Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

reuters.com

721–730 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#721

We need to MAKE SURE that AI as a technology ISN'T controlled by a small number of powerful corporations with connections to governments. To expound, this just seems like a power grab to me, to "lock in" the lead and keep AI controlled by a small number of corporations that can afford to license and operate the technologies. Obviously, this will create a critical nexus of control for a small number of well connected…

> seems like a power grab to me

If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#722
post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It refers to a pretty specific set of views on race and gender.

Nope. It refers to what ever people want it to refer to, because it's a label used by detractors, not a cohesive thing.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#723
post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

Sam Altman is a great case of failing upwards. And this is the problem. You don't get to build a moral backbone if you fake your brilliance.

His last thing is "WorldCoin" which, before pretty much completely failing did manage to scan the irises of 20% of the world's low income people which they definitely were all properly informed about.

He's a charlatan, which makes sense he gets most of his money from Thiel and Musk. Why do so many supposedly smart people worship psychotic idiots?

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#724
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI have no moat. The open source community will catch up in at most a year or two, they are scared and now want to use regulations to strangle competitions. While their AI is going to advance as well, the leap will not be qualitative as the ChatGPT gen 1 was - so they will lose competitive advantage.

OpenAI has plenty of moats if it looks for them. The trick is that companies' moats against commoditization (open source or not) usually have little to do with raw performance. Linux could in theory do everything Mac or Windows do, but Apple and Microsoft are still the richest companies in the world. Postgres can match Oracle, but Larry Ellison still owns a private island. The moats are usually in products (bet: Ther…

OpenAI doens't want to be one of Windows/Mac/Linux, it wants what Microsoft was trying 20 years ago where it wants to strangle all OS not named Windows. Ironically OpenAI is now half owned by Microsoft.

It doesn't want to be one of the successful companies, it want to be the only one, like it is now, but forever.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#725
Not the first time that OpenAI has claimed their technology is so good it's dangerous. (From early 2019: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dang...) This is the equivalent of martial artists saying that their hands have to be registered as deadly weapons.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#726

> He also said companies should have the right to say they do not want their data used for AI training, which is one idea being discussed on Capitol Hill. Altman said, however, that material on the public web would be fair game. Why is this only mentioned as a right of companies and not individuals? It seems to hint at the open secret of the stratified west: most of us are just cows for the self-important C-levels of…

If the idea that whats on the public web is fair game, you kill the public web. I wonder if this is their plan?

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#727

We need to MAKE SURE that AI as a technology ISN'T controlled by a small number of powerful corporations with connections to governments. To expound, this just seems like a power grab to me, to "lock in" the lead and keep AI controlled by a small number of corporations that can afford to license and operate the technologies. Obviously, this will create a critical nexus of control for a small number of well connected…

And how can the government license AI? Do they have any expertise to determine who is and isn't responsible enough to handle it?

A better idea is to regulate around the edges: transparency about the data used to train, regulate the use of copyrighted training data and what that means for the copyright of content produced by the AI, that sort of stuff. (I think the EU is considering that, which makes sense.) But saying some organisations are allowed to work on AI while others aren't, sounds like the worst possible idea.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#729
Folks here like to talk about voting with your wallet.

I just cancelled my OpenAI subscription. If you are paying them and disagree with this, maybe you should too?

Don't worry, I have no naive hopes this will hurt them enough to matter, but principles are principles.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But goodness gracious we need to be going in the EXACT OPPOSITE direction — open source "core inspectable" AIs that millions of people can examine and tear apart, including and ESPECIALLY the training data and processes that create them Except ... when you look at the problem from a military/national security viewpoint. Do we really want to give this tech away just like that?

Is military capable AI in the hands of few militaries safer than in the hands of many? Or is it more likely to be used to bully other countries who don't have it? If it is used to oppress, would we want the oppressed have access to it? Or do we fear that it gives too much advantage to small cells of extremist to carry out their goals? I can think of pros and cons to both sides.

>Is military capable AI in the hands of few militaries safer than in the hands of many?

Yes. It is. I'm sure hostile, authoritarian states that are willing to wage war with the world like Russia and North Korea will eventually get their hands on military-grade AI. But the free world should always strive to be two steps ahead.

Even having ubiquitous semi-automatic rifles is a huge problem in America. I'm sure Cliven Bundy or Patriot Front would do everything they can to close the gap with intelligent/autonomous weapons, or even just autonomous bots hacking America's infrastructure. If everything is freely available, what would be stopping them?

Post reply on HN