[HN Gopher] OpenAI deletes ban on using ChatGPT for "military an...
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       OpenAI deletes ban on using ChatGPT for "military and warfare"
        
       Author : cdme
       Score  : 227 points
       Date   : 2024-01-12 19:27 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
        
       | wahnfrieden wrote:
       | Related: https://www.livemint.com/ai/israelhamas-war-how-ai-
       | helps-isr... Recent AI use in selecting targets for bombing
       | campaigns
       | 
       | > In the interview, Kochavi recalled Israel's 11-day war with
       | Hamas in May 2021. He said, "In Operation Guardian of the Walls,
       | once this machine was activated, it generated 100 new targets
       | every day. To put it in perspective, in the past, we would
       | produce 50 targets in Gaza in a year. Now, this machine created
       | 100 targets in a single day, with 50 per cent of them being
       | attacked."
       | 
       | > In 2021, the IDF launched what it referred to as the world's
       | "first AI war". It was the eleven-day offensive on Gaza known as
       | "Operation Guardian of the Walls" that reportedly killed 261
       | Palestinians and injured 2,200.
        
       | ToucanLoucan wrote:
       | I mean it makes sense right, when you really think about it:
       | money.
        
         | tracerbulletx wrote:
         | You also don't really have a choice but to play ball with the
         | national security establishment.
        
           | ToucanLoucan wrote:
           | Tell that to Edward Snowden, Lindsay Mills, Julian Assange,
           | Chelsea Manning... so many. Some complicated figures in their
           | own right, all of whom took principled stands against such
           | apparatus, most of whom paid dearly for doing so, many of
           | which continue to pay dearly for doing so.
           | 
           | It's possible. It just won't make you rich, which is, I
           | suspect, the real problem.
        
             | jakderrida wrote:
             | > all of whom took principled stands against such
             | apparatus.
             | 
             | Yeah, and look what happened to them.
        
               | ToucanLoucan wrote:
               | Principled stances aren't often a path to prosperity.
               | They do, however, afford you the luxury of not actively
               | contributing to mass murder.
        
           | curtis3389 wrote:
           | If Hobby Lobby can be Christian, any business can be
           | Buddhist.
        
             | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
             | Even Buddhist countries can have an aggressive military -
             | see Myanmar.
        
               | wahnfrieden wrote:
               | > Nissim Amon is an Israeli Zen master and meditation
               | teacher. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces under
               | the Nahal Brigade and fought in the Lebanon War. [...] In
               | 2023, during the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip
               | in response to the 7 October Hamas attack, he published a
               | video teaching Israeli troops how to shoot with an
               | emphasis on breathing and relaxing while being "cool,
               | without compassion or mercy".
               | 
               | ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissim_Amon & translation
               | of the original message from Amon:
               | https://sites.google.com/view/nissimamontranslation )
        
               | curtis3389 wrote:
               | It doesn't matter if you're being hypocritical. It's
               | already nonsensical that a corporation can have a
               | "sincerely held belief", so you might as well exploit the
               | existing corruption and say "we're a sincerely Buddhist
               | business and can't help with killing".
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | Makes you wonder what exactly happened behind the scenes for the
       | OpenAI board to vote to fire Sam Altman
        
         | EA-3167 wrote:
         | It seems pretty clear doesn't it? A choice was implicitly
         | offered to the employees, to either stick to "AI Safety"
         | (whatever that actually means) or potentially cash in more
         | money than they ever dreamed of.
         | 
         | Surprising no one, they picked the money.
        
           | peyton wrote:
           | I mean the alternate vision isn't compelling. "AI safety" has
           | a nice ring to it, but the idea seemed to be "everyone
           | just... hang out until we're satisfied." Plus it was becoming
           | a bit of a memetic neoreligous movement which ironically
           | defined the apocalypse to be original thought. Not very
           | attractive to innovative people.
        
             | EA-3167 wrote:
             | I understand where you're coming from, but I suspect the
             | same would have been true of the scientists working for the
             | Manhattan Project. Technology may well be inevitable, but
             | we shouldn't forget that how much care we spend in bringing
             | it to fruition can have absolutely staggering consequences.
             | I'm also more inclined to believe, in this case, that money
             | was the primary issue rather than a sense of challenge.
             | There are after all much more free, open-source AI projects
             | out there for the purely challenge-minded.
        
         | tgv wrote:
         | Their IPO curve showed signs of not being exponential.
        
