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Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

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Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#221

Post by ben_w »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #146
AaronAPU wrote: post #27

They are talking about slowing down the public facing AI development. Because then nation states can create a capabilities gap between them and the public. Why does nobody seem to be pointing out this obvious explanation? It explains why the “we need to race China” concern suddenly vanished in the discussion. The government can simply gag Sam, Dario, Musk on national security basis, getting them all behind the public…

> The government can simply gag Sam, Dario, Musk on national security basis Genuine question - can they really do this? Obviously if I, a not-even-millionaire, get a national security gag order, I'm going to follow it because I assume they'll bury me under the jail otherwise. But the (b|tr)illionare class? I'd assume they have access to enough legal services to make even the government careful of trampling their firs…

> But the (b|tr)illionare class? I'd assume they have access to enough legal services to make even the government careful of trampling their first amendment rights. Is the national security gag order process so strong that the government doesn't have to worry about motivated, well-resourced actors buying really good lawyers and blowing up their favorite tool?

Hard to hire a lawyer after being struck with a missile as an "emergency executive order after intelligence sources indicated they were in the process of endangering the nation", or however the executive of the day wishes to phrase it.

When something is genuinely national security, and "national security" isn't just an excuse, that is not off the table.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#222

Post by noisy_boy »

gpt5 wrote: post #189
ElProlactin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being sarcastic isn't going to solve the problem but you're obviously free to believe that the US is still in a position to call all the shots when it's evident to the rest of the world this isn't the case.

I’m just repeating your words back to you so hopefully you realize how ridiculous it sounds. Also - I think you totally missed the point of the grandparent poster, which is that US will not let US companies slow down.

Your sarcastic refutation of the allegedly ridiculous assertion was devoid of any counterpoints on how the US government can stop China's progress in AI and what you think they are going to do about it. Just repeating it doesn't make it any more or less ridiculous.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#223

Post by jandrese »

Waterluvian wrote: post #111
Animats wrote: post #94

Whatever happened to Musk's plan for data centers in orbit? That seemed silly at the time. It offers a way to get out from under restrictions imposed by national governments, which might make it worthwhile.

I think space being imagined as some magical international waters that protects something from government powers is poisonous thinking. It just means it’s protected by no power instead of a power with an agenda. Practically, if it was ever possible to build such a thing, it would take a fraction of the effort to destroy it.

I mean for that matter why not float barges in the South Pacific for data centers? Sure it’s a dumb idea, but it’s still less problematic than launching thousands of GPUs on rockets.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#224

Post by fc417fc802 »

metalcrow wrote: post #215
fc417fc802 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a datacenter to train a 30B model. Further, the rapid trend of increasing efficiency and decreasing model size for a given level of capabilities means that what is possible to do without a datacenter will continue to increase. Presumably performance on the level of the current frontier of AI would be achieved in short order and the ceiling would only continue to advance from there. Ergo I expect such a…

> Presumably performance on the level of the current frontier of AI would be achieved in short order and the ceiling would only continue to advance from there That's an enormous presumption! You're saying that even in the theoretical case that frontier research is halted but efficiency isn't, we could do better then the frontier and reach world-changing AI in 30b parameters at home-scale labs?! If that's true then we…

> frontier research is halted but efficiency isn't

Why are you treating those as if they're separate things?

> Advancing the frontier seems to take a massive amount of compute, data, and parameters: miniaturization only happens afterwards.

This is just completely wrong. Don't mistake the path by which something happened (or appeared to an outsider to have happened) for a fundamental truth.

The frontier labs build massive models because if you're competing and you have a lot of cash and brute force is a viable option then it's easy and predictable. But the fundamental research itself doesn't in general require scale (certainly not entire datacenters) and models at any given capability level keep shrinking.

I keep repeating myself at this point but the human brain is on the order of 20 watts. That's a fraction of a single datacenter GPU! So again, would you have us destroy all chip fabs and ban all biomedical research?

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#225

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jordanb wrote: post #10
coderintherye wrote: post #8

I have to wonder if some us are just much more inured to salespeople and thus also to "AI Safety" propaganda. I've yet to have a logical discussion with anyone who thinks the "AI Safety" people should be in charge and I think they just truly don't that what most them actually want is to be the one holding the keys to power.

The problem is the "AI Safety" people seem entirely focused on a sci-fi "the computer is a vengeful god" plot and not at all on the AI talking people into suicide or ruining children's educations. This makes them seem unserious and out of touch.

"The AI is a vengeful god" is a marketing campaign ran by AI companies.

And why not? It seems there is, indeed, one born every minute, and technological progress only accelerates this phenomenon.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#226

Post by jandrese »

lukan wrote: post #34
ranger_danger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured they're just admitting AI models have plateaued and are coming up with some fake story about self restraint so they don't lose VC money

Not sure about the level of irony here, but I keep hearing models have plateaued since a while now, but I keep being impressed with the latest model performance.

I think we are in the second knee of the S curve, simply because we are hitting the point where is not enough hardware in the world to throw at this problem. These AI companies have bought everything they can and yet the models keep growing.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#227

Post by teiferer »

AngryData wrote: post #150
amazingman wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pure fantasy.

Why? There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons. Many of the benefits of AI is "requires less humans", but in an age where we question what work people could possibly do in the future, human labor isn't that hard to find. If the amish can do what they do for whack religious reasons, people could manage it with ai for cultural and social reasons. And I never saw an amish person s…

> There are numerous technologies we have ignored or abandoned for numerous reasons.

Are there? Nukes are a thing. Chemical weapons are a thing. Cluster bombs are a thing. Biological weapons are a thing. What is not a thing that shouldn't be? We say certain things should not be a thing, but then behind the scenes we made them a thing anyway.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#228

Post by necovek »

Retric wrote: post #180
fc417fc802 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But notably the amish don't preclude the rest of us from existing. Some subset of humans could turn their attention away from AI but it would presumably still exist and continue to be developed. I can't think of any economically beneficial technologies that we've collectively ignored. If you manage to come up with a counterexample then that's an opportunity to make some money for yourself. It's a fundamentally unstab…

Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably and no longer exist. There’s levels of R&D required for many technologies where the question goes beyond could this be profitable to what are the risk vs reward that this specific project will succeed.

Were they? Did Concorde provide return on investment? When was the break-even expected? Sure, if we look at it as R&D subsidized by governments of UK and France, then yet, it was profitable.

In particular, the problem with it was that it could not get to supersonic speeds over urban areas, which significantly limited routes where it made sense, and the range was not good enough to cover longer distances.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#229

Post by teiferer »

aorloff wrote: post #123
Buttons840 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the worst outcomes involve taking this technology away from the public.

The very best outcomes involve us intentionally and collectively turning our attention away from this technology.

> The very best outcomes involve us intentionally and collectively turning our attention away from this technology.

To expand on the "pure fantasy" sister comment: There is just no way this will happen. It's in the spirit of "we can just stop all wars" and "we can just end world hunger". Technically it's very easy to do. Socially it's impossible to do. Unless you ignore realities.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#230

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

ares623 wrote: post #32
shimman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are very real effects happening now regarding labor as well but to dismiss it all and worry about science fiction that is on par with evangelical beliefs is just extremely weird.

With wealthy and powerful investors being promised a $30 trillion total addressable market, they need to deliver god.

If people are actually dumb enough to believe an LLM chatbot is god then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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