Sounds like a snake pit. None of them can be trusted. If we have to rely on companies to self appoint a benevolent ‘AI dictator’ we’re fucked.
The only high profile person in AI I’d consider perhaps worthy of trust is Demis Hassabis.
Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#502It's really interesting reading about how these folks view LLMs. Yeah, they're transformative, but I don't know that we're going to be eating ramen in a Neo-Tokyo street bar anytime soon. So much "A.G.I" mentioned in the article.
I find it interesting how a lot of cyberpunk does not really include AI or does not present it in transformative way. There is a lot of mind uploading, implants, corpo fun and overall technology permeating all aspects of life, but often AI itself does not actually play a big role.
AI is one of the core parts of cyberpunk, through androids / humanoid robots. Blade Runner is completely built on the protagonist having to interact with rogue artificial intelligence.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#503It is disconcerting how Altman has used "AI safety" as a marketing tool. The more people imagine the universe turned into paperclips, the more they invest. Obviously Altman doesn't care about safety (I don't either; I'm not an AI-doomer). But he truly does come across as someone incapable of telling the truth. Are you even a liar if honesty is not in the set of possible outcomes? Still, there's something oddly reassu…
I agree with you completely, but the way I see it Anthropic are x100 worse when it comes to amplifying this doomer bs for marketing. It’s their whole shtick.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#504It’s less about trusting one person but more about the structure indeed AI is concentrating capital and compute and talent into a few hands so we’ve seen this before with railroads, oil, semiconductors. It brings innovation and also pricing power and political influence.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
> whether the company that branded itself as the ethical AI lab actually is one FWIW I have two(!!) close friends working for Anthropic, one for nearly two years and one for about 4 months. Both of them tell me that this is not just marketing, that the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere, and that this was the most surprising part about joining Anthropic for them. They insist the culture is ac…
Yeah, every engineer in the bay area has a way of framing the business they work for as a benign force for good... Until they find themselves working somewhere else, then suddenly they have a lot to say about the unacceptable things going on there. From the outside, I find Anthropic's hyperbolic marketing to be an indication that they are basically the same as every other bay area tech startup - more or less nice fol…
My model is that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI engineers who self-selected for safety-consciousness. However, it's still subject to the same problem: power corrupts. I think they are better than OpenAI but they are definitely sliding.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
> whether the company that branded itself as the ethical AI lab actually is one FWIW I have two(!!) close friends working for Anthropic, one for nearly two years and one for about 4 months. Both of them tell me that this is not just marketing, that the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere, and that this was the most surprising part about joining Anthropic for them. They insist the culture is ac…
I find it bizarre even the public image of Anthropic is seen as ethical after the Department of War debacle, in which they themselves admitted they had basically no qualms with their tech being used for war and slaughter at all except two very very thin lines, namely mass surveillance of American citizens and fully automated weaponry with their current models. It only showed they were marginally more ethical than Ope…
Anthropic has two principles they're willing to stand behind, even when it costs them. That's not a lot, but OpenAI only has one principle: look out for number one.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. They share the cultural sensibilities of the average person on the street, and yet they're making decisions that will shape the world for future generations. I think that's bad. I want those decisions being made by people who have a more extensive cultural education. Snobs, if you want to call them that.
Of course they're average people, why do you think tech or AI company employees are somehow above or beyond the average person? I'm not sure why you'd willingly say you'd want snobs controlling the world, that is somehow even worse and reeks of aristocracy which is why you see replies rejecting your thoughts, it is simply not a western ideal or one to strive towards.
> why do you think tech or AI company employees are somehow above or beyond the average person?
They're supposed to be elite. They went to the best schools, many of them have PhDs, they are getting paid insane amounts of money.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course they're average people, why do you think tech or AI company employees are somehow above or beyond the average person? I'm not sure why you'd willingly say you'd want snobs controlling the world, that is somehow even worse and reeks of aristocracy which is why you see replies rejecting your thoughts, it is simply not a western ideal or one to strive towards.
> why do you think tech or AI company employees are somehow above or beyond the average person? They're supposed to be elite. They went to the best schools, many of them have PhDs, they are getting paid insane amounts of money.
Lol. I can tell you right now they're not elite.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#509Why would anyone trust him at all? their tech is used to bomb children, all of these rich folks are immoral only about their selfish gain.
> their tech is used to bomb children
If you're talking about the school in Iran, that wasn't OpenAI. That was a Palantir system that pre-dates OAI by a few years, and was due to a bad entry in a spreadsheet, that showed the building as military housing. Which it was a few years ago.
180 people lost their lives because of bad data in spreadsheet, but not AI.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#510This anecdote is so absurd it sounds like satire. This is the guy with the $23M mansion? > Amodei’s notes describe escalating tense encounters, including one, months later, in which Altman summoned him and his sister, Daniela, who worked in safety and policy at the company, to tell them that he had it on “good authority” from a senior executive that they had been plotting a coup. Daniela, the notes continue, “lost it…
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