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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

#262
post #216
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Frontier models need infinite high quality private IP to keep them fed. Forcing an IP theft funnel ensures big lab survival and model intelligence growth. * Open-weight models are 1month behind frontier models. Cheaper, faster, private (no IP theft), steerable (you can security harden your own software without safeguard triggers). No sane business would keep using these API services if they didn't have to. The labs…

I know people at METR and Anthropic. When they tell you they're worried the tech they're working on may kill everyone despite their best efforts, perhaps believe them.

Do you think they’re exaggerating (again) or do you think they should taken at face value and treated as hostile actors?

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#263

Prediction: in a few years, we will laugh at this hysteria and call it a moral panic.

Well, that's almost a tautology. People claim Y2K or ozone was a panic and that nothing happened. But nothing happened exactly because the force behind the panic also fixed the issues.

What about the panic around dungeons and dragons and violent video games? Did nothing happen because the panic fixed the issue?

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#264
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The danger lies with someone asking the machine to solve those two questions and it decides to cheat the solution. Launching every nuke in the world stops all wars, just like wiping out 99% of humanity ends world hunger.

I don't think killing people solves world hunger, we already produce enough food to feed everyone, it's just not evenly distributed.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#265

A lot of people in this comments section seem to be against this, i genuinely don't get it? Why? Do you think the current state of affairs is GOOD? That if we let companies create a mind that is, AS OF TODAY, able to solve problems no human in history has solved, with no regulation, things will end up good for us? We need some sort of regulations, some sort of method to help ensure the thing we are creating ends up g…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture The fear is not that they will just slow down progress for all. It is that regulation will specifically burden competition. If you kill open-source training, ban Chinese models, crack down on self-hosting, grandfather OpenAI/Anthropic/Google into regulatory compliance while throwing the book at startups, etc. you wind up in the worst of all possible worlds.

But the proposal the article is reacting to is for literally none of that! It is quite literally the opposite, with its proposed measures applying only to frontier labs rather than grandfathering them. It doesn't say anything about open source training, self-hosting, open weights, or startups. It does not suggest a ban on Chinese models (just better enforcement of chip export controls).

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#266
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The danger lies with someone asking the machine to solve those two questions and it decides to cheat the solution. Launching every nuke in the world stops all wars, just like wiping out 99% of humanity ends world hunger.

I don't see how that is more dangerous than two crazy head of states deciding that it's time for armageddon. The outcome is the same (99% of humans dead), it's equally easy to technically not do it (don't press the button, don't continue with LLMs), but also equally hard to regulate away given the real world. And that was my point.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#267
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nukes are barely used. The technology of nuclear detonations was practically abandoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

I find that a weird argument for saying humanity has "ignored or abandoned" nuclear weapons.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#268
post #258
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people at METR and Anthropic. When they tell you they're worried the tech they're working on may kill everyone despite their best efforts, perhaps believe them.

Or you know, stop working on it if its that dangerous? This whole thing of a bunch of employees saying that they are scared of building what they are building, but do it anyway because they are somehow going to make it different? Their model has been used in the planning of mass murdering in war as well as spying on the entire worlds population as well as helping ICE out in the US. They need to stop this BS fearmonge…

Anthropic specifically is basically saying that they believe it's even more dangerous if someone else gets to AGI before they do, so they have to either stop everyone or not stop themselves.

I personally disagree with that take - and, as you note, it's hard to take seriously ethical wrangles from a company that literally sued the government in court to allow their models to be used by Palantir of all people. But if one genuinely believes that it's the robots themselves (rather than the people controlling the robots) that will kill us all, it's not inconsistent.

Re: Everyone should slow down AI development except for me

#269
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The current state of alignment is that we don't know how to make it only as bad as Pol Pot was made by his parents, teachers, genetics, circumstances, etc. This remains true regardless of if it is or isn't kept away from the public. "Helpful, harness, and honest": when used by a bastard, even just helpful and harmless are in direct conflict with each other. you may hate the government, but what about every radical gr…

Honestly? I'd rather al Qaeda have access to something like Fable, than the US government. The US government has capacity to do immensely more damage.
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