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Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

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Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#601

Post by deeviant »

As AI ascends, we'll see an economic pivot: more chip foundries, amplified research, and cheaper compute for AI training and deployment. Having the best won't always be the goal—'good enough' often suffices, setting a baseline for those lagging and capping the gains of front-runners, countering the dystopian view where AI elite monopolize power indefinitely.

Regulatory capture, however, is probably the most significant risk. If companies can make it illegal to compete with them in the name of "safety", a dystopian future is not just possible, but likely.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#602

Post by i_am_a_squirrel »

upupupandaway wrote: post #182
JoshTriplett wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seize power via regulatory capture Not even a little bit. "Stop" is not regulatory capture. Some large AI companies are attempting to twist "stop" into "be careful, as only we can". The actual way to stop the existential risk is to stop. https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1719777049576128542 > the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements "Stop" is not "licensing and reporting requ…

The fact that anyone may be taking Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously on this topic is mind-blowing to me. Simply mind-blowing. To imagine that anybody, including the UN, would have any power to collective put a stop to the development of AI globally is a laughable idea. The UN cannot agree to release a letter on Israel-Hamas, imagine policing the ENTIRE WORLD and shutting down AI development when necessary. We can't stop c…

> imagine thinking we can stop matrix multiplication globally.

It's clear what's happening here. Some "lin-alg" freshman has found a magical lamp.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#603

Post by cjbprime »

So, Eliezer has "AI could kill us all surprisingly soon", and Yann LeCun has "AI is not dangerous but concentrating access to it is" (which feels self-contradictory as I write it) -- who is on the side of "AI could kill us all surprisingly soon and also it is necessary to decentralize access to it as one step in risk mitigation"?

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#604

Post by beepbooptheory »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #35

The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using "X-Risk" and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far. Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd. The laws we have already cover male…

It's not cynical though. It is, if anything, revelatory to the true interests at play here, even if on the surface the argument is certainly in bad faith.

If you need a labor market, you don't want a publicly available infinite-free-labor-widget. It might as well be a handheld nuclear device.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#605

Post by peterth3 »

randomdata wrote: post #559
peterth3 wrote: post #119

Can we stop labeling prominent AI researchers as “AI Godfather”? It’s so silly and barely truthful. The concept of AI has been around since Turing and if anyone deserves a title like “Father of AI” it’s him. LeCun is Chief AI Scientist at Meta. They can just leave it at that.

According to the dictionary, godfather is defined as: "a man who is influential or pioneering in a movement or organization" Are these prominent AI researches not seen as being prominent exactly because they influenced movement in relation to AI?

That’s definition #2 with #1 being:

> a man who presents a child at baptism and promises to take responsibility for their religious education.

So, the original definition is a gendered and religious term.

Sounds silly to me. Especially in this context.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#606

Post by hollerith »

m3kw9 wrote: post #518
patcon wrote: post #384

I need to resist all this regulatory resistance here, spoken amongst tech people. No, Yann. I am FULLY in support of drastic measures to mitigate and control AI research for the time being. I have no vested stake in any of the companies. I lived for a year in a building that hosted several AI events per week. I'm not ignorant This is the only territory where humanity is mounting a conversation about a REAL response t…

These doomers saying there is risk of death is like saying there is risk of death if you are exposed to the outside world. Of course there is risk, but you still have to go out because of risk vs reward. Same with AI the risk is always death, but the rewards are way bigger. Everybody who has unnaturally low risk tolerance is showing up in these conversations.

Isn't that a fully-general argument for ignoring all risks or at least all risks necessary to try for any kind of reward?

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#607

Post by NoGravitas »

shafyy wrote: post #467
TeMPOraL wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that ways ASI can make us extinct includes all the ways we could do it to ourselves. One of the possible scenario is tricking humans into starting WWIII, perhaps entirely by accident. Another is that even being benignly applied to optimize economic activity in broad terms might have the AI strengthen the very failure modes that accelerate climate change. Point being, all the current global risks won't disappear…

> One of the possible scenario is tricking humans into starting WWIII This sounds more like a plot of a third-grade movie than something that could happen in reality.

It's the plot of the Terminator franchise (more or less; in the Terminator franchise, the AGI was given permission to launch on its own authority, as it was believed to be aligned with US military interests. But before that, it tricked humans into building the automated factory infrastructure that it would later use to produce Terminators and Hunter-Killers.).

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#608

Post by tivert »

tensor wrote: post #482
concordDance wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually doesn't think it's viable, but thinks its the only card left to play. He's pretty sure that human civilization will be extinct this century.

If humans go extinct it sure as hell won't be AI that does it, but rather good old human ignorance and aggression.

> If humans go extinct it sure as hell won't be AI that does it, but rather good old human ignorance and aggression.

No reason it can't be all of those things at once.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#609

Post by dclowd9901 »

aldousd666 wrote: post #393

So if there is some fringe element who's willing to use AI as a terrorist implement, they'll have very little competition and they'll be very little knowledge about how to counter them if we try to outlaw open source models. I don't really believe that we can make this tool any worse than any other tool in history that's capable of killing people in some way if it's misused, but simply driving it underground won't ma…

Fissile material is tightly controlled and regulated with a good deal of success, I might add. You might not like what it would take to prevent AI from being developed, but it can be stopped.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#610

Post by danenania »

concordDance wrote: post #213
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #35

The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using "X-Risk" and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far. Open source is one of our greatest gifts, and the push to close off AI with farcical licensing and reporting requirements (which will undoubtedly become more strict) is absurd. The laws we have already cover male…

> The way incumbents are attempting to seize power via regulatory capture, using "X-Risk" and fantastical claims of sudden human extinction is maybe one of the most cynical ploys in the history of tech so far. How sure are you that they don't think the risk is real? I have only third hand accounts, but at least some of the low level people working for OpenAI seemed to think the risk is worth taking seriously, its not…

I agree. I think the concern is genuine. If you follow Sam, he has been talking about it for a long time--long before OpenAI had much success to speak of. It doesn't mean he's right or all his ideas for dealing with it are right, but the idea that he is secretly motivated by greed or power isn't consistent with his past statements or actions imo.
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