Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

platformer.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 466 posts

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#221

Post by IMTDb »

kramerger wrote: post #205
dmix wrote: post #115

Anyone paying close attention to the output of generic "AI ethics" people (especially on Twitter) should not be surprised that companies that when push comes to shove the businesses getting actually useful AI tools that are being tested by real people for real things generating real data, are starting to question the utility of the bulk of the crowd who skirted off hypotheticals for years to build their reputations a…

I think there is a lot of unjustified hatred for the AI ethics guys. From what I have seen, they have raised manu important issues so far, and led to many improvements both around ethics and AI in genetal. For example, the cops wanted to arrest people based on input from image recognition systems. Someone demonstrated that the leading system flagged multiple members of Congress as dangerous fugitives and that was the…

> Someone demonstrated that the leading system flagged multiple members of Congress as dangerous fugitives and that was the end of that.

That's not a question of ethics, it's a question of the model performance.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#222

Post by thrown123098 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #176
Dylan16807 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I supposed to know these terms?

Sorry, yes that wasn't clear. Scott Alexander coined most of them in "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" [1] Red & blue are exactly what a U.S reader would think they are. "Grey" is an attempt by Scott to define something else, loosely hacker-ish / rationalist (you can tell who he thinks the cool people are). "Rainbow tribe" I just made up, but I think you can guess what I mean now based on context. Alignme…

Odly enough at the wedding of a friend you could tell his friends were from the grey tribe because they all wore monochrome and his wife's friends from the rainbow tribe because they all wore rainbows.

There was no mixture between the two groups.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#224

Post by ironSkillet »

ketzo wrote: post #104
worrycue wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this has not caused mass social harm despite the tens of millions of users Isn’t it a bit early to tell? I can foresee ChatGPT being used to farm “karma” on social media sites to bot accounts to credibility on sites like Reddit - maybe even HN.

Yeah, this is like claiming lead ethyl in gas “hasn’t caused mass harm” in 1954. There’s absolutely zero way to know that yet.

The problem with measuring the "harm" of something like AI vs e.g. lead is that with lead there are direct first order chemical harmful effects that are indisputable. With AI, any harm will get expressed via complex social dynamics, which involve so many other variables as well.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#225

Post by poulpy123 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #48
echelon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is the case with literally all kinds of professional ethicists. Thanks to them, we do not routinely do scientific challenge trials and plenty of other valuable experiments, and in many cases are reduced to collecting significantly worse data and doing it very slowly and expensively.

which ones ?

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#226

Post by nradov »

6nf wrote: post #174
nradov wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that any group is capable of bringing AGI to life.

Ok so what’s your point? We can just ignore it? Or what.

Yes, that's my point. We can ignore it until there is some sign of progress towards a true AGI. Show me a machine as intelligent as a mouse.

This article is a bit dated but it gives a good explanation of the difference between the powerful but limited tools we have today versus a true AGI.

https://www.kurzweilai.net/what-is-artificial-intelligence

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#227

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Everything you see a big player do for ethics is for PR or legal reasons, for most companies.

Going green. Affirming diversity. Giving to charities. And of course, ethic committees.

When the cost of those outgrow the benefit they get from it, they throw it out of the window.

You know Bill Bernbach's quote: "A value isn't a value unless it costs you something."

It's not just for people. It's for corporation too.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#229

Post by hallqv »

1attice wrote: post #130

Former MS AI Platform IC here. The main value of this team was likely internal , as a sort of gauze bandage on the conscience of the progressives (like myself) that MSFT has tried to court. There was a time, not too long ago, where working at the new, 'refreshed' Microsoft meant ingesting an endless stream of news releases highlighting zero-carbon this, compostable cutlery that, and, of course, ethical AI. When Tegru…

Love this insider story

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#230

Post by j16sdiz »

AstralStorm wrote: post #198
jeremyjh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and the dangers of AI overlords have been known at least since the first Terminator movie /s. Seriously though, people tend to dismiss things they are know are bad if there is no immediate harm. Certainly they had no idea how incredibly pervasive the lead from gasoline would be, that it would be detectable at harmful levels in basically everyone. It is also hard to measure these harms. How much crime of the 70s a…

Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. General Motors,Standard Oil and DuPont knew for sure, they had industrial incidents and lied about them! US Surgeon General was bought, people with opposing opinions were sued. It was instantly obvious to anyone that using leaded gas esp. in agriculture would be deadly and toxic. The risk was ignored for profit, PR handled, underplayed. Even the chronic effects were know…

> Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get.

Who are “we”?

The same could be told about AI - content farms, generating spam that bypass spam filter, etc…

Some people knew them, majority of the public don’t

Post reply on HN