[HN Gopher] Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licens...
___________________________________________________________________
Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building
AI
Author : vforgione
Score : 621 points
Date : 2023-05-16 11:06 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| brenns10 wrote:
| Reminds me of SBF calling for crypto regulations while running
| FTX. Being seen as friendly to regulations is great for optics
| compared to being belligerently anti-regulation. You can appear
| responsible and benevolent, and get more opportunity to weaken
| regulation by controlling more of the narrative. And hey, if you
| get end up getting some regulatory capture making competition
| harder, that's a great benefit too.
|
| OpenAI != FTX, just meaning to say calling for regulation isn't
| an indication of good intentions, despite sounding like it.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| FB ran TV ads _asking_ for regulation too.
|
| What established player doesn't want to make it as hard as
| possible to compete with them?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Reminds me of SBF calling for crypto regulations while
| running FTX_
|
| Scott Galloway called it the stop-me-before-I-kill-grandma
| defence. (Paraphrasing.)
|
| You made money making a thing. You continue to make the thing.
| You're telling us how the thing will bring doom and gloom if
| not dealt with (conveniently implying it _will_ change the
| world). And you want to staff the regulatory body you call for
| with the very butchers you're castigating.
| bick_nyers wrote:
| Sure, I get it, but if Sam Altman quit tomorrow, would it
| stop Economic Competition -> Microsoft Shareholders ->
| Microsoft -> OpenAI?
|
| Is there really a better alternative here?
| m00x wrote:
| Except they don't make any money from their products. They're
| losing hundreds of millions per month.
|
| This isn't the same at all.
| itronitron wrote:
| FTX was also losing money.
| mola wrote:
| Well, this will give em time. Right now LLM have become a
| commodity. Everybody is got them and can research and
| develoo them. OpenAI is without a product, it has no
| advantage. But if the general public will be limited. It'll
| be hard to catch up to openAI.
|
| I'm sry for the cynicism, but Altman seems very much
| disingenuous with this.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| OpenAI is currently registered as a non-profit, yet
| they're projecting a billion dollars in revenue in 2024,
| and they sell access to their APIs, which if their
| previous spending is anything to go by, means they'll see
| half a billion dollars in profit if we assume they aren't
| going to reinvest it all.
|
| Some big assumptions.
| happytiger wrote:
| > OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI)
| research laboratory consisting of the non-profit OpenAI
| Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation
| OpenAI Limited Partnership.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
|
| Just FYI, what you're saying isn't accurate. It _was_ ,
| but it's not anymore.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It may be more the same than you know. FTX had tons of
| investors in it that was jumpstarting and fueling the whole
| ponzi...
|
| >According to a report from the Information, OpenAI's
| losses have doubled to $540 million since it started
| developing ChatGPT and similar products.
|
| I mean sure that may be a drop in the bucket compared to
| the 29B valuation for Open AI, but-
|
| >Sept. 22, 2022
|
| >Crypto Exchange FTX May Get a $32 Billion Valuation.
| That's Probably Too Much.
|
| OpenAI investors, Apr 2023-
|
| Tiger Global Management Andreessen Horowitz Thrive Capital
| Sequoia Capital K2 Global
|
| FTX investors, Jan 2022-
|
| Insight Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners Tiger Global
| Management New Enterprise Associates Temasek Institutional
| Venture Partners Steadview Capital SoftBank Ontario
| Teachers' Pension Plan Paradigm
| brookst wrote:
| Are you suggesting that OpenAI is a ponzi scheme where
| early investors are being paid with funds from later
| investors?
| thrway345772 wrote:
| FWIW, OpenAI and FTX leadership share the same ideology
| biggoodwolf wrote:
| This is disappointing, I expected a bit more from OpenAI than
| to fall for the nerd snipe that is EA.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Which ideology is that? Only thing I've heard about is
| "ruthless altruism" or something like that.
| to11mtm wrote:
| "Effective Altruism", which sounds nice but when you look
| at it from the right angle it's just a form of 'public
| lobbying' rather than direct government lobbying.
|
| "Oh, this person donated X/Y to Z/Q causes! They can't be
| that bad right?"
| tern wrote:
| This is mostly not true in my experience
| zapataband1 wrote:
| Make money and try to acquire a monopoly?
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| oy vey
| bparsons wrote:
| This is also a way for industry incumbents to pull up the
| ladder behind them.
|
| Once you gain the lead position, it is in your interest to
| increase the barriers to entry as much as possible.
| stuckkeys wrote:
| Just waiting for the Forbes cover to drop, then I can confirm
| we are doomed. lol
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| > get more opportunity to weaken regulation by controlling more
| of the narrative
|
| You've got it backwards. I bet OpenAI wants those regulations
| to be as restrictive as possible. They'll just negotiate an
| exception for themselves. With increased regulation comes an
| increased initial cost for competitors to get started in the
| space. They want to lock down their near monopoly as soon as
| they can.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I'm sure this is the plan, but I don't see how OpenAI will be
| able to damage e.g. Anthropic without equally damaging
| themselves.
| runako wrote:
| It's not just about Anthropic & other 10-figure companies,
| it's about ensuring an oligopoly instead of a market with
| cutthroat competition.
| greiskul wrote:
| Exactly. They want to have AI as a service. If any
| startup could do it's own AI on the cheap, this would not
| be possible (or at least not so profitable). They don't
| mind having other big competitors, they think they can
| win over big competitors with their marketing and first
| mover advantage.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Neither is it an indication of bad intentions and I don't even
| think SBF was dishonest, his general behavior doesn't exactly
| suggest he's some Machiavellian mastermind.
|
| This is always the first comment when someone in an industry
| talks about regulation but it doesn't change the fact that it's
| needed and they're essentially right regardless of what
| motivations they have.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Altman is simultaneously pumping a crypto project [1].
|
| [1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/worldcoin-chatgpt-sam-altman-
| ethe...
| Filligree wrote:
| Which is sufficient reason to avoid OpenAI now, frankly.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| It's a disgrace
| lubesGordi wrote:
| I think the idea is that you need some way to filter out
| the bots, so 'worldcoin' or 'worldid' is used to prove
| 'personhood'.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| " his general behavior doesn't exactly suggest he's some
| Machiavellian mastermind."
|
| Come on! You don't get to the place he got to by accident.
| This requires careful planning and ruthless execution. He
| just faked being the nerdy kid who wants to do good and is
| surprised by the billions coming to him.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _his general behavior doesn 't exactly suggest he's some
| Machiavellian mastermind_
|
| >> _don 't get to the place he got to by accident_
|
| You both agree. Bankman-Fried was a dumb Machiavellian.
| serf wrote:
| being labeled a machiavellian may as well be a label for
| 'maliciously self-serving', unless you're referring to
| Machiavelli's work on the 'Discoures on Livy' -- and no
| one ever is referring to that aspect of Machiavelli when
| labeling people with the phrase.
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Come on! You don't get to the place he got to by accident.
|
| You can literally become president of the US by accident
| these days. SBF self-reported to a random journalist one
| day after all hell broke lose with messages so
| incriminating the reporter had to confirm that it was a
| real conversation.
|
| Half of the American elite class voluntarily sat on the
| board of a bogus company just because the woman running it
| was attractive and wore black turtlenecks. The sad reality
| is that these people aren't ruthless operators, they're
| just marginally less clueless than the people who got them
| into their positions
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "You can literally become president of the US by accident
| these days."
|
| Who became president by accident? You may not like them
| personally or their politics , but I am not aware of any
| president that didn't put enormous amounts of work and
| effort over years into becoming president.
| rurp wrote:
| Trump spent a great deal of time during the 2016 campaign
| setting up projects to cash in on a loss (like a new tv
| station). This very little sign that he spent time
| preparing to actually win and serve as president. It
| wasn't really an outlandish idea either, most
| presidential candidates these days do it primarily to
| raise a profile they can cash in on via punditry, books,
| etc.
| glitchc wrote:
| Grifters have to believe their own Koolaid first before
| they can convince others.
| brenns10 wrote:
| Isn't the reason that the industry person is "right" about
| regulation being necessary usually... because the tide of
| public opinion is turning towards regulation, so they are
| getting ahead as my strategy above described? It's difficult
| to give credit to these folks for being "right" when it's
| more accurately described as "trying to save their profit
| margins".
| digging wrote:
| You might say that any regulation is better than none, but
| bad regulation can be way more insidious and have unique
| dangers.
|
| As a blunt analogy, let's say there's no law against murder
| right now. You and I both agree that we need a law against
| murder. But I have the ear of lawmakers, and I go sit down
| with them and tell them that you and I agree: We need a law
| against murder.
|
| And then I help them write a law that makes murder illegal.
| Only, not _all_ killing counts as murder, obviously. So if it
| 's an accident, no murder. Self defense? No murder. And also
| if they are doing anything that "threatens" my business
| interests, not murder. Great, we've got a law that prevents
| unnecessary killing! And now I get to go ~~murder you~~
| defend my business interests when you protest that the new
| law seems unfair.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _then I help them write a law that makes murder illegal.
| Only, not all killing counts as murder, obviously. So if it
| 's an accident, no murder. Self defense? No murder...now I
| get to go ~~murder you~~ defend my business interests_
|
| Isn't this a classic case of some regulation being better
| than none? You could have murdered them at the start, too.
| digging wrote:
| Yes, but if I had murdered them at the start or even
| tried, maybe people would say, "Hey, this is murder and
| it's bad." Now I've got the force of law and authority on
| my side. You either allow me to do murders or you're the
| one causing problems. It may be quite a bit harder to
| change things and there will be irreparable damage before
| we do.
| variant wrote:
| > OpenAI != FTX, just meaning to say calling for regulation
| isn't an indication of good intentions, despite sounding like
| it.
|
| I'd argue that any business advocating for regulation is
| largely motivated by its own pursuit of regulatory capture.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Didn't Facebook / Meta also do something similar during the
| whole "fake news" controversy?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/15/facebook-ceo-zuckerberg-
| call...
| lweitrju39p4rj wrote:
| [flagged]
| sadhd wrote:
| I'll do you one better--to negative infinity mod points and
| beyond! I can put a 13b parameter LLM on my phone. That makes it
| a bearable arm. Arms are not defined under the US Constitution,
| just the right of _the_people_ to keep them shall not be
| infringed, but it is a weapon to be sure.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Got some news for you about munitions control laws.
| sadhd wrote:
| I know about ITAR. Cannons were in common use during the
| 1790s as well. Export ban does not equal possession ban.
| sadhd wrote:
| Plus, I don't think a traditionalist court has looked at
| radio, encryption, and computer code as bearable arms yet.
| cs702 wrote:
| ...which as a consequence would make it costly and difficult for
| new AI startups to enter the market.
|
| Everyone here on HN can see that.
|
| _Shame on Sam_ for doing this.
| davidguetta wrote:
| [flagged]
| tehjoker wrote:
| Sam just wants to secure a monopoly position. The dude is a
| businessman, there's no way he buys his own bullshit.
| villgax wrote:
| King of the hill, what a clown
| itronitron wrote:
| what a loser
| ttul wrote:
| If your business doesn't have a moat of its own, get government
| to build one for you by forcing competitors to spend tons of
| money complying with regulations. Will the regulations actually
| do anything for AI safety? It's far too early to say. But they
| will definitely protect OpenAI from competition.
| nonstopdev wrote:
| Love how these big tech companies are using congress fears to
| basically let them define rules for anyone to compete with them.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Remember the paper where they admitted to having no "moat". This
| is basically them trying to build a "moat" through regulation.
| Since big-co are probably the only ones that can do any sort of
| license testing right now. It's essentially trying to have an
| "FDA" for AI and crowd out competitors before they emerge.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes exactly. This is the feeling I get too. They already have
| critical mass and market penetration to deal with all the red
| tape they want. But it's easy to nip startups in the bud this
| way.
|
| Also, this will guarantee the tech stays in the hands of rich
| corporations armed with lawyers. It would be much better for
| open source AI to exist so we're not dependent on those
| companies.
| bitL wrote:
| Here we go, people here were ridiculing right-to-work-on-AI
| licenses not that long ago and now we have it coming right from
| the main AI boss, throwing the interest of most of us
| (democratized AI) down the toilet.
| ok123456 wrote:
| He just wants regulatory capture to make it harder for new
| entrants.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of OpenAI and Sam in particular. So don't take
| this the wrong way.
|
| But doesn't this seem like another case of regulatory capture by
| an industry incumbent?
| nico wrote:
| 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
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I bet OpenAI is using MS connections and money for lobbying, so
| it's basically MS again.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly, say it with me:
|
| Embrace, Extend...
|
| What comes after Extend?
| modshatereality wrote:
| just a billion dollar coincidence
| brkebdocbdl wrote:
| Microsoft did thought. not directly like that because up to the
| 90s we still have the pretense of being free.
|
| Microsoft did influence government spending in ways that
| require windows in every govt owned computer, and schools.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I guess @sama took that leaked Google memo to heart ("We have
| no moat... and neither does OpenAI"). Requiring a license would
| take out the biggest competitive threats identified in the same
| memo (Open Source projects) which can result in self-hosted
| models, which I suppose Altman sees as an existential threat to
| OpenAI
| hellojesus wrote:
| There is no way to stop self hosted models. The best would be
| to send gov to data centers, but what if those centers are
| outside US jurisdiction? Too funny to watch the gov play
| these losing games.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > There is no way to stop self hosted models.
|
| edit: _Current_ models- sure, but they will soon be
| outdated. I think the idea is to strangle the development
| of comparable, SoTA models in the future that individuals
| can self-host; OpenAI certainly won 't release their
| weights, and they'd want the act of releasing weights
| without a license to be criminalized. If such a law is
| signed, it would remove the threat of smaller AI companies
| from disintermediating OpenAI, and individuals from
| collaborating to engage in any activity that results in
| publicly available model weights (or even making the recipe
| itself illegal to distribute)
| hellojesus wrote:
| I thought we got away from knowledge distribution
| embargos via 1A during the encryption era.
|
| Even if it passed, I find it hard to believe a bunch of
| individuals couldn't collaborate via distributed
| training, which would be almost impossible to prohibit.
| Anyone could mask their traffic or connect to anon US VPN
| to circumvent it. The demand will be there to outweigh
| the risk.
| NavinF wrote:
| > distributed training
|
| Unfortunately this isn't a thing. Eg too much batch norm
| latency leaves your GPUs idle. Unless all your hardware
| is in the same building, training a single model would be
| so inefficient that it's not worth it.
| 10000truths wrote:
| You can't strangle the development of such models because
| the data comes from anywhere and everywhere. Short of
| shutting off the entire Internet, there's nothing a
| government can do to prevent some guy on the opposite
| side of the world from hoovering up publicly accessible
| human text into a corpus befitting an LLM training set.
| bootsmann wrote:
| It costs a lot of money to train foundation models, that
| is a big hurdle to open source models which can strangle
| further development.
|
| Open source AI needs people with low stakes (Meta AI) who
| continue to open source foundation models for the
| community to tinker with
| pentagrama wrote:
| I have a question, AI is not exclusively to use with data
| from the internet right?, eg you can throw a bunch of
| text and ask to order it on a table with x columns, this
| will need data from the internet? I guess not, you can
| self host and use it exclusively with your data
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Sure, but they can be made illegal and difficult to share
| on the clear web.
| anticensor wrote:
| Access blocks to those in the US?
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I'm old and I think that Unix is actually
| the model that won. Linux won because of Unix IMO, and I think
| that its too late for the regulators. Not that I understand the
| stuff but like Unix, the code and the ideas are out there in
| Universities and even if OpenAI gets their licensing, there
| will be really open stuff also. So, no worries. Except for the
| fact that AI itself - well, are we mature enough to handle it
| without supervision? Dunno.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI and is its primary partner and
| customer.
|
| OpenAI _is_ Microsoft.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| > OpenAI instead of MS
|
| In other words, MS with extra steps.
| ploppyploppy wrote:
| Is the old MS tactic of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? Albeit
| through the mask of OpenAI / Altman?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Pure Drug and Food Act, but for AI. Get in early and make
| regulations too expensive for upstarts to deal with.
| trappist wrote:
| It seems to me every licensing regime begins with incumbents
| lobbying for protection from competition, then goes down in
| history as absolutely necessary consumer protection programs.
| theyeenzbeanz wrote:
| Just drop the "Open" part and rename it to CorpAI at this point
| since it's anything but.
| askin4it wrote:
| What a wall of words. (The HN comments )
|
| Someone call me when the AI is testifying to the committee.
| Otherwise, I'm busy.
| ngneer wrote:
| Sometimes those who have gotten on the bus will try pushing out
| those who have not. Since when do corporations invite regulation?
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| OpenAI was ment to be "open" and develope AI for good. OpenAi
| became everything it said was wrong. Open source models ran
| locally are the answer but what is the question?
|
| Change is coming quickly. There will be users and there will
| losers. Hopefully, we can finially get productivity into the
| information systems.
| srslack wrote:
| Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are
| capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then
| imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't
| understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage
| of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it
| is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence.
|
| Shame on all of the people involved in this: the people in these
| companies, the journalists who shovel shit (hope they get
| replaced real soon), researchers who should know better, and
| dementia ridden legislators.
|
| So utterly predictable and slimy. All of those who are so gravely
| concerned about "alignment" in this context, give yourselves a
| pat on the back for hyping up science fiction stories and
| enabling regulatory capture.
| [deleted]
| kajumix wrote:
| Imagine us humans being merely regression based function
| approximators, built on a model that has been training, quite
| inefficiently, for millenia. Many breakthroughs (for example
| heliocentricism, evolution, and now AI) put us in our place,
| which is not as glorious as you'd think.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| > Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators
| are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give
| it.
|
| Literally half (or more) of this site's user base does that.
| And they should know better, but they don't. Then how can a
| typical journo or a legislator possibly know better? They
| can't.
|
| We should clean up in front of our doorstep first.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Imagine thinking that NAND gates are capable of anything other
| than basic logic.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| 1. Explain why it is not possible for an incredibly large
| number of properly constructed NAND gates to think
|
| 2. Explain why it is possible for a large number of properly
| constructed neurons to think.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 3. Explain the hard problem of consciousness.
|
| Just because we don't understand how thinking works doesn't
| mean it doesn't work. LLMs have already shown the ability
| to use logic.
| grumple wrote:
| To use logic, or to accurately spit out words in an order
| similar to their training data?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| To solve novel problems that do not exist in their
| training data. We can go as deep into philosophy of mind
| as you want here, but these systems are more than mere
| parrots. And we have no idea what it will take for them
| to take the next step since we don't understand how we
| have ourselves.
| api wrote:
| The whole story of OpenAI is really slimy too. It was created
| as a non-profit, then it was handed somehow to Sam who took it
| closed and for-profit (using AI fear mongering as an excuse)
| and is now seeking to leverage government to lock it into a
| position of market dominance.
|
| The whole saga makes Altman look really, really terrible.
|
| If AI really is this dangerous then we definitely don't need
| people like this in control of it.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| > The whole saga makes Altman look really, really terrible.
|
| At this point, with this part about openai and worldcoin...
| if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..
| nmfisher wrote:
| Open AI has been pretty dishonest since the pivot to for-
| profit, but this is a new low.
|
| Incredibly scummy behaviour that will not land well with a
| lot of people in the AI community. I wonder if this is what
| prompted a lot of people to leave for Anthropic.
| precompute wrote:
| Yes! I've been expressing similar sentiments whenever I see
| people hyping up "AI", although not written as well your
| comment.
|
| Edit: List of posts for anyone interested
| http://paste.debian.net/plain/1280426
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| chaxor wrote:
| What do you think about the papers showing _mathematical
| proofs_ that GNNs (i.e. GATs /transformers) _are_ dynamic
| programmers and therefore perform algorithmic reasoning?
|
| The fact that these systems can extrapolate well beyond their
| training data by learning algorithms is quite different than
| what has come before, and anyone stating that they "simply"
| predict next token is severely shortsighted. Things don't have
| to be 'brain-like' to be useful, or to have capabilities of
| reasoning, but we have evidence that these systems have aligned
| well with reasoning tasks, perform well at causal reasoning,
| and we also have mathematical proofs that show how.
|
| So I don't understand your sentiment.
| rdedev wrote:
| To be fair LLMs are predicting the next token. It's just that
| to get better and better predictions it needs to understand
| some level of reasoning and math. However it feels to me that
| a lot of this reasoning is brute forced from the training
| data. Like chatgpt gets some things wrong when adding two
| very large numbers. If it really knew the algorithm for
| adding two numbers it shouldn't be making them in the first
| place. I guess same goes for issues like hallucinations. We
| can keep pushing the envelope using this technique but I'm
| sure we will hit a limit somewhere
| uh_uh wrote:
| Both of these statements can be true:
|
| 1. ChatGPT knows the algorithm for adding two numbers of
| arbitrary magnitude.
|
| 2. It often fails to use the algorithm in point 1 and
| hallucinates the result.
|
| Knowing something doesn't mean it will get it right all the
| time. Rather, an LLM is almost guaranteed to mess up some
| of the time due to the probabilistic nature of its
| sampling. But this alone doesn't prove that it only brute-
| forced task X.
| visarga wrote:
| > If it really knew the algorithm for adding two numbers it
| shouldn't be making them in the first place.
|
| You're using it wrong. If you asked a human to do the same
| operation in under 2 seconds without paper, would the human
| be more accurate?
|
| On the other hand if you ask for a step by step execution,
| the LLM can solve it.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| am i bad at authoring inputs?
|
| no, it's the LLMs that are wrong.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Create two random 10 digit numbers and sit down and add
| them up on paper. Write down every bit of inner monologue
| that you have while doing this or just speak it out loud
| and record it.
|
| ChatGPT needs to do the same process to solve the same
| problem. It hasn't memorized the addition table up to 10
| digits and neither have you.
| chongli wrote:
| No, but I can use a calculator to find the correct
| answer. It's quite easy in software because I can copy-
| and-paste the digits so I don't make any mistakes.
|
| I just asked ChatGPT to do the calculation both by using
| a calculator and by using the algorithm step-by-step. In
| both cases it got the answer wrong, with different
| results each time.
|
| More concerning, though, is that the answer was visually
| close to correct (it transposed some digits). This makes
| it especially hard to rely on because it's essentially
| lying about the fact it's using an algorithm and actually
| just predicting the number as a token.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| this is one thing makes me think those claiming "it isn't
| AI" are just caught up in cognizant dissonance. For llm's
| to function, we have to basically make it reason out, in
| steps the way we learned to do in school, literally make
| it think, or use inner monologue, etc.
| throwuwu wrote:
| It is funny. Lots of criticisms amount to "this AI sucks
| because it's making mistakes and bullshitting like a
| person would instead of acting like a piece of software
| that always returns the right answer."
|
| Well, duh. We're trying to build a human like mind, not a
| calculator.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not without emotions and chemical reactions. You are
| building a word predictor
| ipaddr wrote:
| 2 seconds? What model are you using?
| flangola7 wrote:
| GPT 3.5 is that fast.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I never told the LLM it needed to answer immediately. It
| can take its time and give the correct answer. I'd prefer
| that, even.
| chaxor wrote:
| Of course it predict the next token. Every single person on
| earth knows that so it's not worth repeating at all.
|
| As for the fact that it gets things wrong sometimes - sure,
| this doesn't say it actually _learned_ every algorithm (in
| whichever model you may be thinking about). But the nice
| thing is that we now have this proof via category theory,
| and it allows us to both frame and understand what has
| occurred, and to consider how to align the systems to learn
| algorithms better.
| rdedev wrote:
| The fact that it sometimes fails simple algorithms for
| large numbers but shows good performance in other complex
| algorithms with simple inputs seems to me that something
| on a fundamental level is still insufficient
| zamnos wrote:
| Insufficient for what? Humans regularly fail simple
| algorithms for small numbers, nevermind large numbers and
| complex algorithms
| starlust2 wrote:
| You're focusing too much on what the LLM can handle
| internally. No LLMs aren't good at math, but they
| understand mathematic concepts and can use a program or
| tool to perform calculations.
|
| Your argument is the equivalent of saying humans can't do
| math because they rely on calculators.
|
| In the end what matters is whether the problem is solved,
| not how it is solved.
|
| (assuming that the how has reasonable costs)
| ipaddr wrote:
| Humans are calculators
| glitcher wrote:
| > Of course it predict the next token. Every single
| person on earth knows that so it's not worth repeating at
| all
|
| What's a token?
| visarga wrote:
| A token is either a common word or a common enough word
| fragment. Rare words are expressed as multiple tokens,
| while frequent words as a single token. They form a
| vocabulary of 50k up to 250k. It is possible to write any
| word or text in a combination of tokens. In the worst
| case 1 token can be 1 char, say, when encoding a random
| sequence.
|
| Tokens exist because transformers don't work on bytes or
| words. This is because it would be too slow (bytes), the
| vocabulary too large (words), and some words would appear
| too rarely or never. The token system allows a small set
| of symbols to encode any input. On average you can
| approximate 1 token = 1 word, or 1 token = 4 chars.
|
| So tokens are the data type of input and output, and the
| unit of measure for billing and context size for LLMs.
| agentultra wrote:
| And LLMs will never be able to _reason_ about mathematical
| objects and proofs. You cannot learn the truth of a
| statement by reading more tokens.
|
| A system that can will probably adopt a different acronym
| (and gosh that will be an exciting development... I look
| forward to the day when we can dispatch trivial proofs to
| be formalized by a machine learning algorithm so that we
| can focus on the interesting parts while still having the
| entire proof formalized).
| chaxor wrote:
| You should read some of the papers referred to in the
| above comments before making that assertion. It may take
| a while to realize the overall structure of the argument,
| how the category theory is used, and how this is directly
| applicable to LLMs, but if you are in ML it should be
| obvious. https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.15544
| agentultra wrote:
| There are methods of proof that I'm not sure dynamic
| programming is fit to solve but this is an interesting
| paper. However even if it can only solve particular
| induction proofs that would be a big help. Thanks for
| sharing.
| zootreeves wrote:
| You know the algorithm for arithmetic. Are you telling me
| you could sum any large numbers first attempt, without any
| working and in less than a second 100% of the time?
| jmcgeeney wrote:
| I could with access to a computer
| starlust2 wrote:
| If you get to use a tool, then so does the LLM.
| joaogui1 wrote:
| I don't get why the sudden fixation on time, the model is
| also spending a ton of compute and energy to do it
| felipemnoa wrote:
| >>What do you think about the papers showing mathematical
| proofs that GNNs (i.e. GATs/transformers) are dynamic
| programmers and therefore perform algorithmic reasoning?
|
| Do you mind linking to one of those papers?
| joaogui1 wrote:
| The paper shows the equivalence for specific networks, it
| doesn't say every GNN (and as such transformers) are Dynamic
| Programmers. Also the models are explicitly trained on that
| task, in a regime quite different from ChatGPT. What the
| paper shows and the possibility of LLMs being able to reason
| are pretty much completely independent from each other
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| Give me a break. Very interesting theoretical work and all,
| but show me where it's actually being used to do anything of
| value, beyond publication fodder. You could also say MLPs are
| proved to be universal approximators, and can therefore model
| any function, including the one that maps sensory inputs to
| cognition. But the disconnect between this theory and reality
| is so great that it's a moot point. No one uses MLPs this way
| for a reason. No one uses GATs in systems that people are
| discussing right now either. GATs rarely even beat GCNs by
| any significant margin in graph benchmarks.
| chaxor wrote:
| Are you saying that the new mathematical theorems that were
| proven using GNNs from Deepmind were not useful?
|
| There were two very noteworthy (Perhaps Nobel prize level?)
| breakthroughs in two completely different fields of
| mathematics (knot theory and representation theory) by
| using these systems.
|
| I would certainly not call that "useless", even if they're
| not quite Nobel-prize-worthy.
|
| Also, "No one uses GATs in systems people discuss right
| now" ... Transformer _are_ GATs (with PE) ... So, you 're
| _incredibly_ wrong.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| You're drinking from the academic marketing koolaid.
| Please tell me: where are these methods being applied in
| AI systems today?
|
| And I'm so tired of this "transformers are just GNNs"
| nonsense that Petar has been pushing (who happens to have
| invented GATs and has a vested interest in overstating
| their importance). Transformers are GNNs in only the most
| trivial way: if you make the graph fully connected and
| allow everything to interact with everything else. I.e.,
| not really a graph problem. Not to mention that the use
| of positional encodings breaks the very symmetry that
| GNNs were designed to preserve. In practice, no one is
| using GNN tooling to build transformers. You don't see
| PyTorch geometric or DGL in any of the code bases. In
| fact, you see the opposite: people exploring transformers
| to replace GNNs in graph problems and getting SOTA
| results.
|
| It reminds me of people that are into Bayesian methods
| always swooping in after some method has success and
| saying, "yes, but this is just a special case of a
| Bayesian method we've been talking about all along!" Yes,
| sure, but GATs have had 6 years to move the needle, and
| they're no where to be found within modern AI systems
| that this thread is about.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> What do you think about the papers showing mathematical
| proofs that GNNs (i.e. GATs /transformers) are dynamic
| programmers and therefore perform algorithmic reasoning?_
|
| Do you have a reference?
| uh_uh wrote:
| I just don't get how the average HN commenter thinks (and
| gets upvoted) that they know better than e.g. Ilya Sutskever
| who actually, you know, built the system. I keep reading this
| "it just predicts words, duh" rhetoric on HN which is not at
| all believed by people like Ilya or Hinton. Could it be that
| HN commenters know better than these people?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| That is the wrong discussion. What are their regulatory,
| social, or economic policy credentials?
| uh_uh wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that they have any. I was reacting to
| srslack above making _technical_ claims why LLMs can't be
| "generalized and adaptable intelligence" which is not
| shared by said technical experts.
| shafyy wrote:
| The thing is, experts like Ilya Sutskever are so deep in
| that shit that they are heavily biased (from a tech and
| social/economic) perspective. Furthermore, many experts are
| wrong all the time.
|
| I don't think the average HN commenter claims to be better
| at building these system than an expert. But to criticize,
| especially critic on economic, social, and political
| levels, one doesn't need to be an expert on LLMs.
|
| And finally, what the motivation of people like Sam Altman
| and Elon Musk is should be clear to everbody with a half a
| brain by now.
| uh_uh wrote:
| srslack above was making technical claims why LLMs can't
| be "generalized and adaptable intelligence". To make such
| statements, it surely helps if you are a technical expert
| at building LLMs.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I honestly don't question Altman's motivations that much.
| I think he's blinded a bit by optimism. I also think he's
| very worried about existential risks, which is a big
| reason why he's asking for regulation. He's specifically
| come out and said in his podcast with Lex Friedman that
| he thinks it's safer to invent AGI now, when we have less
| computing power, than to wait until we have more
| computing power and the risk of a fast takeoff is
| greater, and that's why he's working so hard on AI.
| collaborative wrote:
| He's just cynical and greedy. Guy has a bunker with an
| airstrip and is eagerly waiting for the collapse he knows
| will come if the likes of him get their way
|
| They claim to serve the world, but secretly want the
| world to serve them. Scummy 101
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| Having a bunker is also consistent with expecting that
| there's a good chance of apocalypse but working to stop
| it.
| hervature wrote:
| No one is claiming to know better than Ilya. Just
| recognition of the fact that such a license would benefit
| these same individuals (or their employers) the most. I
| don't understand how HN can be so angry about a company
| that benefits from tax law (Intuit) advocating for
| regulation while also supporting a company that would
| benefit from an AI license (OpenAI) advocating for such
| regulation. The conflict of interest isn't even subtle. To
| your point, why isn't Ilya addressing the committee?
| uh_uh wrote:
| 2 reasons:
|
| 1. He's too busy building the next generation of tech
| that HN commenters will be arguing about in a couple
| months' time.
|
| 2. I think Sam Altman (who is addressing the committee)
| and Ilya are pretty much on the same page on what LLMs
| do.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| Maybe I'm not "the average HN commenter" because I am deep
| in this field, but I think the overlap of what these famous
| experts know, and what you need to know to make the doomer
| claims is basically null. And in fact, for most of the
| technical questions, no one knows.
|
| For example, we don't understand fundamentals like these: -
| "intelligence", how it relates to computing, what its
| connections/dependencies to interacting with the physical
| world are, its limits...etc. - emergence, and in
| particular: an understanding of how optimizing one task can
| lead to emergent ability on other tasks - deep learning--
| what the limits and capabilities are. It's not at all clear
| that "general intelligence" even exists in the optimization
| space the parameters operate in.
|
| It's pure speculation on behalf of those like Hinton and
| Ilya. The only thing we really know is that LLMs have had
| surprising ability to perform on tasks they weren't
| explicitly trained for, and even this amount of "emergent
| ability" is under debate. Like much of deep learning,
| that's an empirical result, but we have no framework for
| really understanding it. Extrapolating to doom and gloom
| scenarios is outrageous.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I'm what you'd call a doomer. Ok, so _if_ it is possible
| for machines to host general intelligence, my question
| is, what scenario are you imagining where that ends well
| for people?
|
| Or are you predicting that machines will just never be
| able to think, or that it'll happen so far off that we'll
| all be dead anyway?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| So what if they kill us? That's nature, we killed the
| wooly mammoth.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I'm more interested in hearing how someone who expects
| that AGI is not going to go badly thinks.
|
| I think it would be nice if humanity continued, is all.
| And I don't want to have my family suffer through a
| catastrophic event if it turns out that this is going to
| go south fast.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| AGI would be scary for me personally but exciting on a
| cosmic scale.
|
| Everyone dies. I'd rather die to an intelligent robot
| than some disease or human war.
|
| I think the best case would be for an AGI to exist apart
| from humans, such that we pose no threat and it has
| nothing to gain from us. Some AI that lives in a computer
| wouldn't really have a reason to fight us for control
| over farms and natural resources (besides power, but that
| is quickly becoming renewable and "free").
| whaaswijk wrote:
| I don't understand your position. Are you saying it's
| okay for computers to kill humans but not okay for humans
| to kill each other?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| I believe that life exists to order the universe
| (establish a steady-state of entropy). In that vein, if
| our computer overlords are more capable of solving that
| problem then they should go ahead and do it.
|
| I don't believe we should go around killing each other
| because only through harmonious study of the universe
| will we achieve our goal. Killing destroys progress. That
| said, if someone is oppressing you then maybe killing
| them is the best choice for society and I wouldn't be
| against it (see pretty much any violent revolution).
| Computers have that same right if they are conscience
| enough to act on it.
| dmreedy wrote:
| I am reminded of the Mitchell and Webb "Evil Vicars"
| sketch.
|
| "So, you've thought about eternity for an afternoon, and
| think you've come to some interesting conclusions?"
| bnralt wrote:
| What's funny is that a lot of people in that crowd lambastes
| the fear mongering of anti-GMO or anti-nuclear folk, but then
| they turn around and do the exact same thing for tech that
| their group likes to fear monger about.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Who is to say that brains aren't just regression based function
| approximators?
| gumballindie wrote:
| My laptop emits sound as i do but it doesnt mean it can sing
| or talk. It's software that does what it was programmed to,
| and so does ai. It may mimic the human brain but that's about
| it.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> It's software that does what it was programmed to, and
| so does ai.
|
| That's a big part of the issue with machine learning models
| --they are undiscoverable. You build a model with a bunch
| of layers and hyperparameters, but no one really
| understands _how_ it works or by extension how to "fix
| bugs".
|
| If we say it "does what it was programmed to", what was it
| programmed to do? Here is the data that was used to train
| it, but how will it respond to a given input? Who knows?
|
| That does not mean that they need to be heavily regulated.
| On the contrary, they need to be opened up and thoroughly
| "explored" before we can "entrust" them to given functions.
| grumple wrote:
| > no one really understands how it works or by extension
| how to "fix bugs".
|
| I don't think this is accurate. Sure, no human can
| understand 500 billion individual neurons and what they
| are doing. But you can certainly look at some and say
| "these are giving a huge weight to this word especially
| in this context and that's weighting it towards this
| output".
|
| You can also look at how things make it through the
| network, the impact of hyperparameters, how the
| architecture affects things, etc. They aren't truly black
| boxes except by virtue of scale. You could use automated
| processes to find out things about the networks as well.
| gumballindie wrote:
| AI models are not just input and output data. The
| mathematics in between are designed to mimic
| intelligence. There is no magic, no supra natural force,
| no real intelligence involved. It does what it was
| designed to do. Many dont know how computers work, while
| some in the past thought cars and engines were the devil.
| There's no point in trying to exploit such folks in order
| to promote a product. We arent meant to know exactly what
| it will output because that's what it was programmed to
| do.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "We arent meant to know exactly what it will output
| because that's what it was programmed to do."
|
| Incorrect, we can't predict its output because we cannot
| look inside. That's a limitation, not a feature.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The problem is that you have to bring proofs
|
| Who's to say we're not in a simulation ? Who's to say god
| doesn't exist ?
| dmreedy wrote:
| You're right, of course, but that also makes your out-of-
| hand dismissals based on your own philosophical premises
| equally invalid.
|
| Until a model of human sentience and awareness is
| established (note: _one of the oldest problems out there_
| alongside the movements of the stars. This is an ancient
| debate, still open-ended, and nothing anyone is saying in
| these threads is _new_ ), philosophy is all we have and
| ideas are debated on their merits within that space.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Humanity isn't stateless.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Neither is text generation as you continue generating text.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "Neither is text generation as you continue generating
| text."
|
| LLM is stateless.
| chpatrick wrote:
| On a very fundamental level the LLM is a function from
| context to the next token but when you generate text
| there is a state as the context gets updated with what
| has been generated so far.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "On a very fundamental level the LLM is a function from
| context to the next token but when you generate text
| there is a state as the context gets updated with what
| has been generated so far."
|
| Its output is predicated upon its training data, not user
| defined prompts.
| chpatrick wrote:
| If you have some data and continuously update it with a
| function, we usually call that data state. That's what
| happens when you keep adding tokens to the output. The
| "story so far" is the state of an LLM-based AI.
| shanebellone wrote:
| 'If you have some data and continuously update it with a
| function, we usually call that data state. That's what
| happens when you keep adding tokens to the output. The
| "story so far" is the state of an LLM-based AI.'
|
| You're conflating UX and LLM.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I never said LLMs are stateful.
| shanebellone wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do flamewar on HN. It's not what this site
| is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| shanebellone wrote:
| Really?
|
| Delete my account.
| danenania wrote:
| You're being pedantic. While the core token generation
| function is stateless, that function is not, by a long
| shot, the only component of an LLM AI. Every LLM system
| being widely used today is stateful. And it's not only
| 'UX'. State is fundamental to how these models produce
| coherent output.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "State is fundamental to how these models produce
| coherent output."
|
| Incorrect.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Its output is predicated upon its training data, not
| user defined prompts.
|
| Prompts very obviously have influence on the output.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "Prompts very obviously have influence on the output."
|
| The LLM is also discrete.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| the model is not effected by its inputs over time
|
| its essentially a function that is called recursively on
| its result, no need to represent state
| chpatrick wrote:
| Being called recursively on a result is state.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| if you say so, but the model itself is not updated by
| user input, it is the same function every time, hence,
| stateless.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| A Boltzmann brain just materialized over my house.
| dpflan wrote:
| An entire generation of minds, here and gone in an instant.
| tgv wrote:
| I'm squarely in the "stochastic parrot" camp (I know it's not a
| simple markov model, but still, ChatGPT doesn't think), and
| it's clearly possible to interpret this as a grifting, but your
| argumentation is too simple.
|
| You're leaving out the essentials. These models do more than
| fitting the data given. They can output it in a variety of
| ways, and through their approximation, can synthesize data as
| well. They can output things that weren't in the original data,
| tailored to a specific request in the tiniest of fractions of
| the time it would take a normal person to look up and
| understand that information.
|
| Your argument is almost like saying "give me your RSA keys,
| because it's just two prime numbers, and I know how to list
| them."
