers are not some special deep understanders that ordinary humans are not; we just have more time spent in our specialization than they, as they have in their specializations which we do not. If anything, technology developers, due to our speci…

Just because many technologists are poor communicators, doesn't mean all are.

Carl Sagan.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#193

Post by isthatafact »

93po wrote: post #162
isthatafact wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worldcoin scam suggests to me that Altman is likely to do evil, even if he might have good intentions.

It’s exhaustingly inaccurate to plainly label WC a scam

yes, not everyone would consider it to be a scam, but it seems strange that his worldcoin has been largely ignored in these discussions of the implications of his leadership. I think worldcoin reveals a lot about him.

I am very hesitant to trust charismatic people like Altman, even before hearing of his worldcoin.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#194

Post by Schiendelman »

ethanbond wrote: post #184
Schiendelman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean Ilya’s public statement, and the board walking back their statement… there’s a lot.

When did the board walk back their statement? Ilya as an individual seems to have broken from the board, but that's not "a press release" nor the board walking anything back.

They walked back their statement here, albeit indirectly: https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/openai-memo-altman-firing-m...

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#195

Post by ethanbond »

Schiendelman wrote: post #194
ethanbond wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did the board walk back their statement? Ilya as an individual seems to have broken from the board, but that's not "a press release" nor the board walking anything back.

They walked back their statement here, albeit indirectly: https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/openai-memo-altman-firing-m...

“This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board” is not, on any planet I am aware of, walking back “Sam was not completely candid with the board.”

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#196

Post by pas »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #191
pas wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

funny, yet false. there are clear benefits to having the FDA, SEC, FTC, EPA and so on around. there's a clear benefit to having fire inspectors, and there's a clear benefit to the mandate of 2 stairs per multi-story building. there's a clear benefit to the requirement of demonstration of efficacy in front of the FDA. there's a clear benefit to having clean air. of course there are clear drawbacks too. most of Europe…

> but these are arguments for reform, not for scorched earth We're never going to "reform" this system. We're up against trillion dollar industries with unlimited lobbying power, governments bold enough to ignore the constitutional rights of their own citizens.

... that again seems like a very useless model of the world. regulations change, sometimes for the worse sometimes for the better. of course we know that when populism flies high and the wolves are elected to keep the sheep safe, well, you know, we have always been at war with Oceania. Supreme Court justices were always allowed to accept gifts.

social movements, radicals come and go, trillion dollar industries can too.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#197

Post by hollerith »

Zolde wrote: post #173
hollerith wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how healthy smart young people are always in a hurry to accomplish something or another? There's good reason to expect that the first AI with dangerous cognitive capacities will be like that. It's likely to the turn the Earth and Moon into spaceships because that is the fastest way to exert an effect on matter far away (for which space ships and lots of fuel is needed). Sparing Earth and disassembling Mars a…

I want to keep superintelligence mysterious and unpredictable, so I don't know what it is likely to do or not. I do think that "being in a hurry" is not something felt by an AI system, unless you add a self-disabling timer with your tasks, coincidentally avoiding turning the Earth and the Moon into spaceships, because it only has 30 minutes to do the dishes, and not enough time left for world domination. I also see A…

I want to avoid being killed, which conflicts with your desire for mystery and unpredictability.

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#198

Post by supertimor »

shunyaekam wrote: post #178
starbugs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is: Humans are status-seeking actors acting in our self-interest. It's literally in our genes. Could you please enlighten me what gene exactly that would be? > For example: Encapsule us in pods like The Matrix and build a tailored simulation to impose "AI communism", in order to protect us from climate change and each other? Are you serious?

I cannot give you a specific gene but I think my point still holds. Why would machines be interested in rivalry over resources or territory? Like a pond of water? Or women? We can easily see why animals and humans are though.

>Why would machines be interested in rivalry over resources or territory? Like a pond of water? Or women?

Which one do you consider “women” here? Territory or a resource?

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#199

Post by tnecniv »

loveparade wrote: post #41
rramadass wrote: post #6

Finally! Somebody has said it plainly. Sam Altman is merely another "Tech Executive" out for himself and his buddies making money off of true path-breaking researchers. "AI Trailblazer", "Helping Humanity with AGI" etc. was all bullshit.

I think people have yet to realize that this whole AI Safety thing is complete BS. It's just another veil, like Effective Altruism, to get good PR and build a career around. The only people who truly believe this AI safety stuff are those with no technical knowledge or expertise.

Well I think it’s a bit harder to parse out for most people. Effective altruism is easily seen as garbage when you learn the definition.

AI Safety is a bit more nuanced. I think there’s a lot of issues that are nonsense like having an “aligned AGI.” Aligned with whom? I could ostensibly envision you aligning it with a single person but aligning it with “humanity” is infeasible because humans are unaligned with each other. However there is an actual technical problem worth solving in alignment, which is basically matching the output of the AI with what the human intends not what the human asks.

Moreover, AI has been improperly used already in ways that are plausibly avoidable. A classic example is algorithmically approving bank loans leading to members of ethnic groups getting denied at a higher rate due to their zip code, which is likely irrelevant to the loan. The designers of the algorithm weren’t explicitly trying to be racist (that would have massive legal ramifications on top of just being plainly unethical, but maybe they did it intentionally and I forgot), they screwed up and didn’t realize they produced an algorithm unaligned with their intentions. Figuring out how to avoid scenarios like that through either methodology or algorithmically is an interesting and much more tractable research problem than making an “AI that benefits all of humanity.”

Re: Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

#200

Post by shunyaekam »

supertimor wrote: post #198
shunyaekam wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot give you a specific gene but I think my point still holds. Why would machines be interested in rivalry over resources or territory? Like a pond of water? Or women? We can easily see why animals and humans are though.

>Why would machines be interested in rivalry over resources or territory? Like a pond of water? Or women? Which one do you consider “women” here? Territory or a resource?

In this context, a resource.
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