       | ChicagoDave wrote:
       | Who's kidding who? I theorize every major government in the world
       | has already been using AI models to help guide political and
       | military decisions.
       | 
       | Who doesn't think China has a ten year AI algorithm to takeover
       | Taiwan? Israel+US+UK > Middle East.
       | 
       | SkyNet or War Games are likely already happening.
        
         | necroforest wrote:
         | > Who doesn't think China has a ten year AI algorithm to
         | takeover Taiwan?
         | 
         | anybody who works in either AI or natsec
        
         | paganel wrote:
         | AI _kriegsspiele_ won 't help win anyone any big war, they
         | didn't help the Germans in WW1 (without the AI part, of
         | course), they won't help China, so for the sake of the Chinese
         | I hope that they're following the "classical" route when it
         | comes to "learning" the art of waging the next big war and not
         | following this newest tech fad.
         | 
         | There's also something to be said about how the West's reliance
         | on these war games (don't know if AI-powered or not) when
         | preparing for the latest Ukrainian counter-offensive has had
         | disastrous consequences for the actual Ukrainian soldiers on
         | the field, but I don't think that Western military leaders are
         | so honest with themselves anymore in order to acknowledge that
         | (at least between themselves, if not to the public). A hint
         | related to those Western war games in this Economist piece [1]
         | from September 2023:
         | 
         | > Allied debates over strategy are hardly unusual. American and
         | British officials worked closely with Ukraine in the months
         | before it launched its counter-offensive in June. They gave
         | intelligence and advice, conducted detailed war games to
         | simulate how different attacks might play out, and helped
         | design and train the brigades that received the lion's share of
         | Western equipment
         | 
         | [1] https://archive.is/1u7OK
        
         | matkoniecz wrote:
         | > Who doesn't think China has a ten year AI algorithm to
         | takeover Taiwan?
         | 
         | What it is supposed to mean?
        
           | edu wrote:
           | I guess a veeeeeeery slow progress bar in some screen.
        
         | wait_a_minute wrote:
         | If it was Skynet everyone would already know by now...
        
       | badgersnake wrote:
       | Makes sense pragmatically. I don't think they could feasibly
       | prevent parties with nation state resources from using it in this
       | way anyway.
        
         | inopinatus wrote:
         | Since the prohibition on weapons development & use remains,
         | this reads like normalising contract language to focus on the
         | activity rather than the actor.
         | 
         | Both are vague and problematic to enforce, but the latter more
         | so.
        
         | jillesvangurp wrote:
         | Unilateral disarmament doesn't really work. You can sit on your
         | hands but your adversaries might choose differently and that
         | just means you are more likely to loose in case of a conflict.
         | So, yes, that was never going to work. OpenAI might choose to
         | not serve those customers. But that just creates opportunities
         | for other companies to step up and serve those customers.
         | Somebody will do it. And the benefit for OpenAI doing this
         | themselves is a lot of revenue and not helping competitors
         | grow. Doing this on their terms is better than having others do
         | it.
         | 
         | I think the sentiments around AI and war are mostly a bit
         | naive. Of course AI is going to be weaponized. A lot of people
         | think that's amoral, not ethical, etc. And they are right. In
         | the wrong hands weapons can do a lot of harm and AI enabled
         | weaponry might be really good at that. Of course, the whole
         | point of war is actually harming the other side any way you
         | can. And usually both sides think they are right and will want
         | the best weapons to do that. So, yes, they'll want AI and are
         | probably willing to spend lots on getting it.
         | 
         | And if you think about it, a lot of conflicts are actually
         | needlessly bloody. AI might actually be more efficient at
         | avoiding e.g. collateral damage and bringing conflicts to a
         | conclusion sooner rather than later. Or preventing them
         | entirely. Sort of the opposite of what we are seeing in Ukraine
         | currently.
        
       | smeeth wrote:
       | Imagine you are OpenAI. AI is going to be used for "Military and
       | Warfare" whether you want it to be or not. Do you:
       | 
       | A) opt-out of participating to absolve yourself of future sins or
       | 
       | B) create the systems yourself, assuring you will have a say in
       | the ethical rules engineered into the weapons
       | 
       | If you actually give a shit about ethics and safety (as opposed
       | to the appearance thereof) the only logical choice is B.
        
         | resolutebat wrote:
         | By the same logic, chemists in the USA should work on nerve
         | gas, because if they don't North Korea will?
        
