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White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

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Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#61

Post by kalkin »

throwaway72762 wrote: post #20

This strikes me as the best outcome as long as it stops here. This lets the White House move on from the nonsense AI x-risk discussion without being attacked for not doing anything about it, and also doesn't let the companies use fake x-risk to kill off open source models.

I'm a cynic but even so I've been surprised by how the tone of confident dismissal of x-risk as "nonsense" has been completely unaffected by the change in messenger from LW weirdos to Turning Award winners. Like people don't even feel the need to gesture at an argument, it's just supposed to be obvious. What's really going on is good open source vs evil corporate control, a lot of commenters are sure, and the government is just out-of-touch geriatric puppets—even as the "open source vs Micro$oft" narrative has been ported straight from the 90s to a world where the concrete policy question is "should Meta bear any responsibility for the consequences of their software releases."

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#62

Post by codyb »

This actually seems semi decent for a first go?

140 million in funding for seven more research labs (might be a different order but still neat).

Commitments for cybersecurity funding (probably already happening anyways), independent auditing, and some testing.

The most interesting part was the watermarking. I'm interested to see how that works out, but it's a neat concept, something I hadn't thought of.

I like the focus on reducing bias, that seems like a good effort and of course the focus on helping to cure cancer which I'm always a fan of Biden being such a champion of.

Also reaching out to key allies to work together seems positive.

I dunno, all in all, it seems kind of neat. Call me a wild eyed optimist or something.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#63

Post by kalkin »

hgsgm wrote: post #51
roenxi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is likely to be similar to humans vs. other primates. Step 1 is establish a position of complete military dominance through superior communication, resource utilisation and technology. Step 2 is wipe out anyone who competes for resources. Basically the argument is if anyone, anywhere creates an AI that has the same basic drives as a human (preserve yourself, replicate, preserve things that look like you) it'll sta…

AI is really bad at plugging itself in after it is unplugged.

Do you think this is an unsolvable problem for AI? In a world where humans are already being tricked by AI-generated deepfakes and robots can play ping pong and soccer, just to gesture at a couple of possible approaches it might take?

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#64

Post by lukifer »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #47
adamsmith143 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have been asked by many people to explain how AI could kill us all. How about some clarity for common people. There are countless resources to find this stuff out. To be clear there may not be a level at which common people understand why e.g. Fission Chain Reactions are dangerous but they can grok why a giant bomb that spreads radiation is bad. For Starters: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-r…

You have to find a different preacher than Yud, he has zero capacity to explain himself to skeptics.

Robert Miles is a much more effective communicator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMLKbhY0ji0

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#65

Post by kalkin »

wpietri wrote: post #26
localplume wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

And I think it's important to note that hype about "existential risk" is coming from people who stand to profit from "AI": https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/31/ai-poses-human-extinction-ri... So it seems like the playbook is something like: 1) play up non-problems that, thanks to 50+ years of sci-fi killer AI, will seem real to the rubes; 2) breeze on past the numerous actual problems; 3) solve as few actual problems as p…

> people who stand to profit from "AI"

Some of them, sure, but that doesn't seem to be true of plenty of signatures to the open letter.

> the contents of this press release focus mostly on actual problems

Given that this is a set of entirely voluntary commitments made by the companies who you had thought were hyping x-risk in order to distract from actual problems... maybe it's worth updating your assessment of what the x-risk thing is about?

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#66

Post by kalkin »

LatteLazy wrote: post #5
ilaksh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say "AGI" and they mean different things but I am guessing most now mean something like a digital living human/simulation of human when they say that. Mixed in with some blurry connotation of it automatically becoming godlike in power. That stuff is very speculative. But we don't need AI to get to that level for it to be very dangerous. Just imagine that we have an open source GPT that is something like…

I think you also need to draw a line between different types of danger: An actual AGI, that can think and has it's own motives and initiative is an entirely different danger to GPT-4, -5 etc which cannot. Those might post a danger in terms of fake news, or worker displacement, but they're just social issues. No rate improvement in chat GPT will make it "decide to kill all the humans" etc.

People have literally tried to hack together an agent on top of GTP-4 and given it an explicit goal of "kill all humans" for the lulz (ChaosGPT). I don't think that particular case is going anywhere, but assuming that nothing roughly GPT-shaped can acquire harmful goals seems naive.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#67

Post by javier123454321 »

freedomben wrote: post #31
throwaway72762 wrote: post #20

This strikes me as the best outcome as long as it stops here. This lets the White House move on from the nonsense AI x-risk discussion without being attacked for not doing anything about it, and also doesn't let the companies use fake x-risk to kill off open source models.

I agree with you, but it isn't going to stop here: > Biden-Harris Administration will continue to take decisive action by developing an Executive Order and pursuing bipartisan legislation to keep Americans safe

Ah the lengths they will go for our safety.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#69

Post by ilaksh »

airstrike wrote: post #43

This reeks of ass-covering so we everyone can later say "We are sorry. We tried." followed by some more innocuous PR lingo Great for voters to sleep better at night. Useless for actually "managing AI risks" Not that those risks can seriously be managed long-term, IMHO. The prisoner's dilemma between nation states and corporations ensures someone will defect.

Right. Check out the new Netflix documentary "Unknown: Killer Drones". Basically former soldiers running military tech companies with the experience of losing their friends in battle are looking at how DeepMind's AIs are undefeatable at Star Craft II, Go, and pretty much every game they train it for. And already testing plugging that type of thing into drones and jets.

And now DeepMind wants to combine the language-based fairly general purpose reasoning ability of something like GPT with the superhuman strategic prowess of AlphaStar/AlphaZero/etc.

At the latest big keynote Nvidia touted the fact that they have accelerated AI by a factor of one million over the last decade, and project that they will do so again in the next decade.

Humans will not be able to compete at all, and even putting them in the decision loop will mean immediate failure. Human thought and action will "appear" to be so slow that it is essentially frozen compared to the operating speed of these systems.

Re: White House Secures Commitments from Leading AI Companies to Manage AI Risks

#70

Post by kalkin »

localplume wrote: post #10
asimpleusecase wrote: post #2

Looks like the companies all agreed to do what they were doing already. Nothing about training data transparency , nothing about a common definition of risk or standards for compliance. The public have all heard “AI is going to destroy humanity” but those statements have been short on specifics. I have been asked by many people to explain how AI could kill us all. How about some clarity for common people.

if you think about it, its actual insanity. The fears are all from science fiction with absolutely no grounding in reality. There are legitimate concerns about the unethical mass harvesting of data but if you think about "AI safety" vs something like vehicular safety or spacecraft safety its kind of nuts, because the latter are grounded in reality and have formal specifications which need to be met. But AI safety is…

Personally I don't think AI is very likely to destroy humanity in the next couple of decades. I also don't think that the Ukraine war is very likely to end in a global thermonuclear exchange. But I don't think worrying about nuclear war is insanity. What strikes me as insane in the Ukraine case, or at the very least dangerously irrational, is calling for a no-fly zone without thinking about the consequences. And I feel similarly about attitudes towards AI...
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