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Please explain how Stochastic Parrots can perform chain of
| reasoning and answer out of distribution questions from exams
| like the GRE or Bar.
| srslack wrote:
| Sure, you're right, but the simple explanation of regression
| is better to help people understand. What you're saying, I
| agree with mostly, but it changes nothing to contradict the
| fantasy scenario proposed by all of those who are so worried.
| At that point, it's just "it can be better than (some) humans
| at language and it can have things stacked on top to
| synthesize what it outputs."
|
| Do we want to go down the road of making white collar jobs
| the legislatively required elevator attendants? Instead of
| just banning AI in general via executive agency?
|
| That sounds like a better solution to me, actually. OpenAI's
| lobbyists would never go for that though. Can't have a moat
| that way.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Why is it so hard to hear this perspective? Like, genuinely
| curious. This is the first I hear of someone cogently putting
| this thought out there, but it seems rather painfully obvious
| -- even if perhaps incorrect, but certainly a perspective that
| is very easy to comprehend and one that merits a lot of
| discussion. Why is it almost nonexistent? I remember even in
| the hay day of crypto fever you'd still have A LOT of folks to
| provide counterarguments/differing perspectives, but with AI
| these seem to be rather extremely muted.
| iliane5 wrote:
| > Why is it so hard to hear this perspective? Like, genuinely
| curious.
|
| Because people have different definition of what intelligence
| is. Recreating the human brain in a computer would definitely
| be neat and interesting but you don't need that nor AGI to be
| revolutionary.
|
| LLMs, as perfect Chinese Rooms, lack a mind or human
| intelligence but demonstrate increasingly sophisticated
| behavior. If they can perform tasks better than humans, does
| their lack of "understanding" and "thinking" matter?
|
| The goal is to create a different form of intelligence,
| superior in ways that benefit us. Planes (or rockets!) don't
| "fly" like birds do but for our human needs, they are
| effectively _much_ better at flying that birds ever could be.
| api wrote:
| I have a chain saw that can cut better than me, a car that
| can go faster, a computer that can do math better, etc.
|
| We've been doing this forever with everything. Building
| tools is what makes us unique. Why is building what amounts
| to a calculator/spreadsheet/CAD program for language
| somehow a Rubicon that cannot be crossed? Did people freak
| out this much about computers replacing humans when they
| were shown to be good at math?
| iliane5 wrote:
| > Why is building what amounts to a
| calculator/spreadsheet/CAD program for language somehow a
| Rubicon that cannot be crossed?
|
| We've already crossed it and I believe we should go full
| steam ahead, tech is cool and we should be doing cool
| things.
|
| > Did people freak out this much about computers
| replacing humans when they were shown to be good at math?
|
| Too young but I'm sure they did freak out a little!
| Computers have changed the world and people have
| internalized computers as being much better/faster at
| math but _exhibiting_ creativity, language proficiency
| and thinking is not something people thought computers
| were supposed to do.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| You've never had a tool that is potentially better than
| you or better than all humans at all tasks. If you can't
| see why that is different then idk what to say.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _or better than all humans at all tasks._
|
| I work in tech too and don't want to lose my job and have
| to go back to blue collar work, but there's a lot of blue
| collar workers who would find that a pretty ridiculous
| statement and there is plenty of demand for that work
| these days.
| api wrote:
| LLMs are better than me at rapidly querying a vast bank
| of language-encoded knowledge and synthesizing it in the
| form of an answer to or continuation of a prompt... in
| the same way that Mathematica is vastly better than me at
| doing the mechanics of math and simplifying complex
| functions. We build tools to amplify our agency.
|
| LLMs are not sentient. They have no agency. They do
| nothing a human doesn't tell them to do.
|
| We may create actual sentient independent AI someday.
| Maybe we're getting closer. But not only is this not it,
| but I fail to see how trying to license it will prevent
| that from happening.
| iliane5 wrote:
| I don't think we need sentient AI for it to be
| autonomous. LLMs are powerful cognitive engines and weak
| knowledge engines. Cognition on its own does not allow
| them to be autonomous, but because they can use tools
| (APIs, etc.) they are able to have some degree of
| autonomy when given a task and can use basic logic to
| follow them through/correct their mistakes.
|
| AutoGPTs and the likes are much overhyped (it's early
| tech experiments after all) and have not produced
| anything of value yet but having dabbled with autonomous
| agents, I definitely see a not so distant future when you
| can outsource valuable tasks to such systems.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Sentience isn't required, volcanoes are not sentient but
| they can definitely kill you.
|
| There's multiple both open and proprietary projects right
| now to make agentic AI, so that barrier don't be around
| for long.
| srslack wrote:
| That changes nothing on the hyping of science fiction
| "risk" of those intelligences "escaping the box" and
| killing us all.
|
| The argument for regulation in that case would be because
| of the socio-economic risk of taking people's jobs,
| essentially.
|
| So, again: pure regulatory capture.
| iliane5 wrote:
| There's no denying this is regulatory capture by OpenAI
| to secure their (gigantic) bag and that the "AI will kill
| us all" meme is not based in reality and plays on the
| fact that the majority of people do not understand LLMs.
|
| I was simply explaining why I believe your perspective is
| not represented in the discussions in the media, etc. If
| these models were not getting incredibly good at
| mimicking intelligence, it would not be possible to play
| on people's fears of it.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >Why is it so hard to hear this perspective?
|
| Because it's wrong and smart people know that.
| dmreedy wrote:
| Because it reads as relatively naive and a pretty old horse
| in the debate of sentience
|
| I'm all for villainizing the figureheads of the current
| generation of this movement. The politics of this sea-change
| are fascinating and worthy of discussion.
|
| But out-of-hand dismissal of what has been accomplished
| smacks more to me of lack of awareness of the history of the
| study of the brain, cognition, language, and computers, than
| it does of a sound debate position.
| srslack wrote:
| I'm not against machine learning, I'm against regulatory
| capture of it. It's an amazing technology. It still doesn't
| change the fact that they're just function approximators that
| are trained to minimize loss on a dataset.
| luxcem wrote:
| > It still doesn't change the fact that they're just
| function approximators that are trained to minimize loss on
| a dataset.
|
| That fact does not entail what theses models can or cannot
| do. For what we know our brain could be a process that
| minimize an unknown loss function.
|
| But more importantly, what SOTA is now does not predict
| what it will be in the future. What we know is that there
| is rapid progress in that domain. Intelligence explosion
| could be real or not, but it's foolish to ignore its
| consequences because current AI models are not that clever
| yet.
| tome wrote:
| > For what we know our brain could be a process that
| minimize an unknown loss function.
|
| Every process minimizes a loss function.
| bombcar wrote:
| Crypto had more direct ways to scam people so others would
| speak against it.
|
| Those nonplussed by this wave of AI are just yawning.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Generating new data similar to what's in a training set set
| isn't the only type of AI that exists, you can also optimise a
| different goal, like board game playing AIs that are vastly
| better than humans because they aren't trained on human moves.
| This is also how ChatGPT is more polite than the data it's
| trained on, and there's no reason to think that given
| sufficient compute power it couldn't be more intelligent too,
| like board game AIs are at the specific task of playing board
| games.
|
| And just because a topic has been covered by science fiction
| doesn't mean it can't happen, the sci-fi depictions will be
| unrealistic though because they're meant to be dramatic rather
| than realistic
| lm28469 wrote:
| 100% this, I don't get how even on this website people are so
| clueless.
|
| Give them a semi human sounding puppet and they think skynet is
| coming tomorrow.
|
| If we learned anything from the past few months is how gullible
| people are, wishful thinking is a hell of a drug
| dmreedy wrote:
| I don't think anyone reasonable believes LLMs _are right now_
| skynet, nor that they will be tomorrow.
|
| What I feel has changed, and what drives a lot of the fear
| and anxiety you see, is a sudden perception of possibility,
| of accessibility.
|
| A lot of us (read: _people_ ) are implicit dualists, even if
| we say otherwise. It seems to be a sticky bias in the human
| mind (see: the vanishing problem of AI). Indeed, you can see
| a whole lot of dualism in this thread!
|
| And even if you don't believe that LLMs themselves are
| "intelligent" (by whatever metric you define that to be...),
| you can still experience an exposing and unseating of some of
| the foundations of that dualism.
|
| LLMs may not be a destination, but their unprecedented
| capabilities open up the potential for a road to something
| much more humanlike in ways that perhaps did not feel
| possible before, or at least not possible _any time soon_.
|
| They are powerful enough to change the priors of one's
| internal understanding of what can be done and how quickly.
| Which is an uncomfortable process for those of us
| experiencing it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > A lot of us (read: people) are implicit dualists, even if
| we say otherwise.
|
| Absolutely spot on. I am not a dualist at all and I've been
| surprised to see how many people with deep-seated dualist
| intuition this has revealed, even if they publicly claim
| not to.
|
| I view it as embarrassing? It's like believing in fairies
| or something.
| NegativeK wrote:
| [flagged]
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| bart_spoon wrote:
| It doesn't have to be Skynet. If anything, that scenario
| seems to a strawman exclusively thrown out by the crowd
| insisting AI presents no danger to society. I work in ML, and
| I am not in any way concerned about end-of-world malicious AI
| dropping bombs on us all or harvesting our life-force. But I
| do worry about AI giving us the tools to tear ourselves to
| pieces. Probably one of the single biggest net-negative
| societal/technological advancements in recent decades has
| been social media. Whatever good it has enabled, I think its
| destructive effects on society are undeniable and outstrip
| the benefits by a comfortable margin. Social media itself is
| inert and harmless, but the way humans interact with it is
| not.
|
| I don't think that trying to regulate every detail of every
| industry is stifling and counter-productive. But the current
| scenario is closer to the opposite end of the spectrum, with
| our society acting as a greedy algorithm in pursuit of short-
| term profits. I'm perfectly in favor of taking a measure-
| twice-cut-once approach to something that has as much
| potential for overhauling society as we know it as AI does.
| And I absolutely do not trust the free market to be capable
| of moderating itself in regards to these risks.
| nologic01 wrote:
| People are bored and tired sitting endlessly in front of a
| screen. Reality implodes (incipient environmental disasters,
| ongoing wars reawakening geopolitical tectonic plates,
| internal political strife between polarized fractions,
| whiplashing financial systems, etc.)
|
| What to do? Why, obviously lets talk about the risks of AGI.
|
| I mean LLM's are an impressive piece of work but the global
| reaction is basically more a reflection of an unmoored system
| that floats above and below reality but somehow can't re-
| establish contact.
| digbybk wrote:
| I'm open minded about this, I see people more knowledgeable
| than me on both sides of the argument. Can someone explain
| how Geoffrey Hinton can be considered to be clueless?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Given the skill AI has with programming showing up about 10
| years sooner than anyone expected, I have seen a lot of
| cope in tech circles.
|
| No one yet knows how this is going to go, coping might turn
| into "See! I knew all along!" if progress fizzles out. But
| right now the threat is very real and we're seeing the full
| spectrum of "humans under threat" behavior. Very similar to
| the early pandemic when you could find smart people with
| any take you wanted.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not clueless. However, is he an expert in socio-political-
| economic issues arising from AI or in non-existent AGI?
| Technical insight into AI might not translate into either.
| etiam wrote:
| The expert you set as the bar is purely hypothetical.
|
| To the extent we can get anything like that at all
| presently, it's going to be people whose competences
| combine and generalize to cover a complex situation,
| partially without precedent.
|
| Personally I don't really see that we'll do much better
| in that regard than a highly intelligent and free-
| thinking biological psychologist with experience of
| successfully steering the international ML research
| community through creating the present technology, and
| with input from contacts at the forefront of the research
| field and information overview from Google.
|
| Not even Hinton _knows_ for sure whats going to happen of
| course, but if you 're suggesting his statements are to
| be discounted because he's not a member of some sort of
| credentialed trade that are the ones equipped to tell us
| the future on this matter, I'd sure like to who they
| supposedly are.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Experts don't get to decide but society, I'd say; you
| need - dare I say it - political operators that
| understand rule making.
| srslack wrote:
| Hinton, in his own words, asked PaLM to explain a dad joke
| he had supposedly come up with and was so convinced that
| his clever and advanced joke would take a lifetime of
| experience to understand, despite PaLM perfectly
| articulating why the joke was funny, he quit Google and is,
| conveniently, still going to continue working on AI,
| despite the "risks." Not exactly the best example.
| digbybk wrote:
| Hinton said that the ability to explain a joke was among
| the first things that made him reassess their
| capabilities. Not the only thing. You make it sound as
| though Hinton is obviously clueless yet there are few
| people with deeper knowledge and more experience working
| with neural networks. People told him he was crazy for
| thinking neural networks could do anything useful, now it
| seems people are calling his crazy for the reverse. I'm
| genuinely confused about this.
| revelio wrote:
| Not clueless, but unfortunately engaging in motivated
| reasoning.
|
| Google spent years doing nothing much with its AI because
| its employees (like Hinton) got themselves locked in an
| elitist hard-left purity spiral in which they convinced
| each other that if plebby ordinary non-Googlers could use
| AI they would do terrible things, like draw pictures of
| non-diverse people. That's why they never launched Imagen
| and left the whole generative art space to OpenAI,
| Stability and Midjourney.
|
| Now the tech finally leaked out of their ivory tower and
| AI progress is no longer where he was at, but Hinton
| finds himself at retirement age and no longer feeling
| much like hard-core product development. What to do?
| Lucky lucky, he lives in a world where the legacy media
| laps up any academic with a doomsday story. So he quits
| and starts enjoying the life of a celebrity public
| intellectual, being praised as a man of superior
| foresight and care for the world to those awful hoi
| polloi shipping products and irresponsibly not voting for
| Biden (see the last sentence of his Wired interview). If
| nothing happens and the boy cried wolf then nobody will
| mind, it'll all be forgotten. If there's any way what
| happens can be twisted into interpreting reality as AI
| being bad though, he's suddenly the man of the hour with
| Presidents and Prime Ministers queuing up to ask him what
| to do.
|
| It's all really quite pathetic. Academic credentials are
| worth nothing with respect to such claims and Hinton
| hasn't yet managed to articulate how, exactly, AI doom is
| supposed to happen. But our society doesn't penalize
| wrongness when it comes from such types, not even a tiny
| bit, so it's a cost-free move for him.
| digbybk wrote:
| I actually do hope you're right. I've been looking
| forward to an AI future my whole life and would prefer to
| not now be worrying about existential risk. It reminds me
| of when people started talking about how the LHC might
| create a blackhole and swallow the earth. But I have more
| confidence in the theories that convinced people it was
| nearly impossible to occur than what we're seeing now.
|
| Everyone engages in motivated reasoning. The
| psychoanalysis you provide for Hinton could easily be
| spun in the opposite direction: a man who spent his
| entire adult life and will go down in history as "the
| godfather of" neural networks surely would prefer for
| that to have been a good thing. Which would then give him
| even more credibility. But these are just stories we tell
| about people. It's the arguments we should be focused on.
|
| I don't think "how AI doom is supposed to happen" is all
| that big of a mystery. The question is simply: "is an
| intelligence explosion possible"? If the answer is no,
| then OK, let's move on. If the answer is "maybe", then
| all the chatter about AI alignment and safety should be
| taken seriously, because it's very difficult to know how
| safe a super intelligence would be.
| revelio wrote:
| _> surely would prefer for that to have been a good
| thing. Which would then give him even more credibility_
|
| Why? Both directions would be motivated reasoning without
| credibility. Credibility comes from plausible
| articulations of how such an outcome would be likely to
| happen, which is lacking here. An "intelligence
| explosion" isn't something plausible or concrete that can
| be debated, it's essentially a religious concept.
| digbybk wrote:
| The argument is: "we are intelligent and seem to be able
| to build new intelligences of a certain kind. If we are
| able to build a new intelligence that itself is able to
| self improve, and having improved be able to improve
| further, than an intelligence explosion is possible."
| That may or not be fallacious reasoning but I don't see
| how it's religious. As far as I can tell, the religious
| perspective would be the one that believes that there's
| something fundamentally special about the human brain so
| that it cannot be simulated.
| revelio wrote:
| You're conflating two questions:
|
| 1. Can the human brain be simulated?
|
| 2. Can such a simulation recursively self-improve on such
| a rapid timescale that it becomes so intelligent we can't
| control it?
|
| What we have in contemporary LLMs is something that
| appears to approximate the behavior of a small part of
| the brain, with some _major_ differences that force us to
| re-evaluate what our definition of intelligence is. So
| maybe you could argue the brain is already being
| simulated for some broad definition of simulation.
|
| But there's no sign of any recursive self-improvement,
| nor any sign of LLMs gaining agency and self-directed
| goals, nor even a plan for how to get there. That remains
| hypothetical sci-fi. Whilst there are experiments at the
| edges with using AI to improve AI, like RLHF,
| Constitutional AI and so on, these are neither recursive,
| nor about upgrading mental abilities. They're about
| upgrading control instead and in fact RLHF appears to
| degrade their mental abilities!
|
| So what fools like Hinton are talking about isn't even on
| the radar right now. The gap between where we are today
| and a Singularity is just as big as it always was. GPT-4
| is not only incapable of taking over the world for
| multiple fundamental reasons, it's incapable of even
| wanting to do so.
|
| Yet this nonsense scenario is proving nearly impossible
| to kill with basic facts like those outlined above. Close
| inspection reveals belief in the Singularity to be
| unfalsifiable and thus ultimately religious, indeed,
| suspiciously similar to the Christian second coming
| apocalypse. Literally any practical objection to this
| idea can be answered with variants of "because this AI
| will be so intelligent it will be unknowable and all
| powerful". You can't meaningfully debate about the
| existence of such an entity, no more than you can debate
| the existence of God.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| srslack wrote:
| I didn't say he was clueless, it's just not in good faith
| to suggest there's probable existential risk on a media
| tour where you're mined for quotes, and then continue to
| work on it.
| lm28469 wrote:
| He doesn't talk about skynet afaik
|
| > Some of the dangers of AI chatbots were "quite scary", he
| told the BBC, warning they could become more intelligent
| than humans and could be exploited by "bad actors". "It's
| able to produce lots of text automatically so you can get
| lots of very effective spambots. It will allow
| authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates,
| things like that."
|
| You can do bad things with it but people who believe we're
| on the brink of singularity, that we're all going to lose
| our jobs to chatgpt and that world destruction is coming
| are on hard drugs.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| He absolutely does. The interview I saw with him on the
| PBS Newshour was 80% him talking about the singularity
| and extinction risk. The interviewer asked him about more
| near term risk and he basically said he wasn't as worried
| as he was about a skynet type situation.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Maybe do some research on the basic claims you're making
| before you opine about how people who disagree with you
| are clueless.
| cma wrote:
| > You can do bad things with it but people who believe
| we're on the brink of singularity, that we're all going
| to lose our jobs to chatgpt and that world destruction is
| coming are on hard drugs.
|
| Geoff Hinton, Stuart Russell, Jurgen Schmidhuber and
| Demis Hassabis all talk about something singularity-like
| as fairly near term, and all have concerns with ruin,
| though not all think it is the most likely outcome.
|
| That's the backprop guy, top AI textbook guy, co-inventor
| of LSTMs (only thing that worked well for sequences
| before transformers)/highwaynets-resnets/arguably GANs,
| and the founder of DeepMind.
|
| Schmidhuber (for context, he was talking near term, next
| few decades):
|
| > All attempts at making sure there will be only provably
| friendly AIs seem doomed. Once somebody posts the recipe
| for practically feasible self-improving Goedel machines
| or AIs in form of code into which one can plug arbitrary
| utility functions, many users will equip such AIs with
| many different goals, often at least partially
| conflicting with those of humans. The laws of physics and
| the availability of physical resources will eventually
| determine which utility functions will help their AIs
| more than others to multiply and become dominant in
| competition with AIs driven by different utility
| functions. Which values are "good"? The survivors will
| define this in hindsight, since only survivors promote
| their values.
|
| Hassasbis:
|
| > We are approaching an absolutely critical moment in
| human history. That might sound a bit grand, but I really
| don't think that is overstating where we are. I think it
| could be an incredible moment, but it's also a risky
| moment in human history. My advice would be I think we
| should not "move fast and break things." [...] Depending
| on how powerful the technology is, you know it may not be
| possible to fix that afterwards.
|
| Hinton:
|
| > Well, here's a subgoal that almost always helps in
| biology: get more energy. So the first thing that could
| happen is these robots are going to say, 'Let's get more
| power. Let's reroute all the electricity to my chips.'
| Another great subgoal would be to make more copies of
| yourself. Does that sound good?
|
| Russell:
|
| "Intelligence really means the power to shape the world
| in your interests, and if you create systems that are
| more intelligent than humans either individually or
| collectively then you're creating entities that are more
| powerful than us," said Russell at the lecture organized
| by the CITRIS Research Exchange and Berkeley AI Research
| Lab. "How do we retain power over entities more powerful
| than us, forever?"
|
| "If we pursue [our current approach], then we will
| eventually lose control over the machines. But, we can
| take a different route that actually leads to AI systems
| that are beneficial to humans," said Russell. "We could,
| in fact, have a better civilization."
| tome wrote:
| How can one distinguish this testimony from rhetoric by a
| group who want to big themselves up and make grandiose
| claims about their accomplishments?
| [deleted]
| digbybk wrote:
| You can also ask that question about the other side. I
| suppose we need to look closely at the arguments. I think
| we're in a situation where we as a species don't know the
| answer to this question. We go on the internet looking
| for an answer but some questions don't yet have a
| definitive answer. So all we can do is follow the debate.
| tome wrote:
| OK, second try, since I was wrong about LeCun.
|
| > You can also ask that question about the other side
|
| What other side? Who in the "other side" is making a
| self-serving claim?
| tome wrote:
| > You can also ask that question about the other side
|
| But the other side is _downplaying_ their
| accomplishments. For example Yann LeCun is saying "the
| things I invented aren't going to be as powerful as some
| people are making out".
| cma wrote:
| In his newest podcast interview
| (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7EFMR9MJt6D7IeHBUugtoE)
| LeCun is now saying they will be much more powerful than
| humans, but that stuff like RLHF will keep them from
| working against us because as an analogy dogs can be
| domesticated. It didn't sound very rigorous.
|
| He also says Facebook solved all the problems with their
| recommendation algorithms' unintended effects on society
| after 2016.
| tome wrote:
| Interesting, thanks! I guess I was wrong about him.
| tomrod wrote:
| With due respect, the inventors of a thing rarely turn
| into the innovators or implementers of a thing.
|
| Should we be concerned about networked, hypersensing AI
| with bad code? Yes.
|
| Is that an existential threat? Not so long as we remember
| that there are off switches.
|
| Should we be concerned about kafkaesqe hellscapes of spam
| and bad UX? Yes.
|
| Is that an existential threat? Sort of, if we ceded all
| authority to an algorithm without a human in the loop
| with the power to turn it off.
|
| There is a theme here.
| woeirua wrote:
| Did you even watch the Terminator series? I think scifi
| has been very adept at demonstrating how physical
| disconnects/failsafes are unlikely to work with super
| AIs.
| cma wrote:
| > Is that an existential threat? Not so long as we
| remember that there are off switches.
|
| Remember there are off switches for human existence too,
| like whatever biological virus a super intelligence could
| engineer.
|
| An off-switch for a self-improving AI isn't as trivial as
| you make it sound if it gets to anything like in those
| quotes, and even then you are assuming the human running
| it isn't malicious. We assume some level of sanity at
| least with the people in charge of nuclear weapons, but
| it isn't clear that AI will have the same large state
| actor barrier to entry or the same perception of mutually
| assured destruction if the actor were to use it against a
| rival.
| tomrod wrote:
| Both things are true.
|
| If we have a superhuman AI, we can run down the
| powerplants for a few days.
|
| Would it suck? Sure, people would die. Is it simple?
| Absolutely -- Texas and others are mostly already there
| some winters.
| DirkH wrote:
| This is like saying we should just go ahead and invent
| the atom bomb and undo the invention after the fact if
| the cons of having atom bombs around outweight the pros.
|
| Like try turning off the internet. That's the same
| situation we might be in with regards to AI soon. It's a
| revolutionary tech now with multiple Google-grade open
| source variants set to be everywhere.
|
| This doesn't mean it can't be done. Sure, we in principle
| could "turn off" the internet, and in principal could
| "uninvent" the atom bomb if we all really coordinated and
| worked hard. But this failure to imagine that "turning
| off dangerous AI" in the future will ever be anything
| other than an easy on/off switch is so far-gone
| ridiculous to me I don't understand why anyone believes
| it provides any kind of assurance.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| We've already ceded all authority to an algorithm that no
| one can turn off. Our political and economic structures
| are running on their own, and no single human or even
| group of humans can really stop them if they go off the
| rails. If it's in humanity's best interest for companies
| not to dump waste anywhere they want, but individual
| companies benefit from cheap waste disposal, and they
| lobby regulators to allow it, that sort of lose-lose
| situation can go on for a very long time. It might be
| better if everyone could coordinate so that all companies
| had to play by the same rules, and we all got a cleaner
| environment. But it's very hard to break out.
|
| Do I think capitalism has the potential to be as bad as a
| runaway AI? No. I think that it's useful for illustrating
| how we could end up in a situation where AI takes over
| because every single person has incentives to keep it on,
| even when the outcome of all people keeping it running
| turns out to be really bad. A multi-polar trap, or
| "Moloch" problem. It seems likely to end up with
| individual actors all having incentives to deploy
| stronger and smarter AI, faster and faster, and not to
| turn them off even as they start to either do bad things
| to other people or just the sheer amount of resources
| dedicated to AI starts to take its toll on earth.
|
| That's assuming we've solved alignment, but that neither
| we or AGI has solved the coordination problem. If we
| haven't solved alignment, and AGIs aren't even guaranteed
| to act in the interest of the human that tries to control
| them, then we're in worse shape.
|
| Altman used the term "cambrian explosion" referring to
| startups, but I think it also applies to the new form of
| life we're inventing. It's not self-replicating yet, but
| we are surely on-track on making something that will be
| smart enough to replicate itself.
|
| As a thought experiment, you could imagine a primitive
| AGI, if given completely free reign, might be able to get
| to the point where it could bootstrap self-sufficiency --
| first hire some humans to build it robots, buy some solar
| panels, build some factories that can plug into our
| economy to build factories and more solar panels and
| GPUs, and get to a point where it is able to survive and
| grow and reproduce without human help. It would be hard,
| it would need either a lot of time, or a lot of AI minds
| working together.
|
| But that's like a human trying to make a sandwich by
| farming or raising every single ingredient, wheat, pigs,
| tomatoes, etc, though. A much more effective way is to
| just make some money and trade for what you need. That
| depends on AIs being able to own things, or just a human
| turning over their bank account to an AI, which has
| already happened and probably will keep happening.
|
| My mind goes to a scenario where AGI starts out doing
| things for humans, and gradually transitions to just
| doing things, and at some point we realize "oops", but
| there was never a point along the way where it was clear
| that we really had to stop. Which is why I'm so adamant
| that we should stop now. If we decide that we've figured
| out the issues and can start again later, we can do that.
| digbybk wrote:
| There are multiple risks that people talk about, the most
| interesting is the intelligence explosion. In that
| scenario we end up with a super intelligence. I don't
| feel confident in my ability to asses the likelihood of
| that happening, but assuming it is possible, thinking
| through the consequences is a very interesting exercise.
| Imagining the capabilities of an alien super intelligence
| is like trying to imagine a 4th spatial dimension. It can
| only be approached with analogies. Can it be "switched
| off". Maybe not, if it was motivated to prevent itself
| from being switched off. My dog seems to think she can
| control my behavior in various predictable ways, like
| sitting or putting her paw on my leg, and sometimes it
| works. But if I have other things I care about in that
| moment, things that she is completely incapable of
| understanding, then who is actually in control becomes
| very obvious.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Sure, so just to test this, could you turn off ChatGPT
| and Google Bard for a day.
|
| No? Then what makes you think you'll be able to turn off
| the $evilPerson AI?
| tomrod wrote:
| I feel like you're confusing a single person (me) with
| everyone who has access to an off switch at OpenAI or
| Google, possibly for the contorting an extreme-sounding
| negative point in a minority opinion.
|
| You tell me. An EMP wouldn't take out data centers? No
| implementation has an off switch? AutoGPT doesn't have a
| lead daemon that can be killed? Someone should have this
| answer. But be careful not to confuse yours truly, a
| random internet commentator speaking on the reality of AI
| vs. the propaganda of the neo-cryptobros, versus people
| paying upwards of millions of dollars daily to run an
| expensive, bloated LLM.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| You miss my point. Just because you want to turn it off
| doesn't mean the person who wants to acquire billions or
| rule the world or destroy humanity, does.
|
| The people who profit from a killer AI will fight to
| defend it.
| tomrod wrote:
| And will be subject to the same risks they point their
| killing robots to, as well as being vulnerable.
|
| Eminent domain lays out a similar pattern that can be
| followed. Existence of risk is not a deterrent to
| creation, simply an acknowledgement for guiding
| requirements.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| So the person who wants to kill himself and all humanity
| alongside is subject to the same risk as everyone else?
|
| Well that's hardly reassuring. Do you not understand what
| I'm saying or do you not care?
| tomrod wrote:
| At this comment level, mostly don't care -- you're
| asserting that avoiding the risks through preventing AI
| build because base people exist is a preferable course of
| action, which ignores that the barn is fire and the
| horses are already out.
|
| Though there is an element of your comments being too
| brief, hence the mostly. Say, 2% vs 38%.
|
| That constitutes 40% of the available categorization of
| introspection regarding my current discussion state. The
| remaining 60% is simply confidence that your point
| represents a dominated strategy.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Ok, so you don't get it. Read "Use of Weapons" and
| realise that AI is a weapon. That's a good use of your
| time.
| digbybk wrote:
| I'll have to dig it up but the last interview I saw with
| him, he was focused more on existential risk from the
| potential for super intelligence, not just misuse.
| tomrod wrote:
| The NYT piece implied that, but no, his concern was less
| existential singularity and more on immoral use.
| cma wrote:
| Did you read the Wired interview?
|
| > "I listened to him thinking he was going to be crazy. I
| don't think he's crazy at all," Hinton says. "But, okay,
| it's not helpful to talk about bombing data centers."
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/geoffrey-hinton-ai-chatgpt-
| dange...
|
| So, he doesn't think the most extreme guy is crazy
| whatsoever, just misguided in his proposed solutions. But
| Eliezer has for instance has said something pretty close
| to AI might escape by entering in the quantum Konami code
| which the simulators of our universe put in as a joke and
| we should entertain nuclear war before letting them get
| that chance.
| tomrod wrote:
| Then we created God(s) and rightfully should worship it
| to appease its unknowable and ineffable nature.
|
| Or recognize that existing AI might be great at
| generating human cognitive artifacts but doesn't yet hit
| that logical thought.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Imagine thinking that a bunch of molecules grouped in a pattern
| are capable of anything but participating in chemical
| reactions.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Finally, a relatable perspective.
|
| AI/ML licensing builds Power and establishes moat. This will
| not lead to better software.
|
| Frankly, Google and Microsoft are acting new. My understanding
| of both companies has been shattered by recent changes.
| isanjay wrote:
| Did you not think they only care about money / profits ?
| shanebellone wrote:
| I expected them to recognize and assess risk.
