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Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

openphilanthropy.org

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Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#51

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

hawkice wrote: post #48
jaibot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holden's dedicated a huge chunk of his career to moving hundreds of millions of dollars to alleviating poverty and disease. He's one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. You may disagree with his decision here, but to dismiss his efforts, saying it "sucks" and isn't "effective, or even altruistic", while ignoring the extensive public writing he's done on the subject that led him to these views and stra…

> strawmanning his position as nepotism So, you obviously feel strongly about this, but let me explain why your comments are less persuasive for those of us outside this subculture: The non-profit they donated to is (by any reading of their mission statement) an organization designed to create new technology that "will be the most significant technology ever created by humans" according to their own statements. It do…

Technological advancement has been responsible for most of the increases in human welfare, most notably allowing us to (at least temporally) escape the Malthusian condition. It's not implausible that technical research likely to be neglected by markets and academia could be a better use of money than even the most efficient African charity. But I drink the AI-is-very-likely-to-change-everything-we-really-mean-it-this-time Koolaid, though.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#53

Post by dilemma »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #51
hawkice wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strawmanning his position as nepotism So, you obviously feel strongly about this, but let me explain why your comments are less persuasive for those of us outside this subculture: The non-profit they donated to is (by any reading of their mission statement) an organization designed to create new technology that "will be the most significant technology ever created by humans" according to their own statements. It do…

Technological advancement has been responsible for most of the increases in human welfare, most notably allowing us to (at least temporally) escape the Malthusian condition. It's not implausible that technical research likely to be neglected by markets and academia could be a better use of money than even the most efficient African charity. But I drink the AI-is-very-likely-to-change-everything-we-really-mean-it-this…

OpenAI still isn't open source, or open in any other sense of the word. It is a private organization that will own any technology developed.

Again, OpenAI isn't Open.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#54

Post by nbouscal »

joshuamorton wrote: post #50
nbouscal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's… not at all true? There have been numerous thorough attempts at coming up with as reasonable an estimate as possible, involving in-depth conversations with most of the experts in the field. Maybe it's not strictly a "calculation", but it's a hell of a lot more than just an appeal to the idea of AGI.

Except that there's no such thing as the field of "AGI" (or if there is, its a subfield of philosophy). Asking modern ML and Deep Learning researchers about their thoughts on AGI is like asking the wright brothers about a mars mission. Sure, they're the closest thing we have to "experts", but there's not just one, but likely 5 or 10 more field, if not world-changing leaps we need to make before the technologies we ha…

Your opinion about how far off AGI is is a totally reasonable one, and some AI experts agree with it. Other AI experts disagree, and think that AGI is basically tractable with current research methods plus a breakthrough or two.

Yes, there's some additional uncertainty about whether you're even asking the right people. But you can take account of that uncertainty, both by widening your error bars and by asking people from other fields as well (including philosophers, e.g. Bostrom). What you can't do is just throw up your hands and say "it's unknowable".

This is all beside the original point, which is that these arguments are much more rigorously grounded than just a wave in the direction of AGI. Could they be better? Sure, and there are a lot of people who'd be interested in seeing some better estimates. But for now, they're the best we have, and they're a completely reasonable thing to base decisions on.

> We can formally prove what a system is capable of. That fixes the problem.

That's exactly what some of the people working on this problem are trying to do, but it's a hell of a lot harder than you make it sound. Formal methods have come a really long way, but they're not even remotely close to being able to prove that an AGI system is safe (yet).

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#58

Post by idlewords »

jaibot wrote: post #33
rspeer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I would use it as a criticism. This is a tangled web of like-minded people giving money to each other and calling it charity. Some people conflate this with Effective Altruism, which I think sucks. Compared to the rigorous work done by GiveWell, there's no way to tell if this is effective, or even altruistic. It's just people assuming that the world will be a better place if more people who think like them have…

Holden's dedicated a huge chunk of his career to moving hundreds of millions of dollars to alleviating poverty and disease. He's one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. You may disagree with his decision here, but to dismiss his efforts, saying it "sucks" and isn't "effective, or even altruistic", while ignoring the extensive public writing he's done on the subject that led him to these views and stra…

It looks an awful lot like nepotism when you funnel $30M to your future brother-in-law.

Smart people are great at rationalizing, including to themselves.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#59

Post by idlewords »

mankash666 wrote: post #3

I think there are more important causes than "reducing potential risks from advanced AI". Honest to god, $30M will go a long way in saving lives TODAY. Flint, MI anyone?

The cult of 'AI risk' is a religious belief that brooks no dissent, and unfortunately has its claws in a lot of otherwise smart people.

Re: Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI

#60

Post by Analemma_ »

idlewords wrote: post #57

Scroll to the end. This is a $30M grant to the guy's roommate and future brother-in-law. Unbelievable.

idlewords, this comment has tremendous negative utility for humanity. By pointing out obvious nepotism and corruption in the AI risk charity field, you make people less likely to donate in the future, thus increasing the likelihood of a takeover from the robots. You must delete this comment; the fate of the world depends on it!

/s

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