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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

#781

Post by staunton »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #694
alfalfasprout wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, I'm very concerned by the view being taken here. AI has the capacity to do a ton of harm very quickly. A couple of examples: - Scamming via impersonation - Misinformation - Usage of AI in a way that could have serious legal ramifications for incorrect responses - Severe economic displacement Congress can and should examine these issues. Just because OP works at an AI doesnt' mean that company can't exist i…

You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run. We've been through this song and dance with cryptography. Trying to keep it out of the hands of bad actors will be a waste of time, effort, and money. These resources should be spent lessening the impact rather than trying to completely control it.

> You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run.

You absolutely can. Maybe you can't effectively enforce that regulation but you can regulate and you can take measures that make violating the regulation impractical or risky for most people. By the way, the "crypto-wars" never ended and are ongoing all around the world (UK, EU, India, US...)

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

#782

Post by anthonypasq »

explorer83 wrote: post #696
amelius wrote: post #665

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.

within a few decades there will probably be technology that would allow a semi-dedicated person to engineer and create a bioweapon from scratch if the code was available online. do you think thats a good idea?

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

#783

Post by chasd00 »

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…

> I cannot sell a "rain coat" made of gauze which offers no protection from rain, and I cannot sell a "smoke detector" which doesn't effectively detect smoke. Why should low-volume AI/ML products get a pass?

i can sell a webserver that gets used to host illegal content all day long. Should that be included? Where does the regulation end? I hate that the answer to any question seems to be just add more government.

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

#784

Post by abxytg »

I think as an industry we need to disrespect these people in person when we see them! This is unacceptable and anti social behavior and if I ever see Sam Altman I'll let him know!

People love to kowtow to these assholes as they walk all over us. Fuck sam. Fuck other sam. Fuck elon. Fuck zuck. Fuck jack. Fuck these people man. I dont care about your politics this is nasty!

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

#786

Post by kalkin »

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…

The current generation of AIs are scary to a lot of the initiated, too - both for what they can do now, and what their trajectory of improvement implies.

If you take seriously any downsides, whether misinformation or surveillance or laundering bias or x-risk, how does AI model weights or training data being open source solve them? Open source is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is misuse-resistant (and the "with many eyes all bugs are shallow" thing hasn't proved true in practice even with high level code, much less giant matrices and terabytes of text). Is there a path forward that doesn't involve either a lot of downside risk (even if mostly for people who aren't on HN and interested in tinkering with frontier models themselves, in the worlds where surveillance or bias is the main problem), or significant regulation?

I don't particularly like or trust Altman but I don't think he'd be obviously less self-serving if he were to oppose any regulation.

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

#788

Post by mark_l_watson »

verdverm wrote: post #611
discardedrefuse wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of these letters? Everyone knows this is rent-seeking behavior by OpenAI, and they're going to pay off the right politicians to get it passed. Dear Senator [X], It's painfully obvious that Sam Altman's testimony before the judiciary committee is an attempt to set up rent-seeking conditions for OpenAI, and to snuff out competition from the flourishing open source AI community. We will be carefully mon…

If you want to influence the politicians without money, this is not the way.

You are exactly correct.

I have sent correspondence about ten times to my Congressmen and Senators. I have received a good reply (although often just saying there is nothing that they can do) except for the one time I contacted Jon Kyl and unfortunately mentioned data about his campaign donations from Monsanto - I was writing about a bill he sponsored that I thought would have made it difficult for small farmers to survive economically and make community gardens difficult because of regulations. No response on that correspondence.

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