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

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

futureoflife.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#401

Post by tome »

danaris wrote: post #353
jimrandomh wrote: post #146

For a long time, "AI alignment" was a purely theoretical field, making very slow progress of questionable relevance, due to lack of anything interesting to experiment on. Now, we have things to experiment on, and the field is exploding, and we're finally learning things about how to align these systems. But not fast enough. I really don't want to overstate the capabilities of current-generation AI systems; they're no…

A lot of people seem to take the rapid improvement of LLMs from GPT-2 through GPT-4 and their brethren, and extrapolate that trendline to infinity. But that's not logically sound. The advances that have allowed this aren't arbitrarily scalable. Sure, we may see some more advances in AI tech that take us a few more jumps forward—but that doesn't imply that we will keep advancing at this pace until we hit AGI/superinte…

> A lot of people seem to take the rapid improvement of LLMs from GPT-2 through GPT-4 and their brethren, and extrapolate that trendline to infinity.

> But that's not logically sound.

Yup, five years ago I asked "Do we definitely already know it's going to be possible to deploy self-driving cars in an economically meaningful way?" and got the answer "yes", on a story titled "GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities in 2019"!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15824953

I just have no idea how people are making the extrapolations they are making about the power of future large language models.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#402

Post by yreg »

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #265

If you replace "AI" with "self-driving" throughout the open letter [0] then it still makes a surprising amount of sense (and of course any the incoherent bits can be smoothed out by ChatGPT if you prefer). However I doubt Musk would have signed that version... [0] https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experime...

It makes zero sense to ask for pause on self driving training.

A pause on deploying self driving cars on public roads is another matter, but there is no reason to ban the training.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#403

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

braingenious wrote: post #350

>AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal. LMAO. “AI should have… waves at a laundry list of nice sounding adjectives that mean different things to every single signatory in order to accomplish… Humanity [can enjoy] a flourishing future with AI. This will take… six month…

> Elmo to train up and release his anti-wokeness LLM (whatever that means)

It appears to mean doing without the safety / be-nice aspects of human alignment, and getting something much rawer and unfiltered. An unsafe "free speech" bot.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#404

Post by yreg »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #337
jillesvangurp wrote: post #271

The cat is out of the bag. Some people might volunteer to slow down. But others inevitably won't. And that creates this sense of FOMO with everyone. I think the reason OpenAI is choosing to operate in the open has been exactly this. This way they get to control the narrative, act as a first mover in the market, and ensure it is done right (by their notion of this). Of course others are working on the same topics and…

> The cat is out of the bag. As GPT-4 puts it "the confetti has left the cannon."

I hope this idiom will catch on when talking about LLMs.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#405

Post by lannisterstark »

reso wrote: post #380

To those saying "this is impossible in our society", there is a long history of scientific fields mutually agreeing to pause certain work until safety and regulations could be put in place. The Asilomar Conference is an example. [1] The idea that "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" is very popular in tech culture, but many have suggested that simply extending elements of copyright or tort law to AI would be…

It's not about it being impossible. I guess the major issue right now is that people are focusing on the wrong aspect of it. They should be focusing on how most LLMs are currently only controlled by bigger coroporations. Democratizing the LLMs and Giving access to people would resolve the x-poly we have currently.

This also solves the "safety and regulations" issue to an extent - Do you really trust that Microsoft, Google, or govt-entities will not have their own biases and will want to regulate the citizens who want to use their products more, sometimes in unethical ways (because we all know, corps and govts never do anything bad)?

This "Open letter" reeks of "we are behind, let us play catch up, you cant take all the money!" or, of baseless fearmongering where LLMs and future assistants could be used to help countless people with disabilities for example.

"Make the world a better place, but no, not like that, not by democratizing it, but under OUR CONTROL" seems to be the motto here.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#406

Post by carapace »

zug_zug wrote: post #69

I understand that some people find this a hopeless gesture. But I think anybody who thinks "losing jobs" or "China" is a bad outcome from AI is hopelessly lost. The upside of AI if done right - nobody ever having to work again The downside of AI if done wrong - end of humanity It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine we've made AIs go from thinking like an ant to thinking like a 6-year-old in a few years. Anyb…

> if there was a human that was 27 times smarter than anybody else (and could self-replicate at will), how long would it be until that individual took control over the world?

Sometime in the mid-90's. The problem is, what do you do with it? Tiger by the tail, eh?

- - - -

He lived in Seattle. He was fourteen when I met him, and approximately the size of a brontosaurus, mostly neural tissue. He had cracked nanotechnology though manipulating his own cells, his "nanites" were single cells riding in tiny spaceships, like diatoms but with artificial shells. If you were alive before 1999 you had tens of thousands of them in your body.

