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The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

aphyr.com

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Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#51

Post by fweimer »

Terr_ wrote: post #28
Imnimo wrote: post #23

>Unlike human brains, which are biologically predisposed to acquire prosocial behavior, there is nothing intrinsic in the mathematics or hardware that ensures models are nice. How did brains acquire this predisposition if there is nothing intrinsic in the mathematics or hardware? The answer is "through evolution" which is just an alternative optimization procedure.

> just an alternative optimization procedure This "just" is... not-incorrect, but also not really actionable/relevant. 1. LLMs aren't a fully genetic algorithm exploring the space of all possible "neuron" architectures. The "social" capabilities we want may not be possible to acquire through the weight-based stuff going on now. 2. In biological life, a big part of that is detecting "thing like me", for finding a mate…

While I don't disagree about (2), my experience suggests that LLMs are biased towards generating code for future maintenance by LLMs. Unless instructed otherwise, they avoid abstractions that reduce repetitive patterns and would help future human maintainers. The capitalist environment of LLMs seems to encourage such traits, too.

(Apart from that, I'm generally suspect of evolution-based arguments because they are often structurally identical to saying “God willed it, so it must true”.)

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#52

Post by sigbottle »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #46

"Alignment" In what world would I ever expect a commercial (or governmental) entity to have precise alignment with me personally, or even with my own business? I argue those relationships are necessarily adversarial, and trusting anyone else to align their "AI" tool to my goals, needs, and/or desires is a recipe for having my livelihood completely reassigned into someone else's wallet.

Interesting you single out commercial and government entities but not people. What defines the difference? Bureaucracy? Concentration of resources? Legal theory?

I guess I'm trying to wonder why this line of thinking (in theory) doesn't turn to paranoia about everybody. I don't know much ethics or political theory or anything.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#53

Post by themafia »

> They also build secondary LLMs which double-check that the core LLM is not telling people how to build pipe bombs

Such a fear mongering position. You can learn to build pipe bombs already. Take any chemical reaction that produces gas and heat and contain it. Congratulations, you have a pipe bomb.

Meanwhile.. just.. ask an LLM if you can mix certain cleaning chemicals safely.

> I see four moats that could prevent this from happening.

Really? Because you just said:

> human brains, which are biologically predisposed to acquire prosocial behavior

You think you're going to constrain _human_ behavior by twiddling with the language models? This is foolishly naive to an extreme.

If you put basic and well understood human considerations before corporate ones then reality is far easier to predict.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#55

Post by atleastoptimal »

There really are only 3 options that don't involve human destruction:

1. AI becomes a highly protected technology, a totalitarian world government retains a monopoly on its powers and enforces use, and offers it to those with preexisting connections: permanent underclass outcome

2. Somehow the world agrees to stop building AI and keep tech in many fields at a permanent pre-2026 level: soft butlerian jihad

3. Futurama: somehow we get ASI and a magical balance of weirdness and dance of continual disruption keeps apocalypse in check and we accept a constant steady-state transformation without paperclipocalypse

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#56

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #46

"Alignment" In what world would I ever expect a commercial (or governmental) entity to have precise alignment with me personally, or even with my own business? I argue those relationships are necessarily adversarial, and trusting anyone else to align their "AI" tool to my goals, needs, and/or desires is a recipe for having my livelihood completely reassigned into someone else's wallet.

You could expect such a thing in a world where consent was currency, rather than scarcity.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#57

Post by throw4847285 »

dgfl wrote: post #49
throw4847285 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks LLM!

lol. I did use a lot of short sentences, that’s my bad. But please read through [1] and compare my text onto it, it may enlighten you on how to actually spot llm writing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that.

For the future, try to avoid prevaricating when you actually have a clear sense of what you want to argue. Instead of convincing me that you've weighed both options and found luddism wanting, you just come off as dishonest. If you think stridently, write stridently.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#58

Post by [deleted] »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #55

There really are only 3 options that don't involve human destruction: 1. AI becomes a highly protected technology, a totalitarian world government retains a monopoly on its powers and enforces use, and offers it to those with preexisting connections: permanent underclass outcome 2. Somehow the world agrees to stop building AI and keep tech in many fields at a permanent pre-2026 level: soft butlerian jihad 3. Futurama…

[deleted]

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#59

Post by raincole »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #55

There really are only 3 options that don't involve human destruction: 1. AI becomes a highly protected technology, a totalitarian world government retains a monopoly on its powers and enforces use, and offers it to those with preexisting connections: permanent underclass outcome 2. Somehow the world agrees to stop building AI and keep tech in many fields at a permanent pre-2026 level: soft butlerian jihad 3. Futurama…

In other words, only one option.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety

#60

Post by fmbb »

mursu wrote: post #45
nzoschke wrote: post #38

Excellent articles as expected from aphyr. I'm seeing that these tools are extremely powerful the hands of experts that already understand software engineering, security, observability, and system reliability / safety. And extremely dangerous in the hands of people that don't understand any of this. Perhaps reality of economics and safety will kick in, and inexperienced people will stop making expensive and dangerous…

The future is happening. Instead of trying to raise awareness about evil AI... I think it would be more healthy if we could direct this energy to ways of improving the situation without condemning the unknown of AI evolution. As with anything.. there will be a bad side.. The bad guys will always be there.. be it AI or soccer matches.. should we stop developing nuclear energy because nuclear weapons are developed?

There is no natural law saying the good sides of any kind of tech will outweigh any bad sides.

”The future” is happening because it is allowed in our current legal framework and because investors want to make it happen. It is not ”happening” because it is good or desirable or unavoidable.

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