This is the best PR campaign that openAI ever created
It’s the digital version of the bags around drain cleaner to make you think they’re almost illegally powerful.
If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
81–90 of 475 posts
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think it even requires that AI to be sentient or malicious. The humans already are. Given a tool for carnage and hatred, people will use it. How long did it take from us getting the atomic bomb working to use in production? Less than three months. Will Putin or terrorists hold back from using it in terrible ways if they have it available to them?
>I don’t think it even requires that AI to be sentient or malicious. The humans already are. We are and we aren't. I was struck by this line in the OP: >AI is manifestly different from any other technology humans have ever created, because it could become to us as we are to orangutans; As far as I can tell, we humans treat orangutans quite kindly. I.e., on the whole, we don't go around killing them indiscriminately o…
Humans may not engage in direct violence against orangutans, but will certainly roll over them:
> The wholesale destruction of rainforests on Borneo for the palm oil plantations of Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA) is threatening the survival of orangutans
https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/petitions/914/orangutans-v...
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#83This whole thing is like leaving 20 kids alone in a room with a marshmallow each and telling them don't eat it. ...and then expecting all of them resist. The debate around whether we should tell the kids not to eat it and for what reasons is completely academic. Practically this just isn't happening.
Is there a phrase for when someone proposes something utterly ridiculous and impossible, so that they can morally grandstand and be sanctimonious when it inevitably doesn't happen?
You can't grandstand if you're dead
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#84We're not even talking about AGI or an entity that is "smart" somehow. It's a bloody algorithm. The danger has been the people who use it and find ways to abuse other people with it. This whole idea that we're going to suddenly have HAL 9000 or Terminators running around is mob hype mentality. The responsible thing to do here is to educate. AGI isn't likely to destroy humanity. Humanity is already doing a good job of…
I'm a lot more scared of an AI destroying humanity, like, every single person, than I am of any government or anything like that. More so than climate change. I'm not saying the people using it aren't dangerous -- but I would choose a totalitarian regime over a rogue AI any day of the week. It wouldn't be HAL 9000 or terminators. It would be an AI deciding that it needs to turn every bit of available matter on earth…
Work out the details on exactly how said end-of-the-world would occur.
Note that we already have “AI to end cities” - they’re just sitting, turned off, waiting for the code and button press in silos and submarines throughout the world.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#85u want a coherent reason? look at all the people you could feed with the money instead.
If you prohibit to use that private money on scaling AI, it's not like any of these entities will suddenly choose to gift it to charities instead, they'll just invest those resources (mostly employee time, not literal cash) into R&D of some other tech product.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#86Why are we even bothering talking about this? It's Gary Marcus "neural networks don't really work" suddenly discovering they do, and literally trying to shut down research in that area while keeping his prefered research areas funded. We know a bunch of the people whose names are on the letter didn't sign it (eg Yann Lecunn who said he disagreed with the premise and didn't sign it). I'm so offended by the idea of thi…
A great many would likely join you, making this entire fiasco a time-wasting distraction, at best, and grave risk at worst. The technologies will continue to be developed, moratorium or not. A moratorium only enables the hidden to get there first. The risks need to be discussed and understood, along with the benefits, and publicly. That's the only sensible way forward. Denying that the technology is here already and…
There is already public discussion - even here - about benefits and risks, and I hope also some understanding. Otherwise the general public doesn't have a good understanding of too many issues anyway, so... what else would you suggest can be done for this particular matter? When the discussion is over and everything understood? Can such a moment actually exist? I think now is just as good as last/next year.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#87The problem is centralized control in society, promiscuous sharing of data, a culture where it's normalized to naively acting on incomplete information, and outsourcing executive decisions to blackboxes that are not understood and treated like magic by decisionmakers.
I feel all these arguments miss the point. "The System" closes my bank account and sets me aside for security screening at the airport, blocks my IP from viewing the opening times of businesses in my area, and floods my feeds and search results with nonsense posing as information ending up influencing our perception of the world no matter how aware we think we are.
"AI" is just an amplification factor of the deeper issue, which should be more pressing to address.
AI is not the problem but is on track to facilitate an acceleration of destructive forces in society.
As much as I think everyone seems to be missing the point, hey, it seems people are getting behind a resistance where the specific is consequentially beneficial, so why argue against it just because its misguided and for the wrong reason?
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#88Am I the only one who's not very concerned about ChatGPT and "AI" in general? I am young, but still lived through several hype phases. I remember when 3D TVs were going to be mainstream and 2D was considered legacy. I remember when PC was to die soon and to be replaced by smartphones. I remember when VR was to become as common accessory as a game controller. It's 2023, and I still don't have automated self driving ca…
I think the fact that LLMs are basically fixed models (plus some RLHF and a tiny context window) means they won't likely foom in their current form, but we're trying to change that. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of ML researchers are saying "hey, our field is getting dangerous and we don't know how to keep it safe".
I'm verrrry skeptical of governmental regulation here, but I'm also not willing to dismiss the experts shouting "our work is might quickly lead to disaster!" AI is advancing very rapidly.
Yes, people were wrong about 3D TVs, but they were also wrong about the growth of solar power in the other direction, repeatedly under-estimating its rate of improvement/adoption year after year[0]. It'd consider that a much better comparison: it's not a single "3D will replace 2D", but "solar power will rapidly iterate to be better and cheaper faster than expected". Well, AI is rapidly iterating to be better and cheaper faster than expected. (To be fair, only some AI; LLMs and image generation.)
> People are already plugging ChatGPT to anything from code to managing investments, it's just a matter of time until it crashes and burns
It's not X-risk, but it's worth asking whether just ChatGPT crashes and burns, or also the market it's being plugged into.
> As for OpenAI, it's in their best interest for people to be scared and governments to propose regulations. It further solidifies ChatGPT as a force to be reckoned with, even if it isn't. They're trying to sell it as AGI even though it isn't anywhere near, but actions like this are helping to maintain that image.
No one (or very few) think ChatGPT is an AGI, and anyone who expresses high confidence about how close it is, regardless of whether they say "very close" or "very far" is over-confident. There's widespread disagreement among the people best positioned to know. We don't know, and that's bad.
[0] https://www.vox.com/2015/10/12/9510879/iea-underestimate-ren...
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#89>> same sorts of safeguards as nuclear weapons Seems impossible. If making a nuclear weapon required merely a few branches of a willow tree and baking powder, regulation would be pretty hard. We would just have to live with the risks. It seems we will be at this level with AI at some point fairly soon.
Machine guns are more of a n analogy. You can make them with common metalworking tools, and any factory that can produce basic machines can be retooled for fully automatic weapons. Barrel is the hardest part and that’s a pretty well known technique.
But we have laws against rogue machine gun manufacture and they work reasonably well inside countries. But there’s no way to prohibit countries from having them. Even nukes have been hard to stop countries from obtaining if they really want (see North Korea).
Software regulation and such is way closer to the first than the second once the “idea” is out (see the PGP munitions ban years ago).
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#90Unfortunately the jinn out of the bottle and it will not be squeezed back. We will be doing this experiment in the live environment with potentially serious consequences.