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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

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Re: Statement on AI Risk

#461

Post by EGreg »

holmesworcester wrote: post #394
escape-big-tech wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If the risks were real they would just outright stop working on their AI products. This is nothing more than a PR statement

> If the risks were real they would just outright stop working on their AI products. This is nothing more than a PR statement This statement contains a bunch of hidden assumptions: 1. That they believe their stopping will address the problem. 2. That they believe the only choice is whether or not to stop. 3. That they don't think it's possible to make AI safe through sufficient regulation. 4. That they don't see bene…

If you think that raising instead of cutting taxes actually helps society then why don’t you just send your $ to the federal government?

Because it only works if it is done across the whole country, as a system not as one individual unilaterally stopping.

And here any of these efforts won’t work unless there is international cooperation. If other countries can develop the AI weapons, and get an advantage, then you will also.

We need to apply the same thinking as chemical weapons or the Montreal Conference for banning CFCs

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#462

Post by arisAlexis »

b3nji wrote: post #77

Nonsense, the industry giants are just trying to scare the law makers to license the technology. Effectively, cutting out everyone else. Remember the Google note circulating saying "they have no moat", this is their moat. They have to protect their investment, we don't want people running this willy nilly for next to no cost on their own devices, God forbid!

All academia and researchers say X. Random redditor/HN lurker declares nonesense I know better! This is how we should bet our future.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#463

Post by staunton »

nicce wrote: post #99
patrec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously I don't get this mindset at all. How can it not be obvious to you that AI is an uniquely powerful and thus uniquely dangerous technology? It's like saying nuclear missiles can't possibly be dangerous and nuclear arms reduction and non-proliferation treaties were a scam, because the US, China and the Soviet Union had positioned themselves to capture the majority of t…

If you look the the world politics, basically if you hold enough nuclear weapons, you can do whatever you want to those who don't have them. And based on the "dangers", new countries are prohibit to create them. And the countries which were quick enough to create them, holds all the power. Their value is immeasurable especially for the Russia. Without them, they could not attack to Ukraine. > non-proliferation treati…

> There are no real consequences if you are backing off, and you can do it in any time.

That's not quite true. Sure, noone is going to start a war about such a withdrawal. However, nuclear arsenals are expensive to maintain and it's even more expensive to be in an arms race. Also, nobody wants to risk nuclear war if they can avoid it. Civilian populations will support disarmament in times where they don't feel directly threatened. That's why lot of leaders of all persuasions have advocated for and taken part in efforts to reduce their arsenals. Same goes for relations between countries generally and the huge economic benefits that come with trade and cooperation. Withdrawing from nuclear treaties endangers all of these benefits and increases risk. A country would only choose this route out of desperation or for likely immediate gain.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#464

Post by hackermatic »

wongarsu wrote: post #54
shafyy wrote: post #32

The issue I take with these kind of "AI safety" organizations is that they focus on the wrong aspects of AI safety. Specifically, they run this narrative that AI will make us humans go extinct. This is not a real risk today. Real risks are more in the category of systemic racism and sexism, deep fakes, over reliance on AI etc. But of course, "AI will humans extinct" is much sexier and collects clicks. Therefore, the…

A good way to categorize risk is look at both likelihood and severity of consequences. The most visible issues today (racism, deep fakes, over reliance) are almost certain to occur, but also for the most part have relatively minor consequences (mostly making things that are already happening worse). "Advanced AI will make humans extinct" is much less likely but has catastrophic consequences. Focusing on the catastrop…

Rare likelihood * catastrophic impact ~= almost certain likelihood * minor impact. I'm as concerned with the effects of the sudden massive scaling of AI tools, as I am with the capabilities of any individual AI or individual entity controlling one.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#465

Post by enord »

duvenaud wrote: post #351
enord wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess is many things but it is not a tool. It is an end unto itself if anything of the sort. I struggle with the notion of AI as an end unto itself, all the while we gauge its capabilities and define its intelligence by directing it to perform tasks of our choosing and judge by our criteria. We could have dogs watch television on our behalf, but why would we?

This is a great point. But I'd say that capable entities have a habit of turning themselves into agents. A great example is totalitarian governments. Even if every single citizen hates the regime, they're still forced to support it. You could similarly ask: Why would we ever build a government or institution that cared more about its own self-preservation than its original mission? The answer is: Natural selection fa…

Now agency is an end unto itself I wholeheartedly agree.

