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Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

nytimes.com

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Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#61

Post by etiam »

I wonder if this is also somehow related to Google ending Google Brain as an independent division.

MIT Technology Review just published a short article partly derived from the NYT piece, but with other commentary and history references. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/01/1072478/deep-lea...

At the end of it, it reads a bit like a covert ad for MIT:s conference (which has apparently booked Hinton for an interview on Wednesday). But all in all, maybe it's better journalism than the Metz text?

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#62

Post by lancesells »

h2odragon wrote: post #32
lancesells wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ending the internet would probably do it. Noise goes way down when you only have x amount of news sources and outlets. We could still have things like maps, messages, etc. that are all very beneficial.

Yes, there was no ignorance or error before the Internet. Everyone operated with perfect information at all times.

I was responding to parents: > AI unleashing cognitive noise at industrial scale.

Nothing in my comment says things were all well and good before the internet.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#64

Post by mlajtos »

archerx wrote: post #36

There is part of me that thinks that this A.I. fear-mongering is some kind of tactic by Google to get everybody to pause training their A.I.s so they can secretly catch up in the background. If I was to do some quick game theory in my mind this would be the result. Imagine being Google, leading the way in A.I. for years, create the frameworks (tensorflow), create custom hardware for A.I. (TPUs), fund a ton of researc…

You are partially right — OpenAI is way ahead of everybody else. Even though OpenAI team is thinking and doing everything for safe deployment of (baby) AGI, public and experts don’t think this should be effort lead by single company. So Google naturaly wants to be the counterweight. (Ironic that OpenAI was supposed to be counterweight, not vice versa.) However, when you want to catch up somebody, you cheat. And cheating with AI safety is inherenťy dangerous. Moratorium for research and deployment just doesn’t make sense from any standpoint IMO.

Regarding the hand-holding: As Hinton noted, simple extrapolation of current progress yields models that are super-human in any domain. Even if these models would not be able to access Internet, in wrong hands it could create disaster. Or even in good hands that just don’t anticipate some bad outcome. Tool that is too powerful and nobody tried it before.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#65

Post by Fricken »

ramraj07 wrote: post #2

What little consolation I had that maybe the experts of AI who continued to insist we needn’t worry too much know better, evaporates with this news. I am reminded that even a year back the experts were absolutely confident (as is mentioned in this article, including Hinton) that really intelligent AI is 30 years ahead. Anyone still trying to argue that we needn’t worry about AI, better have a mathematical proof of th…

The state of the art in AI suddenly appears to be a decade ahead of my expectations of only a couple years ago, but whether AI powerful enough to warrant actionable concern is here now or decades out doesn't really change much. Personally I was just as concerned about the risks of AI a decade ago as I am now. A decade ago one could see strong incentives to improve AI, and that persistent efforts tended to yield results. While there is much to debate about the particulars, or the timeline, it was reasonable then to assume the state of the art would continue to improve, and it still is.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#66

Post by nologic01 »

Lutger wrote: post #52
nologic01 wrote: post #4

> the average person will not be able to know what is true anymore We barely held things together as society without AI unleashing cognitive noise at industrial scale. Somehow we must find ways to re-channel the potential of digital technology for the betterment of society, not its annihilation.

Between Social Media, Cambridge Analytica, the Climate Crisis, Pandemic and (mostly) Russian disinfo, etc, it is already the case that most people have a really hard time knowing what is true. I don't claim to have much foresight, but an online world where truly and obviously nothing can be trusted might be a good thing. Because when AI generated content looks and feels the same as real content, nothing is to be trus…

> We will need new devices of trust...

the challenge is that the pace at which existing (imperfect) devices of trust get destroyed (e.g. the demise of ads financed journalism) is far faster that the rate of new device invention

in fact the only positive example after many decades of "digital innovation" might be wikipedia

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#67

Post by kasperni »

williamcotton wrote: post #11

The first step is state-issued public-key cryptographic identification cards. I have been making this argument for years with regards to human actors but perhaps with enough fear of the machines sentiment coursing through society the argument will now be considered. Authentically Human in a World of ChatGPT https://www.williamcotton.com/articles/authentically-human-i... And the article from years ago: The Tyranny of…

First step? Lots of countries have had this for more than a decade?

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#68

Post by notRobot »

nigamanth wrote: post #26

One question for the tech experts, of course people can use AI and technology for bad and illegal activities, but isn't that the case about everything? The person who invented the car didn't think about people using it to smuggle drugs or trample other people on purpose, and the wright brothers didn't think about all the people who would die due to plane crashes. So instead of focusing on the bad that's happening wit…

Yes, let's just ignore the people losing jobs and falling victim to AI-generated large-scale disinformation!

Yes there has been good done. But we need to focus on the bad, so we can figure out how to make it less bad.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

#70

Post by williamcotton »

Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #56
williamcotton wrote: post #11

The first step is state-issued public-key cryptographic identification cards. I have been making this argument for years with regards to human actors but perhaps with enough fear of the machines sentiment coursing through society the argument will now be considered. Authentically Human in a World of ChatGPT https://www.williamcotton.com/articles/authentically-human-i... And the article from years ago: The Tyranny of…

Where i live gambling is tightly controlled and requires government id due to money laundering laws. A sad side effect is a scheme were poor people sell their identity to organisations "gambling" on their behalf, trading an intangible future risk for hard present cash. Even today most chatgpt answers aren't posted by chatgpt on the social networks, but echoed by humans. Considering how much access people are willing…

“Acceptable losses”?

Totalitarians promise water filtration facilities for their citizens as well. Should we also question that infrastructure?

Police can obtain a warrant for searching your premises. Should we do away with this because of how this procedure would unfold under a totalitarian government?

The root cause of your concerns is poverty. We can address that with other policies. We don’t need throw the baby out with the bath water.

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