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Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

ibrahimcesar.cloud

41–50 of 75 posts

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#41
post #30
post #13

The argument against AI alignment is that humans aren't aligned either. Humans (and other life) are also self-perpetuating and mutating. We could produce a super intelligence that is against us at any moment! Should we "take steps" to ensure that doesn't happen? If not, then what's the argument there? That life hasn't caused a catastrophe so far, therefore it's not going to in the future? The arguments are the same f…

Whataboutist false equivalence alert: > Also, it's funny that Elon gets singled out for mandating changes on what the AI is allowed to say when all the other players in the field do the same thing. "All the other players" aren't deliberately tuning their AI to reflect specific political ideology, nor are all the other players producing Nazi gaffes or racist rhetoric as a result of routine tuning[1]. Yes, it's true th…

> All the other players" aren't deliberately tuning their AI to reflect specific political ideology

Citation needed

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#42

Related to this, does anyone have the context related to the Grok "MechaHitler" thing? I've never been able to find out what it was responding to.

isn’t it easily searchable? https://archive.ph/20250708205441/https://x.com/grok/status/...

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#43
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutist false equivalence alert: > Also, it's funny that Elon gets singled out for mandating changes on what the AI is allowed to say when all the other players in the field do the same thing. "All the other players" aren't deliberately tuning their AI to reflect specific political ideology, nor are all the other players producing Nazi gaffes or racist rhetoric as a result of routine tuning[1]. Yes, it's true th…

> All the other players" aren't deliberately tuning their AI to reflect specific political ideology Google did something similar if not quite as offensive. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/18/1239107313/google-races-to-fi...

They didn't, though? The multiracial founding fathers thing was a side effect of what one assumes is pretty normal prompt engineering. Marketing departments everywhere have rules and standards designed to prevent racial discrimination, and this looks like "make sure we have a reasonable mix of ethnicities in our artwork" in practice. That's surely "bias", like I said, but it's not deliberate political ideology. No one said[1] "we need to retcon the racial makeup of 18th century America", it was just a mistake.

[1] Or if they did, it's surely not attested. I invite links if you have them.

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#44
post #13

The argument against AI alignment is that humans aren't aligned either. Humans (and other life) are also self-perpetuating and mutating. We could produce a super intelligence that is against us at any moment! Should we "take steps" to ensure that doesn't happen? If not, then what's the argument there? That life hasn't caused a catastrophe so far, therefore it's not going to in the future? The arguments are the same f…

I generally agree with you - in many ways the AI alignment problem is just projection about the fact that we haven’t solved the human alignment problem.

But, there is one not-completely-speculative factor which differentiates it: AI has the potential to outcompete humans intellectually, and if it does so across the board, beyond narrow situations, then it potentially becomes a much bigger threat than other humans if it’s faster and smarter. That’s not the most immediate concern currently, but it could become so in future. Many people fixate on this because the consequences could be more serious.

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#45
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also add that Elon got singled out because he was very public about the changes. Other players are not, so it's hard to assess the existence of "corrections" and the reasons behind them

No. If ChatGPT or Claude would suddenly start bringing up Boers randomly they would get "singled out" at least as hard. Probably even more for ChatGPT.

I think what the other poster was trying to say is that the other AI chatbots would be more subtle and their bias would be harder to detect.

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#46
post #13

The argument against AI alignment is that humans aren't aligned either. Humans (and other life) are also self-perpetuating and mutating. We could produce a super intelligence that is against us at any moment! Should we "take steps" to ensure that doesn't happen? If not, then what's the argument there? That life hasn't caused a catastrophe so far, therefore it's not going to in the future? The arguments are the same f…

The article explicitly describes the ways in which others mandate/control changes?

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#48
post #13

The argument against AI alignment is that humans aren't aligned either. Humans (and other life) are also self-perpetuating and mutating. We could produce a super intelligence that is against us at any moment! Should we "take steps" to ensure that doesn't happen? If not, then what's the argument there? That life hasn't caused a catastrophe so far, therefore it's not going to in the future? The arguments are the same f…

>Also, it's funny that Elon gets singled out for mandating changes on what the AI is allowed to say when all the other players in the field do the same thing.

The author says as much:

"There’s something particularly clarifying about Musk’s approach. Other AI companies hide their value-shaping behind committees, policies, and technical jargon."

...

"The process that other companies obscure behind closed doors, Musk performs as theater."

Re: Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment

#50
AI alignment is not a solved problem by any means. As long as LLMs hallucinate, they cannot be considered aligned. You can only be aligned if you have a zero probability of generating hallucinations. The two problems, alignment and hallucinations, can be considered equivalent.
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