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

Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 508 posts

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#291

Post by tempodox »

Terretta wrote: post #128
tummler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that these aren't standard-issue HR/legal issues. The technology they're working on poses the gravest of dangers. This is uncharted territory, not just for the tech sector, but period. Whether the recent public back-and-forth is just internal drama/politics spilling out, or there really is a lack of gravitas around the handling of these issues within the company-- neither is good. Others have s…

Text continuation poses "the greatest of dangers"?

You're right, on the face of it it sounds absurd and by rights it should be. However, absurdity has never stopped mankind from doing horrible things. I for one don't see the gravest dangers in the tech itself, but in the stuff that people will (ab)use it for.

And, of course, should AGI (which won't be text continuation, by the way) ever actually happen, then all bets are off. I just don't believe we're in any immediate danger of that.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#292

Post by frenchman99 »

motoxpro wrote: post #262
pdonis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, closing access to their model code when "Open" is right there in their name and was the original promise they made? Plenty of other posts in this discussion give other examples. That's without even getting into all that happened with Altman leaving and then coming back, which has already been discussed to death in other HN threads.

It's closed source but freely available to over 100 million people. To everyone but tech people, it's open. What's more valuable for the normal person, Lllama, that I will never be able to use because I don't know how to get it to run, or ChatGPT that I can use for whatever I want?

Open AI not being open means it will be used in ways that will benefit shareholders, not humanity as they initially planned it, unless it so happens that humanity's goals are aligned with shareholders', but I've rarely seen this happen with the big four.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#293

Post by mjburgess »

carliton wrote: post #259

LLMs are useful to a certain extent, but from my usage they are not ready for anything harder than very basic tasks. I feel like this megaphone about AI safety and creating a sense of doom is a strategy to increase importance of OpenAI and exaggerate the capabilities of LLMs. This era of “AI” is all about pretending that machines can think and the people working in these machines are prophets.

also keep open that these AI researchers are as delusional as they seem. ilya sutskever has said that you can obtain any feature of intelligence by brute force modelling of text data.

It's quite possible these are profoundly naive individuals, with little understanding of the empirical basis of what they're doing.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#294

Post by 9dev »

brandall10 wrote: post #227
Dalewyn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no, and I say that as a Japanese-American who visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial numerous times and never felt anything particular from the exhibits. People die when they are killed. Likewise, if "AI" is actually intelligent then it is no worse a threat than a bumbling baby or a Vladimir Putin or a dog, among other living…

There absolutely is a difference. Nuclear war is considered a likely extinction level event for humanity. A war between the US/NATO and the Soviet Union could take out major cities around the globe within hours, and the resultant nuclear winter would blanket much of the planet within a month making living above ground impossible. GP's comparison is apt here.

Just a minor correction, even though I agree with your point: the Soviet Union is no longer a thing, despite Putins wishes to the contrary :)

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#295

Post by dragonwriter »

tummler wrote: post #85
corry wrote: post #62

In any sufficiently large tech company, the "risk mitigation" leadership (legal, procurement, IT, etc) have to operate in a kind of Overton window that balance the risks they are hired to protect the corp from vs. the need or desire of the senior leadership to play fast and loose when they want or feel they need to. Either the risk-mitigator 'falls in line' after repeatedly seeing their increasingly strident exhortat…

The difference here is that these aren't standard-issue HR/legal issues. The technology they're working on poses the gravest of dangers. This is uncharted territory, not just for the tech sector, but period. Whether the recent public back-and-forth is just internal drama/politics spilling out, or there really is a lack of gravitas around the handling of these issues within the company-- neither is good. Others have s…

“The technology they’re working on poses the gravest of dangers.”

Or, rather, its been actively marketed by Altman as doing so, as part of his effort to buy influence with government to restrict competition.

The simplest explanation for the conflict is that it doesn’t, and that OpenAI internally has allocated resources based on reality rather than it’s public propaganda, and the team whose internal turf was built around that propaganda left in a huff.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#296

Post by bmitc »

Terretta wrote: post #128
tummler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that these aren't standard-issue HR/legal issues. The technology they're working on poses the gravest of dangers. This is uncharted territory, not just for the tech sector, but period. Whether the recent public back-and-forth is just internal drama/politics spilling out, or there really is a lack of gravitas around the handling of these issues within the company-- neither is good. Others have s…

Text continuation poses "the greatest of dangers"?

Yes, exactly because it is just text continuation. It is being integrated into systems and used as a tool as if it is much, much more than text continuation. That is the danger. I've been using Copilot frequently lately, and it's startling just how often it is completely wrong despite being confidently presented as completely right.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#297

Post by trvz »

pilgrim0 wrote: post #249

It’s too late to talk about safety when your product is already free to use and actively employed to pollute the digital space with all sorts of fakery. And AGI? Please, how can they be so delusional to the point of believing they are on a path to achieve anything remotely resembling it? It’s so cringe. I feel like chance has put too much power and influence on the hands of a couple of immature adults. GPT is a state…

Detonating a single nuke for test when you think there's a chance it'd ignite the atmosphere and kill the entire world makes it unethical to contribute on it.

I too don't think OpenAI will ever create an actual AI ("AGI"), but they think they might, and that one might kill humanity; trying to achieve it makes every person working at OpenAI just as reprehensible as those who put the nuclear sword of Damocles over us.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#298

Post by edanm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #295
tummler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that these aren't standard-issue HR/legal issues. The technology they're working on poses the gravest of dangers. This is uncharted territory, not just for the tech sector, but period. Whether the recent public back-and-forth is just internal drama/politics spilling out, or there really is a lack of gravitas around the handling of these issues within the company-- neither is good. Others have s…

“The technology they’re working on poses the gravest of dangers.” Or, rather, its been actively marketed by Altman as doing so, as part of his effort to buy influence with government to restrict competition. The simplest explanation for the conflict is that it doesn’t , and that OpenAI internally has allocated resources based on reality rather than it’s public propaganda, and the team whose internal turf was built ar…

> Or, rather, its been actively marketed by Altman as doing so, as part of his effort to buy influence with government to restrict competition.

I mean, maybe sama is also doing so.

But you're ignoring the many people who have been warning of these dangers for years, some before OpenAI even existed, and many with no part of OpenAI and no monetary incentive.

To describe everything as "Altman is marketing this as dangerous" is to completely ignore the majority of researchers ringing alarm bells.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#299

Post by edanm »

Dalewyn wrote: post #175
hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're being overly reductionist: it's just moving bits around, what harm could that possibly do?

"AI" is one of two things depending on whether you think it's actually intelligent: * If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man. * If "AI" is not actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any other computer program. Both threat models are very thoroughly known and understood. I second parent commenter's sentiment that calling "AI" the "gravest of dang…

> * If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man.

That's not true, because you don't address the degree of intelligence or the scale that computers can achieve.

Even if all we were able to do is to create human-intelligence-equivalent AIs, but we were able to create, say, a billion on command, I'd say we have a major threat.

Re: Sam and Greg's response to OpenAI Safety researcher claims

#300

Post by ksynwa »

camillomiller wrote: post #13

Why do we give this people credit by giving for granted that AGI is somehow magically around the corner? It is not, and everyone’s delusional.

Baffles me that this company has (or had) the smartest people in the industry who understand the workings of their product better than anyone and then you go read their charter where they sagely talk about ethically ushering in AGI like it's nothing.

The whole drama with this infighting about safety feels like a terrible good cop bad cop routine.

Post reply on HN