Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 392 posts

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#81

Post by Valgrim »

nradov wrote: post #39
HDThoreaun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo the worst case scenario is probably an AGI developed by a bad actor who uses it to take over the world. Agreed that rogue ai doesn’t seem super likely, but a rogue person with access to agi does not.

Help us out here. Let's say that known bad actor Vladimir Putin gets an AGI. How does that allow him to take over the world despite many other countries having nuclear weapons? Take us through it step by step, and no hand waving please.

Step 1: AGI (let's call him Hal) is instructed to act as an adversarial agent to a state.

Step 2: Hal research and uses every trick and exploits known to men to infiltrate critical infrastructures like telecommunications, power grids and private corporations of said country. Hal actively search and discover zero-day exploits on every known piece of hardware and software. Hal keeps mostly invisible at this stage, ensuring to leave as little trace as possible.

Step 3: When ready, Hal wreaks havoc, disabling critical infrastructures, shutting down power grid or worse, overloading it to break as many physical systems as possible. Hal complicates coordination by impersonating real people, swamp the infosphere with fake but realistic data.

This vould all be made by humans, but while a single human takes years to train, Hal can be replicated as much as needed.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#82

Post by gumballindie »

Well i mean yeah? The media is proof the indeed some parts of the economy can be replaced entirely by procedural text generators. It took them years to figure out ai “safety” is not a real thing. We can replace them with an llm or a cat /dev/random script.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#83

Post by invig »

broast wrote: post #78
crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

It's possible we could stumble on AGI without immediately realizing it, and without checks and balances built in, it could already be too late.

The same is true for anything. It's possible we could stumble into a dragon and unless we've built dragon defences it'll be too late.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#84

Post by gumballindie »

jacquesm wrote: post #68
wly_cdgr wrote: post #27

[flagged]

What would you suggest can be done about it? People like Sam Altman exist, and they will get funding and support from other people who (1) like money or (2) are doing what they enjoy.

Punish them for their crimes, in this case stealing ip. The rest will follow.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#85

Post by Uehreka »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

I think the concern is that if “fast takeoff” happens and “meh”-level AIs are able to create better AIs that can create better AIs, at that point it will be too late to put any sort of safety controls in place. And given how bad people have been at predicting the pace of AI advancement (think about how many people thought AlphaGo would lose to Lee Sedol for instance), it’s likely that unless we start to think about it way before it’s needed, we may not be able to figure it out in time.

Like, personally, I don’t think we’re close to AGI. But I’d bet that the year before AGI happens (whenever that is) most people will still think it’s a decade out.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#87

Post by colordrops »

subharmonicon wrote: post #62
crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

> We're so far away from AGI Although I personally suspect this is correct, the issue seems to be that there are a lot of people who feel otherwise, whether right or wrong, including some of the people involved in the research and/or running these companies. I've seen several prominent people say things to the effect of "We just don't know if we're six months or 600 years from AGI,", which to me is a little like sayi…

> If we can make something that appears to be able to mimic human responses, isn't that AGI in practice even if it's not in principle?

I'm confused by this. What's the difference? Is there a measure other than how well it "mimics" a human? If a robot is indistinguishable from a human, what other measure would make it different in practice vs principle?

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#88

Post by ary »

subharmonicon wrote: post #62
crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

> We're so far away from AGI Although I personally suspect this is correct, the issue seems to be that there are a lot of people who feel otherwise, whether right or wrong, including some of the people involved in the research and/or running these companies. I've seen several prominent people say things to the effect of "We just don't know if we're six months or 600 years from AGI,", which to me is a little like sayi…

> Although I personally suspect this is correct, the issue seems to be that there are a lot of people who feel otherwise, whether right or wrong, including some of the people involved in the research and/or running these companies.

There is a clear and perverse incentive to talk about "the coming AGI uprising" incessantly because it's free marketing. It gets and keeps people's attention as the majority of humanity is entirely unqualified to have a reasonable conversation regarding anything AI/ML related.

Doomsday fearmongering about AI is a form of grift, and I'll change that opinion only when shown clear evidence that there is something to actually worry about. The real danger of AI is as a weapon to be wielded by people against other people. Good luck having that conversation in any meaningful way because it basically amounts to the long overdue ethics discussion that this entire industry has been avoiding for decades.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#89

Post by invig »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #27

[flagged]

I suppose you've invented the perfect character judgement machine that we can also run the safety people through as we figure out who we can trust to "get it right"?

If we don't put exactly the "right" humans in charge surely we're doomed.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#90

Post by nradov »

Valgrim wrote: post #81
nradov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help us out here. Let's say that known bad actor Vladimir Putin gets an AGI. How does that allow him to take over the world despite many other countries having nuclear weapons? Take us through it step by step, and no hand waving please.

Step 1: AGI (let's call him Hal) is instructed to act as an adversarial agent to a state. Step 2: Hal research and uses every trick and exploits known to men to infiltrate critical infrastructures like telecommunications, power grids and private corporations of said country. Hal actively search and discover zero-day exploits on every known piece of hardware and software. Hal keeps mostly invisible at this stage, ensu…

So just more bullshit hand waving then.
Post reply on HN