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

Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 101 posts

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#91

Post by ENGNR »

chpatrick wrote: post #48
rjbwork wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be so, but given the switcheroo that happened with "Open" AI, he and the entire company is untrustworthy on this particular front.

When OpenAI started I don't think anyone would have thought that AI this powerful was around the corner.

There’s an interview between Musk and Tucker Carlson where he says he knew Google had these powerful models internally and thought they should be out in the open, so the answer was a non-profit called Open AI, it was the whole premise of the org

I believe he disagreed with the direction the board was taking it and tried to take over, which when failed he stopped funding it, and they went to investors

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#92

Post by NumberWangMan »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #81
NumberWangMan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existential threat is a really hard thing to grapple with. You can't wait for real-world evidence of danger to deal with it. If there's a possibility of an asteroid coming that will wipe out life on earth, waiting until our telescopes can see it to start taking action may not give us enough time to react. We have to plan for the theoretical possibility. Maybe we'll never be able to create artificial superintelligence…

> If there's a possibility of an asteroid coming that will wipe out life on earth, waiting until our telescopes can see it to start taking action may not give us enough time to react. How would we even know what to do until we have a concrete target?

Vecr gives good analogies, but for AGI, I think investing a lot into alignment research, trying to set up incentive structures to actively avoid "arms races", establishing global oversight and agreements, having a "fire alarm" or process in place that a company can trigger if they develop an AI that they think is close to becoming dangerous, or even individuals. Strong whistleblower protections may help. Tracking GPUs so we know where compute is being gathered together. Starting talks with other countries like China, right now, to build a common understanding of how to deal with a potential problem.

I think it's true that it may be very difficult to solve alignment theoretically, and solving it when we have real-world systems to look at may make it easier (but still probably not easy). But we need to be able to buy companies time so they can slow down as we approach what seems to be the "edge" of dangerous capability / consciousness / goal directedness, without feeling like they will lose out. And to be very strict about the conditions the models are trained under and what testing they undergo before release.

A lot of this is stuff that people are already suggesting, but not everyone is taking the risk seriously.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#94

Post by yes_a_weirdo_hm »

For a lot of people bally-hoing about Sam Altman trying to trick Congress into letting him hold the reigns of AI regulation;

Good. What would be even better if AI researchers and engineers applied en-mass to be the in-house technical advisement staff for congressional members and executive/congressional regulatory agencies for AI.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#95

Post by bostonsre »

mxkopy wrote: post #36
bostonsre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also possible that Sam is being genuine about his concerns and his statements because he wants what is best for humanity?

No. In situations like this the best you can hope for is that his incentives aren't at odds with the rest of humanity.

Wouldn't it be an almost comical level of supervilliany for him to believe that agi is coming and to only care about his company profitting? It seems pretty plausible that agi terrifies him, that he knows it can be done by a lot of different players, and that he wants it to happen as gracefully as possible. If I put myself in his shoes, I would be terrified and asking for some guardrails too. He seems musk like where he has enough money to not care about making more money.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#96

Post by whitemary »

flangola7 wrote: post #47
whitemary wrote: post #34

How could AI practically be regulated? Would this be the first illegal algorithm?

All of the very capable models required millions of dollars of compute training on high end low latency hardware. You can count on your hands the number of high end chip manufacturers and GPU companies, as well as the number of companies with existing high performance clusters. Treat the production and use of datacenter GPUs the same way we treat enriched uranium. We've already started since database GPUs were added…

This sounds like the answer I was looking for. Thank you!

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#97

Post by mxkopy »

bostonsre wrote: post #95
mxkopy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In situations like this the best you can hope for is that his incentives aren't at odds with the rest of humanity.

Wouldn't it be an almost comical level of supervilliany for him to believe that agi is coming and to only care about his company profitting? It seems pretty plausible that agi terrifies him, that he knows it can be done by a lot of different players, and that he wants it to happen as gracefully as possible. If I put myself in his shoes, I would be terrified and asking for some guardrails too. He seems musk like where…

If you do work in AI you're not worried about AGI, period. It's fine that the average layman feels like they're in Terminator but anyone who's written and trained models knows that it's just silly. We shouldn't really expect Sam Altman to do any better than perpetuating fear and hype because of the amount of money on the line.

It's nice to think that you can have so much money you stop caring about it but it doesn't really make sense. You don't get to personally keep billions of dollars without caring about money.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#98

Post by tarboreus »

bostonsre wrote: post #20
chongli wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Walking into Congress and agreeing with every barb thrown his way is a red flag to me. OpenAI has made AI fear mongering a central plank in their marketing platform. I think their goal is to convince the government to build a regulatory moat around their business. Why? Because they see the writing on the wall. There’s no network effect here. Anyone can build AI. There are thousands of students going into grad s…

Isn't it also possible that Sam is being genuine about his concerns and his statements because he wants what is best for humanity?

Isn't it possible that Sam is actually a lizard person with a really good disguise?

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#99

Post by bostonsre »

mxkopy wrote: post #97
bostonsre wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be an almost comical level of supervilliany for him to believe that agi is coming and to only care about his company profitting? It seems pretty plausible that agi terrifies him, that he knows it can be done by a lot of different players, and that he wants it to happen as gracefully as possible. If I put myself in his shoes, I would be terrified and asking for some guardrails too. He seems musk like where…

If you do work in AI you're not worried about AGI, period. It's fine that the average layman feels like they're in Terminator but anyone who's written and trained models knows that it's just silly. We shouldn't really expect Sam Altman to do any better than perpetuating fear and hype because of the amount of money on the line. It's nice to think that you can have so much money you stop caring about it but it doesn't…

I've seen a lot of people that work in AI express concerns about the impact on society as we progress towards AGI. We don't need to reach AGI for there to be a huge impact on society whether its negative or positive. OpenAI's tool is already having an impact on jobs, it seems straight forward to extrapolate that there will be larger impacts on society as models improve. I would still assert that it would be a comical level of supervillainy for Sam to only care about his companies profits over any potential negative impacts on society. It seems highly plausible that he could not be a sociopath and have empathy and actually cares about limiting negative impacts of these tools.

> It's nice to think that you can have so much money you stop caring about it but it doesn't really make sense. You don't get to personally keep billions of dollars without caring about money.

It is definitely not every billionaire that thinks like this but there are some that seem to not care too much about material possessions like Musk or Sam. Their endeavors seem to be the things that they care about the most and they don't seem to be doing it to attain the most amount of money possible.

Re: Sam Altman isn’t the answer to regulating artificial intelligence

#100

Post by bostonsre »

igxitxiyxiyc wrote: post #46
bostonsre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like it's possible every asshole who did it before him was due to a genuine desire for the good of humanity. So.. you're saying that every person that testifies before congress has bad intentions just because they testify before congress? Say he did want what was best for humanity, how should he have acted differently in front of congress? To me, from every interview I've heard from him, he doesn't seem like a…

My point is that there is no room for granting leeway on either side. "But what if they really want to help the world" is the cry of founders who haven't been shown to be assholes yet. Don't assume they're they're to help. Don't assume they're there to hurt. They are there to cover their own asses and nothing more.

> Don't assume they're they're to help. Don't assume they're there to hurt.

Why is the assumption that they are only there to cover their own asses ok to make but other assumptions are not?

We don't know what he is actually thinking. It is entirely plausible that he is not a sociopath and actually wants to minimize negative impacts on society through regulation because he thinks that is the best path forward.

Post reply on HN