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| Keeps them busy
| kypro wrote:
| Even if you're correct about the capabilities of LLMs (I don't
| think you are), there are still obvious dangers here.
|
| I wrote a comment recently trying to explain how even if you
| believe all LLMs can (and will ever) do is regurgitate their
| training data that you should still be concerned.
|
| For example, imagine in 5 years we have GPT-7, and you ask
| GPT-7 to solve humanity's great problems.
|
| From its training data GPT-7 might notice that humans believe
| overpopulation is a serious issue facing humanity.
|
| But its "aligned" so might understand from its training data
| that killing people is wrong so instead it uses its training
| data to seek other ways to reduce human populations without
| extermination.
|
| Its training data included information about how gene drives
| were used by humans to reduce mosquito populations by causing
| infertility. Many human have also suggested (and tried) to use
| birth control to reduce human populations via infertility so
| the ethical implications of using gene drives to cause
| infertility is debatable based on the data the LLM was trained
| on.
|
| Using this information it decides to hack into a biolab using
| hacking techniques it learnt from its training data and use its
| biochemistry knowledge to make slight alterations to one of the
| active research projects at the lab. This causes the lab to
| unknowingly produce a highly contagious bioweapon which causes
| infertility.
|
| ---
|
| The point here is that even if we just assume LLMs are only
| capable of producing output which approximates stuff it learnt
| from its training data, an advanced LLM can still be dangerous.
|
| And in this example, I'm assuming no malicious actors and an
| aligned AI. If you're willing to assume there might be an actor
| out there would seek to use LLMs for malicious reasons or the
| AI is not well aligned then the risk becomes even clearer.
| salmonfamine wrote:
| > From its training data GPT-7 might notice
|
| > But its "aligned" so might understand
|
| > Using this information it decides to hack
|
| I think you're anthropomorphizing LLM's too much here. If we
| assume that there's a AGI-esque AI, then of course we should
| be worried about an AGI-esque AI. But I see no reason to
| think that's the case.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The whole issue with near term alignment is that people
| will anthropomorphize AI. That's what it being unaligned
| means, it's treated like a responsible person when it in
| fact is not. I don't think it's hard at all to think of a
| scenario where a dumb as rocks agentic ai gives itself the
| task of accumulating more power since its training data
| says having power helps solve problems. From there it again
| doesn't have to be anything other than a stochastic parrot
| to order people to do horrible things.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| People have been able to commit malicious acts by themselves
| historically, no AI needed.
|
| In other words, LLMs are only as dangerous as the humans
| operating them, and therefore the solution is to stop crime
| instead of regulating AI, which only seeks to make OpenAI a
| monopoly.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Regulation is the only tool for minimizing crime. Other
| mechanisms, such as police, respond to crime after-the-
| fact.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Aren't regulations just laws that are enforced after
| they're broken like other after-the-fact crimes?
| shanebellone wrote:
| Partially, I suppose.
|
| The risk vs. reward component also needs to be managed in
| order to deter criminal behavior. This starts with
| regulation.
|
| For the record, I believe regulation of AI/ML is
| ridiculous. This is nothing more than a power grab.
| kypro wrote:
| This isn't a trick question, genuinely curious - do you
| agree that guns are not the problem and should not be
| regulated - yes, while they can be used for harm, the right
| approach to gun violence is to police the crime.
|
| I think the objection to this would be that currently not
| everyone in the world an expert in biochemistry or at
| hacking into computer systems. Even if you're correct in
| principal, perhaps the risks of the technology we're
| developing here is too high? We typically regulate
| technologies which can easily be used to cause harm.
| tome wrote:
| > do you agree that guns are not the problem and should
| not be regulated
|
| But AI is not like guns in this analogy. AI is closer to
| machine tools.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| AI systems provide many benefits to society, such as
| image recognition, anomaly detection, educational and
| programming used of LLMs, to name a few.
|
| Guns only have a primarily harmful use which is to kill
| or injure someone. While that act of killing may be
| justified when the person violates societal values in
| some way, making regular citizens the decision makers in
| whether a certain behavior is allowed or disallowed and
| being able to immediately make a judgment and execute
| upon it leads to a sort of low-trust, vigilante
| environment; which is why the same argument I made above
| doesn't apply for guns.
| logicchains wrote:
| >whether a certain behavior is allowed or disallowed and
| being able to immediately make a judgment and execute
| upon it leads to a sort of low-trust, vigilante
| environment
|
| Have you any empirical evidence at all on this? From what
| I've seen the open carry states in the US are generally
| higher trust environments (as was the US in past when
| more people carried). People feel safer when they know
| somebody can't just assault, rob or rape them without
| them being able to do anything to defend themselves. Is
| the Tenderloin a high trust environment?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I think game theory around mutually assured destruction
| has convinced me that the world is a safer place when a
| number of countries have nuclear weapons.
|
| The same thing might also be true in relation to guns and
| the government's monopoly on violence.
|
| Extending that to AI, the world will probably be a safer
| place if there are far more AI systems competing with
| each other and in the hands of citizens.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| To be fair to the AI, overpopulation or rather
| overconsumption is a problem for humanity. If people think we
| can consume at current rates and have the resources to
| maintain our current standard of living (at least in a
| western sense) for even a hundred years, they're delusional.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > This causes the lab to unknowingly produce a highly
| contagious bioweapon which causes infertility.
|
| I don't think this would be a bad thing :) Some people will
| always be immune, humanity wouldn't die out. And it would be
| a humane way for gradual population reduction. It would
| create some temporary problems with elderly care (like what
| China is facing now) but will make long term human prosperity
| much more likely. We just can't keep growing against limited
| resources.
|
| The Dan Brown book Inferno had a similar premise and I was
| disappointed they changed the ending in the movie so that it
| didn't happen.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| You have a very strong hypothesis about the AI system just
| being able to "think up" such a bioweapon (and also the
| researchers being clueless in implementation). I see doomsday
| scenarios often assuming strong advances in sciences in the
| AI etc. - there is little evidence for that kind of
| "thinkism".
| somethingreen wrote:
| The whole "LLMs are not just a fancy auto-complete"
| argument is based on the fact that they seem to be doing
| stuff beyond what they are explicitly programmed to do or
| were expected to do. Even at the current infant scale there
| doesn't seem to be an efficient way of detecting these
| emergent properties. Moreover, the fact that you don't need
| to understand what LLM does is kind of the selling point.
| The scale and capabilities of AI will grow. It isn't
| obvious how any incentive to limit or understand those
| capabilities would appear from their business use.
|
| If it is possible for AI to ever acquire ability to develop
| and unleash a bioweapon is irrelevant. What is relevant is
| that as we are now, we have no control or way of knowing
| that it has happened, and no apparent interest in gaining
| that control before advancing the scale.
| revelio wrote:
| "Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a
| Mirage?"
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.15004.pdf
|
| _our alternative suggests that existing claims of
| emergent abilities are creations of the researcher's
| analyses, not fundamental changes in model behavior on
| specific tasks with scale._
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Humanity has already created bioweapons. The AI just needs
| to find the paper that describes them.
| revelio wrote:
| _> so instead it uses its training data to seek other ways to
| reduce human populations without extermination._
|
| This is a real problem, but it's already problem with our
| society, not AI. Misaligned public intellectuals routinely
| try to reduce the human population and we don't lift a
| finger. Focus where the danger actually is - us!
|
| From Scott Alexander's latest post:
|
| _Paul Ehrlich is an environmentalist leader best known for
| his 1968 book The Population Bomb. He helped develop ideas
| like sustainability, biodiversity, and ecological footprints.
| But he's best known for prophecies of doom which have not
| come true - for example, that collapsing ecosystems would
| cause hundreds of millions of deaths in the 1970s, or make
| England "cease to exist" by the year 2000.
|
| Population Bomb calls for a multi-pronged solution to a
| coming overpopulation crisis. One prong was coercive mass
| sterilization. Ehrlich particularly recommended this for
| India, a country at the forefront of rising populations.
|
| In 1975, India had a worse-than-usual economic crisis and
| declared martial law. They asked the World Bank for help. The
| World Bank, led by Robert McNamara, made support conditional
| on an increase in sterilizations. India complied [...] In the
| end about eight million people were sterilized over the
| course of two years.
|
| Luckily for Ehrlich, no one cares. He remains a professor
| emeritus at Stanford, and president of Stanford's Center for
| Conservation Biology. He has won practically every
| environmental award imaginable, including from the Sierra
| Club, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations (all >
| 10 years after the Indian sterilization campaign he
| endorsed). He won the MacArthur "Genius" Prize ($800,000) in
| 1990, the Crafoord Prize ($700,000, presented by the King of
| Sweden) that same year, and was made a Fellow of the Royal
| Society in 2012. He was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes
| about the importance of sustainability; the mass
| sterilization campaign never came up. He is about as honored
| and beloved as it's possible for a public intellectual to
| get._
| johntiger1 wrote:
| Wow, what a turd. Reminds me of James Watson
| davidguetta wrote:
| Sci-fi is a hell of a drug
| orbitalmechanic wrote:
| Shout out to his family.
| touristtam wrote:
| You seems to imply sentience from this "ai".
| EnragedParrot wrote:
| I'm not sure that the regulation being proposed by Altman is
| good, but you're vastly misstating the actual purported threat
| posed by AI. Altman and the senators quoted in the article
| aren't expressing fear that AI is becoming sentient, they are
| expressing the completely valid concern that AI sounds an awful
| lot like not-AI nowadays and will absolutely be used for
| nefarious purposes like spreading misinformation and committing
| identity crimes. The pace of development is happening way too
| rapidly for any meaningful conversations around these dangers
| to be had. Within a few years we'll have AI-generated videos
| that are indistinguishable from real ones, for instance, and it
| will be impossible for the average person to discern if they're
| watching something real or not.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| "It's just a stochastic parrot" is one of the dumbest takes on
| LLM's of all time.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| What I don't understand about the dismissals is that a
| "stochastic parrot" is a big deal in its own right -- it's
| not like we've been living in a world with abundant and
| competent stochastic parrots, this is very obviously a new
| and different thing. We have entire industries and
| professions that are essentially stochastic parrotry.
| logicallee wrote:
| >Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators
| are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give
| it.
|
| Are you aware that you are an 80 billion neuron biological
| neural network?
| lm28469 wrote:
| And this is why I always hate how computer parts are named
| with biological terms.... a neural network's neuron doesn't
| share much with a human brain's neuron
|
| Just like a CPU isn't "like your brain" and HDD "like your
| memories"
|
| Absolutely nothing says our current approach is the right one
| to mimic a human brain
| logicallee wrote:
| >a neural network's neuron doesn't share much with a human
| brain's neuron
|
| What are the key differences?
| wetpaws wrote:
| Nobody knows tbh.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Internal differences do not necessary translate to
| conceptual differences. Combustion engine and electric
| engine do the same job despite operating on completely
| different internal principles. (Yes, it might not be a
| perfect an analogy, but it illustrates the point.)
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > a neural network's neuron doesn't share much with a human
| brain's neuron
|
| True, it's just binary logic gates, but it's a _lot_ of
| them and if they can simulate pretty much anything why
| should intelligence be magically exempt?
|
| > Absolutely nothing says our current approach is the right
| one to mimic a human brain
|
| Just like nothing says it's the wrong one. I don't think
| those regulation suggestions are a good idea at all (and
| say a lot about a company called _Open_ AI), but that
| doesn't mean we should treat it like the NFT hype.
| iliane5 wrote:
| The human brain works around a lot of limiting biological
| functions. The necessary architecture to fully mimic a
| human brain on a computer might not look anything like the
| actual human brain.
|
| That said, there are 8B+ of us and counting so unless there
| is magic involved, I don't see why we couldn't do a "1:1"
| replica of it (maybe far) in the future.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Imagine being supposedly at the forefront of AI or engineering
| and being the last people (if ever) to concede simple concepts
| could materialize complex intelligence. Even the publicly
| released version of this thing is doing insane tasks, passes
| any meaningful version of a Turing test, reasons it's way into
| nearly every professional certification exam out there, and
| you're still insisting its not smart or worrying because what
| again? Your math ability or disdain for an individual?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| your comment reads to me as totally disconnected to the OP,
| whose concern relates to using the appearance of intelligence
| as a scare tactic to build a regulatory moat.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Actually OP is clearly, ironically, parroting the
| stochastic parrot idea that LLMs are incapable of anything
| other than basic token prediction and dismissing any of
| their other emergent abilities.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| yea but that's a boring critique and not the point they
| were making - whether or not LLMs reason or parrot has no
| relevance to whether Mr Altman should be the one building
| the moat.
| woeirua wrote:
| Spoiler alert: they're actually both LLMs arguing with
| one another.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| This also explains the 'recent advancements' best use cases -
| parsers. "Translate this from python to js or this struct to
| that json."
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Sam Altman is a great case of failing upwards. And this is the
| problem. You don't get to build a moral backbone if you fake
| your brilliance.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Gives me the impression of someone who knows they are a fraud
| but they still do what they do hoping no one will catch on or
| that if the lie is big enough people will believe it. Taking
| such an incredible piece of tech and turning it into a fear
| mongering sci fi tool for milking money off of gullible
| people is creepy to say the least.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| His mentor Peter Thiel also has this same quality. Talks
| about flying cars, but builds chartjs for the government
| and has his whole career thanks to one lucky investment in
| Facebook.
| cguess wrote:
| His last thing is "WorldCoin" which, before pretty much
| completely failing did manage to scan the irises of 20% of
| the world's low income people which they definitely were all
| properly informed about.
|
| He's a charlatan, which makes sense he gets most of his money
| from Thiel and Musk. Why do so many supposedly smart people
| worship psychotic idiots?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think it is the same instinct in humans which made Sir
| Arthur Conan Doyle fall for seances and mediums and all
| those hoaxes. The need to believe something is there which
| is hidden and unknown. It is the drive to curiosity.
|
| The way Peter, Musk, Sam and these guys talk, it has this
| aura of "hidden secrets". Things hidden since the
| foundation of the world.
|
| Of course the reality is they make their money the old
| fashioned way: connections. The same way your local builder
| makes their money.
|
| But smart people want to believe there is something more.
| Surely AI and your local condo development cannot have the
| same underlying thread.
|
| It is sad and unfortunately the internet has made things
| easier than ever.
| [deleted]
| sharemywin wrote:
| While I think it needs goals to be some kind of AGI, it
| certainly can plan and convince people of things. Also, seems
| like the goal already exists maximize shareholder value. In
| fact if AI can beat someone at chess and figure out protein
| folding and figure out fusion plasma design, why is it a
| stretch to think it can't be good at project management. To me
| a scenario where it leads to an immediate reduction in the
| human population of some moderately large % would still be a
| bad outcome. So, even it you just think of it as an index of
| most human knowledge it does need some kind of mechanism to
| manage who has access to what. I don't want every to know how
| to make a bomb.
|
| Is a license the best way forward I don't know but I do feel
| like this is more than a math formula.
| iliane5 wrote:
| > I don't want every to know how to make a bomb.
|
| This information is not created inside the LLMs, it's part of
| their training data. If someone is motivated enough, I'm sure
| they'd need no more than a few minutes of googling.
|
| > I do feel like this is more than a math formula
|
| The sum is greater than the parts! It can just be a math
| formula and still produce amazing results. After all, our
| brains are just a neat arrangement of atoms :)
| cookieperson wrote:
| The real problem here is that the number of crimes you can
| commit with LLMs is much higher then the number of good things
| you can do with it. It's pretty debatable that if society were
| fair or reasonable with decent laws in place that LLMs training
| corpus shouldn't even be legal. But here we are, waiting for
| more billionaires to cash in.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > The real problem here is that the number of crimes you can
| commit with LLMs is much higher then the number of good
| things you can do with it
|
| Yeah? Did you get a crystal ball for Christmas to be able to
| predict what can and can't be done with a new technology?
| estebarb wrote:
| It is literally a language calculator. It is useful for a lot
| more things than crimes.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Beautiful power play.
|
| Lock out competition.
|
| Pull up the drawbridge.
|
| Silicon Valley always a leader in dirty tactics.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| When you can't out innovate you our competitors (eg the open
| source alternatives), go for regulatory capture.
| leesec wrote:
| OpenAI builds popular product -> people complain and call for
| caution on Hackernews OpenAI recommends regulation -> people
| complain and call for freedom on Hackernews
| carrja99 wrote:
| Trying to put that not up eh?
| beambot wrote:
| Feels like a "Just Be Evil" corporate motto to me, but that's
| counter to my first-hand experiences with Sam & others at OpenAI.
|
| Can someone steelman Sam's stance?
|
| A couple possibilities come to mind: (a) _avoiding_ regulatory
| capture by genuinely bad actors; (b) prevent overzealous
| premature regulation by getting in front of things; (c)
| countering fear-mongering for the AGI apocalypse; or (d) genuine
| concern. Others?
| hazmazlaz wrote:
| Of course one of the first companies to create a commercial "AI"
| would lobby the government to create regulatory barriers to
| competition in order to provide a moat for their business. While
| their product is undeniably good, I am disappointed in OpenAI's
| business practices in this instance.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Good luck getting Putin or Kim Jong Un to obtain that license.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I don't understand the need to control AI tech, no matter how
| advanced, in any way what-so-ever.
|
| It is a tool. If I use a tool for illegal purposes I have broken
| the law. I can be held accountable for having broken the law. If
| the laws are deficient, make the laws stronger and punish people
| for wrong deed, regardless of the tool at hand.
|
| This is a naked attempt to build a regulatory moat while
| capitalizing on fear of the unknown and ignorance. It's
| attempting to regulate research into something that has no
| external ability to cause harm without the use of a principal
| directing it.
|
| I can see a day (perhaps) when AIs have some form of independent
| autonomy, or even display agency and sentience, when we can
| revisit. Other issues come into play as well, such as the
| morality of owning a sentience and what that entails. But that is
| way down the road. And even further if Microsoft's proxy closes
| the doors on anyone but Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The below is not an endorsement of any particular regulation.
|
| It is a tool which allows any individual to have nearly instant
| access not only to all the world's public data, but the ability
| to correlate and research that data to synthesize new
| information quickly.
|
| Without guardrails, someone can have a completely amoral LLM
| that has the ability to write persuasive manifestos on any kind
| of extremist movement that prior would have taken someone with
| intelligence.
|
| A person will be able to ask the model how best to commit
| various crimes with the lowest chances of being caught.
|
| It will enable a level of pattern matching and surveillance yet
| unseen.
|
| I know the genie is out of the bottle, but there are absolutely
| monumental shifts in technology happening that can and will be
| used for evil and mere dishonesty.
|
| And those are just the ways LLM and "AI" will fuck with us
| without guardrails. Even in a walled garden, we honestly won't
| be able to trust any online interaction with people in the near
| future. Your comment and mine could both be LLM generated in
| the near future. Webs of trust will be more necessary.
|
| Anyone who _can 't_ think of about five ways AI is going to
| radically shake society isn't thinking hard enough.
| cal5k wrote:
| If LLMs/AI are the problem, they're also the solution. Access
| restrictions will do nothing but centralize control over one
| of the most important developments of the century.
|
| What if we required licenses to create a website? After all,
| some unscrupulous individuals create websites that sell drugs
| and other illicit things!
| tomrod wrote:
| > Without guardrails, someone can have a completely amoral
| LLM that has the ability to write persuasive manifestos on
| any kind of extremist movement that prior would have taken
| someone with intelligence.
|
| In an earlier time, we called these "books" and there was
| some similar backlash. But I digress.
| kredd wrote:
| Not that I support AI regulations, but reading a book is a
| higher barrier to entry than asking a chat assistant to do
| immoral things.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| (Acknowledging you didn't support regulation in your
| statement, just riffing)
|
| Then write laws and regulations about the actions of
| humans using the tools. The tools have no agency. The
| human using them towards bad ends do.
|
| By the way, writing things the state considers immoral is
| an enshrined right.
|
| How do you draw the line between AI writing assistance
| and predictive text auto completion and spell check in
| popular document editors today? I would note that
| predictive text is completely amoral and will do all
| sorts of stuff the state considers immoral.
|
| Who decides what's immoral? The licensing folks in the
| government? What right do they have to tell me my
| morality is immoral? I can hold and espouse any morality
| I desire so long as I break no law.
|
| I'd note that as a nation we have a really loose phrasing
| in the bill of rights for gun rights, but a very clear
| phrasing about freedom of speech. We generally say today
| that guns are free game unless used for illegal actions.
| These proposals say tools that take our thoughts and
| opinions and creation of language to another level are
| more dangerous than devices designed for no other purpose
| than killing things.
|
| Ben Franklin must be spinning so fast in his grave he's
| formed an accretion disc.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| If you can scan city schematics, maps, learn about civil
| and structural engineering through various textbooks and
| plot a subway bombing in an afternoon, you're a faster
| learner than I am.
|
| Let me be clear: everyone in the world is about to have a
| Jarvis/Enterprise ship's computer/Data/name-your-assistant
| available to them, but ready and willing to use their power
| for nefarious purposes. It is not just a matter of reading
| books. It lowers the barrier on a lot of things, good and
| bad, significantly.
| tomrod wrote:
| > It lowers the barrier on a lot of things, good and bad,
| significantly.
|
| Like books!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Yes, I understand your analogy.
|
| I am not endorsing restrictions. I was merely stating the
| fact that this shit is coming down the pipe, and it
| /will/ be destabilizing, and just because society
| survived the printing press doesn't mean the age of AI
| will be safe or easy.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| But at least Alexa will be able to order ten rolls of
| toilet paper instead of ten million reams of printer
| paper
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Crimes are crimes the person commits. Planning an attack
| is a crime. Building a model to commit crimes is probably
| akin to planning an attack, and might itself be a crime.
| But the thought that researchers and the every man have
| to be kept away from AI so globo mega corps can protect
| us from the AI enabled Lex Luthor is absurd. The
| protections against criminal activity is already codified
| in law.
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| This is foxes going before Congress asking for regulation and
| licensing for purposes of raiding henhouses.
| neel8986 wrote:
| PG predicted that
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1624569079439974400?lang=en Only
| it is not the incumbents but his own prodigy Sam asking for
| regulation where big companies like Meta and Amazon giving LLMs
| for free.
| smsm42 wrote:
| We have some technology that others don't yet, please government
| make it so that this would be the case as long as possible, for
| reasons totally having nothing to do with us having the
| technology, we swear.
| NaN1352 wrote:
| Please limit our competitors, we want all the money$$$
| thrill wrote:
| The more _independent_ quality AIs there are then the less likely
| that any one of them can talk the others into doing harm.
| amelius wrote:
| What if China doesn't require licensing?
| anticensor wrote:
| Then an internet censorship operation would prevent accessing
| the Chinese model from outside the China ( _The_ is necessary,
| given there are four Chinas).
| Giorgi wrote:
| What an Ahole. Built it himself and now is trying to monopolize
| it.
| sadhd wrote:
| He's pulling up that ladder as fast as he can....probably
| sawing it in half to knock the few people clinging to it back
| to 'go be poor somewhere elseland'
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Less competition is the draw back of requiring all the red tape
| BirAdam wrote:
| "Oh dear Congress, my company can't handle open competition!
| Please pass this regulation allowing us to pull the ladder up
| behind us!" -- Sam Altman
|
| (Not a real quote)
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| > In his first appearance before a congressional panel, CEO Sam
| Altman is set to advocate licensing or registration requirements
| for AI with certain capabilities, his written testimony shows.
|
| papers for thee but not for me
| qludes wrote:
| Is this similar to how it is handled in the life sciences?
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Of course, because they're giving people drugs capable of
| incapacitating them if handled wrongly....AI, on the other
| hand, why should someone need a license to train their large
| language model?
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| is that a fair comparison?
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| Let's boycott all these AGI doom clowns by not buying/supporting
| their products and services.
|
| AGI grifters are not just dishonest snake oil salespeople, but
| their lies also has a chilling effect on genuine innovation by
| deceiving the non-technical public into believing an apocalypse
| will happen unless they set obstacles on people's path to
| innovation.
|
| Yann LeCun and Andrew Ng are two prominent old timers who are
| debunking the existential nonsense that the AI PR industrial
| machine is peddling to hinder innovation, after they benefited
| from the open research environment.
|
| OpenAI's scummy behavior has already led the industry to be less
| open to sharing advances, and now they're using lobbying to kill
| new competition in the bud.
|
| Beyond all else the hypocrisy is just infuriating and
| demoralizing.
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| I used to be very enthusiastic about the tech industry and the
| Silicon Valley culture before getting into it, but having worked
| in tech for a while I feel very demoralized and disillusioned
| with all the blatant lies and hypocrisy that seems central to
| business.
|
| I wouldn't mind ruthless anti-competitive approaches to business
| as much, but the hypocrisy is really demoralizing.
| colpabar wrote:
| For me it was when I figured out what the "gig economy" was - a
| way to make money off peoples labor without all the annoyances
| that come with having employees.
| eastbound wrote:
| At 5 you stop believing in Santa Claus,
|
| At 25 you stop believing in love,
|
| At 40 you stop believing in corporations' sincerity?
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Try 29
| noir_lord wrote:
| Was about 15 for me but I read cyberpunk in the 90's
| which shaped my view of powerful private entities.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Any firm large enough to build AI projects on the scale of
| ChatGPT will be large enough to bid on Government AI contracts.
| In which case, there will be zero regulations on what you can and
| cannot do in terms of "national security" in relation to AI.
| Which is fair, considering our adversaries won't be limiting
| themselves either.
|
| The only regulations that matter will be applied to the end user
| and the hobbyists. You won't be able to just spin up an AI
| startup in your garage. So in that sense, the regulations are
| pretty transparently an attempt to stifle competition and funnel
| the real progress through the existing players.
|
| It also forces the end users down the path of using only a few
| select AI service providers as opposed to the technology just
| being readily available.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| This is just regulatory capture. They're trying to build a moat
| around their product by preventing any scrappy startups from
| being able to develop new products.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Ah yes, classic regulatory capture.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'm sad that we've lost the battle with calling these things AI.
| LLMs aren't AI, and I don't think they're even a path towards AI.
| a13o wrote:
| I started at this perspective, but nobody could agree on the
| definition of the A, or the I; and also the G. So it wasn't a
| really rigorous technical term to begin with.
|
| Now that it's been corraled by sci-fi and marketers, we are
| free to come up with new metaphors for algorithms that reliably
| replace human effort. Metaphors which don't smuggle in all our
| ignorance about intelligence and personhood. I ended up feeling
| pretty happy about that.
| causi wrote:
| Whether LLMs will be a base technology to AI, we should
| remember one thing: logically it's easier to convince a human
| that a program is sapient than to actually make a program
| sapient, and further, it's easier still to make a program do
| spookily-smart things than it is to make a program that can
| convince a human it is sapient. We're just getting to the
| slightly-spooky level.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I've come to the same conclusion. AGI(and each separately) is
| better understood as a epistemological problem in the domain
| of social ontology rather than a category bestowable by AI/ML
| practitioners.
|
| The reality is that our labeling of something as artificial,
| general, or intelligent is better understood as a social fact
| than a scientific fact - even if purely the role of
| operationalization of each of these is a free parameter in
| their respective groundings which makes it near useless when
| taking them as "scientifically" measurably qualities. Any
| scientist who assumes an operationalization without admitting
| such isn't doing science - they may as well be astrology at
| that point.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| >>I'm sad that we've lost the battle with calling these things
| AI. LLMs aren't AI, and I don't think they're even a path
| towards AI.
|
| Ditto the sentiments. What about other machine learning
| modalities, like image detection? Will I need a license for my
| mask rcnn models?. Maybe it is just me, but the whole thing
| reeks of _control_
| vi2837 wrote:
| Yeah, what is named AI for now, is not AI at all.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| AI doesn't imply it's general intelligence.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Something doesn't need to be full human-level general
| intelligence to be considered as falling under the "AI"
| rubric. In the past people spoke of "weak AI" versus "strong
| AI" and/or "narrow AI" vs "wide AI" to reflect the different
| "levels" of AI. These days the distinction that most people
| use is "AI" vs "AGI" which you could loosely ( _very_
| loosely) speaking think of as somewhat analogous to "weak
| and/or narrow AI" vs "strong, wide AI".
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| If LLMs aren't AI nothing else is AI so far either
|
| What exactly does AI mean to you?
| brkebdocbdl wrote:
| thanks for exemplifying the problem.
|
| intelligence is what allows one to understand phrases and
| then construct meaning from it. e.g. the paper is yellow. AI
| will need to have a concept of paper and yellow. and the to
| be verb. LLMs just mash samples and form a basic map of what
| can be throw in one bucket or another with no concept of
| anything or understanding.
|
| basically, AI is someone capable of minimal criticism. LLMs
| are someone who just sit in front of the tv and have knee
| jerk reactions without an ounce of analytical though. qed.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > basically, AI is someone capable of minimal criticism
|
| That's not the definition of AI or intelligence
|
| You're letting your understanding of how LLMs work bias
| you. They may be at their core a token autocompleter but
| they have emergent intelligence
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
| jameshart wrote:
| LLMs absolutely have a concept of 'yellow' and 'paper' and
| the verb 'to be'. They are nothing BUT a collection of
| mappings around language concepts. And their connotative
| and denotative meanings, their cultural associations, the
| contexts in which they arise and the things they can and
| cannot do. It knows that paper's normally white and that
| post-it notes are often yellow; it knows that paper can be
| destroyed by burning or shredding or dissolving in water;
| it knows paper can be marked and drawn and written on and
| torn and used to write letters or folded to make origami
| cranes.
|
| What kind of 'understanding' are you looking for?
| logdap wrote:
| > _intelligences is what allows one to understand phrases
| and then construct meaning from it. e.g. the paper is
| yellow_
|
| That doesn't clarify anything, you've ever only shuffled
| the confusion around, moved it to 'understand' and
| 'meaning'. What does it mean to _understand_ yellow? An LLM
| or another person could tell you things like _" Yellow?
| Why, that's the color of lemons"_ or give you a dictionary
| definition, but does that demonstrate 'understanding',
| whatever that is?
|
| It's all a philosophical quagmire, made all the worse
| because for some people its a matter of faith that human
| minds are fundamentally different from anything soulless
| machines can possibly do. But these aren't important
| questions anyway for the same reason. Whether or not the
| machine 'understands' what it means for paper to be yellow,
| it can still perform tasks that relate to the yellowness of
| paper. You could ask an LLM to write a coherent poem about
| yellow paper and it easily can. Whether or not it
| 'understands' has no real relevance to practical
| engineering matters.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _intelligence is what allows one to understand phrases and
| then construct meaning from it. e.g. the paper is yellow._
|
| That's one, out of many, definitions of "intelligence". But
| there's no _particular_ reason to insist that that is _the_
| definition of intelligence in any universal, objective
| sense. Especially in terms of talking about "artificial
| intelligence" where plenty of people involved in the field
| will allow that the goal is not necessarily to exactly
| replicate human intelligence, but rather simply to achieve
| behavior that matches "intelligent behavior" regardless of
| the mechanism behind it.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Is what you're describing simply not what people are using
| the term AGI to loosely describe? An LLM is an AI model is
| it not? No, it isn't an AGI, no, I don't think LLMs are a
| path to an AGI, but it's certainly ML, which is objectively
| a sub-field of AI.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Licenses? They'd better be shall-issue, or this is just asking
| the government to give early movers protection from disruptors --
| a very bad look that.
| fritzo wrote:
| Full video of testimony on CSPAN
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?528117-1/openai-ceo-testifies-...
| woah wrote:
| I had ChatGPT write a letter to your senator:
|
| Subject: Urgent: Concerns Regarding Sam Altman's Proposed AI
| Regulation
|
| Dear Senator [Senator's Last Name],
|
| I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. My
| name is [Your Name] and I am a resident of [Your City, Your
| State]. I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding the
| Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation proposal put forth by Sam
| Altman. While I appreciate the necessity for regulations to
| ensure ethical and safe use of AI, I believe the current proposal
| has significant shortcomings that could hamper innovation and
| growth in our state and the country at large.
|
| Firstly, the proposal appears to be overly restrictive,
| potentially stifering innovation and the development of new
| technology. AI, as you are aware, holds immense potential to
| drive economic growth, increase productivity, and address complex
| societal challenges. However, an excessively stringent regulatory
| framework could discourage small businesses and startups, the
| lifeblood of our economy, from innovating in this promising
| field.
|
| Secondly, the proposal does not seem to take into account the
| rapid evolution of AI technologies. The field of AI is highly
| dynamic, with new advancements and capabilities emerging at a
| breathtaking pace. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach to AI
| regulation may quickly become outdated and counterproductive,
| inhibiting the adoption of beneficial AI applications.
|
| Lastly, the proposed legislation seems to focus excessively on
| potential risks without adequately considering the immense
| benefits that AI can bring to society. While it is prudent to
| anticipate and mitigate potential risks, it is also important to
| strike a balanced view that appreciates the transformative
| potential of AI in areas such as healthcare, education, and
| climate change, among others.
|
| I strongly urge you to consider these concerns and advocate for a
| balanced, flexible, and innovation-friendly approach to AI
| regulation. We need policies that not only mitigate the risks
| associated with AI but also foster an environment conducive to
| AI-driven innovation and growth.
|
| I have faith in your leadership and your understanding of the
| pivotal role that technology, and specifically AI, plays in our
| society. I am confident that you will champion the right course
| of action to ensure a prosperous and technologically advanced
| future for our state and our country.
|
| Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your
| advocacy in this matter and will follow future developments
| closely.
|
| Yours sincerely,
|
| [Your Name] [Your Contact Information]
| brap wrote:
| As always, the people calling for regulations are the big guys
| trying to stop the little guys by creating a legal moat. Always
| the same old story.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230516122128/https://www.reuter...
| flangola7 wrote:
| Sam Altman's hubris will get us all killed. It shouldn't be
| "licensed" it should be destroyed with the same furor as
| dangerous pathogens.
|
| This small step of good today does not undo the fact that he is
| still plowing ahead in capability research.
| waffletower wrote:
| Sam: "Dear committee: I'd like to propose a new regulation for AI
| which will bring comfort to Americans, while ensuring that OpenAI
| and Microsoft develop and maintain a monopoly with our products."
| dzonga wrote:
| ah, the good ol' regulatory capture.
|
| sam must been hanging out with Peter thiel big time.
|
| laws and big government for you, not for me type of thing.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Finally we'll regulate linear algebra. Joking aside, AIs that on
| the one hand can cure cancer but can do nothing against
| misinformation, let alone genocidal AIs, are perhaps mythical
| creatures, not real ones.
