OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#441

Post by sershe » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #204

Utterly predictable. AI will be weaponized and anybody working on it is going to have to live with that knowledge. Consider yourselves part of the MIC from now on, no more bs about doing this for the betterment of humanity. And to add to that: once any party figures out how to do this it is a matter of time before the rest does too, there is no such thing as a secret. The atomic bomb leaked and so will the recipe for…

As an immigrant to the USA I'd be really happy to work for MIC without leaving the tech industry (I'm too selfish to accept lower salary + move to the East Coast + deal with, presumably, a huge bureaucracy).

Atomic bomb still hasn't leaked beyond ~10% of the countries and many had to do it ~from scratch, so it's not a very good example. The choice with AI is either make one, or wait for it to leak from those who do anyway.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#442

Post by ogab » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #361

FactKnower69 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only directly applied napalm to the skin of a couple thousand children, what are those stinky hippies still whining about? They saw the USS Maddox get attacked twice while performing peaceful maneuvers in our own backyard, the Gulf of Tonkin! We only dropped 21,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange, it hardly causes birth defects any more, only a few hundred writhing harlequin babies a year at this point, what exactly i…

Take it up with Nixon. And the fuckers who voted for him who had no problem with the above. The military is a gun. It shoots what the President wants dead. In that case, it was Cambodia. You really don’t want a USA where the military decides it doesn’t want to listen to civilian government anymore.

I wish the gunshots came after formal declarations of war by Congress, something that hasn't happened since before the current and previous Presidents were born.

Also wish Congress wasn't a clown car perpetually headed off a cliff.

But the Department of War became the Department of Defense, so I guess all these gun shots aren't war anymore.

And as for the gun analogy, I'm reminded of the "production for use"[0] defense from Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday:

"And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did."

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[0] https://subtextpodcast.com/his-girl-friday/

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#443

Post by whamlastxmas » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:20 PM UTC

d--b wrote: post #416

fastneutron wrote: post #412

On reading the headline, everyone’s mind immediately goes to GPT-powered killbots, when in reality this is more likely to RAG its way through mountains of procurement paperwork and other mundane procedural documents.

Personally I was thinking about mass surveillance. It skips the need for actual people to listen and flag bad content, so allows the military to do it on a much grander scale. I am pretty sure the military already has killbots…

ChatGPT, using the entirety of John Doe's browsing history, texting messages, emails, and purchases, tell me the most embarrassing and shameful parts of his life so that we can blackmail him to provide witness testimony

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#444

Post by filoleg » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:30 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #341

kelipso wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, so did Sam Bankman-Fried haha.

There’s an argument that without SBF stealing all that money and giving it to the DNC we’d have a president Trump today and the Russian army would be halfway through Germany.

Is this satire? Because it makes no sense otherwise, given that even SBF himself admitted to donating to both sides in nearly equal amounts. Just being more lowkey about donating to republicans due to optics.

Relevant quotes[0]:

> SBF: “The reason [for not publicizing donations to republicans] was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

> […] he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.

0. https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#445

Post by kornhole » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:43 PM UTC

screamingninja wrote: post #295

kornhole wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Russia did have some accounts and bought ads on US social media some years ago, but analysis showed it had marginal effect. They are outsiders on US run social media platforms. The real power is in the hands of those running the social media platforms that can suppress or send viral what they want with a few adjustments. That certainly happened and continues still now aided by AI.

> analysis showed it had marginal effect What analysis? Care to share some of your insights?

There were several, but the Hamilton 68 hoax is one where censors claimed many accounts were Russian bots but were actually mostly American. Twitter found a relatively small amount of the identified accounts to be actually tied to Russia. https://search.brave.com/search?q=hamilton+68+hoax

Many people probably only remember all the news from MSM about the Russian bots but never saw this reveal that it was a hoax as it was not reported much in the MSM.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#446

Post by ericmay » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:44 PM UTC

ogab wrote: post #442

kridsdale1 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it up with Nixon. And the fuckers who voted for him who had no problem with the above. The military is a gun. It shoots what the President wants dead. In that case, it was Cambodia. You really don’t want a USA where the military decides it doesn’t want to listen to civilian government anymore.