He grew his own brain into this vast hulking thing, with artificial life support systems, cyborg intestines and continuous aeration based on "book lungs". This was of course after he was already the most intelligent human to ever exist, eh? He used that huge pile of Lovecraftian brain cells to control the global network of minions (that's what he called his cellular remote drone critters.)

The thing is, he was keenly aware of his limitations, and he refused to exercise any control over anyone else beyond what was required to hide from the rest of humanity. He was also a huge Tom Baker Dr. Who fan. SPOILER ALERT: You know that scene where the Doctor is deciding whether or not it's moral to destroy the Daleks? That fucking scene is the reason he didn't enslave humanity or anything wacky like that. He told me that it had affected him profoundly, and that's why he declined to "fix" humans against their will. Funny old world, ain't it?

Anyway, he got sick of the weirdness and uncertainty, built himself some sort of fucking UFO, shed his exo-brain and nanites, and split. AFAIK he's still living in some weird contraption of his own design out there in the Kuiper belt.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#407

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

reasonableklout wrote: post #190
juancn wrote: post #156

Stopping now would be extremely dangerous and borderline stupid. If you stop now, you're just left behind, because there's no way everyone will stop. At this point the only logical course of action in an adversarial situation is to double down and keep researching, otherwise some other country or culture with different (and possibly worse) values ends up dominating the technology and you're left behind in the dust. T…

I don't agree at all. It's totally fair for rival "countries or cultures with different values" to coordinate on matters that threaten everyone's survival. There are many examples of international agreements on technologies that fit this description. For example: - International treaties to avoid nuclear proliferation and development, as other commenters have pointed out - National moratoriums on gain-of-function res…

Nvidia chips are designed and manufactured in Taiwan, not "the west."

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#408

Post by braingenious »

dang wrote: post #388
braingenious wrote: post #350

>AI research and development should be refocused on making today's powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal. LMAO. “AI should have… waves at a laundry list of nice sounding adjectives that mean different things to every single signatory in order to accomplish… Humanity [can enjoy] a flourishing future with AI. This will take… six month…

Hey can you please recalibrate your comments so that you're making substantive points thoughtfully? We're trying to avoid flamewar here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful. Note these: " Don't be snarky. " " Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. "

Elon Musk has publicly spoken at length about his ongoing struggle with the “woke” crowd

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-wading-into-p...

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2021/12/22/elo...

https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/elon-musk-says-woke-progressiv...

And has publicly voiced his support for a language model that supports his political views

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/fighting-woke-ai-mus...

Now that this comment thread has been flagged because I said LMAO, has the quality of discussion about the future of LLMs been improved by suppressing publicly-available posts by one of the most influential figures in AI?

How is strictly policing tone to the extent of suppressing actual information useful here?

Like seriously, “criticizing a billionaire that’s very public about using technology to further his ideological goals is the same thing as using technology to further your ideological goals is genuinely funny. Like ROFLMAO funny. “Everyone is equivalent to Elon Musk, even in the context of discussing the future of LLMs.” Is a cartoonish rule that serves no purpose whatsoever aside from quelling legitimate criticism.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#409

Post by lannisterstark »

reso wrote: post #391
Jayakumark wrote: post #253

For Sake of Argument lets say you pause US from doing anything on AI, how will you control China, Germany or other Countries.. This will only lead to US Lagging behind other countries.

International treaties are very common. In fact, international research agreements are often easier than treaties because scientists and researchers are more likely to work together as colleagues than nation states.

>International treaties are very common

and US isn't signatory to a fuckton of them for example. Nothing stops PRC from going "Yeah nah fam get wrecked." What are you gonna do, stop Chinese imports in retaliation? lol.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#410

Post by JamesBarney »

reso wrote: post #380

To those saying "this is impossible in our society", there is a long history of scientific fields mutually agreeing to pause certain work until safety and regulations could be put in place. The Asilomar Conference is an example. [1] The idea that "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" is very popular in tech culture, but many have suggested that simply extending elements of copyright or tort law to AI would be…

How much do you think Asilomar slowed down DNA research? Do you think without it we'd more more than 10 year ahead? I doubt it. Optimistically we'd maybe have 6 months to a year of additional progress in those fields without it.

And this would only slow it down in a handful of countries. That's not going to keep China from trying to build AGI. If we are in a world where building an AGI is possible and near, I trust OpenAI far more than the CCP to both align it with it's creators, and for that alignment to match up with my values.

Post reply on HN