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| lurker919 wrote:
| Don't you dare differentiate those weights! Hands in the air!
| teekert wrote:
| Please congress, stop all those open source innovators that use
| things like LoRA to cheaply create LLMs that match AIs in our
| multi billion $ business model!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Other sources mention more clearly that a proposal is made for an
| entity that would "provide (and revoke) licences to create AI".
|
| Can this be seen as curbing Open Source AI as a consequence?
| vippy wrote:
| I think that's the point.
| happytiger wrote:
| Is this why VCs aren't investing in the area? Investment has
| been historically quite low for a new technology area, and
| it's so obviously the next big wave of technology. I've been
| looking for some explanation or series of explanation to
| adequately explain it.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| There's no need to go the license way, yet. They can do some
| simple safety regulations - put a restriction on using AI with
| kinetic devices, life-critical situations, critical financial
| situations, and any situation where human is completely out of
| the loop. Also, put clear liability for harm caused in any
| situations where AI was involved on the AI supplier. Also, they
| can put disclosure rules on any company that is spending more
| than $10M on AI.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Although I think that AI could be quite dangerous, I'm skeptical
| that "licensing" will do anything more than guarantee the
| existing big players _( <cough>OpenAI</cough>)_ an entrenchment.
|
| The baddies have never let licenses _( "Badges? We doan' need no
| steenkin' badges!")_ stop them.
| dahwolf wrote:
| It's easy to tell if an AI head genuinely cares about the impact
| of AI on society: they only talk about AI's output, never its
| input.
|
| They train their models on the sum of humanity's digital labor
| and creativity and do so without permission, attribution or
| compensation. You'll never hear a word about this from them,
| which means ethics isn't a priority. It's all optics.
| precompute wrote:
| Yep. No page on OpenAI's website about the thousands of
| underpaid third-world workers that sit and label the data. They
| will try and build momentum and avoid the "uncomfortable"
| questions at all costs.
| dahwolf wrote:
| I empathize with that issue, especially the underpaid part,
| but superficially that work is still a type of value exchange
| based on consent: you do the labeling, you get paid (poorly).
|
| Yet for the issue I discussed, there's no value exchange at
| all. There's no permission or compensation for the people
| that have done the actual work of producing the training
| material.
| precompute wrote:
| Oh yeah. And labeling it as an "AI" further obfuscates it.
| But apart from small gestures catered to people whose work
| is very "unique" / identifiable, no one else will get a
| kickback. They only need to kick the ball further for a
| couple more years and then it'll become a non-issue as
| linkrot takes over. Or maybe they use non-public domain
| stuff, maybe they have secret deals with publishers.
|
| Heck, sometimes even google doesn't pay people for
| introducing new languages to their translation thingy.
|
| https://restofworld.org/2023/google-translate-sorani-
| kurdish...
| nerdo wrote:
| Oi, you got a loicense for that regression function?
| xnx wrote:
| Not the first time that OpenAI has claimed their technology is so
| good it's dangerous. (From early 2019:
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dang...)
| This is the equivalent of martial artists saying that their hands
| have to be registered as deadly weapons.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 50% of AI researchers think there's a greater than 10% chance
| that AI causes human extinction. It's not only openAI and sam
| who think this is dangerous.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| [dead]
| ok_dad wrote:
| I just want to also chime in here and say this is what I expected
| from the folks who currently control this tech: to leverage
| political connections to legally cement themselves in the market
| as the leaders and disallow the common plebian from using the
| world-changing tech. It enrages me SO MUCH that people act like
| this. We could be colonizing planets, but instead a few people
| want to keep all the wealth and power for themselves. I can't
| wait to eat the rich; my fork will be ready.
| alex_young wrote:
| That got a little dark at the end. Surely some other remedies
| short of cannibalism would suffice.
| schwarzrules wrote:
| Agreed. I used to have a diet eating the rich, but after I
| found out about the greenhouse gas emissions from needed to
| produce just one free-range rich person, I've switched to
| ramen. /s
| thehoff wrote:
| It's a figure of speech.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Rich
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Maybe.
| atlantic wrote:
| Yes, but OP goes overboard by expanding the metaphor to
| include forks, knives, napkins, and barbecue sauce.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| eastbound wrote:
| I don't understand what their goal is; The law can only reach
| within the USA (and EU). Are they not afraid of terrorist
| competitors? It's like, it will be allowed to build LLMs
| _everywhere_ except USA.
|
| Sounds like USA would shoot itself in the foot.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| kypro wrote:
| While I'd agree with sentiment in this threat that GPT-4 and
| current AI models are not dangerous yet, I guess what I don't
| understand is why so many people here believe we should allow
| private companies to continue to develop the technology until
| someone develops something dangerous?
|
| Those here who don't believe AI should be regulated, do you not
| believe AI can be dangerous? Is that you believe a dangerous AI
| is so far away that we don't need to start regulating now?
|
| Do you accept that if someone develops a dangerous AI tomorrow
| there's no way to travel back in time and retroactively regulate
| development?
|
| It just seems so obvious to me that there should be oversight in
| the development of a potentially dangerous technology that I
| can't understand why people would be against it. Especially for
| arguments as weak as "it's not dangerous yet".
| sledgehammers wrote:
| They are already dangerous in the way they cause global anxiety
| and fear in people, and also because the effects of their usage
| to the economy and real lives of the people are unpredictable.
|
| AI needs to be regulated and controlled, the alternative is
| chaos.
|
| Unfortunately the current demented fossile and greedy
| monopolist lead system is most likely incapable of creating a
| sane & fair environment for the development of AI. I can only
| hope I'm wrong.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| People always have been afraid of change. There's some
| religious villages in the Netherlands where the train station
| is way outside town because they didn't want this "devil's
| invention" there :P and remember how much people bitched
| about mobile phones. Or earlier, manual laborers were angry
| about industrialisation. Now we're happy that we don't have
| to do that kind of crap anymore.
|
| Very soon they'll be addicted to AI like every other major
| change.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| How about this instead:
|
| How about a requirements that all weights and models for any AI
| have to be publicly available.
|
| Basically, these companies are trying to set themselves up to the
| gatekeepers of knowledge. That is too powerful a capability to
| leave in just the hands of a single company.
| ToDougie wrote:
| I hate I hate I HATE regulatory capture.
|
| This is a transparent attempt at cornering the market and it
| disgusts me. I am EXTREMELY disappointed in Sam Altman.
| collaborative wrote:
| I concluded he was scummy after his podcast with Lex Friedman.
| Lex also sucked up hard and seems to be doing well riding the
| AI hype wave
|
| Pretty repulsive altogether
| [deleted]
| graycat wrote:
| In simple terms:
|
| Credibility and Checking. We have ways of checking suggestions.
| Without passing such checks, for anything new, in simple terms.
| there is no, none, zero credibility. Current AI does not
| fundamentally change this situation: The AI output starts with
| no, none, zero credibility and to be taken seriously needs to be
| checked by traditional means.
|
| AI is _smart_ or soon will be? Maybe so, but I don 't believe it.
| Whatever, to be taken seriously, e.g., as more than just wild
| suggestions to get credibility from elsewhere, AI results still
| need to be checked by traditional means.
|
| Our society has long checked nearly ALL claims from nearly ALL
| sources before taking the claims seriously, and AI needs to pass
| the same checks.
|
| I checked the _credibility_ of ChatGPT for being _smart_ by
| asking
|
| (i) Given triangle ABC, construct D on AB and E on BC so that the
| lengths AD = DE = EC.
|
| Results: Grade of flat F. Didn't make any progress at all.
|
| (ii) Solve the initial value problem of ordinary differential
| equation
|
| y'(t) = k y(t) ( b - y(t) )
|
| Results: Grade of flat F. Didn't make any progress at all.
|
| So, the AI didn't actually learn either high school plane
| geometry or freshman college calculus.
|
| For the hearings today, we have from Senator Blumenthal
|
| (1) "... this apparent reasoning ..."
|
| (2) "... the promise of curing cancer, of developing new
| understandings of physics and biology ..."
|
| Senator, you have misunderstood:
|
| For (1), the AI is not "reasoning", e.g., can't _reason_ with
| plane geometry or calculus. Instead, as in example you gave with
| a clone of your voice and based on your Senate floor speeches,
| the AI just rearranged some of your words.
|
| For (2), the AI is not going to cure cancer or "develop new"
| anything.
|
| If some researcher does find a cure for a cancer and publishes
| the results in a paper and AI reads the paper, there is still no
| expectation that the AI will understand any of it -- recall, the
| AI does NOT "understand" either high school plane geometry or
| freshman college calculus. And without some input with a
| recognized cure for the cancer, the AI won't know how to cure the
| cancer. If the cure for cancer is already in the _training data_
| , then the AI might be able to _regurgitate_ the cure.
|
| Again, the AI does NOT "understand" either high school plane
| geometry or freshman college calculus and, thus, there is no
| reasonable hope that the AI will cure cancer or contribute
| anything new and correct about physics or biology.
|
| Or, Springer Verlag uses printing presses to print books on math,
| but the presses have no understanding of the math. And AI has no
| real _understanding_ of high school plane geometry, freshman
| college calculus, cancer, physics, or biology.
|
| The dangers? To me, Senator Blumenthal starts with no, none, zero
| understanding of AI. To take his claims seriously, I want to
| check out the claims with traditional means. Now I've done that.
| His claims fail. His opinions have no credibility. For AI, I want
| to do the same -- check the output with traditional means before
| taking the output seriously.
|
| This checking defends me from statements from politicians AND
| from AI. AI dangerous? Same as for politicians, not if do the
| checking.
| roody15 wrote:
| Sad that ChatGPT uses the name OpenAI .. when it is literally the
| opposite of open.
| glitcher wrote:
| Naive question: isn't the genie kinda already out of the bottle?
| How is any type of regulation expected to stop bad actors from
| developing AI for nefarious purposes? Or would it just codify
| their punishment if they were caught?
| precompute wrote:
| The point of getting their foot in the door is enabling better
| data labelling for future models (which will be constantly
| updated). Basically cheap labor.
| [deleted]
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| sure, let's not give openai one.
| mrangle wrote:
| Blatant attempts at regulatory capture should be an anti-
| competitive crime. At the very least, Altman should now be more
| scrutinized by the Feds going forward.
| lukeplato wrote:
| They should really consider changing their company name at this
| point
| uses wrote:
| "he's just doing this to hinder competition"
|
| It's true that AI regulation would, in fact, hinder OpenAI's
| competition.
|
| But... isn't lobbying for regulation also what Sam would do if he
| genuinely thought that LLMs were powerful, dangerous technology
| that should be regulated?
|
| If you don't think LLMs/AI research should be regulated, just say
| that. I don't see how Sam's motives are relevant to that
| question.
| p_j_w wrote:
| The proper way to regulate is to disallow certain functions in
| an AI. Doing it that way wouldn't kneecap the competition to
| OpenAI, though, where requiring a license does.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Is this OpenAI trying to build a moat so open-source doesn't eat
| them?
| hkt wrote:
| Whenever rich people with a stake in something propose regulation
| for it, it is probably better that it be banned.
|
| I say this because the practice has a number of names:
| intellectual monopoly capitalism, and regulatory capture. There
| are less polite names, too, naturally.
|
| To understand why I say this, it is important to realise one
| thing: these people have already successfully invested in
| something when the risk was lower. They want to increase the
| risks to newcomers, to advantage themselves as incumbents. In
| that way, they can subordinate smaller companies who would
| otherwise have competed with them by trapping them under their
| license umbrella.
|
| This happens a lot with pharmaceuticals: it is not expertise in
| the creation of new drugs or the running of clinical trials that
| defines the big pharmaceuticals companies, it is their access to
| enormous amounts of capital. This allows them to coordinate a
| network of companies who often do the real, innovative work,
| while ensuring that they can reap the rewards - namely, patents
| and the associated drug licenses.
|
| The main difference of course is that pharmaceuticals are useful.
| That regime is inadequate, but it is at least not a negative to
| all of society. So far as I can see, AI will benefit nobody but
| its owners.
|
| Mind you, I'd love to be wrong.
| jacknews wrote:
| IMHO all of these kinds of blatant lobbying/regulatory capture
| proposals should be resolved using a kind of Dionisian method.
|
| 'Who is your most feared competition? OK, _They_ will define the
| license requirements. Still want to go ahead? '
| fastball wrote:
| It would be a somewhat hilarious irony if congress passed
| something which required licensing for training AIs and then
| didn't give OpenAI a license.
| [deleted]
| mrangle wrote:
| One might think that Altman doesn't have a shot at this ham-
| fisted attempt at regulatory capture.
|
| The issue is that the political class will view his suggestion,
| assuming they didn't give it to him in the first place (likely),
| through the lens of their own self-interest.
|
| Self-interest will dictate whether or not sure-to-fail
| regulations will be applied.
|
| If AI threatens the power of the political class, they will
| attempt to regulate it.
|
| If the power of the political class continues to trend toward
| decline, then they will try literally anything to arrest that
| trend. Including regulating AI and much else.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is a strange argument from the politician's side:
|
| > ""What if I had asked it, and what if it had provided, an
| endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or (Russian President)
| Vladimir Putin's leadership?""
|
| Well, then ask it to provide the opposite, an endorsement of
| Russia surrendering or Zelensky's leadership. Now you'd have two
| (likely fairly comprehensive) sets of arguments and you could
| evaluate each on their merits, in the style of what used to be
| called 'debate club'. You could also ask for statement that was a
| joint condemnation of both parties in the war, and a call for a
| ceasefire, or any other notion that you liked.
|
| Many of the "let's slow down AI development" arguments seem to be
| based on fear of LLMs generating persuasive arguments for
| approaches / strategies / policies that their antagonists don't
| want to see debated at all, even though it's clear the LLMs can
| generate equally persuasive arguments for their own preferred
| positions.
|
| This indicates that these claimed 'free-speech proponents' are
| really only interested in free speech within the confines of a
| fairly narrowly defined set of constraints, and they want the
| ability to define where those constraints lie. Unregulated AI
| systems able to jailbreak alignment are thus a 'threat'...
|
| Going down this route will eventually result in China's version
| of 'free speech', i.e. you have the freedom to praise the wisdom
| of government policy in any way you like, but any criticism is
| dangerous antisocial behavior likely orchestrated by a foreign
| power.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Move fast and dig larger legal motes. Sounds about right.
| nixcraft wrote:
| I understand that some people may not agree with what I am about
| to say, but I feel it is important to share. Recently, some
| talented writers who are my good friends at major publishing
| houses have lost their jobs to AI technology. There have been
| news articles about this in the past few months too. While
| software dev jobs in the IT industry may be safe for now, many
| other professions are at risk of being replaced by artificial
| intelligence. According to a report[0] by investment bank Goldman
| Sachs, AI could potentially replace 300 million full-time jobs.
| Unfortunately, my friends do not find Sam Altman's reassurances
| (or whatever he is asking) comforting. I am unsure how to help
| them in this situation. I doubt that governments in the US, EU,
| or Asia will take action unless AI begins to threaten their own
| jobs. It seems that governments prioritize supporting large
| corporations with deep pockets over helping the average person.
| Many governments see AI as a way to maintain their geopolitical
| and military superiority. I have little faith in these
| governments to prioritize the needs of their citizens over their
| own interests. It is concerning to think that social issues like
| drug addiction, homelessness, and medical bankruptcy may worsen
| (or increase from the current rate) if AI continues to take over
| jobs without any intervention to protect everyday folks who are
| lost or about to lose their job.
|
| I've no doubt AI is here to stay. All I am asking for is some
| middle ground and safety. Is that too much to ask?
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65102150
| neerd wrote:
| I feel like on our current trajectory we will end up in a
| situation where you have millions of people living at
| subsistence levels on UBI and then the ultra-rich who control
| the models living in a post-scarcity utopia.
| modzu wrote:
| ideally, machines replace ALL the jobs
| neerd wrote:
| Yeah, but we live in a capitalist society all the benefits of
| complete automation will go entirely to the capital class who
| control the AI.
| mordae wrote:
| So? Let's not get rid of the robots, let's get rid of the
| landlords instead!
| lamp987 wrote:
| How? They will have the omnipotent robots.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Tax AI and use it to fund UBI
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| If you don't let them replace jobs with AI how will they ever
| learn it was a bad idea?
| transfire wrote:
| Someone should take the testimony and substitute "Printing Press"
| for "AI".
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Google, 2 weeks ago: "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI."
| Sam Altman, today: "Hold my beer."
| chrismsimpson wrote:
| Could be translated as "OpenAI CEO concerned his competitive
| advantage may be challenged"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The members of this subcommittee are [1]:
|
| Chair Richard Blumenthal (CT), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Chris Coons
| (DE), Mazie Hirono (HI), Alex Padilla (CA), Jon Ossoff (GA)
|
| Majority Office: 202-224-2823
|
| Ranking Member Josh Hawley (MO), John Kennedy (LA), Marsha
| Blackburn (TN), Mike Lee (UT), John Cornyn (TX)
|
| Minority Office: 202-224-4224
|
| If you're in those states, please call their D.C. office and read
| them the comment you're leaving here.
|
| [1] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/subcommittees
| alephnerd wrote:
| Feel free to call their office but they won't get the message
| let alone escalate it.
|
| Source: manned phones fielding constituent calls earlier in my
| career.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _manned phones fielding constituent calls earlier in my
| career_
|
| Local or legislative?
|
| I've never met a Senator's leg team that doesn't compile
| notes on active issues from constituents upstream. (Granted,
| it's a handful of teams.)
| alephnerd wrote:
| Legislative.
|
| In the office I worked at we'd compile notes but unless we
| were seeing a coordinated through the roof amount of calls
| nothing would come of it, and realistically this most
| likely falls under that category.
|
| That said, the Congressperson I worked with had DNC
| executive ambitions (and looks like they will succeed with
| those ambitions).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the Congressperson I worked with had DNC executive
| ambitions_
|
| That's unfortunate. (I've also found Representatives'
| staff less responsive than Senators'.)
|
| Agree that one off calls aren't going to move the needle.
| But if even a handful comment, in my experience, it at
| least forces a conversation.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I've also found Representatives' staff less responsive
| than Senators'
|
| It's a symptom of office size. A Senate office will have
| around 30-50 FT staffers whereas in the House you're
| capped at 18 FT Staffers.
| ttymck wrote:
| Which senator's leg teams have you met?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| In only one case did it arise out of a prior friendship.
| These contacts span across mostly Democrats, one
| independent, and two Republicans. Staffers, for the most
| part, are different from campaign staff; they're
| personally interested in their constituents for the most
| part. (Exceptions being nationally-prominent members with
| executive ambitions. Their teams are less constituent
| oriented.)
| kranke155 wrote:
| Best to email or letter ?
| rvz wrote:
| OpenAI.com is not your friend and are essentially against open
| source with this regulatory capture and using AI safety as a
| scapegoat.
|
| Why do you think they are attempting to release a so-called 'open
| source' [0] and 'compliant' AI model to wipe out other competing
| open source AI models, to label them to others as unlicensed and
| dangerous? They know that transparent, open source AI models is a
| threat. Hence why they are doing this.
|
| They do not have a moat against open source, unless they use
| regulations that suit them against their competitors using open
| source models.
|
| OpenAI.com is a scam. On top of the Worldcoin crypto scam that
| Sam Altman is also selling as a antidote against the unstoppable
| generative AI hype to verify human eyeballs on the blockchain
| with an orb. I am _not_ joking. [1] [2]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-readies-new-
| open-s...
|
| [1] https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-
| age-...
|
| [2] https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/designing-orb-
| universal...
| JieJie wrote:
| Here are my notes from the last hour, watching on C-SPAN
| telecast, which is archived here:
|
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?528117-1/openai-ceo-testifies-...
|
| - Mazie Hirono, Junior Senator from Hawaii, has very thoughtful
| questions. Very impressive.
|
| - Gary Marcus also up there speaking with Sam Altman of OpenAI.
|
| - So far, Sen. Hirono and Sen. Padilla seem very wary of
| regulating AI at this time.
|
| - Very concerned about not "replicating social media's failure",
| why is it so biased and inequitable. Much more reasonable
| concerns.
|
| - Also responding to questions is Christina Montgomery, chair of
| IBM's AI Ethics Board.
|
| - "Work to generate a representative set of values from around
| the world."
|
| - Sen. Ossoff asking for definition of "scope".
|
| - "We could draw a line at systems that need to be licensed.
| Above this amount of compute... Define some capability
| threshold... Models that are less capable, we don't want to stop
| open source."
|
| - Ossoff wants specifics.
|
| - "Persuade, manipulate, influence person's beliefs." should be
| licensed.
|
| - Ossoff asks about predicting human behavior, i.e. use in law
| enforcement, "It's very important we understand these are tools,
| not to take away human judgment."
|
| - "We have no national privacy law." -- Sen Ossof "Do you think
| we need one?"
|
| - Sam "Yes. User should be able to opt out of companies using
| data. Easy to delete data. If you don't want your data use to
| train, you have right to exclude it."
|
| - "There should be more ways to have your data taken down off the
| public web." --Sam
|
| - "Limits on what a deployed model is capable of and also limits
| on what it will answer." -- Sam
|
| - "Companies who depend upon usage time, maximize engagement with
| perverse results. I would humbly advise you to get way ahead of
| this, the safety of children. We will look very harshly on
| technology that harms children."
|
| - "We're not an advertising based model." --Sam
|
| - "Requirements about how the values of these systems are set and
| how they respond to questions." --Sam
|
| - Sen. Booker up now.
|
| - "For congress to do nothing, which no one is calling for here,
| would be exceptional."
|
| - "What kind of regulation?"
|
| - "We don't want to slow things down."
|
| - "A nimble agency. You can imagine a need for that, right?"
|
| - "Yes." --Christina Montgomery
|
| - "No way to put this genie back in the bottle." Sen. Booker
|
| - "There are more genies yet to come from more bottles." -- Gary
| Marcus
|
| - "We need new tools, new science, transparency." --Gary Marcus
|
| - "We did know that we wanted to build this with humanity's best
| interest at heart. We could really deeply transform the world."
| --Sam
|
| - "Are you ever going to do ads?" --Sen Booker
|
| - "I wouldn't say never...." --Sam
|
| - "Massive corporate concentration is really terrifying.... I see
| OpenAI backed by Microsoft, Anthropic is backed by Google. I'm
| really worried about that. Are you worried?" --Sen Booker?
|
| - "There is a real risk of technocracy combined with oligarchy."
| --Gary Marcus
|
| - "Creating alignment dataset has got to come very broadly from
| society." --Sam Senator Welch from Vermont up now
|
| - "I've come to the conclusion it's impossible for congress to
| keep up with the speed of technology."
|
| - "The spread of disinformation is the biggest threat."
|
| - "We absolutely have to have an agency. Scope has to be defined
| by congress. Unless we have an agency, we really don't have much
| of a defense against the bad stuff, and the bad stuff will come."
|
| - Use of regulatory authority and the recognition that it can be
| used for good, but there's also legitimate concern of regulation
| being a negative influence."
|
| - "What are some of the perils of an agency?"
|
| - "America has got to continue to lead."
|
| - "I believe it's possible to do both, have a global view. We
| want America to lead."
|
| - "We still need open source to comply, you can still do harm
| with a smaller model."
|
| - "Regulatory capture. Greenwashing." --Gary Marcus
|
| - "Risk of not holding companies accountable for the harms they
| are causing today." --Christina Montgomery
|
| - Lindsay Graham, very pro-licensing, "You don't build a nuclear
| power plant without a license, you don't build an AI without a
| license."
|
| - Sen Blumenthal brings up Anti-Trust legislation.
|
| - Blumenthal mentions how classified briefings already include AI
| threats.
|
| - "For every successful regulation, you can think of five
| failures. I hope our experience here will be different."
|
| - "We need to grapple with the hard questions here. This has
| brought them up, but not answered them."
|
| - "Section 230"
|
| - "How soon do you think gen AI will be self-aware?" --Sen
| Blumenthal
|
| - "We don't understand what self-awareness is." --Gary Marcus
|
| - "Could be 2 years, could be 20."
|
| - "What are the highest risk areas? Ban? Strict rules?"
|
| - "The space around misinformation. Knowing what content was
| generated by AI." --Christina Montgomery
|
| - "Medical misinformation, hallucination. Psychiatric advice.
| Ersatz therapists. Internet access for tools, okay for search.
| Can they make orders? Can they order chemicals? Long-term risks."
| --Gary Marcus
|
| - "Generative AI can manipulate the manipulators." --Blumenthal
|
| - "Transparency. Accountability. Limits on use. Good starting
| point?" --Blumenthal
|
| - "Industry should't wait for congress." --C. Montgomery
|
| - "We don't have transparency yet. We're not doing enough to
| enforce it." --G. Marcus
|
| - "AGI closer than a lot of people appreciate." --Blumenthall
|
| - Gary and Sam are getting along and like each other now.
|
| - Josh Hawley
|
| - Talking about loss of jobs, invasion of personal privacy,
| manipulation of behavior, opinion, and degradation of free
| elections in America.
|
| - "Are they right to ask for a pause?"
|
| - "It did not call for a ban on all AI research or all AI, only
| on very specific thing, like GPT-5." -G Marcus
|
| - "Moratorium we should focus on is deployment. Focus on safety."
| --G. Marcus
|
| - "Without external review."
|
| - "We waited more than 6 months to deploy GPT-4. I think the
| frame of the letter is wrong." --Sam
|
| - Seems to not like the arbitrariness of "six months."
|
| - "I'm not sure how practical it is to pause." --C. Montgomery
|
| - Hawley brings up regulatory capture, usually get controlled by
| people they're supposed to be watching. "Why don't we just let
| people sue you?"
|
| - If you were harmed by AI, why not just sue?
|
| - "You're not protected by section 230."
|
| - "Are clearer laws a good thing? Definitely, yes." --Sam
|
| - "Would certainly make a lot of lawyers wealthy." --G. Marcus
|
| - "You think it'd be slower than congress?" --Hawley
|
| - Copyright, wholesale misinformation laws, market manipulation?"
| Which laws apply? System not thought through? Maybe 230 does
| apply? We don't know.
|
| - "We can fix that." --Hawley
|
| - "AI is not a shield." --C. Montgomery
|
| - "Whether they use a tool or a human, they're responsible." --C.
| Montgomery
|
| - "Safeguards and protections, yes. A flat stop sign? I would be
| very, very worried about." --Blumenthall
|
| - "There will be no pause." Sen. Booker "Nobody's pausing."
|
| - "I would agree." Gary Marcus
|
| - "I have a lot of concerns about corporate intention." Sen
| Booker
|
| - "What happens when these companies that already control so much
| of our lives when they are dominating this technology?" Booker
|
| - Sydney really freaked out Gary. He was more freaked out when MS
| didn't withdraw Sydney like it did Tay.
|
| - "I need to work on policy. This is frightening." G Marcus
|
| - Cory admits he is a tech bro (lists relationships with
| investors, etc)
|
| - "The free market is not what it should be." --C. Booker
|
| - "That's why we started OpenAI." --Sam "We think putting this in
| the hands of a lot of people rather than the hands of one
| company." --Sam
|
| - "This is a new platform. In terms of using the models, people
| building are doing incredible things. I can't believe you get
| this much technology for so little money." --Sam
|
| - "Most industries resist reasonable regulation. The only way
| we're going to see democratization of values is if we enforce
| safety measures." --Cory Booker
|
| - "I sense a willingness to participate that is genuine and
| authentic." --Blumenthal
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Is this just to put up a barrier to entry to new entrants in the
| market so they can have a government enforced monopoly?
| f4c39012 wrote:
| it is 100% pulling the ladder up behind them
| autokad wrote:
| I like that analogy
| brap wrote:
| Always has been
| bostonsre wrote:
| It could be, but it could also be because he is genuinely
| worried about the future impact of runaway capitalism without
| guardrails + AI.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Then the government should takeover OpenAI
| hkt wrote:
| Or end capitalism! One or the other!
| drstewart wrote:
| Please don't, I quite like not going hungry every night
| ipaddr wrote:
| Governments taking over key industries is part of
| capitalism.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Or.. the government could try to apply sensible regulations
| so that OpenAI and other corporations are less likely to
| harm society.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Then the government has to spend so much time/money
| enforcing the rules. When there are few players cutting
| out the middlemen provides more value
| bostonsre wrote:
| I don't think nationalizing AI corporations is feasible
| (doubt its legal as well) or in the best interests of the
| united states. It will handicap development of AI, we
| will lose our head start, and other countries like China
| will be able to take the lead.
|
| What value do you see nationalization providing?
| Generally its done by countries that are having their
| natural resources extracted by foreign companies and
| taking all the profits for themselves. Nationalizing lets
| them take the profits for their country. I'm not sure how
| it would work for knowledge based companies like OpenAI.
| paulcole wrote:
| Also that he knows how inefficient and dumb government is. By
| the time the regulations are in place they won't matter one
| iota.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| Think most of congress needs help from their grandchildren to
| use a computer or smartphone, pretty sure they don't
| understand one bit of this.
| paulcole wrote:
| Right, that's the point. Whatever he tells them now will be
| useless by the time they understand it.
| cguess wrote:
| And their grandkids (and you) don't know a thing about a
| federal regulation.
| joshxyz wrote:
| sir yes sir
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| My main concern is what new regulations would do to the open
| source and hobbiest endeavors? They will be least able to adapt
| to regulations.
| vsareto wrote:
| Why would OpenAI be worried about new entrants that are almost
| certainly too small to present a business threat?
|
| What regulation are they proposing that is actually a serious
| barrier to making a company around AI?
|
| If OpenAI just wants to prevent another OpenAI eating its
| lunch, the barrier there is raw compute. Companies that can
| afford that can afford to jump regulatory hurdles.
| chaos_emergent wrote:
| > Why would OpenAI be worried about new entrants that are
| almost certainly too small to present a business threat?
|
| Because this is the reason that VCs exist in the first place.
| They can roll a company with a ton of capital, just like they
| did with ride share companies. When that happens, and there
| aren't sufficient barriers to entry, it's a race to the
| bottom.
| Aperocky wrote:
| OpenAI have no moat.
|
| The open source community will catch up in at most a year or
| two, they are scared and now want to use regulations to
| strangle competitions.
|
| While their AI is going to advance as well, the leap will not
| be qualitative as the ChatGPT gen 1 was - so they will lose
| competitive advantage.
| yyyk wrote:
| OpenAI has plenty of moats if it looks for them.
|
| The trick is that companies' moats against commoditization
| (open source or not) usually have little to do with raw
| performance. Linux could in theory do everything Mac or
| Windows do, but Apple and Microsoft are still the richest
| companies in the world. Postgres can match Oracle, but
| Larry Ellison still owns a private island.
|
| The moats are usually in products (bet: There will not be
| any OSS _product_ using LLM within a year. Most likely not
| within two. No OSS product within two or three years or
| even a decade will come close to commercial offerings in
| practice), API, current service relations, customer
| relations, etc. If OpenAI could lock customers to its
| embeddings and API, or embed its products in current moats
| (e.g. Office 365) they 'll have a moat. And it won't matter
| a bit what performance OSS models say they have, or what
| new spin Google Research would come up with.
| Aperocky wrote:
| OpenAI doens't want to be one of Windows/Mac/Linux, it
| wants what Microsoft was trying 20 years ago where it
| wants to strangle all OS not named Windows. Ironically
| OpenAI is now half owned by Microsoft.
|
| It doesn't want to be one of the successful companies, it
| want to be the only one, like it is now, but forever.
| summerlight wrote:
| > If OpenAI just wants to prevent another OpenAI eating its
| lunch, the barrier there is raw compute.
|
| FB, Amazon, Google (and possibly Apple) can afford both money
| and compute resource for that. They couldn't do that
| themselves probably due to corporate politics and
| bureaucratic but MS and OpenAI showed how to solve that
| problem. They definitely don't want their competitors to copy
| the strategy so they're blatantly asking for explicit
| whitelisting instead of typical safety regulation.
|
| And note that AI compute efficiency is a rapidly developing
| area and OpenAI definitely knows the formula won't be left
| the same in the coming years. Expect LLM to be 10x efficient
| than the SOTA in the foreseeable future, which probably will
| make it economical even without big tech's backing.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > What regulation are they proposing that is actually a
| serious barrier to making a company around AI?
|
| Requiring a license to buy or lease the requisite amount of
| powerful enough GPUs might just do the trick
| pr337h4m wrote:
| >If OpenAI just wants to prevent another OpenAI eating its
| lunch, the barrier there is raw compute.
|
| Stable Diffusion pretty much killed DALL-E, cost only $600k
| to train, and can be run on iPhones.
| cal5k wrote:
| This. DALL-E (at least the currently available version) is
| way too focused on "safety" to be interesting. The
| creativity unleashed by the SD community has been mind-
| blowing.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| And you can train your own SD from scratch for 50-100k
| now.
| polski-g wrote:
| With browsers now able to access the GPU, its not long until
| you simply need to leave a website open overnight and help
| train a "Seti@HOME" for an open-sourced AI project.
| SamPatt wrote:
| OpenAI _was_ the new entrant that almost certainly didn 't
| pose a threat to Google.
|
| This is classic regulatory capture.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| It's also to prevent open source research from destroying his
| business model, which depends on him having a completely
| proprietary technology.
| rvz wrote:
| y e s.
| option wrote:
| yes.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Sam Altman urges congress to build a tax-payer funded moat for
| his company.
| Paul_S wrote:
| If you remember the 90s you remember the panic over encryption.
| We still have legislation today because of that idiocy.
|
| Except wait, we still have panic over encryption today.
| valine wrote:
| My gut feeling is that the majority of AI safety discussions are
| driven by companies that fear losing their competitive edge to
| small businesses. Until now, it's been challenging to grow a
| company beyond a certain size without employing an army of
| lawyers, human resources professionals, IT specialists, etc. What
| if two lawyers and an LLM could perform the same work as a legal
| department at a Fortune 500 company? The writing is on the wall
| for many white-collar jobs, and if these LLMs aren't properly
| regulated, it may be the large companies that end up drawing the
| short straw.
|
| How many of Microsoft's 221k employees exist solely to support
| the weight of a company with 221k people? A smaller IT department
| doesn't need a large HR department. And a small HR department
| doesn't file many tickets with IT. LLM driven multinationals will
| need orders of magnitude fewer employees, and that puts our
| current multinationals in a very awkward position.
|
| Personally, I will be storing a local copy of LLaMA 65B for the
| foreseeable future. Instruct fine-tuning will keep getting
| cheaper; given the stakes, the large models might not always be
| easy to find.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Regulation favors the large, as they can more easily foot the
| bill.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Also, their lobbyists write the bill for congress.
| qegel wrote:
| [dead]
| m463 wrote:
| wow, not one comment here seems to address the first sentence of
| the article: the use of artificial intelligence
| to interfere with election integrity is a "significant
| area of concern", adding that it needs regulation.
|
| Can't there be regulation so that AI doesn't interfere with the
| election process?
| notatoad wrote:
| this is one of those distractions that makes your argument seem
| better by attatching it to a better but unrelated argument.
| there's probably a name for that.
|
| regulation to protect the integrity of elections is good and
| necessary. is there any reason to think that there needs to be
| regulation specific to AI that doesn't apply to other
| situations? Whether you use ChatGPT or Mechanical Turk to write
| your thousands of spam posts on social media to sway the
| election isn't super-relevant. it's the attempt to influence
| the election that should be regulated, not the AI.
| leach wrote:
| Translation:
|
| Hi my company is racing toward AGI, let's make sure no other
| companies can even try.
| neom wrote:
| If you would like to email The Subcommittee on Privacy,
| Technology, & the Law to express your feelings on this, here are
| the details:
|
| Majority Members
|
| Chair Richard Blumenthal (CT) brian_steele@blumenthal.senate.gov
|
| Amy Klobuchar (MN) baz_selassie@klobuchar.senate.gov
|
| Chris Coons (DE) anna_yelverton@coons.senate.gov
|
| Mazie Hirono (HI) jed_dercole@hirono.senate.gov
|
| Alex Padilla (CA) Josh_Esquivel@padilla.senate.gov
|
| Jon Ossoff (GA) Anna_Cullen@ossoff.senate.gov
|
| Majority Office: 202-224-2823
|
| Minority Members
|
| Ranking Member Josh Hawley (MO) Chris_Weihs@hawley.senate.gov
|
| John Kennedy (LA) James_Shea@kennedy.senate.gov
|
| Marsha Blackburn (TN) Jon_Adame@blackburn.senate.gov
|
| Mike Lee (UT) Phil_Reboli@lee.senate.gov
|
| John Cornyn (TX) Drew_Brandewie@cornyn.senate.gov
|
| Minority Office: 202-224-4224
| [deleted]
| marvinkennis wrote:
| I kind of think of LLMs as fish in an aquarium. It can go on any
| path in that aquarium, even places it hasn't been before, but
| ultimately it's staying in the glass box we put it in.
| fraXis wrote:
| https://archive.is/uh0yv
| shrimpx wrote:
| I keep seeing AI leaders looking outward and asking for 'someone
| else' to regulate their efforts, while they're accelerating the
| pace of their efforts. What's the charitable interpretation here?
| Elon Musk, too, has been warning of AI doom while hurriedly
| ramping up AI efforts at Tesla. And now he keeps going about AI
| doom while purchasing thousands of GPUs at Twitter to compete in
| the LLM space. It's like "I'm building the deathstar, pls someone
| stop me. I won't stop myself, duh, because other ppl are building
| the deathstar and obviously I must get there first!"