I wish the gunshots came after formal declarations of war by Congress, something that hasn't happened since before the current and previous Presidents were born. Also wish Congress wasn't a clown car perpetually headed off a cliff. But the Department of War became the Department of Defense, so I guess all these gun shots aren't war anymore. And as for the gun analogy, I'm reminded of the "production for use"[0] defen…

Congress being a clown car is problem #1 for sure. Though congress unfortunately is at least somewhat or perhaps majorly representative of the will of the people so the problem is mostly that we're idiots.

I hear you on the need for a declaration of war, but as I'm sure you realize, it's not practical for most of the modern conflicts we find ourselves in. Congress has also explicitly given the Executive the power to conduct limited engagements because conflict develops much more quickly in many cases than Congress can act and we need to be able to respond quickly.

Now of course one might argue something such as that we shouldn't be in areas or be doing things that could instantly cause a conflict and of course that sounds great to me, but then after a second glance you realize that, well, for example Americans must get oil and gas from the Middle East and so here we are without a formal declaration of war protecting shipping lanes.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#447

Post by hsuduebc2 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #238

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do whatever they want to themselves. We are talking about attacking others. You can't ignore direct hit into face.

The talk was: >"The CIA probably realizes it doesn't need to fund rebel groups [1] or use local journalists/clergy [2] to instigate a regime change these days" To me it sounds like instigating regime changes all over the places. The US is famous for doing so and then leaving behind multiple victims.

And another powers are not? Especially in recent age. russians are conquering neighbouring countries and simultaneously threating with nuclear attack. They play same game quite differently.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#448

Post by astroid » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #336

maxglute wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI had/has 57 Chinese talent [1], they're probably getting the boot if OpenAI picks up Pentagon contracts. https://macropolo2.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

That would be a great loss of talent. I wish we could make it much easier for those top scientists to become American citizens. Why assume they have loyalty to the CCP? They’re in California, presumably they like hot dogs, monster trucks, and bikinis.

I can't count the number of times I have seen Chinese people abroad having their family back at home punished for criticizing the CCP or taking other stances that the government oppose.

Doing a quick search, I found several articles detailing how this is becoming more common, with this story being the first one I recalled as the video is nauseating: https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_china-tries-muff... "Editor’s Note: China’s government is expanding its censorship controls by targeting Chinese citizens overseas who criticize Beijing on social media. The pressure tactic is called “zhulian” – an ancient punishment meaning “guilt by association.” It usually involves police threatening family members in China for the actions of their relatives overseas.

This happened to “Zoo” (short for @HorrorZoo, her main handle on Twitter), a Chinese student pursuing graduate studies in Australia, whose father has been repeatedly summoned to the police station because of her criticism of Chinese Communist Party leaders on social media.

But instead of censoring her Twitter account, “Zoo” has become more outspoken, providing multiple videos of police intimidating her via video chat. Her story provides a rare look at how China tries to use the families of dissidents to silence them."

Another instance: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/overseas-chinese-1021... "Police in Beijing have contacted the family of a Chinese student studying in the United States after he expressed support online for the "Bridge Man" protester, who unfurled banners on a Beijing bridge calling on ruling Chinese leader Xi Jinping to step down on the eve of the 20th Communist party’s congress."

I'm sure I could find hundreds of these - it has nothing to do with loyalty, and everything to do with external sources of pressure and coercion.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#449

Post by esafak » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

largbae wrote: post #294

esafak wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Ilya's crew was working on alignment ( https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment ). If only the rank-and-file had been more vocally supportive of that, instead of enthusiastically boarding the Altman train. Look where that train is headed...

Alignment to _what_? Humans aren't aligned without AI, what exactly will AI be aligned to?

Aligned to its creator's specifications. It's value neutral, but constraints are a precondition for avoiding pathological behavior.

Re: OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon

#450

Post by fulladder » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

frogamel wrote: post #55

iknowstuff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hope so, Russia has 100% been doing it, with multiple documented „botfarms” (more like fake identity verification farms)

I've noticed a huge surge in negativity and pessimism on English-language social media within the last year or so, roughly corresponding with to the spread of LLM tech. I do wonder whether these people are mostly just bots.

This seems to be happening in English-language meat space too, so I don't think it's bots. I'm not sure what happened. The trend started in 2023 and seems to be ongoing, though I imagine people will get over it soon. I've heard it suggested that people are just in a funk about the economy, at least in the U.S.