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Statement on AI Risk

safe.ai

551–560 of 964 posts

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was clear that nukes were a risk before they were used; that is why there was a race to create them. I am not in the camp that is especially worried about the existential threat of AI, however, if AGI is to become a thing, what does the moment look like where we can see it is coming and still have time to respond?

>It was clear that nukes were a risk before they were used; that is why there was a race to create them. Yes, because there were other kinds of bombs before then that could already kill many people, just at a smaller scale. There was a lot of evidence that bombs could kill people, so the idea that a more powerful bomb could kill even more people was pretty well justified. >if AGI is to become a thing, what does the m…

> Personally I believe that GPT-4, and even GPT-3, are non-superintelligent AGI already, and as far as I know they haven't killed anyone at all.

They aren't agentic. There's little worry a non-agentic AI can kill people.

Agentic AI that controls systems obviously can kill people today.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#552

This reeks of marketing and a push for early regulatory capture. We already know how Sam Altman thinks AI risk should be mitigated - namely by giving OpenAI more market power. If the risk were real, these folks would be asking the US government to nationalize their companies or bring them under the same kind of control as nukes and related technologies. Instead we get some nonsense about licensing.

I'm eternally skeptical of the tech business, but I think you're jumping to conclusions, here. I'm on a first-name basis with several people near the top of this list. They are some of the smartest, savviest, most thoughtful, and most principled tech policy experts I've met. These folks default to skepticism of the tech business, champion open data, are deeply familiar with the risks of regulatory capture, and don't…

You may be right, I don't know the people involved on a personal basis. Perhaps my problem is how much is left unsaid here (the broader safe.ai site doesn't help much). For example, what does "mitigate" mean? The most prominent recent proposal for mitigation comes from Sam Altman's congressional testimony, and it's very self serving. In such a vacuum of information, it's easy to be cynical.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#553
post #32

The issue I take with these kind of "AI safety" organizations is that they focus on the wrong aspects of AI safety. Specifically, they run this narrative that AI will make us humans go extinct. This is not a real risk today. Real risks are more in the category of systemic racism and sexism, deep fakes, over reliance on AI etc. But of course, "AI will humans extinct" is much sexier and collects clicks. Therefore, the…

> This is not a real risk today. Yes, clearly. But it is a risk for tomorrow. We do still care about the future, right?

I’m sure we can start talking about AI regulation once the existential risks are already happening.

I, for one, will be saying “told you so”. That’s talking, right?

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#554
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are doomsday scenarios are certainty then. What's the model to get to that that isn't just some sort of scary story that waves away or into existence a lot of things we don't know if they can exist.

>What's the model to get to that Let's say I was a small furry mammal that tasted really good, but also for some reason understood the world as it is now. I would tell you that super intelligence had already happened. That super intelligence was humans. That humans happened to reach super intelligence by 1) having the proper hardware. 2) filtering noise from important information. 3) then sharing that information wit…

Do you think we could wipe out all furry mammals, for example? Could another intelligence have the same level of difference to us as in your story we to furry mammals? We don't even know if the mythical superintelligence could manifest the way you assume. It assumes that intelligence basically can overcome any obstacles - I'd say we actually see that seems not to be the case currently and claims that that is just a function of sufficient intelligence are unproven (setting aside physical limits to certain actions and results).

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#555
post #17

I have yet to see a solution for “AI safety” that doesn’t involve ceding control of our most powerful models to a small handful of corporations. It’s hard to take these safety concerns seriously when the organizations blowing the whistle are simultaneously positioning themselves to capture the majority of the value.

I have one: Levy fines on actors judged to be attempting to extend AI capabilities beyond the current state of the art, and pay the fine to those private actors who prosecute them.

https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/privately-enforced-punished...

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#556
AI winter incoming in 2-5 years without it and these solely AI companies want to subsidize it like fusion because they have no other focuses. It’s not nukes, it’s fusion

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#557
post #545

This reeks of marketing and a push for early regulatory capture. We already know how Sam Altman thinks AI risk should be mitigated - namely by giving OpenAI more market power. If the risk were real, these folks would be asking the US government to nationalize their companies or bring them under the same kind of control as nukes and related technologies. Instead we get some nonsense about licensing.

The risks are definitely real. Just look at the number of smart individuals speaking out about this. The argument that anybody can build this in their basement is not accurate at the moment - you need a large cluster of GPUs to be able to come close to state of the art LLMs (e.g. GPT4). Sam Altman's suggestion of having an IAEA [ https://www.iaea.org/ ] like global regulatory authority seems like the best course of a…

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#558
post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with every discussion around this issue is that there are other statements on Sure, but we're not talking about those other ones. Dismissing good faith initiatives as marketing ploys because there are bad faith initiatives is functionally no different than just shrugging and walking away. Of course OpenAI et. al. will try to influence the good faith discussions: that's a great reason to champion the one…

I agree completely. I was just speculating on why there is so much discussion about marketing ploys in this comment section.

Ah, sure. That makes sense.

There's definitely a lot of marketing bullshit out there in the form of legit discussion. Unfortunately, this technology likely means there will be an incalculable increase in the amount of bullshit out there. Blerg.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#559
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but clever mumbo jumbo won't distract from the principle point. If AI can create a virus that kills all humans, another AI can create a virus that kills that virus. The virus has trillions more ways to be killed than to keep it alive, right?

No, the virus is far harder to kill than a human. You have to crate a virus killer that also does not also kill the human host. That is astronomically harder than making a virus that kills.

If a superintelligence is smart enough to create a virus I'm sure it can also create a virophage to counter it.

Whether or not the humans have more than a trillion and viruses only 1 million ways to die, will not have any impact. I suspect both have such a high order of magnitude of ways to die that finding a cross over would be trivial for said superintelligence.

Re: Statement on AI Risk

#560

This reeks of marketing and a push for early regulatory capture. We already know how Sam Altman thinks AI risk should be mitigated - namely by giving OpenAI more market power. If the risk were real, these folks would be asking the US government to nationalize their companies or bring them under the same kind of control as nukes and related technologies. Instead we get some nonsense about licensing.

100% I’d liken it to a fusion energy shop that wants to stay alive for 40 years. It’s not nuke worthy
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