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

reuters.com

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

#771

Post by cratermoon »

happytiger wrote: post #497

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…

Yes, this is the first-to-market leaders wanting to raise the barriers to entry to lock out competition.

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

#772

Post by chrgy »

My comment on this is simple, regulate the one who is saying he needs or ask for regulation, and free the rest of the market! Meaning 100% regulate big players like Openai, Microsoft, Google etc, and let free the smaller players. I heavily like the @happytiger's comment!

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

#773

Post by HDThoreaun »

salmonfamine wrote: post #266
kypro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're correct about the capabilities of LLMs (I don't think you are), there are still obvious dangers here. I wrote a comment recently trying to explain how even if you believe all LLMs can (and will ever) do is regurgitate their training data that you should still be concerned. For example, imagine in 5 years we have GPT-7, and you ask GPT-7 to solve humanity's great problems. From its training data GPT-7 m…

> From its training data GPT-7 might notice > But its "aligned" so might understand > Using this information it decides to hack I think you're anthropomorphizing LLM's too much here. If we assume that there's a AGI-esque AI, then of course we should be worried about an AGI-esque AI. But I see no reason to think that's the case.

The whole issue with near term alignment is that people will anthropomorphize AI. That’s what it being unaligned means, it’s treated like a responsible person when it in fact is not. I don’t think it’s hard at all to think of a scenario where a dumb as rocks agentic ai gives itself the task of accumulating more power since its training data says having power helps solve problems. From there it again doesn’t have to be anything other than a stochastic parrot to order people to do horrible things.

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

#774

Post by chasd00 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #695
happytiger wrote: post #497

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…

> 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. If you actually watch the entire session, Altman does address that and recommend to Congress that regulations 1) not be applied to small startups, individual researchers, or open source, and 2) that they not be done in such a way…

> not be applied to small startups

how will that work? Isn't OpenAI itself a small startup? I don't see how they can regulate AI at all. Sure, the resources required to push the limits are high right now but hardware is constantly improving and getting cheaper. I can take the GPUs out of my kids computers and start doing fairly serious AI work myself. Do i need a license? The cat is out of the bag, there's no stopping it now.

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

#775

Post by verdverm »

abeppu wrote: post #330
elil17 wrote: post #129

This is the message I shared with my senator (edited to remove information which could identify me). I hope others will send similar messages. Dear Senator [X], I am an engineer working for [major employer in the state]. I am extremely concerned about the message that Sam Altman is sharing with the Judiciary committee today. Altman wants to create regulatory roadblocks to developing AI. My company produces AI-enabled…

> regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use - this would allow companies and individuals to research new AIs freely while still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed. While in general I share the view that _research_ should be unencumbered, but deployment should be regulated, I do take issue with your view that safety only matters once they are r…

why should we punish the model or the majority because some people might use a tool for bad things?

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

#777

Post by verdverm »

abeppu wrote: post #757
shon wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, if next month you developed a model that could produce extremely high quality video clips from text and reference images, you did a small, gated beta release with no PR, and one of your beta testers immediately uses it to make e.g. highly realistic revenge porn. You make a great point here. This is why we need as much open source and as much wide adoption as possible. Wide adoption = public education i…

I think the stance that regulation slows innovation and adoption, and that unregulated adoption yields public understanding is exceedingly naive, especially for technically sophisticated products. Imagine if, e.g. drugs testing and manufacture was subject to no regulations. As a consumer, if you can be aware that some chemicals are very powerful and useful, but you can't be sure that any specific product has the chem…

Regulation does slow innovation, but is often needed because those innovating will not account for externalities. This is why we have the Clean Air and Water Act.

The debate is really about how much and what type of regulation. It is of strategic importance that we do not let bad actors get the upper hand, but we also know that bad actors will rarely follow any of this regulation anyway. There is something to be said for regulating the application rather than the technology, as well as for realizing that large corporations have historically used regulatory capture to increase their moat.

Given it seems quite unlikely we will be able to stop prompt injections, what are we to do?

Provenance seems like a good option, but difficult to implement. It allows us to track who created what, so when someone does something bad, we can find and punish them.

There are analogies to be made with the Bill of Rights and gun laws. Gun analogy seem interesting because they have to be registered, but often criminals won't and the debate is quite polarized.

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

#778

Post by mark_l_watson »

All major industries have achieved regulatory capture in the USA: lobbyists for special interests have Congress and the Executive Branch in their pockets.

This seems like a legal moat that will only allow very wealthy corporations to make maximum use of AI.

In the EU, it has been reported that new laws will keep companies like Hugging Face from offering open source models via APIs.

I think a pretty good metaphor is: the wealthy and large corporations live in large beautiful houses (metaphor for infrastructure) and common people live like mice in the walls, quietly living out their livelihoods and trying to not get noticed.

I really admire the people in France and Israel who have taken to the streets in protest this year over actions of their governments. Non-violent protest is a pure and beneficial part of democracy and should be more widely practiced, even though in cases like Occupy Wall Street, some non-violent protesters were very badly abused.

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

#780

Post by smolder »

jlawson wrote: post #754
AlexandrB wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Woke is a specific ideology that it places every individual into a strict hierarchy of oppressor/oppressed according to group racial and sexual identity. It rose to prominence in American culture from around 2012, starting in universities. It revolves around a set of core concepts including privilege, marginalization, oppression, and equity. Now that we've defined what woke is, I hope we can move on from this 'you ca…

> Attempting to shut down discussion by deliberately misunderstanding words or how they work is a sign of an inability to make productive valid points about reality.

Lumping a bunch of things together under a vague term to make it easier to vaguely complain about them is a sign of an inability to make productive valid points about reality.

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