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Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

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21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#21
post #6

> This year with the introduction of ChatGPT-4 we may have seen the invention of something with the equivalent impact on society of explosives, mass communication, computers, recombinant DNA/CRISPR and nuclear weapons – all rolled into one application. I just can't stand this kind of language. ChatGPT is quite useful but have you tried to ask it something serious that is not twitter worthy? We are not there yet. And…

>These are fears that we live with and will forever live with, but we can't live lives only in fear.

But we can't lie to ourselves about reality in order to prevent fear either.

The opinions from Elon musk, to Sam Altman to even the person who started it all Geoffrey Hinton are actually inline with the blog post.

Hinton even says things like these chatGPT models literally can understand things you tell it.

Should we call climate scientists fear mongers because they talk about a catastrophic but realistic future? I think not, and the same can be said for the people I mentioned.

I personally think these experts are right, but you are also right in that "we are not there yet". But given the trajectory of the technology for the past decade we basically have a very good chance of being "there" very soon.

Agi that is perceptually equivalent to a person more intelligent then us is now a very realistic prospect within our lifetimes.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#22
post #6

> This year with the introduction of ChatGPT-4 we may have seen the invention of something with the equivalent impact on society of explosives, mass communication, computers, recombinant DNA/CRISPR and nuclear weapons – all rolled into one application. I just can't stand this kind of language. ChatGPT is quite useful but have you tried to ask it something serious that is not twitter worthy? We are not there yet. And…

[deleted]

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#23
post #16
post #6

> This year with the introduction of ChatGPT-4 we may have seen the invention of something with the equivalent impact on society of explosives, mass communication, computers, recombinant DNA/CRISPR and nuclear weapons – all rolled into one application. I just can't stand this kind of language. ChatGPT is quite useful but have you tried to ask it something serious that is not twitter worthy? We are not there yet. And…

Soon enough they'll argue it's a better invention than oxygen

Oxygen wasn't invented.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#24
post #6

> This year with the introduction of ChatGPT-4 we may have seen the invention of something with the equivalent impact on society of explosives, mass communication, computers, recombinant DNA/CRISPR and nuclear weapons – all rolled into one application. I just can't stand this kind of language. ChatGPT is quite useful but have you tried to ask it something serious that is not twitter worthy? We are not there yet. And…

If anything, this might be like a web 1.0. .

It is better than the promises we had in 1980s where we went through an AI winter.

But it is going to take some time for people an corporations to figure out if it is all hype, the next crypto, or if there are some real applications for this new technology.

Look at the cloud, S3 was launched in 2006, but you did not see much about it on Harvard Business Review till 2011. And even then, it was potential promises of what the cloud could do. Things did not really pick up till 2016.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#25
post #2

I get the concern expressed, but the fear-mongering is getting a little much these days. Innovation can be scary, and at this time, people are making assumptions based purely on things that we do not know. How this will impact the future of business and technology has yet to be determined. Only time will tell. We must be careful as we chart this new scary world of large language models and Artificial Intelligence and…

>Innovation can be scary, and at this time, people are making assumptions based purely on things that we do not know.

Here's the thing. Before chatGPT, it was pretty much a given that society was under more or less zero risk of losing jobs to AI.

Now with GPT-4 that zero risk has changed to unknown risk.

That is a huge change and it is a change that would be highly unwise to not address.

I agree that only time will tell. But as humans we act on predictions of the future. We all have to make a bet on what that future will be.

Right now this blog post is writing about a scenario that although speculative is also very realistic. It is, again, unwise to dismiss the possibility of a realistic scenario.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#26

National Academy of Sciences must not only take a leading role here in creating the platform for discussions tasked with advising the government and public, it also must spearhead creating a national MI infrastructure for public use. Department of Energy already runs many high-tech national labratories and we need a Sandia or Los Alamos for AI , for national, public use.

There's potential for manipulation here by the government.

I would qualify your post with open source usage of the model, training algorithms and training data as well.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#27
post #5

Disaster capitalism! Seriously though, if you are interested in addressing the real, presently-timed harms of large language models (and the capitalists who deploy them), this letter is just the thing: Statement from the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots on the “AI pause” letter Timnit Gebru (DAIR), Emily M. Bender (University of Washington), Angelina McMillan-Major (University of Washington), Margaret Mitchell (H…

They are stopping only just short of saying that myopism is The One True Faith.

(They literally call out "Longtermism" as being elitist and the root of all evil.)

I mean, sure, one should look at one's feet from time to time to make sure one doesn't trip. However, these people come across as exclusively myopic and uncompromising in their position at that.

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#28
Could someone not worried about AGI, please explain their position?

Specifically what makes you so confident that someone won't end up creating an AGI that's unaligned? Or alternative, if you believe an unaligned AGI might be created why are you confident that it won't cause mass destruction?

I guess the way I see this is that even if you believe there is a 5-10% chance of AGI could go rouge and say take out global power grids, why is this a chance worth taking? Especially if we can try to slow capability progress as much as possible while funding alignment research?

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#29
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point about living in fear. Though take the examples - nuclear weapons or biotech - as you say both have huge potential for harm. However both are regulated and relatively inaccessible to the average person. While training models like ChatGPT is still relatively inaccessible for the average person, using them is potentially not. One of the features of software is the almost zero cost of copying - making pro…

There s the optimistic scenario that GPT 17 will build me a spaceship to escape this blue planet and its nuclear dangers

Directly or in the Jeff Bezos sense of making you enough money? :-)

Re: Playing with Fire – ChatGPT

#30
Great piece. Although, I do not agree with "labs keeping safe" look at what happened with the pandemic. Or perhaps, the safety measures that are currently in place need to be redefined. The world is at conflict, everyone is in a race. Dominance is at play. I think it is silly to even consider the halt of AI development. The faster we reach the maximum output, the quicker we will realize the breaking points.
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