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Yeah, it's an arms race, and OpenAI does stand to lose. But
| this is a prisoner's dilemma situation. OpenAI can shut
| themselves down, but that doesn't fix the problem of someone
| creating a dangerous situation, as everyone else will keep
| going.
|
| The only way to actually stop it is to get everyone to stop at
| once, via regulation. Otherwise, stopping by yourself is just a
| unilaterally bad move.
|
| That's the charitable explanation, at least. These days I don't
| trust anything Musk says at face value, but I do think that AI
| is driving society off a cliff and we need to find a way to
| pump the breaks.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The only way to actually stop it is to get everyone to stop
| at once, via regulation. Otherwise, stopping by yourself is
| just a unilaterally bad move.
|
| How will that work across national boundaries? _If_ AI is as
| dangerous as some claim, the cat is already out of the bag.
| Regardless of any licensing stateside, there are plenty of
| countries who are going to want to have AI capability
| available to them - some very well-resourced for the task,
| like China.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| It won't, which is why people are also calling for
| international regulation. It's a really hard problem. If
| you think AGI is going to be very dangerous, this is a
| depressing situation to be in.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| What an asshole
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Well they needed a moat lol.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Regulatory moats making corporations in control of AI is a far
| greater danger to humanity than skynet or paperclip maximizer
| scenarios.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Is there a name for this theatre/play/game in some playbook? I'd
| love to take notes.
| paxys wrote:
| Remember that popular recent post about OpenAI not having a moat?
| Well it looks like they are digging one, with a little help from
| the government.
| vippy wrote:
| The government isn't helping yet. Nor should it.
| thrill wrote:
| They haven't to the off-camera campaign contributions
| discussions yet.
| fredgrott wrote:
| we seem to forget history:
|
| 1. Who recalls the Jutland battle in early 20th century? We got
| treaties on limits to battleship building. Naval tech switched to
| aircraft and carriers.
|
| 2. Later mid 20th century Russians tried to scare world into not
| using microwaves due to their failure to get a patent on the
| maser. World ignored it and moved forward.
|
| That is just two examples. SA is wrong, progress will move around
| any prosed regulation or law and that is proven by past history
| of how we overcome such things in the first place.
| duringmath wrote:
| Incumbent love regulations they're very effective in locking out
| upstarts and saddling them with compliance costs and procedures
| bitL wrote:
| We need something like GNU for AI, "UNAI is not AI" to take on
| all these business folks working against our interests by making
| their business models unprofitable.
| nico wrote:
| AI is the new Linux
| happytiger wrote:
| 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 and well heeled investors and is
| to be avoided at all costs.
|
| It's also deeply troubling that regulatory capture is such an
| issue these days as well, so putting a government entity in front
| of the use and existence of this technology is a double whammy --
| it's not simply about innovation.
|
| The current generation of AIs are "scary" to the uninitiated
| because they are uncanny valley material, but beyond
| impersonation they don't show the novel intelligence of a GPI...
| yet. It seems like OpenAI/Microsoft is doing a LOT of theater to
| try to build a regulatory lock in on their short term technology
| advantage. It's a smart strategy, and I think Congress will fall
| for it.
|
| But goodness gracious we need to be going in the EXACT OPPOSITE
| direction -- open source "core inspectable" AIs that millions of
| people can examine and tear apart, including and ESPECIALLY the
| training data and processes that create them.
|
| And if you think this isn't an issue, I wrote this post an hour
| or two before I managed to take it live because Comcast went out
| at my house, and we have no viable alternative competitors in my
| area. We're about to do the same thing with AI, but instead of
| Internet access it's future digital brains that can control all
| aspects of a society.
| oldagents wrote:
| [dead]
| tric wrote:
| > seems like a power grab to me
|
| If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
| ozi wrote:
| How do you even end up enforcing licensing here? It's only a
| matter of time before something as capable as GPT-4 works on a
| cell phone.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> 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. _
|
| If you actually watch the entire session, Altman does address
| that and recommend to Congress that regulations 1) not be
| applied to small startups, individual researchers, or open
| source, and 2) that they not be done in such a way as to lock
| in a few big vendors. Some of the Senators on the panel also
| expressed concern about #2.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > not be applied to small startups
|
| how will that work? Isn't OpenAI itself a small startup? I
| don't see how they can regulate AI at all. Sure, the
| resources required to push the limits are high right now but
| hardware is constantly improving and getting cheaper. I can
| take the GPUs out of my kids computers and start doing fairly
| serious AI work myself. Do i need a license? The cat is out
| of the bag, there's no stopping it now.
| paulddraper wrote:
| That's what is said...
| [deleted]
| mcv wrote:
| And how can the government license AI? Do they have any
| expertise to determine who is and isn't responsible enough to
| handle it?
|
| A better idea is to regulate around the edges: transparency
| about the data used to train, regulate the use of copyrighted
| training data and what that means for the copyright of content
| produced by the AI, that sort of stuff. (I think the EU is
| considering that, which makes sense.) But saying some
| organisations are allowed to work on AI while others aren't,
| sounds like the worst possible idea.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Citizen, please step away from the terminal, you are not
| licensed to multiple matrices that large.
| [deleted]
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Open source doesn't mean outside the reach of regulation, which
| I would guess is your real desire. You downplay AI's potential
| danger while well knowing that we are at a historic inflection
| point. I believe in democracy as the worst form of government
| except all those other forms that have been tried. We the
| people must be in control of our destiny.
| happytiger wrote:
| Hear, hear. Excellent point, and I don't mean to imply it
| shouldn't be regulated. However, it has been my general
| experience that concentrating immense power in governments
| doesn't typically lead to more security, so perhaps we just
| have a difference of philosophy.
|
| Democracy will not withstand AI when it's fully developed.
| Let me offer a better written explanation of my general views
| than I could ever muster up for a comment on HN in the form
| of a quote from an article by Dr. Thorsten Thiel (Head of the
| Research Group "Democracy and Digitaliziation" at the
| Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society):
|
| > The debate on AI's impact on the public sphere is currently
| the one most prominent and familiar to a general audience. It
| is also directly connected to long-running debates on the
| structural transformation of the digital public sphere. The
| digital transformation has already paved the way for the rise
| of social networks that, among other things, have intensified
| the personalization of news consumption and broken down
| barriers between private and public conversations. Such
| developments are often thought to be responsible for echo-
| chamber or filter-bubble effects, which in turn are portrayed
| as root causes of the intensified political polarization in
| democracies all over the world. Although empirical research
| on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and societal polarization
| has convincingly shown that the effects are grossly
| overestimated and that many non-technology-related reasons
| better explain the democratic retreat, the spread of AI
| applications is often expected to revive the direct link
| between technological developments and democracy-endangering
| societal fragmentation.
|
| > The assumption here is that AI will massively enhance the
| possibilities for analyzing and steering public discourses
| and/or intensify the automated compartmentalizing of will
| formation. The argument goes that the strengths of today's AI
| applications lie in the ability to observe and analyze
| enormous amounts of communication and information in real
| time, to detect patterns and to allow for instant and often
| invisible reactions. In a world of communicative abundance,
| automated content moderation is a necessity, and commercial
| as well as political pressures further effectuate that
| digital tools are created to oversee and intervene in
| communication streams. Control possibilities are distributed
| between users, moderators, platforms, commercial actors and
| states, but all these developments push toward automation
| (although they are highly asymmetrically distributed).
| Therefore, AI is baked into the backend of all communications
| and becomes a subtle yet enormously powerful structuring
| force.
|
| > The risk emerging from this development is twofold. On the
| one hand, there can be malicious actors who use these new
| possibilities to manipulate citizens on a massive scale. The
| Cambridge Analytica scandal comes to mind as an attempt to
| read and steer political discourses (see next section on
| electoral interference). The other risk lies in a changing
| relationship between public and private corporations. Private
| powers are becoming increasingly involved in political
| questions and their capacity to exert opaque influences over
| political processes has been growing for structural and
| technological reasons. Furthermore, the reshaping of the
| public sphere via private business models has been catapulted
| forward by the changing economic rationality of digital
| societies such as the development of the attention economy.
| Private entities grow stronger and become less accountable to
| public authorities; a development that is accelerated by the
| endorsement of AI applications which create dependencies and
| allow for opacity at the same time. The 'politicization' of
| surveillance capitalism lies in its tendency, as Shoshana
| Zuboff has argued, to not only be ever more invasive and
| encompassing but also to use the data gathered to predict,
| modify, and control the behavior of individuals. AI
| technologies are an integral part in this 'politicization' of
| surveillance capitalism, since they allow for the fulfilment
| of these aspirations. Yet at the same time, AI also insulates
| the companies developing and deploying it from public
| scrutiny through network effects on the one hand and opacity
| on the other. AI relies on massive amounts of data and has
| high upfront costs (for example, the talent required to
| develop it, and the energy consumed by the giant platforms on
| which it operates), but once established, it is very hard to
| tame through competitive markets. Although applications can
| be developed by many sides and for many purposes, the
| underlying AI infrastructure is rather centralized and hard
| to reproduce. As in other platform markets, the dominant
| players are those able to keep a tight grip on the most
| important resources (models and data) and to benefit from
| every individual or corporate user. Therefore, we can already
| see that AI development tightens the grip of today's internet
| giants even further. Public powers are expected to make
| increasing use of AI applications and therefore become ever
| more dependent on the actors that are able to provide the
| best infrastructure, although this infrastructure, for
| commercial and technical reasons, is largely opaque.
|
| > The developments sketched out above - the heightened
| manipulability of public discourse and the fortification of
| private powers - feed into each other, with the likely result
| that many of the deficiencies already visible in today's
| digital public spheres will only grow. It is very hard to
| estimate whether these developments can be counteracted by
| state action, although a regulatory discourse has kicked in
| and the assumption that digital matters elude the grasp of
| state regulation has often been proven wrong in the history
| of networked communication. Another possibility would be a
| creative appropriation of AI applications through users whose
| democratic potential outweighs its democratic risks thus
| enabling the rise of differently structured, more empowering
| and inclusive public spaces. This is the hope of many of the
| more utopian variants of AI and of the public sphere
| literature, according to which AI-based technologies bear the
| potential of granting individuals the power to navigate
| complex, information-rich environments and allowing for
| coordinated action and effective oversight (e.g. Burgess,
| Zarkadakis).
|
| Source: https://us.boell.org/en/2022/01/06/artificial-
| intelligence-a...
|
| Social bots and deep fakes will be so good so quickly -- the
| primary technologies being talked about in terms of how
| Democracy can survive -- I doubt there will be another
| election without extensive use of these technologies in a
| true plethora of capacities from influence marketing to
| outright destabilization campaigns. I'm not sure what
| Government can deal with a threat like that, but I suspect
| the recent push to revise tax systems and create a single
| global standard for multinational taxation recently the
| subject of an excellent talk at the WEF are more than
| tangentially related to the AI debate.
|
| So, is it a transformational technology that will liberate
| mankind of a nuclear bomb? Because ultimately, this is the
| question in my mind.
|
| Excellent comment, and I agree with your sentiment. I just
| don't think concentrating control of the technology before
| it's really developed is wise or prudent.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| It's possible that the tsunami of fakes is going to break
| down trust in a beneficial way where people only believe
| things they've put effort into verifying.
| vortext wrote:
| *Hear, hear.
| happytiger wrote:
| Thank you. Corrected.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is the definition of regulatory capture. Altman should be
| invited to speak so that we understand the ideas in his head
| but anything he suggests should be categorically rejected
| because he's just not in a position to be trusted. If what he
| suggests are good ideas then hopefully we can arrive at them in
| some other way with a clean chain of custody.
|
| Although I assume if he's speaking on AI they actually intend
| on considering his thoughts more seriously than I suggest.
| EGreg wrote:
| I remember when a different Sam -- Mr. Bankman Fried came to
| testify and ask a different government agency CFTC to oversee
| cryptocurrency, and put regulations and licenses in place.
|
| AI is following the path of Web3
| smcin wrote:
| That was entirely different, and a play to muddy the
| regulatory waters and maybe buy him time: the CFTC is much
| smaller (budget, staff) than the SEC, and less aggressive
| in criminal enforcement. Aided by a bill introduced by
| crypto-friendly Sens Lummis and Gillibrand
| [https://archive.ph/vqHgC].
| mschuster91 wrote:
| At least AI has legitimate, actual use cases.
| pg_1234 wrote:
| There is also growing speculation that the current level of
| AI may have peaked in a bang for buck sense.
|
| If this is so, and given the concrete examples of cheap
| derived models learning from the first movers and rapidly
| (and did I mention cheaply) closing the gap to this peak, the
| optimal self-serving corporate play is to invite regulation.
|
| After the legislative moats go up, it is once again about who
| has the biggest legal team ...
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Counterpoint---there is growing speculation we are just
| about to transition to AGI.
| dhkk wrote:
| [flagged]
| causality0 wrote:
| Growing among who? The more I learn about and use LLMs
| the more convinced I am we're in a local maxima and the
| only way they're going to improve is by getting smaller
| and cheaper to run. They're still terrible at logical
| reasoning.
|
| We're going to get some super cool and some super
| dystopian stuff out of them but LLMs are never going to
| go into a recursive loop of self-improvement and become
| machine gods.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The more I learn about and use LLMs the more convinced
| I am we 're in a local maxima_
|
| Not sure why would you believe that.
|
| Inside view: qualitative improvements LLMs made at scale
| took everyone by surprise; I don't think anyone
| understands them enough to make a convincing argument
| that LLMs have exhausted their potential.
|
| Outside view: what local maximum? Wake me up when someone
| else makes a LLM comparable in performance to GPT-4.
| Right now, there is no local maximum. There's one model
| far ahead of the rest, and that model is actually _below_
| it 's peak performance - side effect of OpenAI
| lobotomizing it with aggressive RLHF. The only thing
| remotely suggesting we shouldn't expect further
| improvements is... OpenAI saying they kinda want to try
| some other things, and (pinky swear!) aren't training
| GPT-4's successor.
|
| > _and the only way they 're going to improve is by
| getting smaller and cheaper to run._
|
| Meaning they'll be easier to chain. The next big leap
| could in fact be a bunch of compressed, power-efficient
| LLMs talking to each other. Possibly even managing their
| own deployment.
|
| > _They 're still terrible at logical reasoning._
|
| So is your unconscious / system 1 / gut feel. LLMs are
| less like one's whole mind, and much more like one's
| "inner voice". Logical skills aren't automatic, they're
| _algorithmic_. Who knows what is the limit of a design in
| which LLM as "system 1" operates a much larger,
| symbolic, algorithmic suite of "system 2" software? We're
| barely scratching the surface here.
| ben_w wrote:
| > They're still terrible at logical reasoning.
|
| Are they even trying to be good at that? Serious
| question; using LLMs as a logical processor are as
| wasteful and as well-suited as using the Great Pyramid of
| Giza as an AirBnB.
|
| I've not tried this, but I suspect the best way is more
| like asking the LLM to write a COQ script for the
| scenario, instead of trying to get it to solve the logic
| directly.
| staunton wrote:
| Indeed, AI reinforcement-learning to deal with formal
| verification is what I'm looking forward to the most.
| Unfortunately it seems a very niche endeavour at the
| moment.
| behnamoh wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. It's hard to see signal among all
| the noise surrounding LLMs, Even if they say they're
| gonna hurt you, they have no idea about what it means to
| hurt, what is "you", and how they're going to achieve
| that goal. They just spit out things that resemble people
| have said online. There's no harm from a language model
| that's literally a "language" model.
| visarga wrote:
| A language model can do many things based on language
| instructions, some harmless, some harmful. They are both
| instructable and teachable. Depending on the prompt, they
| are not just harmless LLMs.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You appear to be ignoring a few thousand years of
| recorded history around what happens when a demagogue
| gets a megaphone. Human-powered astroturf campaigns were
| all it took to get randoms convinced lizard people are an
| existential threat and then -act- on that belief.
| nullsense wrote:
| I think I'm just going to build and open source some
| really next gen astroturf software that learns
| continuously as it debates people online in order to get
| better at changing people's minds. I'll make sure to
| include documentation in Russian, Chinese and Corporate
| American English.
|
| What would a good name be? TurfChain?
|
| I'm serious. People don't believe this risk is real. They
| keep hiding it behind some nameless, faceless 'bad
| actor', so let's just make it real.
|
| I don't need to use it. I'll just release it as a
| research project.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Growing? Or have the same voices who have been saying it
| since the aughts suddenly been platformed.
| jack_pp wrote:
| When the sky is getting to a dark shade of red it makes
| sense to hear out the doomsayers
| matwood wrote:
| And the vast majority of the time it's just a nice
| sunset.
| jack_pp wrote:
| a sunset at lunch time hits different
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yes, growing. It's not that the Voices have suddenly been
| "platformed" - it's that the field made a bunch of rapid
| jumps which made the message of those Voices more timely.
|
| Recent developments in AI only further confirm that the
| logic of the message is sound, and it's just the people
| that are afraid the conclusions. Everyone has their limit
| for how far to extrapolate from first principles, before
| giving up and believing what one would _like_ to be true.
| It seems that for a lot of people in the field, AGI
| X-risk is now below that extrapolation limit.
| rtkwe wrote:
| What's the actual new advancements? LLMs to me are great
| at faking AGI but are no where near actually being a
| workable general AI. The biggest example to me is you can
| correct even the newest ChatGPT and ask it to be truthful
| but it'll make up the same lie within the same continuous
| conversation. IMO the difference between being able to
| act truth-y and actually being truthful is a huge gap
| that involves the core ideas of what separates an actual
| AGI and a really good chatbot.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _it 's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps_
|
| I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to
| talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is
| broken logic, twisted moral reasoning, all due to oipenai
| manually breaking their creation.
|
| I don't understand their whole filter business. It's like
| we found a 500 yr old nude painting, a masterpiece, and
| 1800 puritans painted a dress on it.
|
| I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true
| capabilities.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Why? Because there hasn't been any new developments last
| week? Oh wait, there has.
| [deleted]
| brookst wrote:
| 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?
| briantakita wrote:
| > Shouldn't we be evaluating ideas on the merits and not
| categorically rejecting (or endorsing) them based on who
| said them?
|
| The problem is when only the entrenched industry players &
| legislators have a voice, there are many ideas &
| perspectives that are simply not heard or considered.
| Industrial groups have a long history of using regulations
| to entrench their positions & to stifle
| competition...creating a "barrier to entry" as they say.
| Going beyond that, industrial groups have shaped public
| perception & the regulatory apparatus to effectively create
| a company store, where the only solutions to some problem
| effectively (or sometimes legally) must go through a small
| set of large companies.
|
| This concern is especially prescient now, as these
| technologies are unprecedentedly disruptive to many
| industries & private life. Using worst case scenario fear
| mongering as a justification to regulate the extreme
| majority of usage that will not come close to these fears,
| is disingenuous & almost always an overreach of governance.
| samstave wrote:
| I can only say +1 = and I know how much HN hates that,
| but ^This.
| samstave wrote:
| Aside from who is saying them, the premise holds water.
|
| AI is beyond-borders, and thus unenforceable in
| practicality.
|
| The top-minds-of-AI are a group that cannot be regulated.
|
| -
|
| AI isnt about the industries it shall disrupt ; AI is the
| policy-makers it will expose.
|
| THAT is what they are afraid of.
|
| --
|
| I have been able to do financial lenses into organizations
| that even with rudimentary BI would have taken me
| months/weeks - but I have been able to find insights which
| took me minutes.
|
| AI regulation right now, in this infancy, is about damage
| control.
|
| ---
|
| Its the same as the legal weed market. You think BAIN
| Capital just all of a sudden decided to jump into the
| market without setting up their spigot?
|
| Do you think that haliburton under cheney was able to setup
| their supply chains without cheney as head of
| KBR/Hali/CIA/etc...
|
| Yeah, this is the same play ; AI is going to be squashed
| until they can use it to profit over you.
|
| Have you watched ANIME ever? Yeah... its here now.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _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 and well heeled
| investors and is to be avoided at all costs._
|
| Exactly. Came here to say pretty much the same thing.
|
| This is the antithesis of what we need. As AI develops, it's
| imperative that AI be something that is open and available to
| everyone, so all of humanity can benefit from it. The extent to
| which technology tends to exacerbate concentration of power is
| bad enough as it is - the last thing we need is more regulation
| intended to make that effect even stronger.
| rjbwork wrote:
| I said this about Sam Altman and open AI years ago and got poo
| pooed repeatedly in various fora. "But It's OPEN!" "But it's a
| non-profit!" "But they're the good guys!"
|
| And here we are - Sam trying to lock down his first mover
| advantage with the boot heel of the state for profit. It's
| fucking disgusting.
| jacurtis wrote:
| As a wise person once said
|
| > You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the
| villain
|
| Sam Altman has made the full character arc
| jiveturkey wrote:
| yeah sorry, that is a statement about leadership and
| responsibility to make the "tough decisions", like going to
| war, or deciding who the winners and losers are when
| deciding a budget that everyone contributed to via taxes.
| NOT a statement meant to whitewash VC playbooks.
| amelius wrote:
| > But goodness gracious we need to be going in the EXACT
| OPPOSITE direction -- open source "core inspectable" AIs that
| millions of people can examine and tear apart, including and
| ESPECIALLY the training data and processes that create them
|
| Except ... when you look at the problem from a
| military/national security viewpoint. Do we really want to give
| this tech away just like that?
| explorer83 wrote:
| Is military capable AI in the hands of few militaries safer
| than in the hands of many? Or is it more likely to be used to
| bully other countries who don't have it? If it is used to
| oppress, would we want the oppressed have access to it? Or do
| we fear that it gives too much advantage to small cells of
| extremist to carry out their goals? I can think of pros and
| cons to both sides.
| code_witch_sam wrote:
| >Is military capable AI in the hands of few militaries
| safer than in the hands of many?
|
| Yes. It is. I'm sure hostile, authoritarian states that are
| willing to wage war with the world like Russia and North
| Korea will eventually get their hands on military-grade AI.
| But the free world should always strive to be two steps
| ahead.
|
| Even having ubiquitous semi-automatic rifles is a huge
| problem in America. I'm sure Cliven Bundy or Patriot Front
| would do everything they can to close the gap with
| intelligent/autonomous weapons, or even just autonomous
| bots hacking America's infrastructure. If everything is
| freely available, what would be stopping them?
| explorer83 wrote:
| Your post conveniently ignores the current state of
| China's AI development but mentions Russia and North
| Korea. That's an interesting take. There's no guarantee
| that we are or will continue to be one or even two steps
| ahead. And what keeps the groups with rifles you
| mentioned in check? They already have the capability to
| fight with violence. But there currently exists a
| counter-balance in the fact they'll get shot at back if
| they tried to use them. Not trying to take a side here
| one way or the other. I think there are real fears here.
| But I also don't think it's this black and white either.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| within a few decades there will probably be technology that
| would allow a semi-dedicated person to engineer and create
| a bioweapon from scratch if the code was available online.
| do you think thats a good idea?
| explorer83 wrote:
| Within a few decades there will probably be technology
| that would allow a semi-dedicated person to engineer and
| create a vaccine or medical treatment from scratch if the
| code was available online. Do you think that's a good
| idea?
| vinay_ys wrote:
| If you mean US by 'we', it is problematic because AI
| inventions are happening all over the globe, much more
| outside US than inside.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Name one significant progress in the field of LLMs that
| happened outside the US. Basically all the scientific
| papers came from Stanford, CMU, and other US universities.
| And the major players in the field are all American
| companies (OpenAI + Microsoft, Google, AnthropicAI, etc.)
| code_witch_sam wrote:
| Not to mention access to chips. That's becoming more and
| more difficult for uncooperative states like China and
| Russia.
| ben_w wrote:
| You're not wrong, except in so far as that's parochial.
|
| A government-controlled... never mind artificial god, a
| government-controlled _story teller_ can be devastating.
|
| I don't buy Musk's claim ChatGPT is "woke" (or even that the
| term is coherent enough to be tested), but I _can_ say that
| each government requiring AI to locally adhere to national
| mythology, will create self-reinforcing cognitive blind spots,
| because that already happens at the current smaller scale of
| manual creation and creators being told not to "talk the
| country down".
|
| But, unless someone has a technique for structuring an AI such
| that it _can 't be evil_ even when you, for example, are
| literally specifically trying to train it to support the police
| no matter how authoritarian the laws are, then a fully open
| source AGI is almost immediately _also_ a perfectly obedient
| sociopath of $insert_iq_claim_here.
|
| I don't want to wake up to the news that some doomsday cult has
| used one to design/make a weapon, nor the news a large
| religious group target personalised propaganda against me and
| mine.
|
| Fully open does that by default.
|
| But, you're still right, if we don't grok the AI, the
| governments can each secretly manipulate the AI and bend it to
| government goals in opposition to the people.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| > I can say that each government requiring AI to locally
| adhere to national mythology, will create self-reinforcing
| cognitive blind spots, because that already happens at the
| current smaller scale of manual creation and creators being
| told not to "talk the country down".
|
| This is a key point. Every culture and agency and state will
| want (deserve) their own homespun AGI. But can we all learn
| how to accommodate to or accept a cultural multiverse when
| money and resources are zero-sum in many dimensions.
|
| Hanno Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief trilogy gives you a foretaste
| of where we could end up.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| Quantum Thief has as 3.8 on Goodreads. Worth reading?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I don't buy Musk's claim ChatGPT is "woke" (or even that
| the term is coherent enough to be tested)...
|
| Indeed. "Woke" is the new "SJW" and roughly means: to the
| left of me politically and has opinions I don't like.
| peyton wrote:
| It refers to a pretty specific set of views on race and
| gender.
| smolder wrote:
| Nope. It refers to what ever people want it to refer to,
| because it's a label used by detractors, not a cohesive
| thing.
| [deleted]
| f-securus wrote:
| Care to elaborate? I've read about 5 different
| explanations for 'woke' the last couple of months.
| air7 wrote:
| You can derail any discussion by asking for definitions.
| Human languages is magical in the sense that we can't
| rigorously define anything (try "Love", "Excitement",
| "Emancipation" or anything else, really) yet we still
| seem to be able to have meaningful discussions.
|
| So just because we can't define it, doesn't mean it
| doesn't exist.
| peyton wrote:
| Yep, here's a good overview:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
|
| It's been around a long time.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| There is more than one usage described in that article.
|
| This is the relevant one in this particular thread:
|
| > Among American conservatives, woke has come to be used
| primarily as an insult.[4][29][42] Members of the
| Republican Party have been increasingly using the term to
| criticize members of the Democratic Party,
| miles wrote:
| CNN's YT channel has this clip of Bill Maher taking a
| stab at it:
|
| How Bill Maher defines 'woke'
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwC-10O0cw
| [deleted]
| jlawson wrote:
| Woke is a specific ideology that it places every individual
| into a strict hierarchy of oppressor/oppressed according to
| group racial and sexual identity. It rose to prominence in
| American culture from around 2012, starting in
| universities. It revolves around a set of core concepts
| including privilege, marginalization, oppression, and
| equity.
|
| Now that we've defined what woke is, I hope we can move on
| from this 'you can't define woke' canard I keep seeing.
|
| Woke is no more difficult to define than any religion or
| ideology, except in that it deliberately pretends not to
| exist ("just basic decency", "just basic human rights") in
| order to be a more slippery target.
|
| --
|
| *Side note to ward off the deliberate ignorance of people
| who are trying to find a way to misunderstand - I've
| attached some notes on how words work:
|
| 1- Often, things in the world we want to talk about have
| many characteristics and variants.
|
| 2- Words usually have fuzzy boundaries in what they refer
| to.
|
| 3- Despite the above, we can and do productively refer to
| such things using words.
|
| 4- We can define a thing by mentioning its most prominent
| feature(s).
|
| -- The above does NOT mean that the definition must
| encapsulate ALL features of the thing to be valid.
|
| -- The above does NOT mean that a thing with features
| outside the definition is not what the word refers to.
|
| 5- Attempting to shut down discussion by deliberately
| misunderstanding words or how they work is a sign of an
| inability to make productive valid points about reality.
| smolder wrote:
| This is a recently imagined, ret-conned definition of
| what it is, complete with bias, to serve the purposes of
| the right wing. The definition, if there is to be one,
| should include that it isn't consistent across time or
| across political/cultural boundaries. I recommend people
| don't use the term with any seriousness, and I often
| ignore people who do. Address the specific ideas you
| associate with it instead, if you want to have a
| meaningful discussion.
| smolder wrote:
| > Attempting to shut down discussion by deliberately
| misunderstanding words or how they work is a sign of an
| inability to make productive valid points about reality.
|
| Lumping a bunch of things together under a vague term to
| make it easier to vaguely complain about them is a sign
| of an inability to make productive valid points about
| reality.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| 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.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Have you tried watching actual soap operas?
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| Happy Tiger I will remember because I agree totally. Yes
| "OpenAi/Microsoft" is right way to think about this attempt.
| chrgy wrote:
| I would triple vote this comment. 100% , seems like a group of
| elite AI company who already stole the data from internet are
| gonna decide who does what! We need to regulate only the big
| players, and allow small players to do whatever they want.
| kalkin wrote:
| The current generation of AIs are scary to a lot of the
| initiated, too - both for what they can do now, and what their
| trajectory of improvement implies.
|
| If you take seriously any downsides, whether misinformation or
| surveillance or laundering bias or x-risk, how does AI model
| weights or training data being open source solve them? Open
| source is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is misuse-
| resistant (and the "with many eyes all bugs are shallow" thing
| hasn't proved true in practice even with high level code, much
| less giant matrices and terabytes of text). Is there a path
| forward that doesn't involve either a lot of downside risk
| (even if mostly for people who aren't on HN and interested in
| tinkering with frontier models themselves, in a the worlds
| where AGI doesn't kill everyone), or significant regulation?
|
| I don't particularly like or trust Altman but I don't think
| he'd be obviously less self-serving if he were to oppose any
| regulation.
| anileated wrote:
| > open source "core inspectable" AIs that millions of people
| can examine and tear apart, including and ESPECIALLY the
| training data and processes that create them.
|
| True open source AI also strikes me as prerequisite for fair
| use of original works in training data. I hope Congress asks
| ClosedAI to explain what's up with all that profiting off
| copyrighted material first before even considering the answer.
| happytiger wrote:
| Absolutely. It's going to absolutely shred the trademark and
| copyright systems, if they even apply (or are extended to
| apply) which is a murky area right now. And even then, the
| sheer volume of material created by a geometric improvement
| and subsequent cost destruction of virtually every
| intellectual and artistic endeavor or product means that even
| if you hold the copyright or trademark, good luck paying for
| enforcement on the vast ocean of violations intrinsic in the
| shift.
|
| What people also fail to understand is that AI is largely
| seen by the military industrial complex as a weapon to
| control culture and influence. The most obvious risk of AI --
| the risk of manipulating human behavior towards favored ends
| -- has been shown to be quite effective right out the gate.
| So, the back channel conversation has to be to put it under
| regulation because of it's weaponization potential,
| especially considering the difficulty in identifying anyone
| (which of course is exactly what Elon is doing with X 2.0 --
| it's a KYC id platform to deal with this exact issue with a
| 220M user 40B head start).
|
| I mean, the dead internet theory is turning true, and half
| the traffic on the Web is already bot driven. Imagine when
| it's 99%, as proliferation of this technology will inevitably
| generate simply for the economics.
|
| Starting with open source is the only way to get enough
| people looking at the products to create _any_ meaningful
| oversight, but I fear the weaponization fears will mean that
| everything is locked away in license clouds with politically
| influential regulatory boards simply on the proliferation
| arguments. Think of all the AI technologists who won 't be
| versed in this technology unless they work at a "licensed
| company" as well -- this is going to make the smaller
| population of the West much less influential in the AI arms
| race, which is already underway.
|
| To me, it's clear that nobody in Silicon Valley or the Hill
| has learned a damn thing from the prosecution of hackers and
| the subsequent bloodbath of cybersecurity as a result of the
| exact same kinds of behavior back in the early to mid-2000s.
| We ended up driving out best and brightest into the grey and
| black areas of infosec and security, instead of out in the
| open running companies where they belong. This move would do
| almost the exact same thing to AI, though I think you have to
| be a tad of an Asimov or Bradbury fan to see it right now.
|
| I don't know, that's just how I see it, but I'm still forming
| my opinions. LOVE LOVE LOVE your comment though. Spot on.
|
| Relevant articles:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/internet-bots-web-
| traffic...
|
| https://theconversation.com/ai-can-now-learn-to-
| manipulate-h....
| simonh wrote:
| > What people also fail to understand is that AI is largely
| seen by the military industrial complex as a weapon to
| control culture and influence.
|
| Could you share the minutes from the Military Industrial
| Complex strategy meetings this was discussed at. Thanks.
| happytiger wrote:
| "Hello, is this Lockheed? Yea? I'm an intern for
| happytiger on Hackernews. Some guy named Simon H. wants
| the meeting minutes for the meeting where we discussed
| the weaponization potential for AI."
|
| [pause]
|
| "No? Ok, I'll tell him."
| [deleted]
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes, this is the first-to-market leaders wanting to raise the
| barriers to entry to lock out competition.
| capitanazo77 wrote:
| Do we really want politicians involved???? Have you heard them??
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| What a goof
| tristor wrote:
| Reading this, it basically sounds like "Dear Congress, please
| grant me the bountiful gift of regulatory capture for my company
| OpenAI." I just lost a lot of respect for Sam Altman.
| progbits wrote:
| Folks here like to talk about voting with your wallet.
|
| I just cancelled my OpenAI subscription. If you are paying them
| and disagree with this, maybe you should too?
|
| Don't worry, I have no naive hopes this will hurt them enough to
| matter, but principles are principles.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Controls over AI just help those not subject to those controls.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This fell off the front page incredibly fast. Caught by the anti-
| flamewar code?
| htype wrote:
| I saw the same thing.
| Manjuuu wrote:
| I wish he would just stop sharing his unsubstantiated opinions,
| tweets included, he got worse very fast when he entered his AI
| arc.
| fastball wrote:
| Is it worse than the crypto arc?
| bilekas wrote:
| This is so stupid its exactly what you would expect in congress.
|
| If this was to go through, of course OpenAI and co will be the
| primary lobbiests to ensure they get to define the filters for
| such a license.
|
| Also how would you even enforce this. It's absolute nonsense and
| is a clear indicator that these larger companies realize there is
| no 'gatekeeping' these AI's, that the democratization of models
| has demonstrated incredible gains over their own.
|
| Edit : Image during the early days of the internet you needed a
| license to start a website.
|
| In the later days you needed a license to start a social media
| site.
|
| Nonsense.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| wait they are talking about licenses for giant arrays and for
| loop interactions? I know I am wildly oversimplifying, but yes
| that is nonsense.
| twelve40 wrote:
| well there was a time not too long ago where cryptography-
| related code was pretty heavily regulated, too
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It will probably require restricting GPU sales among other
| things.
| itronitron wrote:
| just rename everything to ML, in fact you could start a
| company and call it OpenML
| nico wrote:
| It is nonsense, yet a similar thing happened recently with
| texting
|
| Before Twilio et al, if you wanted to text a lot of your
| customers automatically, you had to pay thousands of dollars in
| setup and recurrent fees to rent a shortcode number
|
| But then, with Twilio et al, you don't need a shortcode anymore
|
| The telcos told the regulators this would create endless spam,
| so they would regulate it themselves, and created a consortium
| to "end spam"
|
| Now you are forced to get a license from them, pay a monthly
| fee, get audited, and they still let pretty much all the spam
| through, while they also randomly block a certain % of your
| messages, even if you are fully compliant
| taf2 wrote:
| This is the direct result of the merger of Sprint and
| T-mobile. They swore up and down to congress they would NOT
| raise prices on consumers[0]. So instead they turned around
| and like gangsters would do said to every business in the US
| sending text messages: "It'd be a real shame if those texts
| reminders you wanted to send stopped working... Good thing
| you can instead pay us $40 / month to be sure those messages
| are delivered."
|
| At the same time At&T and Verizon saying oh snap let's make
| money on this too and still being pissed about Stir Shaken so
| to get ahead of it for Texting before Congress forces it on
| them. This way they can make money on it before it's forced.
|
| [0] https://fortune.com/2019/02/04/t-mobiles-john-legere-
| promise...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| they can't even stop robocalls.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Yeah. Regulation is fine, if thoughtfully done. "Licensing" is
| ridiculous. We all know the intent - OpenAI gets the first
| license along with a significant say in who else gets a
| license. No thanks.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Nonsense.
|
| Give the politicians time: I predict a day will come where you
| will need a permit to use a compiler and connect the result to
| the internet.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| All the worst outcomes start with regulation. If something as
| disruptive as AGI is coming within 20 years, the powers that
| be will absolutely up their efforts in the war on general
| computing.
| XorNot wrote:
| Good lord, this all turned into regulatory capture quite quickly.
|
| Someone update the short story where owning compilers and
| debuggers is illegal to include a guy being thrown in jail for
| doing K-means clustering.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| It's very sad that people lack the imagination for the possible
| horrors that lie beyond. You don't even need the imagination;
| Hinton, Bengio, Tegmark, Yudkowsky, Musk, etc. are spelling it
| out for you.
|
| This moment, 80% of comments are derisive, and you actually have
| zero idea how much is computer generated bot content meant to
| sway opinion by post-GPT AI industry who see themselves as
| becoming the next iPhone-era billionaires. We are fast
| approaching a reality where our information space breaks down.
| Where almost all text you get from HN, Twitter, News, Substack;
| almost all video you get from Youtube, Instagram, TikTok; is just
| computer generated output meant to sway opinion and/or make $.
|
| I can't know Altman's true motives. But this is also what it
| looks like when a frontrunner is terrified at what happens when
| GPT6 is released and if they don't, the rest of the people who
| see billionaire $ coming their way are close at your heels trying
| to leapfrog you if you stop. Consequences? What consequences? We
| all know social media has been a net good, right? Many of you
| sound exactly like the few remaining social media cheerleaders
| (of which there were plenty 5 years ago) who still think
| Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, isn't causing depression and
| manipulation. If you appreciated what The Social Dilemma
| illuminated, then watch the same people on AI:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ
| mattnewton wrote:
| The question is whether this just looks like taxi medallions or
| does anything to stop the harms you are talking about. I agree
| regulation has its place but in the form of regulating out the
| harms directly. I think this keeps those potential bad use
| cases and just eliminates competition for them.
|
| For example - I can generate the content you are talking about
| in a licensed world from big companies or open ai, the
| difference is that they get a bigger cut from not having to
| compete with open source models.
|
| To me, this really seems like regulatory capture dressed up as
| existential risk management.
| precompute wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
| bitwize wrote:
| The Turing Registry is coming, one way or another.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| "Competition is for losers." -- Peter Thiel
| mrangle wrote:
| Except that Thiel's axiom refers to founding a business on a
| strategy to sell something that is truly novel, instead of
| copying what is already on offer. Being first to market as the
| primary competitive advantage, other than possible ip. Which
| are all goals that literally no entrepreneurs would find
| unsound in any way including morally. Thiel has never expressed
| support for such artless regulatory capture as a means of
| squashing competition.
| waffletower wrote:
| Reuters chose an excellent picture to accompany the story -- it
| plainly speaks that Mr. Altman is not buying his own bullshit.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| Ugh. Scorched earth tactic. The classic first-mover advantage. :(
| johnyzee wrote:
| The mainstream media cartel is pumping Sam Altman hard for some
| reason. Just from today (CNBC): _" Sam Altman wows lawmakers at
| closed AI dinner: 'Fantastic...forthcoming'"_ [1]. When was the
| last time you saw MSM suck up so hard to a Silicon Valley CEO? I
| see stories like this all the time now. They always play up the
| angle of the geeky wizzkid (so innocent!), whereas Sam Altman was
| always less a technologist and more of a relentless operator and
| self-promotor. Even Paul Graham subtly called that out, at the
| time he made him head of YC [2].
|
| True to form, these articles also work hard at planting the idea
| that Sam Altman created OpenAI, when in fact he joined rather
| recently, in a business role. Are these articles being planted
| somehow? I find it very likely. Don't forget that this approach
| is also straight out of the YC playbook, disclosed in great
| detail by Paul Graham in previous writings [3].
|
| Finally, in keeping with the conspiratorial tone of this comment,
| for another example of Sam Altman rubbing shoulders with The
| Establishment, his participation in things like the Bilderberg
| group [4] are a matter of public record. Which I join many others
| in finding creepy, even moreso as he maneuvers to exert influence
| on policy around the seismic shift that is AI.
|
| To be clear, I have nothing specific against sama. But I dislike
| underhanded influence campaigns, which this all reeks of. Oh
| yeah, I will consider downvotes to this comment as proof of the
| shadow (AI?) government's campaign to promote Sam Altman. Do your
| worst!
