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We must pace the frontier

darioamodei.com

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Re: We must pace the frontier

#441

Post by joshheitzman »

simianwords wrote: post #325
bilsbie wrote: post #231

Right as open source models catch up to frontier closed source ones for 1/10th (or less) of the cost suddenly it's time to hit the brakes! Funny how that works. https://x.com/BasedTorba/status/2098795920720547916

I'm willing to at least listen to conspiracy theories but this makes no sense.. OpenAI and Anthropic have more to lose by pausing than these rando Chinese companies.

Here's how it make senses: - reality they can't keep up their pace - that's bad for forward projections of their revenue - that's bad for their stock price - being 'forced' to slowdown by the government is less bad for their stock price

Re: We must pace the frontier

#442

Post by Aurornis »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #425
Aurornis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances. Regulate what, exactly? Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules. There’s a theoretical version where all the countries in the world join hands and agree not to compete…

> Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules. Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs. What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into? Just as with H1B visas, you restri…

> Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs.

I have some bad news for you if you bought into the idea that the tariffs were good for domestic jobs and the economy.

> What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into?

This is the definition of a false dichotomy, and you also ignored (or missed) the point completely.

I did not make an argument out of “free market doctrine”. I explained the second order effects that would provide a net reduction in jobs in this country.

My wife’s company is going through this right now. H1Bs are expensive and unpredictable, so the solution is to relocate more of the operations outside of the country and build up those offices.

Failure to understand second order effects and international economies is pervasive in these arguments for heavy regulations. You can do a lot to hold back your country’s companies to force them to pay for employees they don’t need and those few employees benefit for a while, but it collapses when those companies stop hiring in the regulated countries and resume hiring where they can actually operate a business. If you try to regulate them from doing it anywhere, you’ve given their competitors a wonderful gift to come destroy the company completely. Then they’re not making any jobs for anyone.

Re: We must pace the frontier

#443

Post by CrimsonRain »

Chance-Device wrote: post #306

I like the idea of pacing the frontier, but while we’re talking about restrictions, I like restrictions of another sort more. Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances. The chance of getting broad agreement on “pacing” is fairly low, meaning that all of this likely won’t happen and the race will continue. However, even in the unlikely event that…

You can "pace" yourself like that if you want. Don't shove your idiotic self-destructive ideas on to others. If you were president during invention of cars, we'd still be horse riding everywhere.

Re: We must pace the frontier

#444

Post by xg15 »

esafak wrote: post #382
rickydroll wrote: post #372

I also like the idea of pacing the frontier and slowing down development so we all have a chance to stop and catch our breath. However, I don't think regulating AI is the way to do it. I would tackle the problem by constraining the resources used to run AI models; the "simplest" way to do that is increasing the costs of running a data center. The two easiest places to raise data center costs are electricity and water…

This makes no sense. The hardware is only going to get cheaper. In a decade, everybody could be running an ASI on their phones. What we need to do is to make unaligned AIs illegal and monitor for them, like we do with nuclear weapons. And make aligned AI strong enough to counter it, for deterrence and defense.

> The hardware is only going to get cheaper.

Is that so? Last time I checked, RAM was getting a lot more expensive...

Re: We must pace the frontier

#445

Post by Aurornis »

Loquebantur wrote: post #434
Aurornis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances. Regulate what, exactly? Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules. There’s a theoretical version where all the countries in the world join hands and agree not to compete…

You start from incorrect premises by presupposing agreed-upon rules would never work anyway. "Competition" only makes sense within a pre-mediated set of constrains. Rules all competitors agree to. Workable rules are a difficult problem, that doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to come up with them.

> You start from incorrect premises by presupposing agreed-upon rules would never work anyway.

The rules would never work on a global economy.

If you think the entire world is going to shake hands and agree not to let their companies use a competitive advantage, that’s not a conversation I’m interested in having. It’s a fantasy.

If you think it’s that easy to get all competitors in a global economy to agree to a set of rules, maybe start with nuclear disarmament?

Re: We must pace the frontier

#446

Post by glub »

qnleigh wrote: post #318
glub wrote: post #302

Dario, Sam, and Elon are all on the same page on this. So it's either they truly think AI is going to kill us all, or there's some other motives at play here. I don't think these people could possibly agree on the color of the sky, so what could the other possible motives be, based on what we know? OpenAI / Anthropic models have largely stopped advancing - that's not a good look when you're pre-IPO and Chinese models…

> OpenAI / Anthropic models have largely stopped advancing I'm shocked anyone could conclude this. This year it became common for people to entirely delegate coding to AI (I know many competent programmers/researchers who do this now). Progress in math has just been insane. An internal model at OAI just resolved one of the most celebrated open problems in mathematics. If anything, progress has accelerated.