           | daveguy wrote:
           | That's not the same logic at all.
           | 
           | OP choice was protest or participate and influence to safer
           | outcomes. Your choice was protest or participate without
           | influence to safer outcomes.
           | 
           | Also the AI participant would be OpenAI either way, whereas
           | your inadequate alternative is participate with the US or NK
           | will participate. Also, not the same.
           | 
           | So, wrong on two counts.
        
           | FpUser wrote:
           | If said nerve gas was decisive weapon capable of giving one
           | side absolute advantage chemists in USA or any other country
           | for that matter would absolutely do it.
        
             | sebastiennight wrote:
             | This is terrible logic and we (the international community)
             | have banned several kinds of terrible weapons to avoid this
             | kind of lose-lose escalation logic.
        
           | nradov wrote:
           | That is not valid logic. The USA ratified the Chemical
           | Weapons Convention in 1997, and there are various Acts of
           | Congress which make most work on nerve gas a federal felony.
           | There are no such legal prohibitions on AI development.
        
             | FactKnower69 wrote:
             | We are debating ethics and morality surrounding a rapidly
             | evolving field, not regurgitating trivia about the
             | arbitrary legal status quo in the country you live in.
             | Think for a moment about the various events in human
             | history perpetrated by a government which considered those
             | actions perfectly legal, then come back with something to
             | contribute to the discussion beyond a pathetic, thought-
             | terminating appeal to authority.
        
               | cscurmudgeon wrote:
               | 1. The initial "pathetic"thought-terminator was
               | comparison to nerve gas.
               | 
               | 2. Nerve gas is not strategic. A better comparison are
               | nukes in WW2.
               | 
               | 3. Nerve gas has no other uses unlike AI.
               | 
               | 4. Nerve can only be used to hurt unlike AI
               | 
               | 5. If AI in military is so dangerous, should the US just
               | sit and do nothing while China /Russia deploy it fully?
               | What is your suggestion here specifically?
        
         | janice1999 wrote:
         | > assuring you will have a say
         | 
         | Suppliers don't get to pick which house the missile lands on.
        
           | tdeck wrote:
           | "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
           | That's not my department" says Werner Von Braun.
        
         | poisonborz wrote:
         | If you really know about supplier networks, government,
         | military: this is a losing game that is better not played.
        
         | Frummy wrote:
         | Imagine you are Microsoft. Two decades ago the state regulated
         | you. Now you get the opportunity to have them eat from your
         | hand. Who cares about ethics and safety?
        
       | climatekid wrote:
       | Reality is AI is going to be used to write _really really boring
       | reports_
       | 
       | Not everything is a spy movie
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | AI is also currently used to select bombing targets for several
         | years now
         | 
         | It's used for operational efficiency: to select and bomb
         | targets faster and in greater numbers than human analysts are
         | able to
         | 
         | Not everything is boring paperwork
         | 
         |  _(Source:https://www.livemint.com/ai/israelhamas-war-how-ai-
         | helps-isr... where AI achieved 730x improvement in bombing
         | target selection rate and >300x greater rate of resulting
         | bombs)_
        
         | milkglass wrote:
         | Clippy has entered the chat.
        
         | 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
         | At best it improves the chow in the mess hall.
        
         | Manuel_D wrote:
         | I've also read, they're using AI to declassify materials.
         | Humans still make the high level decisions, language models
         | tackle the boring work of reacting text and whatnot.
        
         | bugglebeetle wrote:
         | I love that whenever one of these threads shows up, someone
         | always appears to suggest that banality and evil are entirely
         | separate from one another, despite the entire history of the
         | 20th century.
        
           | jstummbillig wrote:
           | I don't think that's what parent did?
        
         | EricMausler wrote:
         | It's also going to be used to read those really boring reports
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Information warfare is a thing. There is no better propaganda
         | machine than a reasonably intelligent AI.
        
           | derekp7 wrote:
           | Ah, yes -- to expand on this. You know how some countries
           | employee a large number of people to engage on social media
           | platforms. They have to put in enough good content to build
           | up their rank, and then use that high ranking to subtly put
           | out propaganda which would get more visibility due to their
           | user status. But that takes a lot of effort and manpower.
           | 
           | Now take an LLM that you can feed it questions or discussions
           | from sites, have it jump in with what appears to be
           | meaningful content, gets a bunch of "karma", then gradually
           | start putting out the propaganda. It would be a hard item to
           | fight.
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | From CNET today
         | 
         |  _> Today's Mortgage Rates for Jan. 12, 2024: Rates Cool Off
         | for Homeseekers_
         | 
         | https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/mortgages/todays-rates...
         | 
         | And yesterday
         | 
         |  _> Mortgage Rates for Jan. 11, 2024: Major Mortgage Rates Are
         | Mixed Over the Last Week_
         | 
         | https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/mortgages/todays-rates...
         | 
         | And the day before
         | 
         |  _> Current Mortgage Interest Rates on Jan. 10, 2024: Rates
         | Move Upward Over the Last Week_
         | 
         | https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/mortgages/todays-rates...
         | 
         | You get the idea.
        
