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Safe Superintelligence Inc.

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Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "tweet" loses a veneer if you see that we value what has Worth as a collective treasure, and the more Value is produced the better - while that one engages in producing something of value is (hopefully but not necessarily) a good exercise in intelligent (literal sense) cultivation. So, yes, if algorithms strict or loose could one day produce Art, and Thought, and Judgement, of Superior quality: very welcome. Do…

> we value what has Worth as a collective treasure, and the more Value is produced the better ... So, yes, if algorithms strict or loose could one day produce Art, and Thought, and Judgement, of Superior quality: very welcome. Except that's not how we value the "worth" of something. If "Art, and Thought, and Judgement" -- be they of "Superior quality" or not -- could be produced by machines, they'd be worth a heck of…

> Except that's not how we value the "worth" of something

In that case, are you sure your evaluation is proper? If a masterpiece is there, and it /is/ a masterpiece (beyond appearances), why would its source change its nature and quality?

> Come to think of it, hasn't that process already begun?

Please present relevant examples: I have already observed in the past that simulations of the art made by X cannot just look similar but require the process, the justification, the meanings that had X producing them. The style of X is not just thickness of lines, temperature of colours and flatness of shades: it is in the meanings that X wanted to express and convey.

> WTF is up with the weird capitalisations?

Platonic terms - the Ideas in the Hyperuranium. E.g. "This action is good, but what is Good?".

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#892
post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we value what has Worth as a collective treasure, and the more Value is produced the better ... So, yes, if algorithms strict or loose could one day produce Art, and Thought, and Judgement, of Superior quality: very welcome. Except that's not how we value the "worth" of something. If "Art, and Thought, and Judgement" -- be they of "Superior quality" or not -- could be produced by machines, they'd be worth a heck of…

The issue I have with all of these discussions is how vague everyone always is. “Art” isn’t a single thing. It’s not just pretty pictures. AI can’t make art. And give a good solid definition for thought which doesn’t depend on lived experiences while we’re at it. You can’t. We don’t have one. “AGI” as well.

> “Art” isn’t a single thing. It’s not just pretty pictures

And this is why it was capitalized as "Art", proper Art.

> AI can’t make art

Not really: "we may not yet have AI that makes art". But if a process that creates, that generates (proper sense) art is fully replicated, anything that can run that process can make Art.

> And give a good solid definition for [T]hought

The production of ideas which are truthful and important.

> which doesn’t depend on lived experiences while we’re at it. You can’t

Yes we can abstract from instances to patterns and rules. But it matters only relatively: if the idea is clear - and ideas can be very clear to us - we do not need to describe them in detail, we just look at them.

> AGI” as well

A process of refinement of the ideas composing a world model according to truthfulness and completeness.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is something I hear over and over, particularly as a rebuttal to the argument that llm is just a stochastic parrot. Calling it "good enough" doesn't mean anything, it just allows the person saying it to disengage from the substance of the debate. It's either reasons or it doesn't, and today it categorically does not.

That some will remark that you do not need consciousness to achieve reasoning does not lose truth because a subset sees in LLMs something that appears to them as reasoning. I do not really understand who you are accusing of a «good enough» stance: we have never defined "consciousness" as a goal (cats are already there and we do not seem to need further), we just want something that reasons. (And that reasons excellen…

If you can't define consciousness how can you define good enough? Good enough is just a lazy way to exit the conversation.

Llms appear to reason because they captured language with reason already in it, rather than producing language because of reason.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI does look like an unsolved problem right now, and a hard one at that. But I think it is wrong to think that it needs an AGI to cause total havoc. I think my dyslexic namesake Prof Stuart Russell got it right. It humans won't need an AGI to dominate and kill each other. Mosquitoes have killed far more people than war. Ask yourself how long will it take us to develop a neutral network as smart as a mosquito, becaus…

But then, haven't we reached that point already with the development of nuclear weapons? I'm more scared of a lunatic (whether of North Korean, Russian, American, or any other nationality) being behind the "nuclear button" than an artificial mosquito swarm.

The problem is that strong AI is far more multipolar than nuclear technology and the ways in which it might interact with other technologies to create emergent threats is very difficult to forsee.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about superintelligence, I'm talking about the models we have today.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been more than a decade now since we first saw botnets based on stealing AWS credentials and running arbitrary code on them (e.g. for crypto mining) - once an actual AI starts duplicating itself in this manner, where's the big red button that turns off every single cloud instance in the world?

This is making a lot of assumptions like…a super intelligence can easily clone itself…maybe such an entity would require specific hardware to run ?

