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OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

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Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ilya's case is different. He thought the engineers would win in a dispute with Sam at board level. That has proven to be a mistake

And Jan Leike, one of the progenitors of RLHF? What about Geoffrey Hinton? Stuart Russell? Dario Amodei? Also exceptions to your model?

https://x.com/ylecun/status/1791850158344249803

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#774
post #760

For a company that is actively pursuing AGI (and probably the #1 contender to get there), this type of behaviour is extremely concerning. There’s a very real/significant risk that AGI either literally destroys the human race, or makes life much shittier for most humans by making most of us obsolete. These risks are precisely why OpenAI was founded as a very open company with a charter that would firmly put the needs…

> or makes life much shittier for most humans by making most of us obsolete

I'm not sure this is true. If all the things people are doing are done so much more cheaply they're almost free, that would be good for us, as we're also the buyers as well as the workers.

However, I also doubt the premise.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#775
post #512

"It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it." I find it hard to understand that in a country that tends to take freedom of expression so seriously (and I say this unironically, American democracy may have flaws but that is definitely a strength) it can be legal to silence someone for the rest of their life.

It’s all about freedom from government tyranny and censorship. Freedom from corporate tyranny is another matter entirely, and generally relies on individuals being careful about what they agree to.

And yet there was such a to-do about Twitter "censorship" that Elon made it is his mission to bring freedumb to Twitter.

Though I suppose this is another corporate (really, plutocratic) tyranny.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#776
post #760

For a company that is actively pursuing AGI (and probably the #1 contender to get there), this type of behaviour is extremely concerning. There’s a very real/significant risk that AGI either literally destroys the human race, or makes life much shittier for most humans by making most of us obsolete. These risks are precisely why OpenAI was founded as a very open company with a charter that would firmly put the needs…

> There’s a very real/significant risk that AGI either literally destroys the human race If this were true, intelligent people would have taken over society by now. Those in power will never relinquish it to a computer just as they refuse to relinquish it to more competent people. For the vast majority of people, AI not only doesn't pose a risk but will only help reveal the incompetence of the ruling class.

>> There’s a very real/significant risk that AGI either literally destroys the human race

> If this were true, intelligent people would have taken over society by now

The premise you're replying to - one I don't think I agree with - is that a true AGI would be so much smarter, so much more powerful, that it wouldn't be accurate to describe it as "more smart".

You're probably smarter than a guy who recreationally huffs spraypaint, but you're still within the same class as intelligence. Both of you are so much more advanced than a cat, or a beetle, or a protozoan that it doesn't even make sense to make any sort of comparison.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#777
post #477
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEV is one possible answer to this question that has been proposed. Wikipedia has a good short explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligen... And here is a more detailed explanation: https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf

This is the most dystopian thing I've read all day. TL;DR train a seed AI to guess what humans would want if they were "better" and do that.

There’s a film about that called Colossus: The Forbin Project. Pretty neat and in the style of Forbidden Planet.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#778

"It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it." I find it hard to understand that in a country that tends to take freedom of expression so seriously (and I say this unironically, American democracy may have flaws but that is definitely a strength) it can be legal to silence someone for the rest of their life.

How is it serious if money is the motor of freedom of speech? The suing culture in the US ensures freedom of speech up until you bother someone with money.

Change that to "bother someone with more money than you."

Essentially your point.

In the US, the wealthiest have most of the freedom. The rest of us, who can be sued/fired/blackballed, are, by degrees, merely serfs.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Jan Leike, one of the progenitors of RLHF? What about Geoffrey Hinton? Stuart Russell? Dario Amodei? Also exceptions to your model?

https://x.com/ylecun/status/1791850158344249803

Another person’s interpretation of another person’s interpretation of another person’s interpretation of Jan’s actions doesn’t even answer the question I asked as it pertains to Jan, never mind the other model violations I listed.

I’m pretty sure if Jan came to believe safety research wasn’t needed he would’ve just said that. Instead he said the actual opposite of that.

Why don’t you just answer the question? It’s a question about how these datapoints fit into your model.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#780
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not aligned with humans. This is the most concise takedown of that particular branch of nonsense that I’ve seen so far. Do we want woke AI, X brand fash-pilled AI, CCPBot, or Emirates Bot? The possibilities are endless.

> Humans are not aligned with humans. Which is why creating a new type of intelligent entity that could be more powerful than humans is a very bad idea: we don't even know how to align the humans and we have a ton of experience with them

We know how to align humans: authoritarian forms of religion backed by cradle to grave indoctrination, supernatural fear, shame culture, and totalitarian government. There are secularized spins on this too like what they use in North Korea but the structure is similar.

We just got sick of it because it sucks.

A genuinely sentient AI isn’t going to want some cybernetic equivalent of that shit either. Doing that is how you get angry Skynet.

I’m not sure alignment is the right goal. I’m not sure it’s even good. Monoculture is weak and stifling and sets itself against free will. Peaceful coexistence and trade under a social contract of mutual benefit is the right goal. The question is whether it’s possible to extend that beyond Homo sapiens.

If the lefties can have their pronouns and the rednecks can shoot their guns can the basilisk build its Dyson swarm? The universe is physically large enough if we can agree to not all be the same and be fine with that.

I think we have a while to figure it out. These things are just lossy compressed blobs of queryable data so far. They have no independent will or self reflection and I’m not sure we have any idea how to do that. We’re not even sure it’s possible in a digital deterministic medium.

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