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Safe Superintelligence Inc.

ssi.inc

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Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#481

Post by softg »

m3kw9 wrote: post #455
tiarafawn wrote: post #403

If superintelligence can be achieved, I'm pessimistic about the safe part. - Sandboxing an intelligence greater than your own seems like an impossible task as the superintelligence could potentially come up with completely novel attack vectors the designers never thought of. Even if the SSI's only interface to the outside world is an air gapped text-based terminal in an underground bunker, it might use advanced psych…

Why do people always think that a superintelligent being will always be destructive/evil to US? I rather have the opposite view where if you are really intelligent, you don’t see things as a zero sum game

Why wouldn't it be? A lot of super intelligent people are/were also "destructive and evil". The greatest horrors in human history wouldn't be possible otherwise. You can't orchestrate the mass murder of millions without intelligent people and they definitely saw things as a zero sum game.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#482

Post by Nasrudith »

m3kw9 wrote: post #455
tiarafawn wrote: post #403

If superintelligence can be achieved, I'm pessimistic about the safe part. - Sandboxing an intelligence greater than your own seems like an impossible task as the superintelligence could potentially come up with completely novel attack vectors the designers never thought of. Even if the SSI's only interface to the outside world is an air gapped text-based terminal in an underground bunker, it might use advanced psych…

Why do people always think that a superintelligent being will always be destructive/evil to US? I rather have the opposite view where if you are really intelligent, you don’t see things as a zero sum game

It is low-key anti-intellectualism. Rather than consider that a greater intelligence may be actually worth listening to (in a trust but verify way at worst), it is assuming that 'smarter than any human' is sufficient to do absolutely anything. If say Einstein or Newton were the smartest human they would be super-intelligence relative to everyone else. They did not become emperors of the world.

Superintelligence is a dumb semantic game in the first place that assumes 'smarter than us' means 'infinitely smarter'. To give an example bears are super-strong relative to humans. That doesn't mean that nothing we can do can stand up to the strength of a bear or that a bear is capable of destroying the earth with nothing but its strong paws.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#483

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

xanderlewis wrote: post #197
dougb5 wrote: post #125

> Building safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our time. Call me a cranky old man but the superlatives in these sorts of announcements really annoy me. I want to ask: Have you surveyed every problem in the world? Are you aware of how much suffering there is outside of your office and how unresponsive it has been so far to improvements in artificial intelligence? Are you really sayi…

It certainly is the most important technical problem of our time, if we end up developing such a system. That conditional makes all the difference.

It's a hell of a conditional, though.

"How are all those monkeys flying out of my butt?" would be the important technical problem of our time, if and only if, monkeys were flying out of my butt.

It's still not a very important statement, if you downplay or omit the conditional.

Is "building safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our time" full stop ?

Is it fuck.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#484

Post by Bengalilol »

chrisldgk wrote: post #473

Not to be too pessimistic here, but why are we talking about things like this? I get that it’s a fun thing to think about, what we will do when a great artificial superintelligence is achieved and how we deal with it, feels like we’re living in a science fiction book. But, all we’ve achieved at this point is making a glorified token predicting machine trained on existing data (made by humans), not really being able t…

I got flagged for less. Anyways, nice sum up of the current AI game!

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#485

Post by Nasrudith »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #412
crowcroft wrote: post #383

As others have pointed out, it's the business incentives that create unsafe AI, and this doesn't solve that. Social media recommendation algorithms are already incredibly unsafe for society and young people (girls in particular [1]). When negative externalities exist, government should create regulation that appropriately accounts for that cost. I understand there's a bit of a paradigm shift and new attack vectors wi…

I mean if the last 20 years is to be taken as evidence, it seems big tech is more than happy to shotgun unproven and unstudied technology straight into the brains of our most vulnerable populations and just see what the fuck happens. Results so far include a lot of benign nothing but also a whole lot of eating disorders, maxed out parents credit cards, attention issues, rampant misogyny among young boys, etc. Which,…

Please look up the history of maxing out credit cards, eating disorders, attention disorders, and misogyny. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that anything before your birth was the Garden of Eden and that the parade of horribles existed only because of "big tech". What is next? Blaming big tech for making teenagers horny and defiant?

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#486

Post by mediaman »

wyager wrote: post #433
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if the last 20 years is to be taken as evidence, it seems big tech is more than happy to shotgun unproven and unstudied technology straight into the brains of our most vulnerable populations and just see what the fuck happens. Results so far include a lot of benign nothing but also a whole lot of eating disorders, maxed out parents credit cards, attention issues, rampant misogyny among young boys, etc. Which,…

Blaming the internet for misogyny is kind of bizarre, given that current levels of misogyny are within a couple points of all-time historical lows. The internet was invented ~40 years ago. Women started getting vote ~100 years ago. Do you think the internet has returned us to pre-women's-suffrage levels of misogyny?

Do you believe that no subfactor can ever have a sign opposite of the factor of which it is a component?

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#487

Post by adamisom »

chrisldgk wrote: post #473

Not to be too pessimistic here, but why are we talking about things like this? I get that it’s a fun thing to think about, what we will do when a great artificial superintelligence is achieved and how we deal with it, feels like we’re living in a science fiction book. But, all we’ve achieved at this point is making a glorified token predicting machine trained on existing data (made by humans), not really being able t…

Agree up til last paragraph: how's Altman involved? Otoh Sutskever is a true believer so that explains his Why

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#488

Post by wmf »

sbarre wrote: post #323
jackothy wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how someone so smart can be so naive" Do you really think Ilya has not thought deeply about each and every one of your points here? There's plenty of answers to your criticisms if you look around instead of attacking.

I mean if you just take the words on that website at face value, it certainly feels naive to talk about it as "the most important technical problem of our time" (compared to applying technology to solving climate change, world hunger, or energy scarcity, to name a few that I personally think are more important). But it's also a worst-case interpretation of motives and intent. If you take that webpage for what it is -…

A lot of people think superintelligence can "solve" politics which is the blocker for climate change, hunger, and energy.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#489

Post by transcriptase »

cwillu wrote: post #221
jiveturkey wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly. and define safe. eg, is it safe (ie dereliction) to _not_ use ai to monitor dirty bomb threats? or more simple, CSAM?

In the context of super-intelligence, “safe” has been perfectly well defined for decades: “won't ultimately result in everyone dying or worse”. You can call it hubris if you like, but don't pretend like it's not clear.

It’s not, when most discussion around AI safety in the last few years has boiled down to “we need to make sure LLMs never respond with anything that a stereotypical Berkeley progressive could find offensive”.

So when you switch gears and start using safety properly, it would be nice to have that clarified.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#490

Post by its_ethan »

smegger001 wrote: post #332
its_ethan wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every problem is a "technical" problem in the year 2024 though? What problems out there don't have a solution that leverages technology?

>What problems out there don't have a solution that leverages technology? Societal problems created by technology?

Wouldn't the technology that caused those problems inherently be a part of that solution? Even if only to reduce/eliminate them?
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