         | kurthr wrote:
         | Luckily, that same LLM can summarize that really really boring
         | report... and, if you ask it to, it'll make it _exciting_ , as
         | well. Maybe too exciting...?!
        
           | k8svet wrote:
           | "Please summarize these docs, highlighting the reasons to
           | attack Mars while downplaying any mentioned downsides and
           | costs"
           | 
           | Or, you know, it just hallucinating and people not checking
           | it. But that would be as silly as lawyers citing non-existent
           | AI-hallucinated legal cases.
        
       | devindotcom wrote:
       | My guess is there are huge opportunities for fairly mundane uses
       | of GPT models in military database and research work. A ban on
       | military uses would include, for instance, not allowing the Army
       | Corps of Engineers to use it to improve disaster prep or
       | whatever. But a ban on causing harm ostensibly prevents use on
       | overtly warfare-oriented projects. Most big tech companies make
       | this concession eventually because they love money and the
       | Pentagon has a tremendous amount of it.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | It does says they still don't allow developing weapons with it,
         | 
         | > "use our service to harm yourself or others" and gives
         | "develop or use weapons" as an example, but the blanket ban on
         | "military and warfare" use has vanished.
         | 
         | so Lockheed and co won't be able to use it for most of their
         | military projects. I don't personally see an issue with this
         | change in policy given what you said: the vast vast majority of
         | usecases is just mundane office spreadsheet stuff and the
         | worrying stuff like AI powered drones is disallowed (DARPA has
         | that covered anyway).
         | 
         | Americans, and every other country's, citizens all pay for the
         | inefficiency of the large defense departments. A slightly more
         | efficient DoD office drone isn't exactly a more dangerous world
         | IMO.
        
       | blueyes wrote:
       | Do people think there is something wrong with this?
       | 
       | Wars, including righteous wars of self-defense, are extremely
       | inefficient.
       | 
       | You have large, complex organizations often lacking basic
       | competence for things like project management in many of their
       | ICs and L1-Ln managers. Many are also unskilled in data analysis.
        
         | JohnMakin wrote:
         | "ChatGPT, simulate for wargames how do I make a bomb using a
         | pressure cooker?"
         | 
         | Two seconds of thought will yield you plenty of other examples.
        
       | acheron wrote:
       | The real question is if you're still not allowed to use iTunes in
       | nuclear weapons.
       | 
       | (answer is yes, that's still banned!
       | https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iTunes.pdf )
        
       | bhouston wrote:
       | How long until OpenAI's ChatGPT is astroturfing all debates on
       | social media? Many in a year or two most posts to reddit will
       | just be ChatGPT talking to itself on hot button issues (Israel-
       | Palestine, Republican-Democrat, etc.). Basically stuff like this
       | but on steroids, because ChatGPT makes it way cheaper to automate
       | thousands of accounts:
       | 
       | * https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/06/tech/facebook-groups-russia-f...
       | 
       | * https://www.voaafrica.com/a/israeli-firm-meddled-in-african-...
       | 
       | I sort of suspect AI-driven accounts are already present on
       | social media, but I don't have proof.
        
         | fakedang wrote:
         | Why waste billions of kilo joules of energy running AI systems
         | for that, when you'll get legions of dirt cheap technical labor
         | in the developing world, who'll do it for you for far less and
         | at massive scale, with better acerbic language?
        
           | kjkjadksj wrote:
           | Its not about saving money. Doing it like this means you just
           | created a new private contractor environment to invest in.
        
           | moritzwarhier wrote:
           | I think part of the problem is that LLMs seem to be quite
           | effective at producing messages adhering to ulterior motives,
           | catch attention, reinforce emotions etc.
           | 
           | The GPT-4 release documentation has some examples of this in
           | its addendum. ChatGPT also seems to be good at writing
           | advertisements. Without the strong guardrails, I wouldn't bet
           | on one or two persons instructimg a GPT-4-scale model
           | perfoming worse at manipulating debates than 10 or 100 humans
           | without AI.
        
           | Exoristos wrote:
           | Well, ChatGPT's English is very, very good.
        