I feel though, that any worry about the agency of supercapable computer systems is premature until we see even the tiniest— and I mean really anything at all— sign of their agency. Heck, even agency _in theory_ would suffice, and yet: nada.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#466

Post by arisAlexis »

randomdata wrote: post #123
patrec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously I don't get this mindset at all. How can it not be obvious to you that AI is an uniquely powerful and thus uniquely dangerous technology? It's like saying nuclear missiles can't possibly be dangerous and nuclear arms reduction and non-proliferation treaties were a scam, because the US, China and the Soviet Union had positioned themselves to capture the majority of t…

Nuclear missiles present an obvious danger to the human body. AI is an application of math. It is not clear how that can be used directly to harm a body. The assumption seems to be that said math will be coupled with something like a nuclear missile, but in that case the nuclear missile is still the threat. Any use of AI is just an implementation detail.

Please read Life 3.0 or superintelligence. There are people that spent decades thinking about how this would happen. You spent a little bit of time and conclude it can't.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#467

Post by goolulusaurs »

jackbrookes wrote: post #445
goolulusaurs wrote: post #388

Throughout history there have been hundreds, if not thousands of examples of people and groups who thought the end of the world was imminent. So far, 100% of those people have been wrong. The prior should be that the people who believe in AI doomsday scenarios are wrong also, unless and until there is very strong evidence to the contrary. Vague theoretical arguments are not sufficient, as there are many organizations…

Of course every one has been wrong. If they were right, you wouldn't be here talking about it. It shouldn't be surprising that everyone has been wrong before

Consider two different scenarios:

1) Throughout history many people have predicted the world would soon end, and the world did not in fact end.

2) Throughout history no one predicted the world would soon end, and the world did not in fact end.

The fact that the real world is aligned with scenario 1 is more an indication that there exists a pervasive human cognitive bias to think that the world is going to end, which occasionally manifests itself in the right circumstances (apocalypticism).

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#468

Post by zucker42 »

silverlake wrote: post #131
wongarsu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good way to categorize risk is look at both likelihood and severity of consequences. The most visible issues today (racism, deep fakes, over reliance) are almost certain to occur, but also for the most part have relatively minor consequences (mostly making things that are already happening worse). "Advanced AI will make humans extinct" is much less likely but has catastrophic consequences. Focusing on the catastrop…

This doesn’t work either. The consequence of extinction is infinity (to humans). Likelihood * infinity = infinity. So by hand-waving at a catastrophic sci-fi scenario they can demand we heed their demands, whatever that is.

Saying that extinction has infinity disutility seems reasonable at first, but I think its completely wrong. I also think that you bear the burden of proof if you want to argue that, because our current understanding of physics indicates that humanity will go extinct eventually, and so there will be finitely many humans, and so the utility of humanity is finite.

If you accept that fact that extinction has finite negative utility, it's completely valid to trade off existential risk reduction against other priorities using normal expected value calculations. For example, it might be a good idea to pay $1B a year to reduce existential risk by 0.1% over the next century, but might arguably be a bad idea to destroy society as we know it to prevent extinction in 1000 years.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#469

Post by logicchains »

veerd wrote: post #402
holmesworcester wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out, there are many on this list (Bruce Schneier, for example) who do not stand to benefit from AI marketing or regulatory capture. Anyone upvoting this comment should take a long look at the names on this letter and realize that many are not conflicted. Many signers of this letter are more politically sophisticated than the average HN commenter, also. So sure, maybe they're getting rolled by m…

Agreed. It's difficult for me to see how the regulatory capture arguments apply to Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (!!). Both of them are criticizing their own life's work and the source of their prestige. That has to be emotionally painful. They aren't doing it for fun. I totally understand not agreeing with AI x-risk concerns on an object level, but I find the casual dismissal bizarre.

[flagged]

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#470

Post by pixl97 »

randomdata wrote: post #217
pixl97 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany, for example would disagree with you. They believe violent speech is an act of violence in itself. >AI is an application of math. It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. You know like robot bodies, or 3D printers. And as mentioned above, even virtual things like social media can cause enough problems. People hook AI to tools. And this is just the maybe not quite g…

> It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. But those physical things would be the danger, at least if you consider the nuclear missile to be the danger. It seems you are trying to go down the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line of thinking. Which is fine, but outside of the discussion taking place.

>but outside of the discussion taking place.

Drawing an artificial line between you and the danger is a great way to find yourself in a Maginot Line with AI driving right around it.

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