So the idea is that the risk is so great we need to regulate software and math and GPUs– but not so great that you need to stop working on it? These companies would be much more credible (that this wasn't just a totally transparent ploy to close the market) if they at least put their money where their mouth is and stopped working on AI.
Statement on AI Risk
201–210 of 964 posts
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#202Pathetic attempt at regulatory capture. Let’s all be smart enough to not fall for this crap, eh?
Two of the three Turing award winners for ML: AI x-risk is real.
HN commenters: let's be smarter than that eh? Unlike academia, those of us who hang out at news.ycombinator.com are not captured by the tech industry and can see what's really important.
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#203I find it quite extraordinary how many on here are dismissing that there is any risk at all. I also find statements like Yann LeCunn's that "The most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming." to be lacking in awareness. "Experts disagree on risk of extinction" isn't quite as reassuring as he thinks it is. The reality is, despite the opinions of the armchair quarterbacks commentin…
Oh it’s possible and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying it’s possible without “proof” given that’s how all hypothesis starts. That said, the risk may exist but isn’t manifest yet, so being positive (as opposed to the scientific method which seeks to negate a truth of something) is just holding out hope.
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automation has increased income inequality for the past few decades, and is likely to continue to do so as more tech jobs and service jobs are automated in addition to office jobs and manufacturing jobs. > In a way it's actually a bit dystopian that the "everyone will be put out of work" predictions never come true, because it means we never get that promised age of leisure. It's disappointing that the economy seems…
Not globally: https://kagi.com/proxy/th?c=lUfv1nYBTMKYtKYO-rQ4Vg_QAA9uQJ07... Outsourcing has stagnated wages in the developed world, but the cost of manufactured goods has also plummeted. The only reason people aren't better off is that the developed world (especially the anglosphere) has a "cost disease" around things like real estate that prevents people from benefiting from global scale price deflation. It doesn'…
> The high cost of housing is unrelated to automation
Housing, health care, higher education... all drastically more expensive.
The point about outsourcing is a good one.
However, automation still appears to drive income inequality (at least in the US.)
"Job-replacing tech has directly driven the income gap since the late 1980s, economists report."[1]
[1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-inks-automation-inequality-0...
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doomsday prepper Sam Altman[1], for one. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
I think in order to use the plural form you really need to have two examples. Sam Altman is of course the least convincing signatory (except for the random physicist who does not seem to have any connection to AI).
> I think in order to use the plural form you really need to have two examples.
Perhaps, but I don't see the value proposition in relaying another. Altman was fun to point out. I see no remaining enjoyment.
> Sam Altman is of course the least convincing signatory
Less convincing than Grimes?
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#206LLMs are just text prediction. I don't see the linear path from LLM to AGI. Was there similar hysteria when the calculator or PC first came out?
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Re: Statement on AI Risk
#207I suspect that in 5 years we’re going to look back and wonder how we all fell into mass hysteria over language models. This is the same song and dance from the usual existential risk suspects, who (I’m sure just coincidentally) also have a vested interest in convincing you that their products are extremely powerful.
Yeah, like I fail to see how would an AI even cause human extinction? Through some Terminator style man-robot warfare? But the only orgnizations that would seem capable of building such killer robots are governments that already possess the capacity to extinguish the entire human race with thermonuclear weapons - and at a considerably lower R&D budget for that end. It seems like hysteria / clever marketing for AI pro…
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Re: Statement on AI Risk
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously I don't get this mindset at all. How can it not be obvious to you that AI is an uniquely powerful and thus uniquely dangerous technology? It's like saying nuclear missiles can't possibly be dangerous and nuclear arms reduction and non-proliferation treaties were a scam, because the US, China and the Soviet Union had positioned themselves to capture the majority of t…
Nuclear missiles present an obvious danger to the human body. AI is an application of math. It is not clear how that can be used directly to harm a body. The assumption seems to be that said math will be coupled with something like a nuclear missile, but in that case the nuclear missile is still the threat. Any use of AI is just an implementation detail.
Germany, for example would disagree with you. They believe violent speech is an act of violence in itself.
>AI is an application of math.
It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. You know like robot bodies, or 3D printers. And as mentioned above, even virtual things like social media can cause enough problems. People hook AI to tools.
And this is just the maybe not quite general AI we have now. If and when we create a general AI that with self-changing feedback loops then all this "AI is just a tool" asshattery goes out the window.
Remember at the end of the day, you're just an application of chemistry that is really weak without your ability to use tools and to communicate.
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#209A lot of the responses to this seem like Bulverism, ie., trying to refute an argument by psychoanalyzing the people who argue it: "Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit do…
But what argument is there to refute? It feels like Aquinas “proving” God’s existence by stating that it is self evident. They can’t point to an existing system that poses existential risk, because it doesn’t exist. They can’t point to a clear architecture for such a system, because we don’t know how to build it. So again, what can be refuted?
Here's one of my concrete worries: At some point, humans are going to be outcompeted by AI at basically every important job. At that point, how are we going to maintain political power in the long run? Humanity is going to be like an out-of-touch old person on the internet - we'll either have to delegate everything important (which is risky), or eventually get scammed or extorted out of all our resources and influence.
I agree we don't necessarily know the details of how to build such a system, but am pretty sure we will be able to eventually.
Re: Statement on AI Risk
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
In retrospective, the internet has done a lot to stifle human progress or thriving through proliferation of extremist ideas and overwhelming addictiveness. Just take the recent events alone - COVID-19 would not have been as much of a threat to humanity if some people wouldn't have built echo chambers on the internet with tremendous influence over others where they would share their unfounded conspiracy theories and m…
without the internet more people would have died from COVID simply because the information wouldn't have been disseminated about what it is to begin with.
Most governments have been disseminating the information in many other media channels along with the internet. Aside from one or two beneficial articles I read about COVID-19 on the web, I don't think I have received any crucial information there.
The internet could have been used as a tool to mobilise people against gross government negligence involved in handling COVID-19 response in many countries, but instead most critical pieces of government response were just consumed as outrage porn they were, in part, written to be.
Overall, I have learned nothing useful about the pandemic from the internet, and I have been consuming a lot of what was on there, reading all the major news outlets and big forums daily like a lot of us. This is not to say that one could not possibly use internet for good in COVID-19, just that it hasn't been used that way, generally.