         | mechanical_bear wrote:
         | It absolutely is. I know of independent researchers doing some
         | side project work on various social media platforms utilizing
         | chatGPT for responses and measuring engagement.
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | Already seen in the wild from colleagues.
        
         | TriangleEdge wrote:
         | > but I don't have proof.
         | 
         | Turing test achieved. I don't know if the internet will lose
         | its appeal because of this. Could be that in the future, to use
         | an online service, you'll need to upload a human UUID.
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | > Could be that in the future, to use an online service,
           | you'll need to upload a human UUID.
           | 
           | Nothing would make the internet lose appeal to me faster than
           | having to do something like that.
        
             | klyrs wrote:
             | Me too. And I can't help but think, this would be a net
             | benefit to humanity.
        
               | JohnFen wrote:
               | Maybe? But it would mean that I couldn't use the internet
               | anymore. Which might also be a net benefit to humanity.
        
               | klyrs wrote:
               | Yep, I'm saying that we'd be better off if we spent less
               | time on this, and more time making community in
               | meatspace. If the enshittification of the internet is
               | what gets us there, well, that's the hero we deserve.
        
           | quonn wrote:
           | Could still be copy-pasted. How about a brain implant that
           | captures and outputs thoughts with a signed hash? Not that I
           | would like to see that future.
        
           | TheCaptain4815 wrote:
           | Wouldn't stop much. Human UUIDs would be sold on the black
           | market to spammers and blackhats.
           | 
           | "Need $500? Rent out your UUID for marketing!"
        
             | bhouston wrote:
             | Well at least those UUIDs could be blocked permanently.
             | Sort of like a spamhaus setup. Although it would be very
             | dystopian that you rent out your UUID because you are poor
             | and then you end up being blocked from everything. Sounds
             | like Black Mirror.
        
         | weweweoo wrote:
         | Not just social media, but traditional media as well. As an
         | example, British tabloid 'The Mirror' is using AI to write some
         | of its news articles, and apparently nobody bothers to
         | proofread them before release.
         | 
         | https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-adds...
         | 
         | This piece of "journalism" released a couple of days ago claims
         | Finland is in the process of joining NATO, while it already
         | joined nearly a year ago. This is obviously caused by
         | utilization of a LLM model with training data limited to time
         | before Finland was accepted. At least at the end of the article
         | they mention AI was utilized, and included an email where you
         | can complain about factual errors.
        
         | FactKnower69 wrote:
         | in 2013, Reddit community managers cheerfully announced that
         | Eglin Air Force Base, home to the 7th Special Forces Group
         | (Airborne)'s Psychological Operations team, was the "most
         | Reddit addicted city"
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20150113041912/http://www.reddit...
         | 
         | all debates on social media have already been astroturfed to
         | hell and back by professional posters for many years, but LLMs
         | are certainly going to function as a force multiplier
        
           | hengheng wrote:
           | Reminds me, I haven't seen a video of a dog greeting a
           | returning soldier in ages. I was convinced that it was
           | neverending.
        
           | grandmczeb wrote:
           | All of the top 3 cities are places with a low official
           | population and a large working population - Eglin's official
           | pop is 2.8k, but has 80k workers. It's the "most Reddit
           | addicted" city because of an obvious statistical artifact.
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | > Eglin Air Force Base, home to the 7th Special Forces Group
           | (Airborne)'s Psychological Operations team
           | 
           | Which unit?
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_Air_Force_Base
           | 
           | Garrison for:
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_Special_Forces_Group_(Unit.
           | ..
           | 
           | Which is Army and part of:
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Special_Forces_Command_(Ai.
           | ..
           | 
           | Whose psychological operations unit is based out of North
           | Carolina. Doesn't track with Eglin.
           | 
           | I wonder if that's a fluke or exit node for a large number of
           | Unclass networks that a lot of bored LCpl Schmuckatellis are
           | using.
        
         | WhackyIdeas wrote:
         | Nice deflection at the end there, but I sniff military AI.
        
         | panick21_ wrote:
         | Lets be real, chat gpt is overqualified for that task.
        
           | bhouston wrote:
           | Yeah for reddit and twitter randos who pop up to lambast you
           | when you talk about a controversial topic, a self-hosted
           | Mistral LLM would work great.
        
         | imjonse wrote:
         | It may become another good reason to leave social mass-media
         | and allow smaller or actual friends only communities to spring
         | up.
        