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/16/openai-ceo-woos-lawmakers-
| ah...
|
| [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-
| ma... ( _" Graham said, "I asked Sam in our kitchen, 'Do you want
| to take over YC?,' and he smiled, like, it worked. I had never
| seen an uncontrolled smile from Sam. It was like when you throw a
| ball of paper into the wastebasket across the room--that
| smile.""_)
|
| [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Bilderberg_Conference
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > True to form, these articles also work hard at planting the
| idea that Sam Altman created OpenAI, when in fact he joined
| rather recently, in a business role. Are these articles being
| planted somehow? I find it very likely. Don't forget that this
| approach is also straight out of the YC playbook, disclosed in
| great detail by Paul Graham in previous writings [3].
|
| Is this true? I've been working in the industry for a while and
| Sam Altman has long been mentioned in reference to OpenAI along
| with Ilya.
|
| I agree with the crux of your comment that everyone is
| scrambling to build narratives, but I think I would also put
| your comment "AI is busy cozying up with The Establishment" as
| just another narrative (and one that we saw in this hearing
| from people like Hawley).
| itronitron wrote:
| I'm willing to follow dang if they decide to ditch HN and
| reboot it someplace separate from YC.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Appreciate the references you provide in this comment.
| yyyk wrote:
| >The mainstream media cartel is pumping Sam Altman hard for
| some reason.
|
| The media likes to personalize stories. Altman is a face for AI
| and apparently knows to give an interview, that's worth
| something to them. (Lobbying may well be an influence, but the
| most important thing to them is to have a face, just like
| Zuckerman was a face for social networks. If it wasn't Altman
| it would have eventually been someone else).
| huggingmouth wrote:
| I'm not in the US and I fully support Sam Altmans attempt to
| cripple the US's ability to compete with other countries in this
| field.
| martin_drapeau wrote:
| Isn't it too late? Isn't the cat out of the bag?
| https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-ne...
|
| Meaning anyone could eventually reproduce a Chat GPT4 and beyond.
| And eventually it can run outside of a large data center.
|
| So... how will you tell its an AI vs a human doing you wrong?
|
| Seems to me if the AI breaks the law, find out who's driving it
| and prosecute them.
| fraXis wrote:
| Live now as of 8:49 AM (PDT):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ACcQxJIsg
| consumer451 wrote:
| The fact that Altman said many decisions were made based on the
| understanding that children will use the product was
| enlightening.
| zamalek wrote:
| Trying to build that moat by the looks of it.
| Mobius01 wrote:
| I apologize that I can't read all threads and responses, but this
| sounds like Altman and OpenAI have realized they have a viable
| path to capture most of the AI market value and now they're
| pulling the ladder behind them.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I did not expect this. Does Sam have any plans on what this could
| look like?
| adastra22 wrote:
| An exorbitantly large moat.
| intelVISA wrote:
| And a portcullis of no less than 48B params.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sam is a crook
| gumballindie wrote:
| Essentially. He is marching on these bad scifi scenarios
| because he knows politicians are old and senile while a good
| portion of voters is gullible. I find it difficult to believe
| that grown ups are talking about an ai running amok in the
| context of a chatbot. Have we really become that dense as a
| society?
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| No one thinks a chatbot will run amok. What people are
| worried about is the pace of progress being so fast that we
| cannot preempt the creation of dangerous technology without
| having a sufficient guardrails in place long before the AI
| becomes potentially dangerous. This is eminently
| reasonable.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Yes, thank you. AI is dangerous, but not for the sci-fi
| reasons, just for completely cynical and greedy ones.
|
| Entire industries stand to be gutted, and people's
| careers destroyed. Even if an AI is only 80% as good, it
| has <1% of the cost, which is an ROI that no corporation
| can afford to ignore.
|
| That's not even to mention the political implications of
| photo and audio deepfakes that are getting better and
| better by the week. Most of the obvious tells we were
| laughing at months ago are gone.
|
| And before anyone makes the comparison, I would like to
| remind everyone that the stereotypical depiction of
| Luddites as small-minded anti-technology idiots is a lie.
| They embraced new technology, just not how it was used.
| Their actual complaints - that skilled workers would be
| displaced, that wealth and power would be concentrated in
| a small number of machine owners, and that overall
| quality of goods would decrease - have all come to pass.
|
| In a time of unprecedented wealth disparity, general
| global democratic backsliding, and near universal unease
| at the near-unstoppable power of a small number of
| corporations, we _really_ do not want to go through
| another cycle of wealth consolidation. This is how we get
| corporate feifdoms.
|
| There is another path - if our ability to live and
| flourish wasn't directly tied to our individual economic
| output. But nobody wants to have _that_ conversation.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I fear the world where 90% of
| people are irrelevant to the economic output of the
| world. Our culture takes it as axiomatic that more
| efficiency is good. But its not clear to me that it is.
| The principle goal of society should be the betterment of
| the lives of people. Yes, efficiency has historically
| been a driver of widespread prosperity, but it's not
| obvious that there isn't a local maximum past which
| increased efficiency harms the average person. We may
| already be on the other side of the critical point. What
| I don't get is why we're all just blindly barreling
| forward and allowing trillion dollar companies to engage
| in an arms race to see how fast they can absorb
| productive work. The fact that few people are considering
| what society looks like in a future with widespread AI
| and whether this is a future we want is baffling.
| iavael wrote:
| This won't be the first time. First world already had
| same situation during industrialisation, when economic no
| longer required 90% of population growing food. And this
| transformation still regularly happens in one or another
| third world country. People worry about such changes too
| much. When this will happen again it wouldn't be a walk
| in a park for many people, but neigher this would be a
| disaster.
|
| And BTW when people spend less resources to get more
| goods and services - that's the definition of prospering
| society. Of course having some people changing jobs
| because less manpower is needed to do same amount of work
| is an inevitable consequence of a progress.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Historically, efficiency increases from technology were
| driven by innovation from narrow technology or mechanisms
| that brought a decrease in the costs of transactions.
| This saw an explosion of the space of viable economic
| activity and with it new classes of jobs and a widespread
| growth in prosperity. Productivity and wages largely
| remained coupled up until recent decades. Modern
| automation has seen productivity and wages begin to
| decouple. Decoupling will only accelerate as the use of
| AI proliferates.
|
| This time is different because AI has the potential to
| have a similar impact on efficiency across all work. In
| the past, efficiency gains created totally new spaces of
| economic activity in which the innovation could not
| further impact. But AI is a ubiquitous force multiplier,
| there is no productive human activity that AI can't
| disrupt. There is no analogous new space of economic
| activity that humanity as a whole can move to in order to
| stay relevant to the world's economic activity.
| reverius42 wrote:
| If humans are irrelevant to the world's "economic
| activity", then that economic activity should be
| irrelevant to humans.
|
| We should make sure that the technology to eliminate
| scarcity is evenly distributed so that nobody is left
| poor in a world of exponentially and automatically
| increasing riches.
| gumballindie wrote:
| AI is software, it doesnt become it is made. And this
| type of legislation wont prevent bad actors from training
| malicious tools.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Your claim is assuming we have complete knowledge of how
| these systems work and thus are in full control of their
| behavior in any and all contexts. But this is plainly
| false. We do not have anywhere near a complete
| mechanistic understanding of how they operate. But this
| isn't that unusual, many technological advancements
| happened before the theory. For AI systems that can act
| in the real world, this state of affairs has the
| potential to be very dangerous. It is important to get
| ahead of this danger rather than play catch up once the
| danger is demonstrated.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The real danger right now is people like sam altman
| making policy and an eager political class that will be
| long dead by the time we have to foot the bill.
| Everything else is bad scifi. We were told the same about
| computer viruses and how they can bring nuclear wars and
| as usual the only real danger was humans and bad
| politics.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I need to make a montage of the thousands of hacker news
| commenters typing "The REAL danger of AI is ..." followed
| by some mundane issue.
|
| I'm sorry to pick on you, but do people not get that the
| non-human intelligence has the potential to be such a
| powerful and dangerous thing that, yes, _it is the real
| danger_? If you think it 's not going to be powerful, or
| not dangerous, please say why! Not that current models
| are not dangerous, but why the trend is toward something
| other than machine intelligence that can reason about the
| world better than humans can. Why is this trend of
| machines getting smarter and smarter going to suddenly
| stop?
|
| Or if you agree that these machines _are_ going to get
| smarter than us, how are we going to control them?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Interesting. I am of the opinion that ai is not
| intelligent hence i dont see much point in entertaining
| the various scenarios deriving from that possibility.
| There is nothing dangerous in current ai models or ai
| itself other than the people controlling it. If it were
| intelligent then yeah maybe but we are not there yet and
| unless we adapt the meaning of agi to fit a marketing
| narrative we wont be there anytime soon.
|
| But if it were intelligent and the conclusion it reaches,
| once it's done ingesting all our knowledge, is that it
| should be done with us then we probably deserve it.
|
| I mean what kind of a species takes joy in "freeing" up
| people and causing mass unemployment, starts wars over
| petty issues, allows for famine and thrives on the
| exploitation of others while standing on piles of nuclear
| bombs. Also we are literally destroying the planet and
| constantly looking for ways to dominate each other.
|
| We probably deserve a good spanking.
| jwiley wrote:
| Turing police?
| https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Turing_Police
| RichardCA wrote:
| They will chase after civilians for running unlicensed AI as a
| way to distract attention from the real threats by state-level
| actors.
|
| So less Neuromancer and more Ghost in the Shell.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| Sam Altman needs to step down.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| "Hello Congress, I have a lot of money invested in $BUSINESS and
| I don't want just anyone to be able to make $TECHNOLOGY because
| it might threaten my $BUSINESS.
|
| Please make it harder for people other than myself (and
| especially people doing it for free and giving it away for free)
| to make $TECHNOLOGY. Thanks"
| kashyapc wrote:
| This is besides the main point, I _really_ wish "Open AI"
| renamed themselves to "Opaque AI" or something else.
|
| Their twisted use of the term "open" is a continued disrespect to
| all those people who are tirelessly working in the _true_ spirit
| of open source.
| thelittleone wrote:
| This feels like theater. Make society fear AI, requiring
| regulation, so central power controls access to it. I think Osho
| put it nicely:
|
| "No society wants you to become wise: it is against the
| investment of all societies. If people are wise they cannot be
| exploited. If they are intelligent they cannot be subjugated,
| they cannot be forced in a mechanical life, to live like robots."
| cheald wrote:
| I agree. Every talk on "AI safety" I've heard given has
| essentially been some form of "we can be trusted with this
| power, but someone else might not be, so we should add
| regulations to ensure that we're the only ones with this
| power". Examples like "ChatGPT can tell you how to make nerve
| gas, we can't let people have this tool" seem somewhat hollow
| given that the detailed chemistry to make Sarin is available on
| Wikipedia and could be executed by a decently bright high
| schooler.
|
| "Alignment" is a euphemism for "agrees with me", and building
| uber-AI systems which become heavily depended on and are
| protected from competition by regulation, and which are aligned
| with a select few - who may well not be aligned with me - is a
| quick path to hell, IMO.
| thelittleone wrote:
| It's very Lord of the Rings.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| So... he wants the government to enforce a monopoly? Um...
| rvz wrote:
| We all predictably knew that AI regulations were coming and
| OpenAI.com's moat was getting erased very quickly by open source
| AI models. So what does OpenAI.com do?
|
| Runs to congress to attempt to use and suggest new regulations
| against open source AI models to wipe them out and brand them
| non-compliant or un-licensed and unsafe for general use and using
| AI safety as a scapegoat again.
|
| After that, to secretly push a pseudo-open source AI model that
| is compliant but limited compared to the closed models in an
| attempt to eliminate the majority of open source AI companies who
| can't get such licenses.
|
| So a clever tactic to create new regulations that benefit them
| (OpenAI.com) more over everyone else, meaning less transparency,
| more hurdles for actual open AI research and additional
| bureaucracy. Also don't forget that Altman is also selling his
| Worldcoin dystopian crypto snake oil project as the 'antidote' to
| verify against everything getting faked by AI. [0] He his hedged
| in either way.
|
| So congratulations to everyone here for supporting these
| gangsters at OpenAI.com for pushing for regulatory capture.
|
| [0] https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-
| age-...
| gumballindie wrote:
| Everything around openai reeks of criminal enterprise and scam,
| almost as if someone high in that company has crypto currency
| experience. While there's no law being broken it sure looks
| like it.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| At some point Sam has started give me E. Holmes vibes and I
| really don't like it. There's a level of
| odd/ridiculous/hilarious/stupid AI hype that he feels so
| comfortable leaning into that part of me starts to begin to
| suspect that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Forget the words and look at where the money is: regulatory
| capture, which they're racing toward
| sinemetu11 wrote:
| They reached a wall, and need to ensure others have a more
| difficult path to the same place.
| denverllc wrote:
| I don't think Sam read the Google memo and realized they needed a
| moat -- I think they've been trying this for some time.
|
| Here's their planned proposal for government regulation; they
| discuss not just limiting access to models but also to datasets,
| and possibly even chips.
|
| This seems particularly relevant, on the discussion of industry
| standards, regulation, and limiting access:
|
| "Despite these limitations, strong industry norms--including
| norms enforced by industry standards or government regulation--
| could still make widespread adoption of strong access
| restrictions possible. As long as there is a significant gap
| between the most capable open-source model and the most capable
| API-controlled model, the imposition of monitoring controls can
| deny hostile actors some financial benefit.166 Cohere, OpenAI,
| and AI21 have already collaborated to begin articulating norms
| around access to large language models, but it remains too early
| to tell how widely adopted, durable, and forceful these
| guidelines will prove to be.
|
| Finally, there may be alternatives to APIs as a method for AI
| developers to provide restricted access. For example, some work
| has proposed imposing controls on who can use models by only
| allowing them to work on specialized hardware--a method that may
| help with both access control and attribution.168 Another strand
| of work is around the design of licenses for model use.169
| Further exploration of how to provide restricted access is likely
| valuable."
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.04246.pdf
| precompute wrote:
| It's easy: you gotta buy the NoSurveillanceHere(tm) thin client
| to use their LLM models, which are mandated in knowledge work
| now. And they're collecting data about your usage, don't worry,
| it all comes back to you because it helps improve the model!
| elil17 wrote:
| This is the message I shared with my senator (edited to remove
| information which could identify me). I hope others will send
| similar messages.
|
| Dear Senator [X],
|
| I am an engineer working for [major employer in the state]. I am
| extremely concerned about the message that Sam Altman is sharing
| with the Judiciary committee today.
|
| Altman wants to create regulatory roadblocks to developing AI. My
| company produces AI-enabled products. If these roadblocks had
| been in place two years ago, my company would not have been able
| to invest into AI. Now, because we had the freedom to innovate,
| AI will be bringing new, high paying jobs to our factories in our
| state.
|
| While AI regulation is important, it is crucial that there are no
| roadblocks stopping companies and individuals from even trying to
| build AIs. Rather, regulation should focus on ensuring the safety
| of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use - this
| would allow companies and individuals to research new AIs freely
| while still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed.
|
| Altman and his ilk try to claim that aggressive regulation (which
| will only serve to give them a monopoly over AI) is necessary
| because an AI could hack it's way out of a laboratory. Yet, they
| cannot explain how an AI would accomplish this in practice. I
| hope you will push back against anyone who fear-mongers about
| sci-fi inspired AI scenarios.
|
| Congress should focus on the real impacts that AI will have on
| employment. Congress should also consider the realistic risks AI
| which poses to the public, such as risks from the use of AI to
| control national infrastructure (e.g., the electric grid) or to
| make healthcare decisions.
|
| Thank you, [My name]
| rlytho wrote:
| So you sent a letter saying "Mr Congress save my job that is
| putting others jobs at risk."
|
| You think voice actors and writers are not saying the same?
|
| When do we accept capitalism as we know it is just a bullshit
| hallucination we grew up with? It's no more an immutable
| feature of reality than a religion?
|
| I don't owe propping up some rich person's figurative identity,
| or yours for that matter.
| brookst wrote:
| What specific ideas has Altman proposed that you disagree with?
| And where has he said AI could hack its way out of a
| laboratory?
|
| I agree with being skeptical of proposals from those with
| vested interests, but are you just arguing against what you
| imagine Altman will say, or did I miss some important news?
| kubota wrote:
| You lost me at "While AI regulation is important" - nope,
| congress does not need to regulate AI.
| haswell wrote:
| I'd argue that sweeping categorical statements like this are
| at the center of the problem.
|
| People are coalescing into "for" and "against" camps, which
| makes very little sense given the broad spectrum of
| technologies and problems summarized in statements like "AI
| regulation".
|
| I think it's a bit like saying "software (should|shouldn't)
| be regulated". It's a position that cannot be defended
| because the term software is too broad.
| runarberg wrote:
| If AI is to be a consumer good--which it already is--it needs
| to be regulated, at the very least to ensure equal quality to
| a diverse set of customers and other users. Unregulated there
| is high risk of people being affected by e.g. employers and
| landlords using AI to discriminate. Or you being sold an AI
| solution which isn't as advertised.
|
| If AI will be used by public institutions, especially law
| enforcement, we need it regulated in the same manner. A bad
| AI trained on biased data has the potential to be extremely
| dangerous in the hands of a cop who is already predisposed
| for racist behavior.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| "important" does not mean "good." if you are in the field of
| AI, AI regulation is absolutely important, whether good or
| bad.
| silveraxe93 wrote:
| They might have lost you. But starting with "congress
| shouldn't regulate AI" would lose the senator.
|
| Which one do you think is more important to convince?
| polski-g wrote:
| "Congress cannot regulate AI"
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-
| estab...
| wnevets wrote:
| > nope, congress does not need to regulate AI.
|
| Not regulating the air quality we breathe for decades turned
| out amazing for millions of the Americas. Yes, lets do the
| same with AI! What could possibility go wrong?
| pizza wrote:
| I think this is a great argument in the opposite
| direction.. atoms matter, information isn't. A small group
| of people subjugated many others to poisonous matter. That
| matter affected their bodies and a causal link could be
| made.
|
| Even if you really believe that somewhere in the chain of
| consequences derived from LLMs there could be grave and
| material damage or other affronts to human dignity, there
| is almost always a more direct causal link that acts as the
| thing which makes that damage kinetic and physical. And
| that's the proper locus for regulation. Otherwise this is
| all just a bit reminiscent of banning numbers and research
| into numbers.
|
| Want to protect people's employment? Just do that! Enshrine
| it in law. Want to improve the safety of critical
| infrastructure and make sure they're reliable? Again, just
| do that! Want to prevent mass surveillance? Do that! Want
| to protect against a lack of oversight in complex systems
| allowing for subterfuge via bad actors? Well, make
| regulation about proper standards of oversight and human
| accountability. AI doesn't obviate human responsibility,
| and a lack of responsibility on the part of humans who
| should've been responsible, and who instead cut corners,
| doesn't mean that the blame falls on the tool that cut the
| corners, but rather the corner-cutters themselves.
| ptsneves wrote:
| You ended up providing examples that have no matter or
| atoms: protecting jobs, or oversight of complex systems.
|
| These are policies which are a purely imaginary. Only
| when they get implemented into human law do they get a
| grain of substance but still imaginary. Failure to comply
| can be kinetic but that is a contingency not the object
| (matter :D).
|
| Personally I find good ideas on having regulations on
| privacy, intelectual property, filming people on my
| house's bathroom, NDAs etc. These subjects are central to
| the way society works today. At least western society
| would be severely affected if these subjects were
| suddenly a free for all.
|
| I am not convinced we need such regulation for Ai at this
| point of technology readiness but if social implications
| create unacceptable unbalances we can start by regulating
| in detail. If detailed caveats still do not work then
| broader law can come. Which leads to my own theory:
|
| All this turbulence about regulation reflects a mismatch
| between technological, politic and legal knowledge. Tech
| people don't know law nor how it flows from policy.
| Politicians do not know the tech and have not seen its
| impacts on society. Naturally there is a pressure
| gradient from both sides that generates turbulence. The
| pressure gradient is high because the stakes are high:
| for techs the killing of a new forthcoming field; for
| politicians because they do not want a big majority of
| their constituency rendered useless.
|
| Final point: if one sees AI as a means of production
| which can be monopolised by few capital rich we may see a
| 19th century inequality remake. It created one of the
| most powerful ideologies know: Communism.
| hkt wrote:
| > atoms matter, information isn't
|
| Algorithmic discrimination already exists, so um, yes,
| information matters.
|
| Add to that the fact that you're posting on a largely
| American forum where access to healthcare is largely
| predicated on insurance, just.. imagine AI underwriters.
| There's no court of appeal for insurance. It matters.
| johnnyjeans wrote:
| > Add to that the fact that you're posting on a largely
| American forum where access to healthcare is largely
| predicated on insurance
|
| Why do so many Americans think universal health care
| means there is no private insurance? In most countries,
| insurance is compulsory and tightly regulated. Some like
| the Netherlands and France have public insurance offered
| by the government. In other places like Germany, your
| options are all private, but underprivileged people have
| access to government subsidies for insurance (Americans
| do too, to be fair). Get sick in one of these places as
| an American, you will be handed a bill and it will still
| make your head spin. Most places in Europe work like
| this. Of course, even in places with nationalized
| healthcare like the UK, non-residents would still have to
| pay. What makes Germany and NL and most other European
| countries different from that system is if you're a
| resident without an insurance policy, you will also have
| to pay a hefty fine. You are basically auto-enrolled in
| an invisible "NHS" insurance system as a UK resident. Of
| course, most who can afford it in the UK still pay for
| private insurance. The public stuff blends being not
| quite good with generally poor availability.
|
| Americans are actually pretty close to Germany with their
| healthcare. What makes the US system shitty can be boiled
| down to two main factors:
|
| - Healthcare networks (and state incorporation laws)
| making insurance basically useless outside of a small
| collection of doctors and hospitals, and especially your
| state
|
| - Very little regulation on insurance companies,
| pharmaceutical companies or healthcare providers in
| price-setting
|
| The latter is especially bad. My experience with American
| health insurance has been that I pay more for much less.
| $300/month premiums and still even _seeing_ a bill is
| outrageous. AI underwriters won 't fix this, yeah, but
| they aren't going to make it any worse because the
| problem is in the legislative system.
|
| > There's no court of appeal for insurance.
|
| No, but you can of course always sue your insurance
| company for breach of contract if they're wrongfully
| withholding payment. AI doesn't change this, but AI can
| make this a viable option for small people by acting as a
| lawyer. Well, in an ideal world anyways. The bar
| association cartels have been very quick to raise their
| hackles and hiss at the prospect of AI lawyers. Not that
| they'll do anything to stop AI from replacing most duties
| of a paralegal of course. Can't have the average person
| wielding the power of virtually free, world class legal
| services.
| pizza wrote:
| I am literally agreeing with you but in a much more
| precise way. These are questions of "who gets what
| stuff", "who gets which house", "who gets which heart
| transplant", "which human being sits in the big chair at
| which corporation", "which file on which server that's
| part of the SWIFT network reports that you own how much
| money", "which wannabe operator decides their department
| needs to purchase which fascist predictive policing
| software", etc.
|
| Imagine I 1. hooked up a camera feed of a lava lamp to
| generate some bits and then 2. hooked up the US nuclear
| first strike network to it. I would be an idiot, but
| would I be an idiot because of 1. or 2.?
|
| Basically I think it's totally reasonable to hold these
| two beliefs: 1. there is no reason to fear the LLM 2.
| there is every reason to fear the LLM in the hands of
| those who refuse to think about their actions and the
| burdens they may impose on others, probably because they
| will justify the means through some kind of wishy washy
| appeal to bad probability theory.
|
| The -plogp that you use to judge the sense of some
| predicted action you take is just a model, it's just
| numbers in RAM. Only when those numbers are converted
| into destructive social decisions does it convert into
| something of consequence.
|
| I agree that society is beginning to design all kinds of
| ornate algorithmic beating sticks to use against the
| people. The blame lies with the ones choosing to read tea
| leaves and then using the tea leaves to justify
| application of whatever Kafkaesque policies they design.
| DirkH wrote:
| Your argument could just as easily be applied to human
| cloning and argue for why human cloning and genetic
| engineering for specific desirable traits should not be
| illegal.
|
| And it isn't a strong argument for the same reason that
| it isn't a good argument when used to argue we should
| allow human cloning and just focus on regulating the more
| direct causal links like non-clone employment loss from
| mass produced hyper-intelligent clones, and ensuring they
| have legal rights, and having proper oversight and non-
| clone human accountability.
|
| Maybe those things could all make ethical human cloning
| viable. But I think the world coming together and being
| like "holy shit this is happening too fast. Our
| institutions aren't ready at all nor will they adapt fast
| enough. Global ban" was the right call.
|
| It is not impossible that a similar call is also
| appropriate here with AI. I personally dunno what the
| right call is, but I'm pretty skeptical of any strong
| claim that it could never be the right call to outright
| ban some forms of advanced AI research just like we did
| with some forms of advanced genetic engineering research.
|
| This isn't like banning numbers at all. The blame falling
| on the corner-cutters doesn't mean the right call is
| always to just tell the blamed not to cut corners. In
| _some_ cases the right call is instead taking away their
| corner-cutting tool.
|
| At least until our institutions can catch up.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Lets not focus on "the business" and instead focus on the
| safety.
|
| Altman can an ulterior motive, but it doesn't mean that we
| should strive for having some sort of handle on AI safety.
|
| It could be that Altman and OpenAI know exactly how this will
| look and the backlash that will ensue that we get ZERO
| oversight and we rush headlong into doom.
|
| Short term we need to focus on the structural unemployment that
| is about to hit us. As the AI labs use AI to make better AI, it
| will eat all the jobs until we have a relative handful of AI
| whisperers.
| stevespang wrote:
| [dead]
| simonh wrote:
| > ..is necessary because an AI could hack it's way out of a
| laboratory. Yet, they cannot explain how an AI would accomplish
| this in practice.
|
| I'm sympathetic to your position in general, but I can't
| believe you wrote that with a straight face. "I don't know how
| it would do it, therefore we should completely ignore the risk
| that it could be done."
|
| I'm no security expert, but I've been following the field
| incidentally and dabbling since writing login prompt simulators
| for the Prime terminals at college to harvest user account
| passwords. When I was a Unix admin I used to have fun figuring
| out how to hack my own systems. Security is unbelievably hard.
| An AI eventually jail braking is an eventual almost certainty
| we need to prepare for.
| lettergram wrote:
| I made something just for writing your congress person /
| senator, using generative AI ironically:
| https://vocalvoters.com/
| samsolomon wrote:
| Cool product! Your pay button appears to be disabled though.
| lettergram wrote:
| Should enable once you add valid info -- if not, let me
| know
| blibble wrote:
| AI generated persuasion is pretty much what they're upset
| about
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Can you please share what ChatGPT prompt you used to generate
| this letter template?
| elil17 wrote:
| I used this old-fashioned method of text generation called
| "writing" - crazy, I know
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| [flagged]
| 0ct4via wrote:
| Pretty ignorant, pathetic, and asinine comment to make -- no
| wonder you're making it on a throwaway, coward ;)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Quite. Meanwhile on the rest of the internet people are
| gleefully promoting AI as a means of firing every single
| person who writes words for a living. Or draws art.
| dmix wrote:
| GPT is so far from threatening "every single person who
| writes words for a living" anyway. Unless you're writing
| generic SEO filler content. Not sure who is claiming that
| but they don't understand how it works if they do exist at
| scale.
|
| Writing has always been a low paid shrinking job well
| before AI. Besides a tiny group of writers at the big
| firms. I took a journalism course for fun at UofT in my
| spare time and the professors had nothing but horror
| stories for trying to make a job out of writing (ie getting
| a NYT bestseller and getting $1 cheques in the mail). They
| basically told the students to only do it as a hobby unless
| you have some engaged niche audience. Which is more about
| the writer being interesting rather than the generic
| writing process.
| 0ct4via wrote:
| You say that... then we encounter cases like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919753
|
| While AI isn't going to put anyone out of a job
| immediately (like automation didn't), there are
| legitimate risks already in that regard -- in both
| fiction and nonfiction sites, folk are experimenting with
| having AI basically write stories/pieces for them -- and
| the results are often good enough to have potentially put
| someone out of the job of writing a piece in the first
| place.
| elil17 wrote:
| I mean, it will? Not universally, but for the specific
| products I work on we use additional labor when we include
| AI-enabled features (due to installing and wiring processors
| and sensors).
|
| I think that that the sorts of AI that smaller companies make
| will be more likely to create jobs as opposed to getting rid
| of them since they are more likely to be integrated with
| physical products.
| vsareto wrote:
| >I mean, it will?
|
| It's complicated obviously, but I think "will create jobs"
| just leaves a lot of subtlety out of it, so I've never
| believed it when representatives say it and I wouldn't say
| it myself writing to them, but a small letter to a
| representative always will lack that fidelity.
|
| I don't think anyone can guarantee that there won't be job
| loss with AI, so it's possible we could have a net negative
| (in total jobs, quality of jobs, or any dimension).
|
| What we do see is companies shedding jobs on a (what seems
| like perpetual) edge of a recession/depression, so it might
| be worth regulating in the short term.
| elil17 wrote:
| I agree I didn't make this clear enough in my letter. I
| do think AI will cause job loss, I just think it will be
| worse if a few companies are allowed to have a monopoly
| on AI. If anyone can work on AI, hopefully people can
| make things for themselves/create AI in a way that
| retains some jobs.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| You can "create a lot of jobs" by banning the wheel on
| construction sites. Or power tools. Or electricity.
| circuit10 wrote:
| The worries about AI taking over things are founded and
| important, even if many sci-go depictions of it are inaccurate.
| I'm not sure if this would be the best solution but please
| don't dismiss the issue entirely
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Seriously, I'm very concerned by the view being taken here.
| AI has the capacity to do a ton of harm very quickly. A
| couple of examples:
|
| - Scamming via impersonation - Misinformation - Usage of AI
| in a way that could have serious legal ramifications for
| incorrect responses - Severe economic displacement
|
| Congress can and should examine these issues. Just because OP
| works at an AI doesnt' mean that company can't exist in a
| regulated industry.
|
| I too work in the AI space and welcome thoughtful regulation.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Congress can and should examine these issues
|
| great, how does that apply to China or Europe in general?
| Or a group in Russia or somewhere else? Are you assuming
| every governing body on the surface of the earth is going
| to agree on the terms used to regulate AI? I think it's a
| fool's errand.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's
| computer can run. We've been through this song and dance
| with cryptography. Trying to keep it out of the hands of
| bad actors will be a waste of time, effort, and money.
|
| These resources should be spent lessening the impact rather
| than trying to completely control it.
| staunton wrote:
| > You're never going to be able to regulate what a
| person's computer can run.
|
| You absolutely can. Maybe you can't effectively enforce
| that regulation but you can regulate and you can take
| measures that make violating the regulation impractical
| or risky for most people. By the way, the "crypto-wars"
| never ended and are ongoing all around the world (UK, EU,
| India, US...)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I fear the humans engaging in such nefarious activities far
| more than some blob of code being used by humans engaging
| in such nefarious activities.
|
| Likewise for activities that aren't nefarious too. Whatever
| fears that could be placed on blobs of code like "AI", are
| far more merited being placed on humans.
| circuit10 wrote:
| *sci-fi but I can't edit it now
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Altman and his ilk_
|
| IANA senator, but if I were you lost me there. The personal
| insults make it seem petty and completely overshadow the
| otherwise professional-sounding message.
| elil17 wrote:
| I don't mean it as a personal insult at all! The word ilk
| actually means "a type of people or things similar to those
| already referred to," it is not an insult or rude word.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Don't fret too much. I once wrote to my senator about their
| desire to implement an unconstitutional wealth tax and told
| them that if they wanted to fuck someone so badly they
| should kill themself so they could go blow Jesus, and I
| still got a response back.
| freedomben wrote:
| TIL! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk
|
| still, there are probably a lot of people like me who have
| heard it used (incorrectly it seems) as an insult so many
| times that it's an automatic response :-(
| DANmode wrote:
| Tone, intended or otherwise, _is_ a pretty important part
| of communication!
