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Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

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Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#311

Post by wk_end »

frollogaston wrote: post #301
wk_end wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's medically necessary is for a person and their own doctors to decide on, not for you or some AI engineer or anyone else to disagree about.

Not when public money is involved, which pro-trans voices absolutely want it to be. And even without it, society does have reasons to concern itself with how parents treat their children. There's no side that separates the responsibilities, it's just a matter of who thinks this is socially right.

I actually don't know how much of that's especially true where doctors are involved. We as a society strictly regulate who can call themselves a doctor and the credentials that are required to do so, and then in doing so entrust them as a class to be reliable arbiters of what constitutes what's medically necessary, how public medical funds should be spent (which, even if that's something activists agitate for, is still a separate issue), and so on. We also entrust them to help monitor how parents are treating their children.

Anyway, to double back once, it actually doesn't really "assume it's a medically necessary procedure"; we can soften it to something like a "medically desired procedure" and the point in fact still stands that Shazeer's wording - which really should be the point here, not re-enacting the tired trans healthcare debate - is deliberately incendiary and manipulative. Broadly, no one is advocating for parents to be sterilizing their children as an end to itself, so it shouldn't be characterized as such.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#312

Post by bbeonx »

dekhn wrote: post #220
altmanaltman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What you're describing about gender is.... not really scientific. It was basically declared by fiat by researchers. It's not an authoritative definition and many people disagree with the concept, at least when it gets conflated with scientific topics.

there are some things that clearly exist that are really hard to nail down with definitions; once we get into anything social, we are kinda playing with that territory. everything is so fuzzy that our normal way of defining things breaks down. so saying precisely what gender _is_ is going to be almost impossible. but there are definitely roles and traits that are highly correlated with a person's birth sex that are distinct from their birth sex. there can even be genetic reasons why those correlations emerged. but they are still distinct.

as evidence, what it _means_ to be a man, woman, etc, differs from society to society. if you ask me to quantify this precisely, i will struggle. but it's plain for all to see.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#313

Post by geori »

afavour wrote: post #302
electriclove wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple both need a culling similar to what Elon did with Twitter after taking over.

Eh, what has X/Twitter delivered since the cull? It’s basically in maintenance mode. Which is fine if that’s what you want to do, but Google and Apple definitely don’t (and I’m glad for that)

He merged it with SpaceX, quickly created a few colossal datacenters for training runs and somehow turned that into a 3T company.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#314

Post by gwern »

nrds wrote: post #262
p1necone wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah my current feeling is that once I had double digit millions earning further money would be pretty meaningless to me, and the difference between 'large salary' and 'even larger salary' would be even more meaningless, but who knows maybe it really would change me. I kind of assume people like this are primarily chasing the most interesting/impactful work though.

The problem with this belief is that it implies that all of bigtech is massively overpaying for top talent who would happily stay on for pennies. While bigtech overpaying talent is more plausible than any other bigcorp doing so, it's still rather unlikely.

Only if there was a cartel which would agree to never outbid each other, of course... You can ask Steve Jobs about that one.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#315

Post by afavour »

geori wrote: post #313
afavour wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, what has X/Twitter delivered since the cull? It’s basically in maintenance mode. Which is fine if that’s what you want to do, but Google and Apple definitely don’t (and I’m glad for that)

He merged it with SpaceX, quickly created a few colossal datacenters for training runs and somehow turned that into a 3T company.

That has nothing to do with culling staff at Twitter though.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#316

Post by chaos_emergent »

nrds wrote: post #262
p1necone wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah my current feeling is that once I had double digit millions earning further money would be pretty meaningless to me, and the difference between 'large salary' and 'even larger salary' would be even more meaningless, but who knows maybe it really would change me. I kind of assume people like this are primarily chasing the most interesting/impactful work though.

The problem with this belief is that it implies that all of bigtech is massively overpaying for top talent who would happily stay on for pennies. While bigtech overpaying talent is more plausible than any other bigcorp doing so, it's still rather unlikely.

I think money’s marginal utility just changes from a vehicle for material comfort to a way to keep score.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#317

Post by frollogaston »

wk_end wrote: post #311
frollogaston wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when public money is involved, which pro-trans voices absolutely want it to be. And even without it, society does have reasons to concern itself with how parents treat their children. There's no side that separates the responsibilities, it's just a matter of who thinks this is socially right.

I actually don't know how much of that's especially true where doctors are involved. We as a society strictly regulate who can call themselves a doctor and the credentials that are required to do so, and then in doing so entrust them as a class to be reliable arbiters of what constitutes what's medically necessary, how public medical funds should be spent (which, even if that's something activists agitate for, is sti…

Doctors are allowed to make judgement calls within whatever rules the insurance providers and laws give. The status quo before all this was that gender-affirming care was never covered, which changed to always covered in discrete steps across the 2000s and 2010s. Doctors didn't get to decide that on their own. Before that even, medical schools instill rules and values that come mostly from the outside, while the medical knowledge and experience is from the inside.

Another controversy is physician-assisted s–... euthanasia. Some doctors would consider it medically necessary, but they can't legally perform or even recommend it, as it's considered murder. They can in Canada. Abortion of a viable fetus not threatening the mother is illegal in all 50 US states, but legal in many states in earlier stages, again based on what the states consider murder (but the doctor judges what is viable or a threat to the mother).

Anyway if gender-affirming care is just medically desired but not medically necessary, the sterilization is accepted but not necessary. I agree with the spirit of the wording, even though it's imprecise, because it highlights that children are taking on an irreversible side effect. It's a short quote and not a whole essay where he gets to clarify.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#318

Post by jdkfmtlym »

dang wrote: post #249
SiempreViernes wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using what team members would later describe with words like “magic” and “alchemy” and “bells and whistles,” Ok, these peopl have all gotten extensive training on how to hype for the non-technical crowd without saying anything of substance.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#320

Post by jdkfmtlym »

dang wrote: post #258
anon_shill wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that apply to quotes from an article? They seemed to be criticizing a second or third degree source for being PR, which feels fair.

Yes, in the sense that if there's nothing interesting to say about a quote then there's no reason to copy it into the thread.

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