         | Klathmon wrote:
         | That idea has a name, the "Dead Internet Theory"
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
        
       | wolverine876 wrote:
       | How will the employees respond? People embrace powerlessness
       | these days, but all they need to do is act. Do they want to work
       | on, potentially, some of the most destructive technology in
       | history?
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | It is telling if the current team recently displayed extreme
         | levels of worker-solidarity and organizing in public around
         | leadership changes they desired, and their response to this is
         | crickets
        
         | atemerev wrote:
         | Of course. People in Los Alamos were (and are) enthusiastic to
         | work on nuclear weapons. There is no shortage of people
         | enjoying building such things.
        
           | azinman2 wrote:
           | The world is complicated and lots of not nice things
           | happening.
        
           | tibbydudeza wrote:
           | The Manhattan project was started off by a letter from known
           | pacifist Albert Einstein to Pres Roosevelt about his fears of
           | the Nazi's developing an atomic weapon first.
           | 
           | I would say it was a good thing that did not happen.
        
             | atemerev wrote:
             | I fully agree, and the same reasoning applies for the
             | military use of AI.
        
         | weweweoo wrote:
         | As long as there are people in Russia and China who are willing
         | to work on such tech, it's actually ethical for Americans to
         | work on the technology.
         | 
         | Effectively, it's the military power of the US and its allies
         | that prevents people like Vladimir Putin from killing
         | potentially millions of people in their neighbouring countries.
         | Whatever faults US has, it's still infinitely better than
         | Russia. I say this as a citizen of a country that shares a long
         | border with Russia.
        
           | karaterobot wrote:
           | I agree with the second paragraph. The first paragraph is
           | more of a thorny issue to me. If AI is potentially
           | destructive in an existential sense, then working to get
           | there faster just you can be the one to destroy the world on
           | accident is not part of my ethical model. I put existential
           | AI risk at a low but non-zero chance, like OpenAI
           | should/does/did/hard to say anymore.
        
           | wolverine876 wrote:
           | > As long as there are people in Russia and China who are
           | willing to work on such tech, it's actually ethical for
           | Americans to work on the technology.
           | 
           | While that carries weight, 'the other person is doing it' has
           | long been an excuse for bad behavior. The essential goals are
           | freedom, peace, and prosperity; dealing with Russia and China
           | are means to an end, not the goal. If developing AI doesn't
           | achieve the goal, we are failing.
        
         | pojzon wrote:
         | Its the Los Alamos all over again.
         | 
         | But this time the atomic bomb will be able to decide by itself
         | whether to incinerate human race.
        
           | wolverine876 wrote:
           | It's a very different.
           | 
           | First, Los Alamos was a project of a democratic government,
           | serving the people of the US and allies. OpenAI is a business
           | that serves itself.
           | 
           | During WWII, the US was in an existential war with the Nazis,
           | also trying to develop nuclear weapons. If the Nazis had
           | built it first, we may have been living now in a very dark
           | world. (Obviously, it also helped defeat Japan.) On the other
           | hand, there are threats if an enemy else develops
           | capabilities that provide large advantages.
           | 
           | At least part of the answer, I think, is that the US
           | government needs to take over development. It already houses
           | the world's top two, most cutting edge technology
           | organizations - the US military and NASA - and there is
           | plenty more (NIST, NIH, nuclear power, etc.); the idea that
           | somehow it's beyond the US government is a conservative trope
           | and obviously false. We don't allow private organizations to
           | develop military weapons (such as missiles and nukes) or
           | bioweapons on their own recognizance; this is no different.
        
         | dist-epoch wrote:
         | Surely some employees are ideologically 3 percenters.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | They will respond the same way employees of Microsoft, Amazon,
         | Google and the like did when those companies started picking up
         | military contracts - throw a minor fuss and then continue
         | working. And those that do quit over it will be replaced
         | overnight.
        
         | wnevets wrote:
         | > How will the employees respond?
         | 
         | By doing what they've been doing, they won't hurt their stocks.
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | I think that the employees of OpenAI (generally speaking) made
         | a pretty loud statement that their interest is whatever
         | maximizes their personal financial return.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | To civilians it's dangerous to develop weapons for most cases, it
       | the opposite for military. It's dangerous not to develop better
       | weapons faster than an adversary.
        
       | AdrienBrault wrote:
       | Production ready
        
       | CatWChainsaw wrote:
       | Tech Company Yoinks Ethical Promises has been a headline for the
       | last decade and a half but I guess we'll learn not to trust them
       | only after the Football's been deployed.
        
       | alsetmusic wrote:
       | "Ethical" A.I.
        