> This year it became common for people to entirely delegate coding to AI

This has been the case for around 2 years now, more reliably - a year. We've mostly stayed there since then.

Saying that more people started doing it isn't indicative of significant improvement. Some people just started doing it later.

I can't speak about math because I haven't used AI for that application, but I know that there hasn't been any significant advancement in coding in this year on base models. There has been more RL work, more harness work, more tools, they all expanded some capabilities like cyber or orchestration or tool use, but raw intelligence of base models is no longer where the main focus is.

Re: We must pace the frontier

#447

Post by robomartin »

My position on the clear gaslighting coming out of Anthropic is simple.

1: It is ridiculous on the face of it; it does not pass the physics test. They are actually claiming that AI will kill ALL OF HUMANITY (>10% probability) and have not provided a detailed explanation of exactly how they see that happening. Not one.

Publish a paper showing exactly how you kill eight billion people while we all sit around and do nothing watching the first 5, 10, 100, 500 million die on CNN. I mean, as smart as these people are to work on AI they seem to be some of the dumbest people on earth.

In addition to that, all proposals invariably assume we are complete idiots for decades and do nothing to install safety measures (which do not have to involve AI at all in lots of cases) to mitigate.

So, yeah, everyone: Stop working on all cybersecurity projects. Resistance is futile.

2: If everyone at Anthropic truly believes this doomsday vision, they should move to shut down the company immediately and go write software to get more clicks on Facebook or something.

3: Nobody should buy Anthropic's stock when they IPO. Not one person or institution. Why would you provide them with massive amounts of money if they are telling you that they are going to kill all of humanity? What? They are good and everyone else is evil? Please.

I remember when the Y2K zealots were convinced civilization would come to an end at the turn of the clock starting at the end of 1999. "Bat shit crazy" is the only way I can describe that era. I also remember when Al Gore said we would all be dead by now. Again, "Bat shit crazy" and likely with political and financial objectives driving it all.

It seems humanity is susceptible to these crazy cults that grab onto something and just don't let go. I have yet to see one such predictions come true, the proof being that I am writing this and you are reading it. These people are bat-shit-crazy and you should not listen to them or support them.

4: Don't work for them. You'd be killing humanity.

5: No company should use Anthropic's products. They are telling you they are building the human extinction machine. Don't help them succeed.

----------

Etc.

This is one of the things that really gets me about the ease with which the ignorant media outlets can reach billions of people with complete nonsense these days. And nobody asks even the simplest questions like: How do you actually kill eight billion people? Show your work. Or, why would we just bazooka power plants feeding AI data centers on day 5? Etc. It's FUD at its best. I am sure there are both political and financial reasons for supporting and promoting this nonsense. I won't even venture a guess as to what they might be.

And let's not forget about enemies of the West being thrilled to fund the FUD because, if we set the brakes on development, they will absolutely win. Then what?

----------

If you care to have a better understanding of what might be going on, watch this:

AI Kills Everybody or Doomer Psyop?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvxjqbfLVk0

Re: We must pace the frontier

#448

Post by Loquebantur »

Aurornis wrote: post #429
rickydroll wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever someone talks about regulation, I always have the same question: How do you enforce it? How do you keep companies from using the replaced talent as a seat warmer? Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work. Legislating against using AI to replace employees could create an unevenly distributed basic income. The idea of limiting AI to socially beneficial effort…

> How do you keep companies from using the replaced talent as a seat warmer? Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work. I don’t think the proponents of these ideas care about who does the work. They see it as protection for specific jobs. Basically a jobs program with the costs forced on to large corporations. As you said, it becomes a great gift to the few people lu…

Earth isn't infinite.

You can and should engage in international regulation, as that is the only way to solve international problems.

The idea, capitalism would somehow lead to an ideal world all by itself is demonstrably wrong.

Re: We must pace the frontier

#449

Post by Art9681 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #425
Aurornis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances. Regulate what, exactly? Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules. There’s a theoretical version where all the countries in the world join hands and agree not to compete…

> Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules. Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs. What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into? Just as with H1B visas, you restri…

Jobs are going to evolve because of AI. Some jobs will be automated. New jobs will be created. It's like saying we should have never created car factories and automated much of it because we should think of the horse handlers and maintainers.

There will still be a market for "trust". And its customers will never trust the machines. And within that market a lot of new startups will emerge for those who actually get to work and seize opportunities rather than lament a bygone era.

Re: We must pace the frontier

#450

Post by cardamomo »

thadt wrote: post #430

Hard disagree. Our choices are: A) Bet our collective good on the national and international cooperation of all companies, nations, and people to come together in order to slow down development of one of the most powerful economic tools (and/or weapons) the world has ever known. Or B) Assume that all our systems will be targeted by super hackers right now , and take appropriate measures to deal with that reality. If…

These do not seem to be mutually exclusive. Should we not do both?
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