Is that really "a lot of assumptions" that a piece of software can clone itself? We've been cloning and porting software from system to system for over 70 years (ENIAC was released in 1946 and some of its programs were adapted for use in EDVAC in 1951) - why would it be a problem for a "super intelligence"?

And even if it was originally designed to run on some really unique ASIC hardware, by the Church–Turing thesis it can be emulated on any other hardware. And again, if it's a "super intelligence", it should be at least as good at porting itself as human engineers have been for the three generations.

Am I introducing even one novel assumption here?

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#897
This is yesterday's entry on a journal-style novel I am writing. This post is a footnote in the book, so I thought it'd be kind of cool to post the entry on this thread...

Entry 77 - 2024-06-19 - Superintelligence ===========================================

A company just launched called "Safe Superintelligence Inc." I saw their announcement on Hacker News [foodnote 1], a hacker forum I participate in from time to time (too often actually - it's and old school form of social media, so it has its addictive qualities too). I was reading some of the negative comments (saying its impossible). I'm not sure what the outcome will be... but a thought occured to me while thinking about what might be possible - what people might be capable of. The thought was that it is interesting how people look roughly the same. Most adults are between 4 and 6 feet tall. Between 1 and 300 pounds. Etc. I mean, there's a lot of variety to human bodies, but they largely look similar when comparing to gorillas or lizards, etc. But the thing is - that's just their physical bodies. In reality, people are wildly different if you could see them in their full form. For example, the power which a billionaire can wield in the world is ridiculously larger than most people. You can see some of these guys with their super yachts - if fish, or birds saw these super yachts, they would think those are creatures have much larger bodies than most humans they see swimming or paddleboarding in the water.

    But people are wildly different in many dimensions. Buying power is just one. Another dimension is intelligence. Another is creativity (or are intelligence and creativity the same?).


    It's easy to see people doing what for you would be impossible, and to assume it must be impossible for everyone. The idea that scientists can derive an understanding of subatomic particles seems completely impossible to most people (myself included). "How can they know that?" is a question Whitney has asked me many times when I've shared various scientific discoveries. Fair question. Yet there are people over in Switzerland ripping the fabric of matter apart at the LHC.


    The other big factor, is that people together are capable of what is absolutely unthinkably impossible for an individual. When Whitney and I were in Savannah a couple weeks ago, we were hanging out in a cathedral, and I said something that came to mind: that this place could not possibly be built by a single individual. The existence of the cathedral implies that there is a power higher than that of a single individual human. When I saw some of the huge container ships leaving and arriving at the Savannah river harbor, the thought kept occurring to me that their existence is an amazing testament to the power of humanity. And we only have such power in collectives. The power of humanity comes due to our ability to work together. We can specialize, and thus go so much farther than it is possible for a person on their own to go. And we can discover and build what is unthinkable for a person working alone.


    It's strange how the collective is smarter and stronger than the individuals. This is part of God. There is a higher power.
[Footnote 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40730156]

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#898

I understand the concern that a "superintelligence" will emerge that will escape its bounds and threaten humanity. That is a risk. My bigger, and more pressing worry, is that a "superintelligence" will emerge that does not escape its bounds, and the question will be which humans control it. Look no further than history to see what happens when humans acquire great power. The "cold war" nuclear arms race, which brough…

AGI is still a long way off. The history of AI goes back 65 years and there have been probably a dozen episodes where people said "AGI is right around the corner" because some program did something surprising and impressive. It always turns out human intelligence is much, much harder than we think it is. I saw a tweet the other day that sums up the current situation perfectly: "I don't need AI to paint pictures and w…

Yeah but the exponential growth of computer power thing https://x.com/josephluria/status/1653711127287611392

I think AGI in the near future is pretty much inevitable. I mean you need the algos as well as the compute but there are so many of the best and brightest trying to do that just now.

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#899

I understand the concern that a "superintelligence" will emerge that will escape its bounds and threaten humanity. That is a risk. My bigger, and more pressing worry, is that a "superintelligence" will emerge that does not escape its bounds, and the question will be which humans control it. Look no further than history to see what happens when humans acquire great power. The "cold war" nuclear arms race, which brough…

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

I love to think about how this would feel for "AI" too :)

Re: Safe Superintelligence Inc.

#900

I understand the concern that a "superintelligence" will emerge that will escape its bounds and threaten humanity. That is a risk. My bigger, and more pressing worry, is that a "superintelligence" will emerge that does not escape its bounds, and the question will be which humans control it. Look no further than history to see what happens when humans acquire great power. The "cold war" nuclear arms race, which brough…

Indeed. I'd much rather someone like Altman does it who is shifty but can at least be controlled by the US government than someone like Putin who'd probably have it leverage their nuclear arsenal to try "denazify" planet like he's doing in Ukraine.
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