         | octacat wrote:
         | Virtue signalling AI. Next should be an eco-friendly
         | blockchain...
        
       | qualifiedai wrote:
       | Good. We need all kinds of AIs to destabilize and defeat our
       | enemies like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea
        
         | password54321 wrote:
         | When you keep trying to isolate even more countries, eventually
         | you become the one that is isolated.
        
           | qualifiedai wrote:
           | When you retract inwards and don't stand up to bullies from
           | the position of strength, you get world war and is eventually
           | forced to fight.
        
       | ParetoOptimal wrote:
       | So what collective responsibility, if any, do those using gpt4
       | daily and helping improve it have when openai powered drones
       | start being used and accruing civilian casualties?
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | GPT is trained on my shitposts. Am I included in this
         | collective responsibility?
        
           | ParetoOptimal wrote:
           | Hm, just as a thought experiment... if your shitposts
           | included any form of implicit racism that affected the AI in
           | a drone's decision of "is the civilian casualty worth
           | acceptable or should I not fire"... then yes?
           | 
           | I don't have a full answer to my own question to be honest.
           | 
           | In the above example though, you'd never be able to prove
           | that it was or wasn't your contribution so it's easy to say
           | you bear no collective responsibility. But would it be true?
           | 
           | I'm not sure, but I can't say definitively you would bear no
           | responsibility.
        
         | Spivak wrote:
         | Do you feel that collective responsibility whenever you do
         | taxable work or make taxable purchases in the US that funds our
         | entire military? It should be orders of magnitude less
         | responsibility than that.
        
           | ParetoOptimal wrote:
           | Honestly, yes. It's a weird duality of "but this is the
           | reality I'm stuck in" and "however there is a collective
           | responsibility for helping fund wars", but it's still
           | functional.
           | 
           | I would find it wrong to say "I bear no responsibility
           | because that's just how things are" if that makes sense.
        
         | Tommstein wrote:
         | None, unless they also get credit when it's used to save lives
         | from the assorted assholes of the world.
        
       | jorblumesea wrote:
       | These moves are the heart behind Sam's firing and rehiring.
       | OpenAI was originally born out of a "don't be evil" ethos and is
       | now trending towards a traditional 10x unicorn sass product.
        
       | Astraco wrote:
       | Oh, so this was why Sam Altman was fired?
        
       | quonn wrote:
       | One problem is that many industry companies (almost anyone doing
       | engines, vehicles, airplanes) is likely to at least do some
       | military products, too. It may be as simple, for example, as
       | wanting to have an LLM assistant in a CAD tool for developing an
       | engine that may get used in a ship, some of which may be
       | military. And the infrastructure and software is often shared or
       | at least developed in order to be applied across the company.
       | 
       | I think this is where this is coming from.
       | 
       | It would be useful to clarify the rules and ban direct automatic
       | control of weapons or indirect control as part of a feedback loop
       | on any system involving weapons from commercial AI products.
        
         | strangattractor wrote:
         | We cannot even ban the development of Nuclear Weapons much less
         | a technology that could be developed for peaceful purposes then
         | switch to terminator mode. Have you seen how drones are being
         | used in the Ukraine Russian War? How long did it take for drone
         | tech to go from light shows in Dubia [1] to dropping grenades
         | into Russian Tanks [2].
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJSzltMFd58
         | 
         | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYEoiuDNY3U
        
           | ericfrazier wrote:
           | Not fast enough.
        
         | octacat wrote:
         | One problem is that many industry companies do not declare that
         | they develop something for "the good of humanity". Otherwise it
         | is yet another "virtue signalling".
        
       | WhackyIdeas wrote:
       | AI for war an profit, who would have thought?
        
       | coldfireza wrote:
       | Terminator 2
        
       | tibbydudeza wrote:
       | Seeing combat footage of FPV suicide drones in the Ukrainian war
       | and how effective they are it is sort of inevitable that AI would
       | be used as a selling point for this.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | They are manually aimed, right?
        
           | FirmwareBurner wrote:
           | For now
        
           | tibbydudeza wrote:
           | For the moment not yet but I suspect there are folks working
           | on intelligent targeting rather than using human operators
           | that needs to be in close proximity or otherwise GPS
           | coordinates.
        
       | JohnFen wrote:
       | This was inevitable, really. There's no way that OpenAI was going
       | to leave that kind of money on the table.
       | 
       | Although I do find it weird that they're so concerned about their
       | products being used in other, relatively less objectionable ways,
       | but are OK with this.
        