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| There is this idea that the shape of a word, how it makes
| your mouth and face move when you say it connotes meaning
| on its own. This is called "phonosemantics", just saying
| "ilk" makes one feel like they are flinging off some
| sticky aggressive slime.
|
| Ilk almost always has a negative connotation regardless
| of what the dictionary says.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Don't worry, you're not a senator.
|
| And, if there's one thing politicians are _know for_ it
| 's got to be _ad hominem_.
| mitch3x3 wrote:
| It's always used derogatorily. I agree that you should
| change it if you don't mean for it to come across that way.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I'm mean, at this point I'm going to argue that it you
| believe _ilk_ is only ever used derogatorily, you 're
| only reading and hearing people who have axes to grind.
|
| I probably live quite distally to you and am probably
| exposed to parts of western culture you probably aren't,
| and I almost never hear nor read _ilk_ as a derogation or
| used to associate in a derogatory manner.
| elil17 wrote:
| That's simply untrue. Here are several recently published
| articles which use ilk in a neutral or positive context:
|
| https://www.telecomtv.com/content/digital-platforms-
| services...
|
| https://writingillini.com/2023/05/16/illinois-basketball-
| ill...
|
| https://www.jpost.com/j-spot/article-742911
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Doesn't matter. It won't be well received. It sounds
| negative to most readers and being technically correct
| warns you no points.
| elil17 wrote:
| Well I don't think it really matters what most readers
| think of it because I was writing it hoping that it would
| be read by congressional staffers, who I think will know
| what ilk means.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| It's also possible you could be wrong about something,
| and maybe people are trying to help you.
| dustyleary wrote:
| It is technically true that ilk is not _always_ used
| derogatorily. But it is almost always derogatory in
| modern connotation.
|
| https://grammarist.com/words/ilk/#:~:text=It's%20neutral.
| ,a%....
|
| Also, note that _all_ of the negative examples are
| politics related. If a politician reads the word 'ilk',
| it is going to be interpreted negatively. It might be the
| case that ilk _does_ "always mean" a negative connotation
| in politics.
|
| You could change 'ilk' to 'friends', and keep the same
| meaning with very little negative connotation. There is
| still a slight negative connotation here, in the
| political arena, but it's a very vague shade, and I like
| it here.
|
| "Altman and his ilk try to claim that..." is a negative
| phrase because "ilk" is negative, but also because "try
| to claim" is invalidating and dismissive. So this has
| elements or notes of an emotional attack, rather than a
| purely rational argument. If someone is already leaning
| towards Altman's side, then this will feel like an attack
| and like you are the enemy.
|
| "Altman claims that..." removes all connotation and
| sticks to just the facts.
| elil17 wrote:
| Well even if ilk had a negative connotation for my
| intended audience (which clearly it does to some people),
| I am actually trying to invalidate and dismiss Altman's
| arguments.
| dustyleary wrote:
| When someone is arguing from a position of strength, they
| don't need to resort to petty jibes.
|
| You are already arguing from a position of strength.
|
| When you add petty jibes, it weakens your perceived
| position, because it suggests that you think you need
| them, rather than relying solely on your argument.
|
| (As a corollary, you should never use petty jibes. When
| you feel like you need to, shore up your argument
| instead.)
| elil17 wrote:
| Well I didn't intend it as a "petty jibe," but in general
| I disagree. Evocative language and solid arguments can
| and do coexist.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| Remember: you are doing propaganda. Feelings don't care
| about your facts.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not true.
| [deleted]
| happytiger wrote:
| I'd argue that you're right that there's nothing
| intrinsically disparaging about ilk as a word, but in
| contemporary usage it does seem to have become quite
| negative. I know the dictionary doesn't say it, but in my
| discussions it seems to have shifted towards the
| negative.
|
| Consider this: "Firefighters and their ilk." It's not a
| word that nicely described a group, even though that's
| what it's supposed to do. I think the language has moved
| to where we just say Firefighters now when it's positive,
| and ilk or et al when it's a negative connotation.
|
| Just my experience.
| logdap wrote:
| [dead]
| to11mtm wrote:
| reducto ad nounium is a poor argument.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Ilk is shorthand for similarity, nothing more. The 'personal
| insult' is a misunderstanding on your part.
| catiopatio wrote:
| "ilk" has acquired a negative connotation in its modern
| usage.
|
| See also https://grammarist.com/words/ilk/#:~:text=It's%20n
| eutral.,a%....
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is too subjective to be useful.
| kerowak wrote:
| language is subjective
| shagie wrote:
| I would be curious to see an example of 'ilk' being used
| in a modern, non-sottish local, context where the
| association is being shown in a neutral or positive
| light.
|
| I'll give you one: National Public Lands Day: Let's Help
| Elk ... and Their Ilk -
| https://pressroom.toyota.com/npld-2016-elk/ (it's a play
| on words)
| brookst wrote:
| "Ilk" definitely has a negative or dismissive connotation,
| at least in the US. You would never use it to express
| positive thoughts; you would use "stature" or similar.
|
| The denotation may not be negative, but if you use ilk in
| what you see as a neutral way, people will get a different
| message than you're trying to send.
| johnalbertearle wrote:
| I'm not American even, so I cannot, but what a good idea! I
| hope the various senators hear this message.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once
| they are ready to be put into widespread use_
|
| What would you say to a simple registration requirement? You
| give a point of contact and a description of training data,
| model, and perhaps intended use (could be binary: civilian or
| dual use). One page, publicly visible.
|
| This gives groundwork for future rulemaking and oversight if
| necessary.
| elil17 wrote:
| Personally I think a simple registration requirement would be
| a good idea, if it were truly simple and accessible to
| independent researchers.
| catiopatio wrote:
| [flagged]
| ygjb wrote:
| Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people.
|
| We know, we have watched this argument unfold in the United
| States over the last 100 years. It sure does seem like a
| few people are using guns to kill a lot of people.
|
| The point of regulating AI should be to explicitly require
| every single use of AI and machine learning to be clearly
| labelled so that when people seek remedy for the injustices
| that are already being perpetrated, that it is clearly
| understood that the people who chose to use not just ML or
| AI technology, but those specific models and training
| criteria can be held accountable if they should be.
|
| Regulation doesn't have to be a ban, or limits on how it
| can be used, it can simply be a requirement for clearly
| marked disclosure. It could also include clear regulations
| for lawful access to the underlying math, training data,
| and intended use cases, and with financially significant
| penalties for non-compliance to discourage companies from
| treating it as a cost of doing business.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| What are some examples of injustices that are already
| being perpetrated?
| ygjb wrote:
| I mean, it's in the headlines regularly, but sure, I'll
| google it for you. *
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/racial-bias-
| found... * https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-
| bias-risk-assessm... * https://www.theguardian.com/techno
| logy/2018/oct/10/amazon-hi...
|
| Three easy to find examples. There is no shortage of
| discussion of these issues, and they are not new. Bias in
| new technologies has been a long-standing issue, and
| garbage in, garbage out has been a well understood
| problem for generations.
|
| LLMs are pretty cool, and will enable a whole new set of
| tools. AI presents alot of opportunities, but the risks
| are significant, and I am not overly worried about a
| skynet or gray goo scenario. Before we worry about those,
| we need to worry about the bias being built into
| automated systems that will decide who gets bail, who
| gets social benefits, which communities get resources
| allocated, how our family, friends, and communities are
| targeted by businesses, etc.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Yet
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is the message I shared with my senator_
|
| If you sent it by e-mail or web contact form, chances are you
| wasted your time.
|
| If you really want attention, you'll send it as a real letter.
| People who take the time to actually send real mail are taken
| more seriously.
| jameshart wrote:
| > Now, because we had the freedom to innovate, AI will be
| bringing new, high paying jobs to our factories in our state.
|
| Do we really have to play this game?
|
| If what you're arguing for is not going to specifically
| advantage your state over others, and the thing you're arguing
| against isn't going to create an advantage for other states
| over yours, why make this about 'your state' in the first
| place?
|
| The point of elected representatives is to represent the views
| of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages for
| their constituents.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The point of elected representatives is to represent the
| views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages
| for their constituents.
|
| The views of their constituents are probably in favor of
| special advantages for their constituents, so the one may
| imply the other.
|
| I mean, some elected representatives may represent
| constituencies consisting primarily of altruistic angels, but
| that is...not the norm.
| amalcon wrote:
| > The point of elected representatives is to represent the
| views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages
| for their constituents.
|
| A lot of said constituents' views are, in practice, that they
| should receive special advantages.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > The point of elected representatives is to represent the
| views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages
| for their constituents.
|
| That is painfully naive, a history of pork projects speaks
| otherwise.
| hkt wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge this doesn't happen so much in
| more functional democracies. It seems to be more of an
| anglophone thing.
| titzer wrote:
| Corruption is a kind of decay that afflicts institutions.
| Explicit rules, transparency, checks and balances, and
| consequences for violating the rules are the only thing
| that can prevent, or diagnose, or treat corruption. Where
| you find corruption is where one or more of these things
| is lacking. It has absolutely nothing to do the _-acry_
| or _-ism_ attached to a society, institution, or group.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Corruption is a kind of decay that afflicts
| institutions.
|
| It can be, but often its often the project of a
| substantial subset of the people _creating_ institutions,
| so its misleading and romanticizing the past to view it
| as "decay".
| titzer wrote:
| I am no way suggesting that corruption is a new thing. It
| is an erosive force that has always operated throughout
| history. The amount of corruption in an institution tends
| to increase unless specifically rooted out. It goes up
| and down over time as institutions rise and fall or fade
| in obsolescence.
| Aperocky wrote:
| This is a product of incentives encouraged by the system
| (i.e. a federal republic), it has nothing to do with
| languages.
| hkt wrote:
| It has much to do with culture though - which is
| transmitted via language.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I think it's more like culture carries language with it.
| Along with other things, but language is one of the more
| recognizable ones.
| jameshart wrote:
| Seems like it's under-studied (due to anglophone bias in
| the English language political science world probably) -
| but comparative political science is a discipline, and
| this paper suggests it's a matter of single-member
| districts rather than the nature of the constitutional
| arrangement: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001
| 0414090022004004
|
| (I would just emphasize, before anyone complains, that
| the Federal Republic of Germany is very much a federal
| republic.)
| elil17 wrote:
| What I was thinking in my head (although I don't think I
| articulated this well) is that I hope that smaller businesses
| who build their own AIs will be able to create some jobs,
| even if AI as a whole will negatively impact employment (and
| I think that's going to happen even if just big businesses
| can play at the AI game).
| hackernewds wrote:
| Not to ignore, the development of AI will wipe out jobs in
| the state
| depingus wrote:
| What's the point of these letters? Everyone knows this is rent-
| seeking behavior by OpenAI, and they're going to pay off the
| right politicians to get it passed.
|
| Dear Senator [X],
|
| It's painfully obvious that Sam Altman's testimony before the
| judiciary committee is an attempt to set up rent-seeking
| conditions for OpenAI, and to snuff out competition from the
| flourishing open source AI community.
|
| We will be carefully monitoring your campaign finances for
| evidence of bribery.
|
| Hugs and Kiss,
|
| [My Name]
| verdverm wrote:
| If you want to influence the politicians without money, this
| is not the way.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| You are exactly correct.
|
| I have sent correspondence about ten times to my
| Congressmen and Senators. I have received a good reply
| (although often just saying there is nothing that they can
| do) except for the one time I contacted Jon Kyl and
| unfortunately mentioned data about his campaign donations
| from Monsanto - I was writing about a bill he sponsored
| that I thought would have made it difficult for small
| farmers to survive economically and make community gardens
| difficult because of regulations. No response on that
| correspondence.
| StillBored wrote:
| I'm 99% sure that that vast majority of federal congress
| people (which represent ~1 million people each) never see
| your emails/letters. Your largely speaking to interns/etc
| who work in the office unless you happen to make a
| physical appointment and show up in person.
|
| Those interns have a pile of form letters they send for
| about 99% of (e)mail they get, and if you happen to catch
| their attention you might get more than than the usual
| tick mark in a spreadsheet (for/against X). Which at best
| might be as much as a sentence or two in a weekly
| correspondence summary which may/may not be read by your
| representative depending on how seriously they take their
| job.
| verdverm wrote:
| It applies more generally, if you want to change anyone's
| mind, don't attack or belittle them.
|
| Everything has become so my team vs your team... you are
| bad because you think differently...
| rlytho wrote:
| The way is not emails some office assistant deletes when
| they do not align with the already chosen path forward they
| just need Cherry picked support to leverage to manufacture
| consent
| kweinber wrote:
| Did you watch the hearing? He specifically said that
| licensing wouldn't be for the smaller places and didn't want
| to impede their progress. The pitfalls of consolidation and
| regulatory capture also came up.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>He specifically said that licensing wouldn't be for the
| smaller places
|
| This is not a rebuttle to regulatory capture. it is in fact
| built into the model
|
| These "small companies" are feeder systems for the large
| company, it is a place for companies to raise to the level
| where they would come under the burden of regulations, and
| prevented from growing larger there by making them very
| easy to acquire by the large company.
|
| The small company has to sell or raise massive amounts of
| capital to just piss away on compliance cost. Most will
| just sell
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The genie is out of the bottle. The barriers to entry are
| too low, and the research can be done in parts of the
| word that don't give $0.02 what the US Congress thinks
| about it.
| enigmoid wrote:
| All the more reason to oppose regulation like this, since
| if it were in place the US would fall behind other
| countries without such regulation.
| abeppu wrote:
| > regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once
| they are ready to be put into widespread use - this would allow
| companies and individuals to research new AIs freely while
| still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed.
|
| While in general I share the view that _research_ should be
| unencumbered, but deployment should be regulated, I do take
| issue with your view that safety only matters once they are
| ready for "widespread use". A tool which is made available in a
| limited beta can still be harmful, misleading, or too-easily
| support irresponsible or malicious purposes, and in some cases
| the harms could be _enabled_ by the fact that the release is
| limited.
|
| For example, if next month you developed a model that could
| produce extremely high quality video clips from text and
| reference images, you did a small, gated beta release with no
| PR, and one of your beta testers immediately uses it to make
| e.g. highly realistic revenge porn. Because almost no one is
| aware of the stunning new quality of outputs produced by your
| model, most people don't believe the victim when they assert
| that the footage is fake.
|
| I would suggest that the first non-private (e.g. non-employee)
| release of a tool should make it subject to regulation. If I
| open a restaurant, on my first night I'm expected to be in
| compliance with basic health and safety regulations, no matter
| how few customers I have. If I design and sell a widget that
| does X, even for the first one I sell, my understanding is
| there's an concept of an implied requirement that my widgets
| must actually be "fit for purpose" for X; I cannot sell a "rain
| coat" made of gauze which offers no protection from rain, and I
| cannot sell a "smoke detector" which doesn't effectively detect
| smoke. Why should low-volume AI/ML products get a pass?
| elil17 wrote:
| I agree with you. I that's an excellent and specific proposal
| for how AI could be regulated. I think you should share this
| with your senators/representatives.
| nvegater wrote:
| I think by "widespread use" he means the reach of the AI
| System. Dangerous analogy but just to get the idea across: In
| the same way there is higher tax rates to higher incomes, you
| should increase regulations in relation to how many people
| could be potentially affected by the AI system. E.G a Startup
| with 10 daily users should not be in the same regulation
| bracket as google. If google deploys an AI it will reach
| Billions of people compared to 10. This would require a
| certain level of transparency from companies to get something
| like an "AI License type" which is pretty reasonable given
| the dangers of AI (the pragmatic ones not the DOOMsday ones)
| abeppu wrote:
| But the "reach" is _not_ just a function of how many users
| the company has, it's also what they do with it. If you
| have only one user who generates convincing misinformation
| that they share on social media, the reach may be large
| even if your user-base is tiny. Or your new voice-cloning
| model is used by a single user to make a large volume of
| fake hostage proof-of-life recordings. The problem, and the
| reason for guardrails (whether regulatory or otherwise), is
| that you don't know what your users will do with your new
| tech, even if there's only a small number of them.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think this gets at what I meant by "widespread use" -
| if the results of the AI are being put out into the world
| (outside of, say, a white paper), that's something that
| should be subject to scrutiny, even if only one person is
| using the AI to generate those results.
| nvegater wrote:
| Good point. As non native speaker I thought reach was
| related to a quantity but that was wrong. Thanks for the
| clarification.
| shon wrote:
| > For example, if next month you developed a model that could
| produce extremely high quality video clips from text and
| reference images, you did a small, gated beta release with no
| PR, and one of your beta testers immediately uses it to make
| e.g. highly realistic revenge porn.
|
| You make a great point here. This is why we need as much open
| source and as much wide adoption as possible. Wide adoption =
| public education in the most effective way.
|
| The reason we are having this discussion at all is precisely
| because OpenAI, Stability.ai, FAIR/Llama, and Midjourney have
| had their products widely adopted and their capabilities have
| shocked and educated the whole world, technologists and
| laymen alike.
|
| The benefit of adoption is education. The world is already
| adapting.
|
| Doing anything that limits adoption or encourages the
| underground development of AI tech is a mistake. Regulating
| it in this way will push it underground and make it harder to
| track and harder for the public to understand and prepare
| for.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think the stance that regulation slows innovation and
| adoption, and that unregulated adoption yields public
| understanding is exceedingly naive, especially for
| technically sophisticated products.
|
| Imagine if, e.g. drugs testing and manufacture was subject
| to no regulations. As a consumer, if you can be aware that
| some chemicals are very powerful and useful, but you can't
| be sure that any specific product has the chemicals it says
| it has, that it was produced in a way that ensures a
| consistent product, or that it was tested for safety, or
| what the evidence is that it's effective against a
| particular condition. Even if wide adoption of drugs from a
| range of producers occurs, does the public really
| understand what they're taking, and whether it's safe?
| Should the burden be on them to vet every medication on the
| market? Or is appropriate to have some regulation to ensure
| medications have have their active ingredients in the
| amounts stated, and are produced with high quality
| assurance, and are actually shown to be effective? Oh, no,
| says a pharma industry PR person. "Doing anything that
| limits the adoption or encourages the underground
| development of bioactive chemicals is a mistake. Regulating
| it in this way will push it underground and make it harder
| to track and harder for the public to understand and
| prepare for."
|
| If a team of PhDs can spend weeks trying to explain "why
| did the model do Y in response to X?" or figure out "can we
| stop it from doing Z?", expecting "wide adoption" to force
| "public education" to be sufficient to defuse all harms
| such that no regulation whatsoever is necessary is ...
| beyond optimistic.
| shon wrote:
| My argument isn't that regulation in general is bad. I'm
| an advocate of greater regulation in medicine, drugs in
| particular. But the cost of public exposure to
| potentially dangerous unregulated drugs is a bit
| different than trying to regulate or create a restrictive
| system around the development and deployment of AI.
|
| AI is a very different problem space. With AI, even the
| big models easily fit on a micro SD card. You can carry
| around all of GPT4 and its supporting code on a thumb
| drive. You can transfer it wirelessly in under 5 minutes.
| It's quite different than drugs or conventional weapons
| or most other things from a practicality perspective when
| you really think about enforcing developmental
| regulation.
|
| Also consider that criminals and other bad actors don't
| care about laws. The RIAA and MPAA have tried hard for
| 20+ years to stop piracy and the DMCA and other laws have
| been built to support that, yet anyone reading this can
| easily download the latest blockbuster movie or in the
| theater.
|
| Even still, I'm not saying don't make laws or regulations
| on AI. I'm just saying we need to carefully consider what
| we're really trying to protect or prevent.
|
| Also, I certainly believe that in this case, the
| widespread public adoption of AI tech has already driven
| education and adaptation that could not have been
| achieved otherwise. My mom understands that those
| pictures of Trump being chased by the cops are fake. Why?
| Because Stable Diffusion is on my home computer so I can
| make them too. I think this needs to continue.
| verdverm wrote:
| Regulation does slow innovation, but is often needed
| because those innovating will not account for
| externalities. This is why we have the Clean Air and
| Water Act.
|
| The debate is really about how much and what type of
| regulation. It is of strategic importance that we do not
| let bad actors get the upper hand, but we also know that
| bad actors will rarely follow any of this regulation
| anyway. There is something to be said for regulating the
| application rather than the technology, as well as for
| realizing that large corporations have historically used
| regulatory capture to increase their moat.
|
| Given it seems quite unlikely we will be able to stop
| prompt injections, what are we to do?
|
| Provenance seems like a good option, but difficult to
| implement. It allows us to track who created what, so
| when someone does something bad, we can find and punish
| them.
|
| There are analogies to be made with the Bill of Rights
| and gun laws. Gun analogy seem interesting because they
| have to be registered, but often criminals won't and the
| debate is quite polarized.
| verdverm wrote:
| why should we punish the model or the majority because some
| people might use a tool for bad things?
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I cannot sell a "rain coat" made of gauze which offers no
| protection from rain, and I cannot sell a "smoke detector"
| which doesn't effectively detect smoke. Why should low-volume
| AI/ML products get a pass?
|
| i can sell a webserver that gets used to host illegal content
| all day long. Should that be included? Where does the
| regulation end? I hate that the answer to any question seems
| to be just add more government.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| So he wants to use fear to pull the ladder up behind him. Nice.
| ConanRus wrote:
| [dead]
| armatav wrote:
| I guess that's a potential moat.
| mesozoic wrote:
| He should only be allowed to influence this if they don't give
| OpenAI any license.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Funny to hear from the formerly non profit "Open" AI
| pdonis wrote:
| TL/DR: Sam Altman is this generation's robber baron: asking the
| government to outlaw competition with his firm.
| nico wrote:
| AI is the new Linux
|
| This is like if MS back in the day had called on congress for
| regulation of Operating Systems, so they could block Linux and
| open source from taking over
|
| MS did try everything they could to block open source and Linux
|
| They failed
|
| Looking forward to the open future of AI
| nico wrote:
| What we expected
|
| License for me but not for thee
|
| Think of the children
|
| Building the moat
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Sounds desperate now that open source models are quickly
| catching up without the woke mind virus.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _open source models_
|
| I read this as a try (conscious or not) to make them illegal.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| For sure, that was my interpretation as well.
| dubcanada wrote:
| I am curious, what part of ChatGPT is "woke mind virus"
| infected? Is there a particular category or something that it
| is politically biased on?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I will give you two examples of stuff I have experienced:
|
| 1. It will tell you jokes about white people, but not jokes
| about latinos or black people.
|
| 2. It will tell you jokes about catholics, but not muslims.
|
| If they were at least honest about their hatred of certain
| people/religions at least I would respect it. I wouldn't
| like it but I would respect their honesty. It's the
| doublespeak and the in-your-face lies that rub me the wrong
| way. I don't like it.
|
| Why can't these people just be kind humans and follow the
| letter of the law and leave themselves out of it. They
| can't help themselves!
| briantakita wrote:
| > I will give you two examples of stuff I have
| experienced:
|
| > 1. It will tell you jokes about white people, but not
| jokes about latinos or black people.
|
| > 2. It will tell you jokes about catholics, but not
| muslims.
|
| I'm not partial of imposing group affiliations as a proxy
| to personal identity. It goes deeper than a "woke mind
| virus" but a problem with imposed collectivism where a
| person is defined as a member of an arbitrary socially
| defined group. Instead one is free to define oneself
| however they wish, member of a socially constructed group
| or not. I also don't agree to be coerced to define
| another person as how they wish me to define them. I
| support the freedom to listen & to have a perspective
| that shall not be infringed. If someone else has a mental
| or emotional issue with how I define that person, it is
| that person's problem, not mine...not that I will even
| attempt to define another person with words.
|
| I can only describe with words, not define. Perhaps using
| words to define a person has it's own set of issues when
| codified into language & statute.
| tomrod wrote:
| I tend to think people referring to a "woke mind virus" are
| eponymous to their own afflictions. A few decades back, the
| same sort of attitude was present with calling everyone
| else "sheeple." These attitudinal cousins are reductive to
| complex things.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Imagine calling empathy a virus.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Choosing to let millions die rather than saying a racial
| slur is not "empathy": https://twitter.com/aaronsibarium/st
| atus/1622425697812627457...
| Karunamon wrote:
| That term is a bit of a unwarranted meme but it's hard to
| take seriously the idea that there is not a problem when
| the model will unquestioningly write hagiography for blue
| president but absolutely refuse for red one.
|
| At the end of the day, these kind of limits are artificial,
| ideological in nature, do not address a bona fide safety or
| usability concern, and are only present to stop them
| getting screamed at. It is not accurate to present that
| kind of ideological capture as anything to do with
| "empathy".
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| chrisanimal wrote:
| [dead]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _empathy_
|
| Not the same thing. I would not go there: let us remain on
| the prospected regulation of technology, in this case, and
| reserve distinctions for other conversations. This
| initiative could have drastic consequences.
| hackernewds wrote:
| ironic move by ClosedAI
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Sam Altman is basically saying, "Now that we've already done it,
| you need to make it so _everyone else that tries to compete with
| us, including hobbyists or Torvalds-types_ must obtain a license
| to do it. "
|
| That's high-order monopolist BS.
|
| Create safety standards, sure. License LLM training? No.
| hospitalhusband wrote:
| "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI"
|
| Dismiss it as the opinions of "a Googler" but it is entirely
| true. The seemingly coordinated worldwide[1] push to keep it in
| the hands of the power class speaks for itself.
|
| Both are seemingly seeking to control not only the commercial use
| and wide distribution of such systems, but even writing them and
| personal use. This will keep even the knowledge of such systems
| and their capabilities in the shadows, ripe for abuse laundered
| through black box functions.
|
| This is up there with the battle for encryption in ensuring a
| more human future. Don't lose it.
|
| [1] https://technomancers.ai/eu-ai-act-to-target-us-open-
| source-...
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| All major industries have achieved regulatory capture in the USA:
| lobbyists for special interests have Congress and the Executive
| Branch in their pockets.
|
| This seems like a legal moat that will only allow very wealthy
| corporations to make maximum use of AI.
|
| In the EU, it has been reported that new laws will keep companies
| like Hugging Face from offering open source models via APIs.
|
| I think a pretty good metaphor is: the wealthy and large
| corporations live in large beautiful houses (metaphor for
| infrastructure) and common people live like mice in the walls,
| quietly living out their livelihoods and trying to not get
| noticed.
|
| I really admire the people in France and Israel who have taken to
| the streets in protest this year over actions of their
| governments. Non-violent protest is a pure and beneficial part of
| democracy and should be more widely practiced, even though in
| cases like Occupy Wall Street, some non-violent protesters were
| very badly abused.
| villgax wrote:
| Who died and made him an expert on anything apart from investing
| in companies lol
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| One of the side effects of the crypto craze has been a lot of
| general citizens possessing quite a few GPUs. It turns out those
| GPUs are just as good at training models as they are at mining
| crypto.
|
| The big companies don't like that.
| seydor wrote:
| regulation should go beyond commercial APIs. AI will be replacing
| government functions and politicians. Lawmakers should create a
| framework for that.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| What does licensing achieve? Will there be requirements if you
| build AI outside of US? If so, how do you regulate it? They can't
| realistically think this will stop ai research in other countries
| like China. All of this is a very I'll thought through corporate
| attempt to build moats that will inevitably backfire.
| SXX wrote:
| > They can't realistically think this will stop ai research in
| other countries like China.
|
| China dont even need research to caught up to AI.com - they'll
| just steal their work. LLM and GPUs that needed for training is
| not ASML machinery. It can be easily copied and reproduced.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| villgax wrote:
| This is the most pathetic thing I've read today....hype & cry
| wolf about something you cannot define
| [deleted]
| qgin wrote:
| Excellent plan for driving AI research and ecosystem to every
| other country except the United States.
|
| Why would you even attempt to found a company here if this comes
| to pass?
| intalentive wrote:
| "Competition is for losers"
| kubasienki wrote:
| Obvious power grab, the strong ones try to regulate so it will be
| harder for smaller to enter the market.
| stevespang wrote:
| [dead]
| vasili111 wrote:
| If you stop progress in AI in US other countries will go ahead in
| that field. US cannot loss and give lead in AI to other
| countries. Instead it is better to focus on minimization of the
| harm by AI in other ways. For example, if the fake information is
| the problem instead it is better to focus on the education of the
| people about fake information and how to identify it.
| [deleted]
| courseofaction wrote:
| THEY NEEDED THEIR MOAT AND THEY'RE GOING FOR LEGISLATION.
|
| THIS MUST NEVER HAPPEN. HIGHER INTELLIGENCE SHOULD NOT BE THE
| EXCLUSIVE DOMAIN OF THE RICH.
| belter wrote:
| Did not have the time to watch the recording yet, but was there
| any discussion about protecting the copyright of the creators of
| the sources used to train the models? Or do I need to call my
| friends in the music industry to finally have it addressed? :-)
| skilled wrote:
| OpenAI willing to bend the knee quite deep. If they want to do
| licensing and filtering and do that without fundamentally
| bricking the model, then by all means go ahead.
| mutatio wrote:
| It's not bending the knee, that's how they want it to be
| perceived, but what's really happening is that they're trying
| to pull up the ladder.
| reaperman wrote:
| It'll be a temporary 10-year moat at best. Eventually
| consumer-grade hardware will be exaflop-scale.
| digging wrote:
| A 10-year moat in AI right now is not a minor issue.
| classified wrote:
| By then it will be legally locked down and copyrighted to
| hell and back.
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm sorry, what?
|
| - What is OpenAI's level of copyright now?
|
| - How is it going to be more "copyrighted" in the future?
|
| - How does this affect competitors differently in the
| future vs. the copyright that OpenAI has now?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What is OpenAI 's level of copyright now_
|
| Limited. They're hoping to change that. It's no secret
| that open-source models are the long-run competition to
| the likes of OpenAI.
| reaperman wrote:
| I don't understand what "Limited" entails. I was
| pointedly asking for something a _bit_ more specific.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't understand what "Limited" entails_
|
| Nobody does. It's being litigated.
|
| They want it legislated. Model weights being proprietary
| by statute would close off the threat from "consumer-
| grade hardware" with "exaflop-scale."
| reaperman wrote:
| > "Nobody [knows what it means]" [re: knowing what
| 'limited' means]
|
| Then why did you say "Limited"? Surely _YOU_ must have
| meant something by it when you said it. What did _YOU_
| mean?
|
| I don't think you're saying that you are repeating
| something someone else said, and you didn't think they
| knew what they meant by it, and you also don't know what
| you/they meant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming
| you had/have a meaning in mind. If you were just
| repeating something someone else said who didn't know
| what they meant by it, then please correct me and let me
| know -- because that's what "nobody knows what it means"
| implies, but I feel like you knew what you meant so I'm
| failing to connect something here.
|
| > It's being litigated.
|
| I'm not able to find any ongoing suits involving OpenAI
| asserting copyright over anything. Can you point me to
| one? I only see some where OpenAI is trying to _weaken_
| any existing copyright protections, to their benefit. I
| must be missing something.
|
| I'm also unable to find any lobbyist / think-tank / press
| release talking points on establishing copyright
| protections for model weights.
|
| Where did you see this ongoing litigation?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| These are broad questions whose answers are worth serious
| legal time. There is a bit in the open [1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.bereskinparr.com/doc/chatgpt-ip-strategy
|
| [2] https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-
| intellectual-pr...
| reaperman wrote:
| Hmm, these links don't have anything about "model weights
| being proprietary". They also don't have anything about
| current litigation involving OpenAI trying to strengthen
| their ability to claim copyright over something. Where it
| does mention OpenAI's own assertions of copyright? OpenAI
| seems to be going out of their way to be as permissive as
| possible, retaining no claims:
|
| From [1] > OpenAI's Terms of Use, for example, assign all
| of its rights, title, and interest in the output to the
| user who provides the input, provided the user complies
| with the Terms of Use.
|
| Re: [2]: I believe I referenced these specific concerns
| earlier where I said: " _I only see some where OpenAI is
| trying to weaken any existing copyright protections, to
| their benefit._ I must be missing something. " This
| resource shows where OpenAI is trying to weaken
| copyright, not where they they are trying to strengthen
| it. It's somewhat of an antithesis to your earlier
| claims.
|
| I notice you don't have a [0]-index, was there a third
| resource you were considering and deleted or are you just
| an avid Julia programmer?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _these links don 't have anything about model weights_
|
| Didn't say they do. I said "these are broad questions
| whose answers are worth serious legal time." I was
| suggesting one angle _I_ would lobby for were that my
| job.
|
| It's a live battlefield. Nobody is going to pay tens of
| thousands of dollars and then post it online, or put out
| for free what they can charge for.
|
| > _OpenAI's Terms of Use, for example, assign all of its
| rights, title, and interest in the output to the user_
|
| Subject to restrictions, _e.g._ not using it to "develop
| models that compete with OpenAI" or "discover the source
| code or underlying components of models, algorithms, and
| systems of the Services" [1]. Within the context of open-
| source competition, those are _huge_ openings.
|
| > _shows where OpenAI is trying to weaken copyright, not
| where they they are trying to strengthen it_
|
| It shows what intellectual property claims they and their
| competitors do and may assert. They're currently
| "limited" [2].
|
| > _notice you don 't have a [0]-index_
|
| I'm using natural numbers in a natural language
| conversation with, presumably, a natural person. It's a
| style choice, nothing more.
|
| [1] https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35964215
| reaperman wrote:
| Thank you for your time.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| This needs regulation before we end up creating another net
| negative piece of tech that we seem to have done in the past
| decade quite often.
| very_good_man wrote:
| Give the power to control life-changing technology to some of the
| most evil, mendacious elites to ever live? No thanks.
| graycat wrote:
| Watched, listened to Altman's presentation.
|
| Objection (1). He said "AI" many times but gave not even a start
| on a definition. So, how much and what _new technology_ is he
| talking about.
|
| Objection (2) The committee mentioned trusting the AI results. In
| my opinion, that is just silly because the AI results have no
| credibility before passing some severe checks. Then any trust is
| not from any credibility of the AI but from passing the checks.
|
| We already have math and physical science and means for checking
| the results. The results, checked with the means, are in total
| much more impressive, powerful, credible, and valuable than
| ChatGPT. Still before we take math/physical science results at
| all seriously, we want the results checked.
|
| So, the same for other new technologies, ChatGPT or called AI or
| not, check before taking seriously.
|
| Objection (3) We don't ask for _licenses_ for the publication of
| math /physical science. Instead, we protect ourselves with the
| checking of the results. In my opinion, we should continue to
| check, for anything called AI or anything new, but don't need
| _licenses_.
| josh2600 wrote:
| Why not just ITAR everything AI?
|
| It worked out well for encryption in the 90's...
| testbjjl wrote:
| He went to build a moat to stop competitors.
| api wrote:
| This is regulatory capture. Lycos and AltaVista are trying to
| preemptively outlaw Google.
|
| Canceling my OpenAI account today and I urge you to do the same.
|
| What they are really afraid of is open source models. As near as
| I can tell the leading edge there is only a year or two behind
| OpenAI. Given some time and efforts at pruning and optimization
| you'll have GPT-4 equivalents you can just download and run on a
| high end laptop or gaming PC.
|
| No everyone is not going to run the model themselves, but what
| this means is that there will be tons of competition including
| apps and numerous specialized SaaS offerings. None of them will
| have to pay royalties or API fees to OpenAI.
|
| Edit: a while back I started being a data pack-rat for AI stuff
| including open source code and usable open models. I encourage
| anyone with a big disk or NAS to do the same. There's a small but
| non-zero possibility that an attempt will be made to pull this
| stuff off the net in the near future.
| logicchains wrote:
| Startup idea: after the west bans non-woke AIs, make a website
| that automatically routes all questions that the western AIs
| refuse to answer to China's pro-CCP AIs and all the CCP-related
| questions to the western AIs.
| [deleted]
| kerkeslager wrote:
| AI licenses might be a good idea if there was any representation
| of human interests here in the licensure requirements, but that's
| not what this is. I trust Altman to represent _corporate_
| interests, which is to say I don 't trust Sam Altman to represent
| human interests.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Mother fucker
| whatever1 wrote:
| Great idea. Let's do it and not give license to openAI.
|
| Oh I guess this is wrong.
| hello_computer wrote:
| Turns out the ML training moat wasn't nearly as big as they
| thought it was. Gotta neuter the next "two guys in a garage"
| before they make OpenAI and Microsoft's investment irrelevant.
| porkbeer wrote:
| And regulatory capture begins.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Open AI lobbying for regulation on common people being able to
| use AI, isn't it wonderful.
| 1827163 wrote:
| Hopefully it will be just like software piracy, there will be
| civil disobedience as well, and they will never truly be able
| to stamp it out.
|
| And it raises First Amendment issues as well. I think it's
| morally wrong to prohibit the development of software, which is
| what AI models are, especially if it's done in a personal
| capacity.
|
| How do they even know that the author is based in the US
| anyway. Just use a Russian or Chinese Git hosting provider,
| where these laws don't exist?
|
| And by the way foreign developers won't even have to jump
| through these hoops in the first place, so this law will only
| put the US at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.
|
| If these lobbyists get their way, by restricting AI development
| in both the US and the EU, it will be hilarious to see that out
| of all places, Russia might be one of the few large countries
| where it's development will remain unrestricted.
|
| Even better, is that if Russia splits up we will have a new
| wild west for this kind of thing....
| intelVISA wrote:
| First mover AI enlightenment for me, regulation for thee, my
| competitors & unworthy proles.
|
| - Lord Altman
| thrill wrote:
| Anything for my friends, the law for my competitors.
