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Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

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Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying fact is of course not copyrightable. But for example merely translating a news article to another language would be a derived work.

So if I read your article and then write a new using just the facts in your article it’s fine? Why can’t an AI do that?

No, if you copy the same layout of the information, pacing, etc. that's plagiarism.

The line of plagiarism in modern society has already been drawn, and it's a lot further back than a lot of uncreative people that want to steal work en-mass seem to think it is.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#302
post #2

There are many types of safety. For example, protecting your profits! I'd imagine that if we trace the money back these organisations will look a lot like lobbyists for existing companies in the AI space. I recall Microsoft's licence enforcement effort was done with that sort of scheme, I think they used the BSA [0]. It has been a while though so maybe it was a different group. Anyway, point being, if they can lobby…

I have to believe this is the case.

The vast majority of "ai safety" news I see is about some dumb shit someone is getting called out for supporting and the responses are always "ai safety is such a joke since they focus on these issues instead of real issues".

Who does this benefit to have the "popular ai safety" news/people be ridiculous? It's not furthering the issues people seem to care about, but it does give a bunch of ammunition for Microsoft/openai/etc. fans to use to shutdown any discussion of AI safety issues.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#303
post #165

I find it unhelpful that several different ideas are covered under the blanket term of AI safety. - There is AI safety in terms of producing "safe", politically correct outputs, no porn, etc. - There is AI safety in terms of mass society/election manipulation. - There is AI safety in terms of strong AI that kills us all a la Eliezer Yudkowsky. I feel like these three have very little in common and it makes all debate…

The third effort is referred to sometimes as AI not-kill-everyone-ism, a tacky and unwieldy term that is unlikely to be co-opted or lead to the unproductive discussion like around the OP article.

It is pretty sad to read people bash together the efforts to understand and control the technology better and the companies doing their usual profit maximization.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With AI, there still seems to be a lot of hand-waving between where we are now and "AGI". > I am more than prepared to admit that I may not be seeing (for various reasons) the evidence that this is near/possible - but I would also claim that nobody is convincingly showing any either. If I understand you correctly, then (1) you doubt that AGI systems are possible and (2) even if they are possible, you believe that h…

For info: I don't believe (1), I do believe (2) although not that strongly - it's more likely to be a leap than a gradient, I suspect - I simply don't see anything right now that convinces me it's just over the next hill. Your conclusion... maybe, yes - I don't think we're anywhere near a simulation approach with sufficient fidelity however. Also 82% is very specific!

> For info: I don't believe (1), I do believe (2) although not that strongly

Thanks for clarifying. Do you believe there is a better than 20% chance that humans will develop AGI in the next 30 years?

> I simply don't see anything right now that convinces me it's just over the next hill.

These are the reasons that I believe we are close to developing an AGI system.

  (1) Many smart people are working on capabilities.
  (2) Many investment dollars will flow into AI development in the near future.
  (3) Many impressive AI systems have recently been developed: Meta's CICERO, OpenAI's GPT4, DeepMind's AlphaGo.
  (4) Hardware will continue to improve.
  (5) LLM performance significantly improved as data volume and training time increased.
  (6) Humans have built other complex artefacts without good theories of the artefact, including: operating systems, airplanes, beer.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, anyone who knows what they're talking about will tell you the ban makes heroin a much worse problem, not better. Ban leads to a black market, leads to lousy purity, which leads to fluctuations in purity and switches to potent alternatives, leads to waves of overdose deaths.

The way the ban is enforced, yes. But no one in their right mind believes that heroin should be openly accessible on the market like candy. We've seen how that works out with tobacco.

I think that's worked fine with tobacco. Unlike illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco consumption have been gradually dropping over time(or moved to less harmful methods than smoking).

Heroin already is openly accessible. As much as one can try to argue this is an accessibility issue, it really isn't. Anyone who is motivated to can get their hands on some heroin. The only thing that's made harder to access is high quality heroin. It's only a quality control and outreach(to addicts) issue.

