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

reuters.com

951–960 of 1001 posts

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

#951

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same move SBF was trying to do. Get all cozy with the people spending their time in the alleys of power. Telling them what they want to hear, posturing as the good guy. He is playing the game, this guy ambition is colossal, I don't blame him, but we should not give him too much power.

Seems like speculation on very thin grounds to me.

He already has precedent with OpenAI and pivoting from Open to fully Close overnight once the tech kind of worked. We know the guy is a piece of work, let’s not give him any benefit of doubt.

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

#952
post #143

This is quite incredible Could you imagine if MS had convinced the govt back in the day, to require a special license to build an operating system (this blocking Linux and everything open)? It’s essentially what’s happening now, Except it is OpenAI instead of MS, and it is AI instead of Linux AI is the new Linux, they know it, and are trying desperately to stop it from happening

What‘s incredible to me is how humans [in this case Sam Altman] have that tendency to fulfil their given role [CEO of OpenAI] with such a singleminded purpose, that they are able to block out the bigger picture entirely and rationalise away the wider consequences of their actions.

It is as if most humans lack an inner compass, a set of principles, a solid value system.

It is as if humans are robots, that fulfil their given role as if they were programmed to do so.

Our institutions, companies, political parties, etc. are these functions that humans slip into and in robot-like fashion execute their expected role like clockwork.

The free thinkers / big picture thinkers, humanity‘s heroes seem to be so rare.

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

#953

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…

- Most, but not all, all the most scary uses for ai are those potentially by governments against their people.

- The next most scary uses are by governments against the people of other countries.

- After that, corporate use of ai against their employees and customers is also terrifying;

- next, the potential for individuals or small organizations seeking to use it for something terrorism-related. Eg, 3d printers or a lab + an ai researcher who helps you make dangerous things I suppose

- near the bottom of the noteworthy list is probably crime. eg, hacking, blackmail, gaslighting, etc

These problems will probably all come up in a big way over the next decade; but limiting ai research to the government and their lackeys? That's extremely terrifying. To prevent the least scary problems, we're jumping into the scariest pool with both feet

Look at how China has been using AI for the last 5-10 years: millions of facial recognition cameras, a scary police force, and a social credit system. In 10-20 years, how much more sophisticated will this be? If the people wanted to rebel, how on Earth will they?

Hell, with generative ai, a sophisticated enough future state could actually make the Dead Internet Theory a reality

That's the future of ai: a personal, automated boot stomping on everybody individually and collectively forever, with no ability to resist

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

#955
post #908

Altman wants to be the good guy so bad and instead is turning into the poster child of everything that’s wrong in Silicon Valley. His personal goals have always been very laudable. His stance on Universal Basic Income for instance stems from a genuine belief that its adoption would eliminate poverty altogether. But then the reality of both technical challenges and money implications kicks in and everything turns to s…

"you made that up!" is one of the most common phrases I type into chatGPT these days, after which it apologizes and admits the mistake and then tells a new lie

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

#956

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…

[deleted]

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

#957

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following this "good ideas must come from an ideologically pure source" thing. Shouldn't we be evaluating ideas on the merits and not categorically rejecting (or endorsing) them based on who said them?

The subtle difference between the original statement and yours: Ideas that drive governing decisions should be globally good - meaning there should be more than just @sama espousing them.

You're defending an argument that is blatantly self contradictory within the space of two sentences.

A) "anything he suggests should be categorically rejected because he’s just not in a position to be trusted."

B) "If what he suggests are good ideas then hopefully we can arrive at them in some other way with a clean chain of custody."

These sentences directly follow each other and directly contradict each other. Logically you can't categorically (the categorical is important here. Categorical means something like "treat as a universal law") reject a conclusion because it is espoused by someone you dislike, while at the same time saying you will accept that conclusion if arrived at by some other route.

"I will reject P if X proposes P, but will accept P if Y proposes P." is just poor reasoning.

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

#959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the first-to-market leaders wanting to raise the barriers to entry to lock out competition.

Sam is a snake. The goal is to fuck everyone else. He is scared that someone will beat his tech and the hype is gone. Which is going to happen. Matter of months.

I suspect that he knows that this is a 'local maxima' as someone put it, and the field will stagnate once the size and attention of models approach the limits of available computing resources. He wants others kept out of the field not only because they could beat him but because he would wants to horde available processing power.

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

#960

Since no one here watched the actual hearings, I feel like I should point out that he said that nothing at the level they've created today should be eligible for any "licensing". If you did watch the hearings it would have been pretty clear that the goal of any such licensing would be to prevent the runaway AI scenario or AGI from being unknowingly being created. It's obvious that some sort of agency would need to be…

I watched the hearing, but didn’t read the article, and I was going to say. These comments are far more vitriolic than I would have expected.
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