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The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

danieltan.weblog.lol

51–60 of 73 posts

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#51
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ran on the messy biological human substrate because it was astoundingly cheap compared to engineering better factories. The video going around now of the robot pushing packages down a conveyor belt is so baffling to me. Why are we building a humanoid robot capable of pushing a clog of packages across a conveyor belt, when we could just make a conveyor belt that does not clog up and require a human or a robot to…

As with many things that have a percentile failure mode, it's almost always cheaper to build something flexible that can handle issues than it is to design a perfect widget that never fails. This is where humans came in in autonomation, the toyota version of automation. When you try to eliminate adaptability and adjustment entirely, the whole system becomes only metastable / fragile.

Is the human doing anything flexible here? It isn't like they occasionally unclog packages plus a dozen other things. They are on the line to just unclog the packages. Likewise for most other factories. When you see clips of the human in the line, they are just doing some task someone has not made a machine for yet. There is no specific human input required here. No human touch. They are doing things like turning over the object because no one designed a flipper to turn it over yet. Mindless repetitive tasks.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#52
This is a bit of weird article. On one hand, I understand what they're getting at: AI is a transformative technology, but the people whose lives will be most transformed aren't included in the conversation. On the other hand... of course that's how it is while AI is in the hands of literal profit seeking corporations. That won't change until the labs are nationalised under a government that cares about its citizens' wellbeing. One might counter that a good corporation will listen to its customers, but that has never been the case for powerful technologies with real costs for users to not adopt them.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

While their comment is abbrasive, that's a lot of assumptions about OP. Do you really know what their information source is? The core point remains valid, you could've just skipped the play on "alt-man" and you wouldn't have muddied your argument.

They called me a schizo in two separate comments and the only thing I did in my original post, was point out that his name was Altman which could be interpreted as alternate man. I never claimed that it was the etymological root of his name - the folks making the replies got upset for whatever reason and inferred that.

Pointing things out that I find interesting to potential readers of my comment, doesn't necessarily muddle my argument. If I had said that alternate man was the origin of his last name, you or the other commenters might have a valid point, but I never did that.

If someone is going to make broad assumptions about me and resort to infantile name calling in an attempt to demean me, I have no problem making broad assumptions about them in turn.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the username checks out. Very original. > transhumanists - yes. Luciferians - this definition is a lot more broad, branched, and complex. one transhumanist is hell-bent on Christianity (or at least seems to be; also pun intended) and most others have an atheistic position. Which transhumanist is hell-bent on Christianity? If you're approaching this seriously then provide names please. There have been plenty of Luci…

Teilhard de Chardin was, for one.

He was also a Jesuit priest and if you know anything about the history of the Jesuits...

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#55

I feel like it’s changing my brain. A colleague uses AI to make some code change and submits a PR. I use AI to evaluate the PR. It’s like AIs talking to each other with humans serving as conduits or connectors. Sometimes I’ll look up from the screen and realize how strange it is.

Do you ever actually think during this process? or could I train a monkey to do this same activity with the same outcomes?

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#56
The post's portrayal of Eliezer Yudkowsky's position strikes me as a mischaracterization, especially coming one month after Yudkowsky wrote the following:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5CfBDiQNg9upfipWk/only-law-c...

Daniel says that Yudkowsky is advocating for nuclear brinksmanship, while Yudkowsky says his position is basically "sign international agreements, and then commit to enforcing them against defectors".

I wonder if Daniel has the same view of any other international treaty ultimately backed by threat of lawful violence? (For example, NATO's article 5). Is enforcement of laws an extremist position?

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#57

Hearing about aligning with the AI reminds me of this other post about the current prophecies about AI: “Everyone will have an AI assistant,” or “Companies that fail to adopt AI will be eliminated.” and that > the power of prophecy lies not in accurately predicting the future, but in shaping it https://projectlibertynewsletter.substack.com/p/reject-ai-pr... We need better prophecies.

I have an AI assistant built into my phone I don't use. There's also one built into Windows I don't use. Several apps I use have AI assistants that I ignore. I kind of have one in the form of Google's AI search results that I wish I could turn off.

I use Claude on purpose. I'm not sure it's actually better than the other ones. I haven't even tried half of them.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#58
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends whether you think humanity / civilization are stable systems meant to exist in equilibrium, which they might not be.

Think of it more like conditionally stable or quasi-stable. There are external stability influences on it like weather, angry bacteria, and big rocks from space smashing us. Conversely there are internal influences, that is where humanity influences itself. It's best to look at it this way when talking about AI as AI is an internal influence. That is we put society in the machine, and the machine puts society back in…

What I'm saying is you're taking historical reference as a future prophecy. There is no evidence, until it actually happens, that human civilization is self stabilising. It could be its a totally terrible system that can't maintain equilibrium, and that's just the way it goes.

Our decisions are organic parts of the system, not some kind of alien factor that we have to / are able to control the footprint of. I don't see any reason to think of human decision making as magical - its just another part of the organism.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#59

I feel like it’s changing my brain. A colleague uses AI to make some code change and submits a PR. I use AI to evaluate the PR. It’s like AIs talking to each other with humans serving as conduits or connectors. Sometimes I’ll look up from the screen and realize how strange it is.

Do you ever actually think during this process? or could I train a monkey to do this same activity with the same outcomes?

Of course I think. I have 20 years of coding experience and knowledge of the codebase and business. That’s why I’m keenly aware of how strange the process is.

What I’d like to know is how you’d train a monkey to read and judge output from an llm on a pull request.

Re: The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they mean Thiel?

yup that one

There are many people who claim to be Christian but are not in order to subvert the religion. Pretty much the same with all Abrahamic religions. Peter Thiel definitely doesn't display Christian values. Joel Osteen is a great example - claims to be a Christian but doesn't at all behave like one. Same with Thiel.

Freemasonry is Luciferian, yet many of its members claim to be Christian. [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q1hnkp5Zqw

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