Most people in a well-functioning society wouldn't develop a heroin addiction just like most people don't become alcoholics just because alcohol is easily available.

So yes, I believe heroin should be legal, and available to adults for purchase. And you're gonna have to do better than saying I'm "out of my mind" to convince me otherwise.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is substantially different from changing a word in a terry Pratchett novel. Terry Prachett wrote none of that text. It would be absolute bonkers for Terry to claim ownership of text he didn’t write. Even if we pretend for a minute that the bot was asked to write in the style of Terry specifically.

But by prompting for 'in the style of' effectively you are mechanically rearranging everything he wrote without adding anything yourself. So not so different really, and I can see how lawyers for the plaintiff may make a convincing argument along those lines.

It’s a terrible argument and a terrible loop hole. It’s perfectly legal to hire someone to write in the copied style of Terry.

So even if your desired system were implemented to a T, you could hire someone to write a dozen or so examples of Terry writing. Probably just 30 or so pages of highly styled copied text, and then train your bot on this corpus to make “Not Terry” content. Boom. $100 on gig author and then for all practical purposes the Terry style is legally open source. Terry doesn’t even get the $100!

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#307
post #165

I find it unhelpful that several different ideas are covered under the blanket term of AI safety. - There is AI safety in terms of producing "safe", politically correct outputs, no porn, etc. - There is AI safety in terms of mass society/election manipulation. - There is AI safety in terms of strong AI that kills us all a la Eliezer Yudkowsky. I feel like these three have very little in common and it makes all debate…

To add to this, the people writing these articles are not stupid and know there is more than one understanding for the words they're using. They choose not to clarify on purpose, or they're incompetent and I don't want to believe that's the case.

"AI safety" imo should be the blanket term for "any harm done to society by the technology", and it's the responsibility of anyone using the term to clarify the usage.

If someone is trying to tell you to support/decry something because of "AI safety" they're tying to use the vagueness to take advantage of you.

If someone is trying to tell you that "ai safety people are dumb", they're trying to use the most extreme examples to change your opinion on the moderate cases, and are trying to take advantage of you.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I read your article and then write a new using just the facts in your article it’s fine? Why can’t an AI do that?

No, if you copy the same layout of the information, pacing, etc. that's plagiarism. The line of plagiarism in modern society has already been drawn, and it's a lot further back than a lot of uncreative people that want to steal work en-mass seem to think it is.

“rewrite the key insights of this article but with different layout and pacing”. Your move?

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#309

Government knows that random people having the ability to use "AI" without their control and oversight reduces their ever expanding reach. As the article demonstrates, the groundwork is already being laid by these "think tanks" to prevent a repeat of Llama 2. We truly need an AI Stallman. FOSS AI models need to become a movement, like the push for a FOSS UNIX became in the 80s and 90s. Sadly when I wrote to Stallman…

The problem is that open source philosophy and large language models don't mix.

How can you support open source licensing, while completely ignoring that licencing to construct you model?

That's the biggest reason for the lack of "AI Stalman" imo, that's asking for someone that vehemently supports taking any content they can get their hands on to make the content generator irrelevant, while also supporting the idea that content distributed with open source licenses need to have their terms respected.

Edit: I think what you're asking for does exist, just not in the large language model space. There are many people calling for datasets to be more ethical(e.x. not breaking licenses) and for better AI models, it's just that none of them are trying to push a different model made using the same techniques by someone else.

Re: Many AI safety orgs have tried to criminalize currently-existing open-source AI

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you copy the same layout of the information, pacing, etc. that's plagiarism. The line of plagiarism in modern society has already been drawn, and it's a lot further back than a lot of uncreative people that want to steal work en-mass seem to think it is.

“rewrite the key insights of this article but with different layout and pacing”. Your move?

Exactly, if you have a human take in the information and make something that is arguably "different layout and pacing" then its possible it's not plagiarism.

Unfortunately no such leeway exists for algorithms, and the human elements of creation and judgement are integral to the process so they cant be codified and worked around without changing the law.

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