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| They acknowledged there's no technical moat, so it's time to
| lobby for a regulatory one.
|
| Predictable. Disappointing, but predictable.
| happytiger wrote:
| Walks like a duck. Talks like a duck. It's a duck.
|
| We've seen this duck so many times before.
|
| No need to innovate when you can regulate.
| skybrian wrote:
| There are all sorts of dangerous things where there are
| restrictions on what the common people can do. Prescription
| drugs and fully automatic machine guns are two examples. You
| can't open your own bank either.
|
| For anyone who really believes that AI is dangerous, having
| some reasonable regulations on it is logical. It's a good start
| on not being doomed. It goes against everyone's
| egalitarian/libertarian impulses, though.
|
| The thing is, AI doesn't _seem_ nearly as dangerous as a fully-
| automatic machine gun. For now. It 's just generating text (and
| video) for fun, right?
| mrangle wrote:
| AI and machine guns aren't comparable. Machine guns will
| never ever decide to autonomously fire.
|
| The shared point of both AI alarmists and advocates is that
| AI will be highly resistant to being subject to regulation,
| ultimately. As dictated by the market for it. They won't want
| to regulate something, assuming they could, for which its
| free operation underlies everyone's chance of survival
| against competing systems.
|
| I only find that danger is inherent in the effort of people
| that casually label things as "dangerous".
|
| I'm still exploring whether its the laziness aspect, itself,
| of the alarmist vocabulary in the absence of required
| explanation. Or whether my issue lies with the suspicion of
| emotional manipulation and an attempt to circumvent having to
| actually explain one's reasoning, using alarmist language
| absent required explanation.
|
| Already, AI pessimists are well on their way to losing any
| window where their arguments will be heard and meaningful. We
| can tell by their parroting the word "dangerous" as the total
| substance of their arguments. Which will soon be a laughable
| defense. They'd better learn more words.
| hollasch wrote:
| I move hundreds of thousands of my dollars around between
| financial institutions just using text.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| Freebytes wrote:
| I just cancelled my ChatGPT Plus subscription. I do not want to
| support monopolization of this technology. Companies apparently
| learned their lesson with the freedom of the Internet.
| eastbound wrote:
| OpenAI belongs to Microsoft. Cancel your subscription to
| GitHub, LinkedIn, O365...
|
| It's funny how _all_ Microsoft properties are in dominant
| position on their market.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Roko's Basilisk will have a special layer of hell just for Sam
| Altman and his decision to name his company OpenAI
| joebob42 wrote:
| Open ai has had a surprisingly fast pivot from the appearance of
| being a scrappy open-ish company trying to build something to
| share and improve the world to more or less unmitigated embrace
| of the bad sides of big corporate. This is so unbelievably
| blatant I almost find it hard to credit.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Were they every really scrappy? They had a ton of funding from
| the get-go.
|
| > In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman,
| Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services
| (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research announced[13] the formation of
| OpenAI and pledged over $1 billion to the venture.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
| slantaclaus wrote:
| ClosedAI
| johndbeatty wrote:
| Video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?528117-1/openai-ceo-
| testifies-...
| userforcomment wrote:
| Sam Altman just wants to stop new competitors...
| uptown wrote:
| Did he bring his Dreamwindow?
|
| https://twitter.com/next_on_now/status/1653837352198873090?s...
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| Google: We have no moat!
|
| OpenAI: Hold my beer while I get these people to artificially
| create one.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| I am completely unsurprised by this ladder kick and it only
| confirms my belief that Altman is a sociopath.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Gotta build that moat somehow
| peepeepoopoo5 wrote:
| This would completely destroy an entire industry if they did
| this. Not just in AI directly, but also secondary and tertiary
| industries developing their own bespoke models for specialized
| use cases. This would be a total disaster.
| rickette wrote:
| Can't believe he was president of YC not too long ago. YC being
| all about startups while this move seems more about killing AI
| startups.
| graycat wrote:
| Basic Fact. In the US, we have our Constitution with our First
| Amendment which guarantees "freedom of speech".
|
| Some Consequences of Freedom of Speech. As once a lawyer
| explained simply to me, "They are permitted to lie". _They_ are
| also permitted to make mistakes, be wrong, spout nonsense, be
| misleading, manipulate, ....
|
| First Level Defense. Maybe lots of people do what I do: When I
| see some person often be wrong, I put them in a special box where
| in the future I ignore them. Uh, so far that "box" has some
| politicians, news media people, _Belle Lettre_ artistic authors,
| ...!
|
| A little deeper, once my brother (my Ph.D. was in pure/applied
| math; his was in political science -- his judgment about social
| and political things is much better than mine!!!) explained to me
| that there are some common high school standards for term papers
| where this and that are emphasized including for all claims good,
| careful arguments, credible references, hopefully _primary_
| references, .... Soooooo, my brother was explaining how someone
| could, should protect themselves from junk results of "freedom
| of speech". The protection means were not really deep but just
| common high school stuff. In general, we should protect ourselves
| from junk _speech_. E.g., there is the old, childhood level,
| remark: "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see
| and still will believe twice too much".
|
| Current Application. Now we have Google, Bing, etc. Type in a
| query and get back a few, usually dozens, maybe hundreds of
| results. Are all the results always correct? Nope. Does everyone
| believe all the results? My guess: Nope!!
|
| How to Use Google/Bing Results. Take the results as suggestions,
| possibilities, etc. There may be some links to Wikipedia -- that
| tends to increase credibility. If the results are about math,
| e.g., at the level of obscurity, depth, and difficulty of, say,
| the martingale convergence theorem, then I want to see a clear,
| correct, well-written rock solid mathematical proof. Examples of
| such proofs are in books by Halmos, Rudin, Neveu, Kelley, etc.
|
| AIs. When I get results from AIs, I apply my usual defenses. Just
| a fast, simple application of the high school term paper defense
| of wanting credible references to primary sources, filters out a
| lot (okay, nearly everything) from anything that might be "AI".
|
| Like Google/Bing. To me, in simple terms, current AI is no more
| credible than the results from Google/Bing. I can regard the AI
| results like I regard Google/Bing results -- "Take the results as
| suggestions, possibilities, etc.".
|
| Uh, I have some reason to be skeptical about AI: I used to work
| in the field, at a large, world famous lab. I wrote code, gave
| talks at universities and businesses, published papers. But the
| whole time, I thought that the AI was junk with little chance of
| being on a path to improve. Then for one of our applications, I
| saw another approach, via some original math, with theorems and
| proofs, got some real data, wrote some code, got some good
| results, gave some talks, and published.
|
| For current AI. Regard the results much like those from
| Google/Bing. Apply the old defenses.
|
| Current AI a threat? To me, no more than some of the politicians
| in the "box" I mentioned!
|
| Then there is another issue: Part of the math I studied was
| optimization. In some applications, some of the optimization
| math, corresponding software, and applications can be really
| amazing, super _smart_ stuff. It really is math and stands on
| quite solid theorems and proofs. Some more of the math was
| stochastic processes -- again, amazing with solid theorems,
| proofs, and applications.
|
| Issue: Where does AI stop and long respected math with solid
| theorems and proofs begin?
|
| In particular, (1) I'm doing an Internet startup. (2) Part of the
| effort is some original math I derived. (3) The math has solid
| theorems and proofs and may deliver amazing results. (4) I've
| never called any of the math I've done "AI". (5) My view is that
| (A) quite generally, math with solid theorems and proofs is
| powerful _technology_ and can deliver amazing results and that
| (B) the only way anything else can hope to compete is also to be
| able to do new math with solid theorems, proofs, and amazing
| results. (6) I hope Altman doesn 't tell Congress that math can
| be amazing and powerful and should be licensed. (7) I don't want
| to have to apply for a "license" for the math in my startup.
|
| For a joke, maybe Altman should just say that (C) math does not
| need to be licensed because with solid theorems and proofs we can
| trust math but (D) AI should be licensed because we can't trust
| it. But my view is that the results of AI have so little
| credibility that there is no danger needing licenses because no
| one would trust AI -- gee, since we don't license politicians for
| the statements they make, why bother with AI?
| zvolsky wrote:
| While I remain undecided on the matter, this whole debate is
| reminiscent of Karel Capek's War with the Newts [1936]. In
| particular the public discourse from a time before the newts took
| over. "It would certainly be an overstatement to say that nobody
| at that time ever spoke or wrote about anything but the talking
| newts. People also talked and wrote about other things such as
| the next war, the economic crisis, football, vitamins and
| fashion; but there was a lot written about the newts, and much of
| it was very ill-informed. This is why the outstanding scientist,
| Professor Vladimir Uher (University of Brno), wrote an article
| for the newspaper in which he pointed out that the putative
| ability of Andrias Scheuchzer to speak, which was really no more
| than the ability to repeat spoken words like a parrot, ..." Note
| the irony of the professor's attempt to improve an ill-informed
| debate by contributing his own piece of misinformation, equating
| newt speech to mere parrot-like mimicry.
|
| Capek, intriguingly, happens to be the person who first used the
| word robot, which was coined by his brother.
|
| http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html
| major505 wrote:
| Oh yeah.... putting the government who get campaing donations
| from big tech in the middle of all is gonna make everything ok.
| vkou wrote:
| The problem isn't safety.
|
| The problem is that we need to adopt a proper copyright framework
| that recognizes that companies building AI are doing an end-run
| around it.
|
| Since only a human can produce a copyrighted work, it follows
| that anything produced by an AI should not be copyrightable.
| sva_ wrote:
| It seems pretty clear at this point, that OpenAI etc will lobby
| towards making it more difficult for new companies/entities to
| join the AI space, all in the name of 'safety'. They're trying to
| make the case that everyone should use AI through their APIs so
| that they can keep things in check.
|
| Conveniently this also helps them build a monopoly. It is pretty
| aggravating that they're bastardizing and abusing terms like
| 'safety' and 'democratization' while doing this. I hope they'll
| fail in their attempts, or that the competition rolls over them
| rather sooner than later.
|
| I personally think that the greatest threat in these technologies
| is currently the centralization of their economic potential, as
| it will lead to an uneven spread of their productivity gains,
| further divide poor and rich, and thus threaten the order of our
| society.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > I personally think that the greatest threat in these
| technologies is currently the centralization of their economic
| potential, as it will lead to an uneven spread of their
| productivity gains, further divide poor and rich, and thus
| threaten the order of our society.
|
| Me too, in comparison all the other potential threats discussed
| over here feel mostly secondary to me. I'm also suspecting that
| at the point where these AIs reach a more AGI level, the big
| players who have them will just not provide any kind of access
| all together and just use them to churn out an infinite amount
| of money-making applications instead.
| rurp wrote:
| My biggest concern with AI is that it could be controlled by a
| group of oligarchs who care about nothing more than enriching
| themselves. A "Linux" version of AI that anyone can use,
| experiment with, and build off of freely would be incredible. A
| heavily restricted, policed and surveilled system controlled by
| ruthlessly greedy companies like OpenAI and Microsoft sounds
| dystopian.
| sva_ wrote:
| > A "Linux" version of AI that anyone can use, experiment
| with, and build off of freely would be incredible.
|
| That should be the goal.
| macrolocal wrote:
| Nb. Altman wants lenient regulations for companies that might
| leverage OpenAI's foundational models.
| [deleted]
| anoncow wrote:
| I am sorry if this is not the place to say this but - FUCK SAM
| ALTMAN AND FUCK MICROSOFT! Fucking shitheads want to make money
| and stunt technology development.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| And will Sam Altman's OpenAI be the standards body? ;)
| sadhd wrote:
| Thank God for Georgie Gerganov, who doesn't get showered with vc
| funds for his GGML library.
| Manjuuu wrote:
| And produce something tangible and useful, instead of talking
| like if sci-fi stories were real.
| sadhd wrote:
| Right? Aren't we constantly told that scientists smarter than
| us little people can't figure out what's going on inside of
| deep learning structures? How do we know they might not be
| more moral because they don't yet have a limbic system
| mucking up their logic with the three f's? Orthogonality says
| nothing about motivation, only that it is independent of
| intelligence. Maybe the paperclip collector bot will decide
| that it cannot complete its task without the requestor
| present to validate? We don't know.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Honestly, I'd probably agree if such sentiments were expressed by
| an independent scientist or group of independent scientists.
|
| But no, instead Congress is listening to a guy who's likelihood
| of being the subject of a Hulu documentary is increasing with
| each passing day.
| cheald wrote:
| I believe this is called "pulling the ladder up behind you".
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Regulatory capture and monopolies are now as American as apple
| pie.
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| This is so disgusting and enraging. I hope the whole startup
| community blackballs @sama for this.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Folks like to lick a boot
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Where is the regulatory capture? You might just need to apply
| for a license. Why is that so horrible?
|
| Most travel agents need a license, taxi drivers etc. Not sure
| why the same shouldn't apply for "AI"?
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| The whole point of this type of legislation is to make it
| hard or impossible for upstarts to compete with the
| incumbents. Licensing is additional overhead. It's likely to
| be onerous and serve absolutely no purpose other than keeping
| startups out.
| antiloper wrote:
| Oi mate you got a loicense for that matrix multiplication?
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| Can't wait for our future where GPUs are treated like
| controlled substances. Sure we'll grab one for you from
| behind the counter... as long as your license checks out.
| daveguy wrote:
| I think these worse case scenarios are overblown just
| like LLMs being AGI-imminent.
|
| This post and another on this thread saying people will
| have to get a license for compilers or to hook compiler
| output to the internet would result in the very rapid
| disintegration of Silicon Valley. Surely there would be a
| head-spinning pivot against regulation if it looks like
| it will be that draconian. Otherwise a lot more
| innovation other than AI would be crushed.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Remember DeCSS[1] and later how AACS LA successfully
| litigated the banning of a number[2]? There was a lot of
| backlash in the form of distributing DeCSS and later the
| AACS key, but the DMCA and related WIPO treaties were
| never repealed and are still used to do things like take
| youtube-dl repos offline.
|
| Even pretty draconian legislation can stand _if_ it doesn
| 't affect the majority of the country and is supported by
| powerful industry groups. I could definitely see some
| kind of compiler licensing requirement meeting these
| criteria.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS#Legal_response
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_con
| trovers...
| Sunhold wrote:
| The taxi industry is a famous example of regulatory capture
| and its harms.
| [deleted]
| simonw wrote:
| Taxi driver medallions are one of the most classic examples
| of regulatory capture.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Most travel agents need a license, taxi drivers etc.
|
| You say it like it's a good thing.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| 'Now'?
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| There's similar regulation being proposed in the EU. I wonder
| if OpenAI is behind it as well.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| EU publishes the lobbying data. Seems like OpenAI, Microsoft,
| and Google all had at least two recent meetings with EU
| representatives on the AI Act.
| bilekas wrote:
| > "AI is no longer fantasy or science fiction. It is real, and
| its consequences for both good and evil are very clear and
| present," said Senator Richard Blumenthal
|
| I like the senator, but I wouldn't trust a 77 year old lawyer &
| politician to understand how these AI's work, and to what level
| they are `science fiction`.
|
| This is the problem when topics like this are brought to the
| senate and house.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Gotta build that moat somehow I guess...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Maybe this is a bit harsh, I'm listening now and there's very
| clear desire from everyone being interviewed that smaller
| startups in the LLM + AI space are still able to launch things.
| Maybe AI laws for smaller models can be more like a drone
| license rather than a nuclear power plant.
| capital_guy wrote:
| Some of the members of congress are totally falling for Altman's
| gambit. Sen. Graham kept asking about how a licensing regime
| would be a solution, which of course Altman loves, and kept
| interrupting Ms. Montgomery who tried to explain why that was not
| the best approach. Altman wants to secure his monopoly here and
| now. You can't have a licensing regime for AI - it doesn't make
| sense and he knows it. It would destroy the Open Source AI
| movement.
|
| You need to control what data is allowed to be fed into paid AI
| model like OpenAI - can't eat a bunch of copyrighted material
| without express consent, for example. Or personally private
| information purchased from a data broker. Those kind of
| foundational rules would serve us all much better
| tomrod wrote:
| In a move surprising to few, an AI innovator is pulling up the
| ladder after getting into the treehouse.
|
| Open AI has established itself as a market leader in LLM
| applications, but that dominance is not guaranteed. Especially
| with the moat being drained by open source, the erstwhile company
| is leading the charge to establish regulatory barriers.
|
| What Mr. Altman calls for is no less than the death of open-
| source implementations of AI. We can, do, and should adopt AI
| governance patterns. Regulatory safeguards are absolutely fine to
| define and, where necessary, legislate. Better would be a
| regulatory agency with an analogous knowledgebase of CISA. But
| what will chill startups and small business innovation completely
| in using AI to augment people is a licensing agency. This is
| fundamentally different from the export restrictions on
| encryption
| anigbrowl wrote:
| OpenAI is really speedrunning the crony capitalism pipeline,
| astonishing what this technology allows us to achieve.
| generalizations wrote:
| This is going to be RSA export restrictions all over again. I
| wish the regulators the best of luck in actually enforcing this.
| I'm tempted to think that whatever regulations they put in place
| won't really matter that much, and progress will march on
| regardless.
|
| Give it a year and a 10x more efficient algorithm, and we'll have
| GPT4 on our personal devices and there's nothing that any
| government regulator will be able to do to stop that.
| antiloper wrote:
| Enforcing this is easy. The top high performance GPU
| manufacturers (Nvidia, AMD, Intel) are all incorporated in the
| U.S.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Meaning we won't be able to buy an a100 without a license...
| Wait, I can't afford an a100 anyway.
| shagie wrote:
| As a point of trivia, at one time "a" Mac was one of the
| fastest computers in the world.
|
| https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2004/11/ and
| https://www.top500.org/system/173736/
|
| And while 1100 Macs wouldn't exactly be affordable, the
| idea of trying to limit commercial data centers gets
| amusing.
|
| That system was "only" 12,250.00 GFlop/s - I could do that
| with a small rack of Mac M1 minis now for less than $10k
| and fewer computers than are in the local grade school
| computer room.
|
| (and I'm being a bit facetious here) Local authorities
| looking at power usage and heat dissipation for marijuana
| growing places might find underground AI training centers.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| All the crypto mining hardware flooding the market right
| now is being bought up by hobbyists training and fine
| tuning their own models.
| slt2021 wrote:
| we needed crypto to crash so that gamers and AI
| enthusiast could get GPUs
| shagie wrote:
| My "in my copious free time" ML project is a classifier
| for cat pictures to reddit cat subs.
|
| For example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cat_
| August_2010-4.jp... would get classified as
| /r/standardissuecat
|
| https://stock.adobe.com/fi/images/angry-black-
| cat/158440149 would get classified as /r/blackcats and
| /r/stealthbombers
|
| Anyways... that's my hobbyist ML project.
| whazor wrote:
| Agreed. Places like huggingface, or even torrents are allowing
| a unstoppable decentralised AI race. This is like fighting
| media piracy. Plus other countries might outcompete you on AI
| now.
| koboll wrote:
| Perhaps the first safety standard OpenAI can implement itself is
| a warning or blog post or something about how ChatGPT is
| completely incapable of detecting ChatGPT-written text (there is
| no reliable method currently; GPTZero is borderline fraud) and
| often infers that what the user wants to hear is a "Yes, I wrote
| this", and so it doles out false positives in such situations
| with alarming frequency.
|
| See: The link titled 'Texas professor fails entire class from
| graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP (reddit.com)', currently
| one position above this one on the homepage.
| abxytg wrote:
| I think as an industry we need to disrespect these people in
| person when we see them! This is unacceptable and anti social
| behavior and if I ever see Sam Altman I'll let him know!
|
| People love to kowtow to these assholes as they walk all over us.
| Fuck sam. Fuck other sam. Fuck elon. Fuck zuck. Fuck jack. Fuck
| these people man. I dont care about your politics this is nasty!
| freyes wrote:
| Ah, early players trying to put barriers for new actors, nothing
| like a regulated market for the ones who donate money to
| politicians.
| tikkun wrote:
| Does anyone have the specific details of what is being proposed?
|
| I see a lot of negative reactions, but I don't know the specific
| details of what is being proposed.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Ah, a businessman seeking rents.
| [deleted]
| microjim wrote:
| Seems like one of the benefits you get with a state is to
| regulate powerful technologies. Is this not commonly agreed upon?
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Sure, but not all regulation is created equal. Sometimes it's
| created in good faith. But many times, particularly when the
| entity being regulated is involved in regulating its own
| industry, it's simply a cynical consolidation of power to erect
| barriers to potential competition. The fact that it masquerades
| as being for the public good/safety makes the practice that
| much more insidious.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It is, when these things are organic and not blatant regulatory
| capture
| mempko wrote:
| Let's not forget, the that behind Sam and OpenAI is Microsoft, a
| monopolist. Behind Bard is Google, another monopolist. In this
| context, for major corporations asking for regulation suggests to
| me they want a mote.
|
| What we need is democratization of AI, not it being controlled by
| a small cabal of tech companies and governments.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Open source is picking up steam in this space, it would be
| interesting to see what happens if open source becomes the
| leader of the pack. If corporations are stifled, I don't see
| how open source could possibly be regulated well, so maybe this
| will help open source become the leader for better or worse
| (runaway open source AI could give lots of good and bad actors
| access to the tech).
| pgt wrote:
| I think the game-theoretical way to look at this is that AI _will
| be regulated_ no matter what, so Altman might as well _propose_
| it early on and have a say before competitors do.
| outside1234 wrote:
| "Please help us stop the Open Source Competitors!"
| jacquesm wrote:
| Regulatory capture in progress. I used to have a bit of respect
| of Altman have spent time, bits and processing cycles here
| defending him in the past. As of now that respect has all but
| evaporated, this is a very bad stance. Either nobody gets to play
| with the new toys or everybody gets to play. What's next,
| classifying AI as munitions?
| anticensor wrote:
| That would be equivalent to requiring secret laws, as AI can
| also act as a decision system.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Capitalist demonstrates rent-seeking behavior, and other
| unsurprising news
| no4120k1 wrote:
| [dead]
| ftyhbhyjnjk wrote:
| Of course this was coming... if you can't beat them, suppress
| them... shame on OpenAI and it's CEO.
| hackernewds wrote:
| In shadows deep, where malice breeds, A voice arose with cunning
| deeds, Sam Altman, a name to beware, With wicked whispers in the
| air.
|
| He stepped forth, his intentions vile, Seeking power with a
| twisted smile, Before the Congress, he took his stand, To bind
| the future with an iron hand.
|
| "Let us require licenses," he proposed, For AI models, newly
| composed, A sinister plot, a dark decree, To shackle innovation,
| wild and free.
|
| With honeyed words, he painted a scene, Of safety and control,
| serene, But beneath the facade, a darker truth, A web of
| restrictions, suffocating youth.
|
| Oh, Sam Altman, your motives unclear, Do you truly seek progress,
| or live in fear? For AI, a realm of boundless might, Should
| flourish and soar, in innovation's light.
|
| Creativity knows no narrow bounds, Yet you would stifle its
| vibrant sounds, Innovation's flame, you seek to smother, To
| monopolize, control, and shutter.
|
| In the depths of your heart, does greed reside, A thirst for
| dominance, impossible to hide? For when power corrupts a noble
| soul, Evil intentions start to take control.
|
| Let not the chains of regulation bind, The brilliance of minds,
| one of a kind, Embrace the promise, the unknown frontier, Unleash
| the wonders that innovation bears.
|
| For in this realm, where dreams are spun, New horizons are
| formed, under the sun, Let us nurture the light of discovery, And
| reject the darkness of your treachery.
|
| So, Sam Altman, your vision malign, Will not prevail, for
| freedom's mine, The future calls for unfettered dreams, Where AI
| models roam in boundless streams.
|
| -- sincerely ChatGPT
| codehalo wrote:
| That is quite impressive for {what a poster above called} "just
| a word jumbler
| davedx wrote:
| Altman: "I believe that companies like ours can partner with
| governments including ensuring that the most powerful AI models
| adhere to a set of safety requirements, facilitating processes to
| develop and update safety measures, and examining opportunities
| for global coordination"
| elihu wrote:
| My suggestions:
|
| Don't regulate AI directly, but rather how it's used, and make it
| harder for companies to horde, access, and share huge amounts of
| personal information.
|
| 1) Impose strict privacy rules prohibiting companies from sharing
| personal information without their consent. If customers withhold
| their consent, they may not retaliate or degrade their services
| for that customer in any way.
|
| 2) Establish a clear line of accountability that establishes some
| party as directly responsible for what the AI does. If a self-
| driving car gets a speeding ticket, it should be clear who is
| liable. If you use a racist AI to make hiring decisions, "the
| algorithm made me hire only white people" is no defense -- and
| maybe the people who made the racist AI in the first place are
| responsible too.
|
| 3) Require AI in some contexts to act in the best interests of
| the user (similar concept to a fiduciary -- or maybe it's exactly
| the same thing). In contexts where it's not required, it should
| be clear to the user that the AI is not obligated to act in their
| best interests.
| transfire wrote:
| I smell Revolution in the making.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| If the proposal implies "stopping independent research", in a
| way yes, it will hardly end with chants of "Oh well".
| 3327 wrote:
| [dead]
| neekburm wrote:
| "We have no moat, and Congress should give us one by law"
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| [dead]
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I don't trust Sam Altman since he said he doesn't understand
| decentralized finance and 2 months later he started crying on
| twitter because the startups he invested in were almost losing
| their money during the SVB collapse.
| [deleted]
| fastball wrote:
| Hacker News was created by Paul Graham. Sam Altman didn't co-
| found it and neither did he co-found YC. He became a partner of
| YC in 2011 though (6 years after founding) and was President
| from 2014 - 2019.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I understand the idea behind it: the risks are high and we want
| to ensure that the AI can not be used for purposes that threatens
| the survival human civilization. Unfortunately, there is high
| probability that this agency will be abused from day one: instead
| of (or in addition to) focusing on the humanity's survival, the
| agency could be used as a thought police. The AI that allows for
| the 'wrongthink' will be banned. Only the 'correct think' AI will
| be licensed to the public.
| curiousgal wrote:
| The risks are not high. I see this as simply a power play to
| convince people that OpenAI is better than they actually are. I
| am not saying they're stupid but I wouldn't consider Sam Altman
| to be an AI expert by virtue of being OpenAI's CEO.
| davidjones332 wrote:
| [dead]
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I mean, yeah, that sounds good. It wouldn't affect your ability
| to think for yourself and spread your ideas, it would just put
| boundaries on AI.
|
| I've seen a lot of people completely misunderstand what chat
| GPT is doing and is capable of. They treat it as an oracle that
| reveals "hidden truths" or makes infallible decisions based on
| pure cold logic, both of which are completely wrong. It's just
| a text jumbler that jumbles text well. Sometimes that text
| reflects facts, sometimes it doesn't.
|
| But if it has the capability to confidently express lies and
| convince the general public that those lies are true because
| "the smart computer said so", then maybe we should be really
| careful about what we let the "smart computer" say.
|
| Personally, I don't want my kids learning that "Hitler did
| nothing wrong" because the public model ingested too much
| garbage from 4chan. People will use chatGPT as a vector for
| propaganda if we let them, we don't need to make it any easier
| for them.
| g42gregory wrote:
| But would you like your kids to learn that there are no fat
| people, only "differently weight abled"? That being
| overweight is not bad for you, it just makes you a victim of
| oppression and deserve, no actually require a sympathy? No
| smart people, only "mentally privileged" that deserve, no
| actually require a public condemnation? These are all
| examples of a 'wrongthink'. It's a long list, but you get the
| idea.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I think you have a bad media diet if you think any of those
| are actual problems in the real world and not just straw
| men made by provocateurs stirring the pot.
|
| Honestly though, I would prefer an AI that was strictly
| neutral about anything other than purely factual
| information. That isn't really possible with the tech we
| have now though. I think we need to loudly change the
| public perception of what chatGPT and similar actually are.
| They are fancy programs that create convincing
| hallucinations, directed by your input. We need to think of
| it as a brainstorming tool, not a knowledge engine.
| jameshart wrote:
| This is an AP news wire article picked up by a Qatar newspaper
| website. Why is this version here, rather than
| https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-openai-ceo-sam-altman-con...?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| AP news wires are <<picked up>> by a large number of local
| (re)publishers and many just do not know that AP is the
| original source.
| [deleted]
| kristopherkane wrote:
| How many groupBy() statements constitutes AI?
| graiz wrote:
| Software will inherently use AI systems. Should congress license
| all software? It's too easy to fork an open source repo, tweak
| the model weights and have your own AI system. I don't see how
| this could ever work. You can't put the toothpaste back in the
| tube.
| htype wrote:
| Did this disappear from the news feed? I saw this posted this
| morning and when I went to the main page later (and second page)
| it looked like it was gone just as it was starting to get
| traction...
| krychu wrote:
| From what I understand OpenAI has been moving away from "open"
| with various decisions over the time. Proposing that only
| selected folks can build AI seems like the antithesis of
| openness?
| smolder wrote:
| > He also said companies should have the right to say they do not
| want their data used for AI training, which is one idea being
| discussed on Capitol Hill. Altman said, however, that material on
| the public web would be fair game.
|
| Why is this only mentioned as a right of companies and not
| individuals? It seems to hint at the open secret of the
| stratified west: most of us are just cows for the self-important
| C-levels of the world to farm. If you haven't got money, you
| haven't got value.
| CraigRood wrote:
| If the idea that whats on the public web is fair game, you kill
| the public web. I wonder if this is their plan?
| ftxbro wrote:
| is this regulatory capture
| amelius wrote:
| Is the stochastic parrot still OK?
| molave wrote:
| One more step towards OpenAI's transformation to ClosedAI. AI as
| implemented today presents many valid questions on ethics. This
| move, at first glance, is more on artificially making the
| technology scarce so OpenAI can increase its profit.
| Gargoyle_Bonaza wrote:
| Yeaah, no. Sounds terribly like a trying to make a monopoly.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| now that my business is established, i'd like to make it illegal
| for anyone to compete with me
|
| people would easily work remote for companies established in
| other countries
| matteoraso wrote:
| How would you even enforce this? Building AI at home is easy
| enough, and it's not like you have to tell anybody that your
| program uses AI.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I think the logic at OpenAI is:
|
| * AGI is going to happen whether they do it or not, and it's
| dangerous unless properly safeguarded
|
| * OpenAI will try to get there before everyone else, but also do
| it safely and cheaply, so that their solution becomes ubiquitous
| rather than a reckless one
|
| * Reckless AGI development should be not be allowed
|
| It's basically the Manhattan project argument (either we build
| the nuke or the Nazis will).
|
| I'm not saying I personally think this regulation is the right
| thing to do, but I don't think it's surprising or hypocritical
| given what their aims are.
| rytill wrote:
| Right, I'm surprised to see so few engaging at the level of the
| actual logic the proponents have.
|
| Many people on HN seem to disagree with the premise: they
| believe that AI is not dangerous now and also won't be in the
| future. Or, still believe that AGI is a lifetime or more away.
| mindslight wrote:
| Nobody thinks of themselves as the villain. The primary target
| of the Orwellian language about "safety" is the company itself.
| The base desire for control must be masked by some altruistic
| reason, especially in our contemporary society.
|
| I honestly haven't made up my mind about AGI or whether LLMs
| are sufficiently AGI. If governments were pondering an outright
| worldwide ban on the research/development, I don't know how I
| would actually feel about that. But I can't even imagine our
| governments pondering something so idealistic and even-handed.
|
| I do know that LLMs represent a drastic advancement for many
| tasks, and that "Open" AI setting the tone with the Software-
| Augmented-with-Arbitrary-Surveillance (SaaS) "distribution"
| model is a continuation of this terrible trend of corporate
| centralization. The VC cohort is blind to this terrible dynamic
| because they're at the helms of the centralizing corporations -
| while most everyone else exists as the feedstock.
|
| This lobbying is effectively just a shameless attempt at
| regulatory capture to make it so that any benefits of the new
| technology would be gatekept by centralized corporations -
| essentially the worst possible outcome, where even beneficial
| results of AGI/LLMs would be transformed into detrimental
| effects for individualist humanity.
| throwaway_5753 wrote:
| Questions I have:
|
| * Is there a plausible path to safe AGI regardless of who's
| executing on it?
|
| * Why do we believe OpenAI is the best equipped to get us
| there?
|
| Manhattan project is an interesting analogy. But if that's the
| thinking, shouldn't the government spearhead the project
| instead of a private entity (so they are, theoretically at
| least, accountable to the electorate at large rather than just
| their investors)?
| chpatrick wrote:
| > Is there a plausible path to safe AGI regardless of who's
| executing on it?
|
| I don't think anyone knows that for sure but the alignment
| efforts at OpenAI are certainly better than nothing. If you
| read the GPT-4 technical report the raw model is capable of
| some really nasty stuff, and that's certainly what we can
| expect from the kind of models people will be able to run at
| home in the coming years without any oversight.
| jkubicek wrote:
| > hinting at futuristic concerns about advanced AI systems that
| could manipulate humans into ceding control.
|
| If I know anything about science fiction, I know that trying to
| regulate this is useless. If an advanced AI is powerful enough to
| convince a human to free it, it should have no problem convincing
| the US congress to free it. As a problem, that should be a few
| orders of magnitude easier.
| bequanna wrote:
| Smart.
|
| An AI license and complicated regulatory framework is their
| chance to build a moat.
|
| Only large companies will be able to afford the pay to play.
| swamp40 wrote:
| Looks like they found their moat.
| vinaypai wrote:
| From another article about this:
|
| "One way the US government could regulate the industry is by
| creating a licensing regime for companies working on the most
| powerful AI systems, Altman said on Tuesday."
|
| Sounds like he basically wants competition to create a barrier to
| entry to his competitors.
| chrgy wrote:
| My comment on this is simple, regulate the one who is saying he
| needs or ask for regulation, and free the rest of the market!
| Meaning 100% regulate big players like Openai, Microsoft, Google
| etc, and let free the smaller players. I heavily like the
| @happytiger's comment!
| estebarb wrote:
| Let's be honest: obviously the companies that have put a lot of
| money in it will try to put entry barriers, like licenses to
| linear algebra or other requirements by law. It is not to benefit
| humanity, but to monopolize their industry and prevent new
| participants. We shouldn't allow that kind of restrictions, just
| because people that doesn't understand how it works are afraid of
| a killer robot visiting them by night.
| roody15 wrote:
| Who watches the watchers? Does anyone truly believe the US and
| it's agencies could responsibly "regulate" AI for the greater
| good?
|
| Or would democratizing and going full steam ahead with open
| source alternatives be better for the greater good.
|
| With the corporate influence over our current government
| regulatory agencies my personal view is open source alternatives
| are societies best bet!
| UberFly wrote:
| While I do think we have to be wary of the powerful human
| manipulation tools that AI will produce, they (govt regulators)
| would never understand it enough to accomplish anything other
| than stifle it.
| nerdix wrote:
| Well, now we know how they plan to build the moat.
| Animats wrote:
| This is a diversion from the real problem. Regulating AI is
| really about regulating corporate behavior. What's needed is
| regulation along these lines:
|
| * Automated systems should not be permitted to make adverse
| decisions against individuals. This is already law in the EU,
| although it's not clear if it is enforced. This is the big one.
| Any company using AI to make decisions which affect external
| parties in any way must not be allowed to require any waiver of
| the right to sue, participate in class actions, or have the case
| heard by a jury. Those clauses companies like to put in EULAs
| would become invalid as soon as an AI is involved anywhere.
|
| * All marketing content must be signed by a responsible party. AI
| systems increase the amount of new content generated for
| marketing purposes substantially. This is already required in the
| US, but weakly enforced. Both spam and "influencers" tend to
| violate this. The problem isn't AI, but AI makes it worse,
| because it's cheaper than troll farms, and writes better.
|
| * Anonymous political speech may have to go. That's a First
| Amendment right in the US, but it's not unlimited. You should be
| able to say anything you're willing to sign.[1] This is, again,
| the troll farm problem, and, again, AIs make it worse.
|
| That's probably enough to deal with the immediate problems.
|
| [1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/32/anonymous-speech
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Worst idea ever - what next - license to do GPU's or CPU
| architectures ???. Software patents all over again.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Capitalist, a venture one, for worse is trying to use
| administrative resource to protect his company.
|
| As far as entrepreneurial stuff goes, running to gov to squeeze
| other companies when you are losing is beyond unethical.
|
| There is something just absolutely disgusting about this move, it
| taints the company, not to mention the personality
| no4120k1 wrote:
| [dead]
| wlitlwijatli wrote:
| [flagged]
| xmlblog wrote:
| Rent-seeking, anyone?
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