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Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

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Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#451

Post by bioemerl »

xpe wrote: post #436
bioemerl wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that most predictions about the dystopian AI future are typical of any generation encountering a disruptive technology. They're exaggerated and built from assumptions. They also always seem to conclude that the answer to these problems is to keep these machines centralized in the hands of big companies and governments, which is a very strange conclusion when they tend to get paychecks from those groups. At…

> They also always seem to conclude that the answer to these problems is to keep these machines centralized in the hands of big companies and governments, which is a very strange conclusion when they tend to get paychecks from those groups. I'm not sure who you mean by they. I'd suggest a vast majority of the public mindshare (in the US at least) of technology gone wrong and dystopias come from sci-fi. In general, I…

By the day I tend to refer to people who are professional AI ethics types.

Not sure what you're getting at with the rest of your comment. I would also classify most science fiction as pretty solidly out of touch with what reality is going to look like. It shows us exaggerated aspects of what writers think the future is going to look like, not realistic predictions.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#452

Post by BeFlatXIII »

ethbr0 wrote: post #351
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this will force people to search on subject-specific forums instead of subsections of the everything forum.

That doesn't seem different-in-kind. Spammed GPT content will eventually infect them too.

I believe that it's a case where the difference in scale becomes the difference in kind. Reddit is easy to target because there is one single Reddit: GPT spambots farm karma by reposting porn and cute animal photos and easily sail past even the most stringent karma requirements after letting the account age for a month or three. Niche forums would require the bot to develop a positive reputation to be accepted as the authoritative answer in each new forum that is targeted.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#453

Post by 0dayz »

As some has pointed out, ai safety teams are just window dressing.

I think it is even more cynical how what it actually highlights the need for ai regulations but ofc "the market can regulate itself" keeps on being used as a catch all shield against scandals and criticism.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#454

Post by RickHull »

bmc7505 wrote: post #111
anonylizard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People should understand AI safety != AI ethics. AI safety has two branches, AI ethics and AI alignment. Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. The alignment branch (responsible for developing RLHF->ChatGPT) believes AI ethics is completely trivial, and distracts attention away from existential risks. The ethics branch (responsible for all the media attention about racist AIs/bias etc) view…

Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. I never actually made this connection before, but having spent far too much time listening to both camps, this observation does ring true. Another observation I had is that there is an orthogonal axis to the safety/ethics dichotomy that follows a more scholastic approach, namely neuro/symbolism. These two branches correspond, roughly, to the debate between m…

Wordcels vs shape rotators

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#455

Post by throwayyy479087 »

prepend wrote: post #234
piokoch wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chief Diversity Officers is a cheap PR. You can be a company that forces its employees to piss into bottle as you punish going to toilet, but if you have Chief Diversity Officer, you change your logo once a year to rainbow colors then you are considered to be a progressive, well-behaved company. I don't even blame companies for this, they are just optimizing, if public is so stupid that it is buying it then, well, wh…

Chief Diversity Officer also help increase the ratio of underrepresented populations in company officers without having to change any existing officers. If the goal is to increase minority positions, then you can do this by hiring new officers to replace attrition. This takes a long time and constraining available candidates for key positions is probably frowned upon. Or you can add a new position, increasing the den…

I have never seen them actually create meaningful change. I have been in a lot of very racist trainings lead by these people.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#456

Post by throwayyy479087 »

ec109685 wrote: post #62
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

These sorts of adjunct, off-to-the-side "ethics" teams are always corporate window dressing, and when push comes to shove they always get jettisoned when competition demands an increase in speed. I don't mean to start a flame war, but this is a reason why I think "Chief Diversity Officers" are such an ill-conceived notion. It's not that I don't think diversity in corporate environments is extremely valuable, but it's…

Off topic but it’s impressive your throwaway account has a karma of 49,005.

I use a throwaway because I'm afraid of cancel culture, not because I plan on throwing it away. I mean, I DO throw them away somewhat regularly, but still.

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#458

Post by zestyping »

dweinus wrote: post #411
anonylizard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People should understand AI safety != AI ethics. AI safety has two branches, AI ethics and AI alignment. Those two branches despise each other with intense passion. The alignment branch (responsible for developing RLHF->ChatGPT) believes AI ethics is completely trivial, and distracts attention away from existential risks. The ethics branch (responsible for all the media attention about racist AIs/bias etc) view…

> It seems increasingly that the concerns from the ethics branch have not come to pass at all. Nonsense, there are countless ethical and alignment harms in the wild, and have been for many years. For example: - midjourney ripping off artists = ethical harm - google search telling people to throw batteries in the ocean = alignment harm - Buzzfeed slashing staff and replacing them with chatgpt = ethical harm - google p…

I'm confused. All of your examples sound like ethical harm to me, according to the definition in the parent comment. How are you drawing the line?

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#459

Post by ethbr0 »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #452
ethbr0 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem different-in-kind. Spammed GPT content will eventually infect them too.

I believe that it's a case where the difference in scale becomes the difference in kind. Reddit is easy to target because there is one single Reddit: GPT spambots farm karma by reposting porn and cute animal photos and easily sail past even the most stringent karma requirements after letting the account age for a month or three. Niche forums would require the bot to develop a positive reputation to be accepted as the…

Would they? I don't spend a lot of time on niche forums these days, but the question boils down to "Would you not accrue positive karma over time from posting?"

I'm sure there are forums out there sufficiently expert that's not the case... but that doesn't feel like most forums (even niche).

Exhibit A: me, who doesn't post particularly interesting things on HN, but eventually accrues karma simply from time

Re: Microsoft lays off one of its responsible AI teams

#460

Post by LegitShady »

smolder wrote: post #357
LegitShady wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please dont link random pdfs without some discussion as to what it is. i mean you can but my guess is it lowers willingness to interact and is not goos for communication. i can differentiate your post from spam.

*can't differentiate.

you're right - I use android for firefox and either the autocorrect doesn't work at all on HN or it corrects everything the wrong way. Too late to edit now. I wrote "cant" and it autocorrected to "can" instead of inserting an apostrophe. Firefox for android hates this site.

anyways - previous he had a throwaway line like "we need to be thinking about this!" and a link to the pdf. It looked just like spam.

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