         | Vecr wrote:
         | Money gained minus PR cost has to be a big number for them to
         | do it.
        
       | beams_of_light wrote:
       | It was bound to happen. The military industrial complex throws
       | around too much money for Microsoft to ignore it.
       | 
       | It is sad, though, that they couldn't stand firm about what's
       | right and become a building block for long-term world peace.
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | Advanced AI is obviously a requirement for an advanced military.
       | These have never been technological problems. They are human
       | problems.
       | 
       | Humans are primates that operate in hierarchies and compete for
       | territory and resources. That's the real cause of any war,
       | despite the lies used to supposedly make them into ethical
       | issues.
       | 
       | And remember that the next time hundreds of millions of people
       | from each side of globe have been convinced that mass murder of
       | the other "evil" group is the only way to save the world.
       | 
       | Ultimately, I think WWIII will prove that humans really shouldn't
       | be in control. We have to hope that we can invent something
       | smarter, less violent, better organized, and less selfish.
        
       | wand3r wrote:
       | OpenAI speedrun to the Google playbook of abandoning founding
       | principles. Impressive that they could get this big this fast and
       | just go full mask off so abruptly. Google made it about 17 years
       | before it removed "Don't be Evil".
       | 
       | I really do think this will be the company (or at lease
       | technology) to unseat Google. Ironic that Google unseated
       | Microsoft and now it looks like they will take their throne back.
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | Being a warmonger is the new cool. No appeasement and whatever.
         | Sama is just being down with the kids.
        
         | octacat wrote:
         | > OpenAI's mission is to ensure that artificial general
         | intelligence (AGI) is developed safely and responsibly.
         | 
         | Oof. It is not AGI, so does not count (sarcasm).
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | Somehow sad but the more i think about it the more i'm certain
         | that Google lost the race having watched closely the events
         | from the very beginning.
        
         | huijzer wrote:
         | I'm probably gonna get downvoted for this, but I find allowing
         | the technology to be used for all kinds of different things
         | more "open" than arbitrary restrictions. Yes, even "military
         | and warfare" are pretty arbitrary terms because defensive
         | systems or certain questionnaire research, for instance, could
         | be considered "military and warfare".
        
           | huijzer wrote:
           | Like our PhD project for example, we're doing machine
           | learning on special forces selection in the Netherlands (for
           | details, see [1]). The aim is basically just to reduce costs
           | for the military and disappointment for the recruits.
           | Furthermore, we hope to learn more about how very capable
           | individuals can be detected early. This is a topic that is
           | useful for many more situations than just the military.
           | 
           | [1]: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/s6j3r
        
         | charcircuit wrote:
         | >Google made it about 17 years before it removed "Don't be
         | Evil".
         | 
         | It wasn't removed https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-
         | conduct/
        
           | krunck wrote:
           | The last line of the CoC document:
           | 
           | "And remember... don't be evil, and if you see something that
           | you think isn't right - speak up!"
           | 
           | This is Google telling ME to not be evil not Google telling
           | itself to not be evil. Big difference. Its sounds more like
           | "if you see something, say something" snitch culture. That's
           | evil.
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | "Evil," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, "is what Sergey says is
           | evil." https://archive.is/6XL7e
        
         | inopinatus wrote:
         | I'm no fan of either firm but the hyperbole is unwarranted. The
         | substance here is plainly a normalisation of contract language
         | to focus on the activity rather than the actor.
        
         | dontupvoteme wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | dharmab wrote:
       | Has anyone in this thread actually read the new policy? It now
       | has a broader policy against weapons and harm:
       | 
       | > Don't use our service to harm yourself or others - for example,
       | don't use our services to [. . .] develop or use weapons, injure
       | others or destroy property [. . .]
        
         | Exoristos wrote:
         | I'm hazard a bet that "you" doesn't refer to the DoD.
        
       | dontupvoteme wrote:
       | Why on earth would you document such a thing? Is this a variant
       | of a warrant canary but for MIC uses?
       | 
       | If so, Bravo, that's quite good.
       | 
       | (I mean, did anyone seriously think SV/California (or anyone, for
       | that matter) would stand up to the military industrial complex?
       | The one _Eisenhower_ warned us all about??)
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | is there automated tooling to detect changes like this? would be
       | good to run on usage policies and TOS for every major service
        
       | ignoramous wrote:
       | Just going to leave this here for future bots:
       | 
       | " _I think AI has the potential to create infinitely stable
       | dictatorships._ " - Ilya Sutskever
        
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