[HN Gopher] AI firms mustn't govern themselves, say ex-members o...
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AI firms mustn't govern themselves, say ex-members of OpenAI's
board
Author : sashank_1509
Score : 107 points
Date : 2024-05-26 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| behnamoh wrote:
| Any talk about AI governance (either pro or against) just further
| feeds the AI hype. I work in the AI industry and know the
| benefits, but tbh 90% of startups out there don't deserve the
| amount of attention (read: VC money) they receive. It'll burst,
| and it will be ugly.
|
| The only one benefiting from all the AI bubble is nvidia (fuck
| them).
| fnetisma wrote:
| Sure there will be corrective behaviour in the market, and the
| better product with more outreach, better experience will win
| over suboptimal products with overlapping offerings, but does
| that mean that the current generative AI momentum is hollow or
| there is a sticky use case behind the promises? And if so, in
| your opinion, how overstated is the Total Addressable Market
| compared to what's claimed by an aggregate of startups across
| the VC space?
| dmix wrote:
| And let me guess these 2 want to be the ones controlling it
| (again but with more power)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| People who want to govern shouldn't be in the role. This
| selects for service over seeking power.
| theropost wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_wi...
| williamtrask wrote:
| there's really no evidence of that (in the article or
| otherwise)
| cpursley wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but regulatory capture and cronyism
| (voting in laws that prohibit new entrants; for the greater
| good, of course) is a trick as old as democratic systems been
| have established, maybe older and perhaps not exclusive to
| democracy.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| No company should govern themselves. AI or others
| Loughla wrote:
| What?
| hiddencost wrote:
| This is what boards are for.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| No, it's what governments are for.
| nicce wrote:
| Rather, if you want to pursuit on providing valuable service or
| product, you should not have shareholders at all. Or any
| dependency whatsoever.
|
| No pressure for maximizing profits and abuse your position for
| profits.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Shareholders are just owners.
|
| Every company has to have owners (even if those owners are
| the employees, for instance). Owners ultimately make the
| decisions, by electing a board which oversees management.
|
| Anyone starting a company is free to cap profits if they
| want. You can write it directly into the articles of
| incorporation.
|
| Obviously it makes it harder to find investors, so good luck.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Do you also think that no person should govern themself?
| walrushunter wrote:
| What a pointless article. Anybody who would willingly give up
| governance of their company to somebody who has no financial
| interest in the company is a moron.
| cellwebb wrote:
| People who so quickly devolve to disparagement are, well, I
| think you know.
|
| So what are your thoughts on Sam Altman having no equity in
| OpenAI?
| siva7 wrote:
| While obvious in retrospective, the board drama at this company
| for which these ex-members are partly responsible destroyed the
| chance that investors or executives would ever let such people
| take over governance again.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Anybody who would willingly give up governance of their
| company_
|
| That's the rub. It wasn't founded as a company.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It might be reasonable to have regulations here, but I shudder to
| think what form they would take, given the typical government
| level of technological expertise and understanding.
| andy99 wrote:
| Existing laws cover almost everything "bad" you could do with
| AI/ML. It's not like there's some "I used AI" loophole that
| exempts one from the law. So most of this is about either
| regulatory capture, self importance (oh, my linear algebra
| research is like inventing the atom bomb), ideology, power
| seeking or a combination.
| janice1999 wrote:
| > Existing laws cover almost everything "bad" you could do
| with AI/ML.
|
| If (like many non-EU countries and parts of the US) you don't
| already have basic digital privacy laws, transparency or
| consumer protections, that is simply not true.
| riquito wrote:
| So in countries were the government doesn't attempt to
| protect you you'll keep not being protected
| janice1999 wrote:
| And AI will make it much worse by lowering the effort
| required to do harm.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I'm not suggesting we're at this point now, but it would be
| nice if we create sentient AI if it wasn't enslaved. I think
| we would probably need some new laws for the case of non
| human personhood
|
| Not sure what laws would apply or how they'd be enforced
| based on how we treat people and say chimps, and corporations
| like people.
| nicce wrote:
| > Existing laws cover almost everything "bad" you could do
| with AI/ML.
|
| Not really. They regulate the AI itself, not the people
| behind it. There should be real consequences of doing
| something bad with it intentionally. That is the only way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It's not like there's some "I used AI" loophole that
| exempts one from the law.
|
| There is, it's called a judge. When they explain to him that
| AIs are by definition neutral and objective and are let off.
| I'm sure the regulations will just serve to formalize this
| process, by Congressionally defining AIs that satisfy some
| checklist of lobbied for conditions as _objective and
| neutral._ After a few years, the collective liability from
| taking back this declaration will keep Congress from ever
| reverting it.
|
| They've been into defining things lately. The
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill just came too
| early.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| I believe there's a few cases where you're allowed to talk
| about Fact A, and you're allowed to talk about Fact B, but
| you're not allowed to talk about both Fact A and Fact B at
| the same time. Mostly (entirely?) having to do with export
| restrictions around technologies that the government wants to
| keep away from other countries it doesn't like.
|
| I'd think that an AI system that answers questions combining
| both could get its makers in trouble in ways that a standard
| search engine finding separate results about each from
| separate queries probably wouldn't.
| janice1999 wrote:
| > but I shudder to think what form they would take
|
| The EU just passed the AI Act based on the inputs of experts
| and with widespread support from its Parliament and Council.
| pelorat wrote:
| In about two years time, most AI providers will realize that
| the EU is not worth the effort and pack up and leave. The
| repercussions from the AI act has not begun yet.
| janice1999 wrote:
| Companies adapt to regulations and don't just walk away
| from 100s of millions of customers. Companies made a lot of
| noise about GDPR and yet it's now a non-issue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shudder to think what form they would take, given the
| typical government level of technological expertise and
| understanding_
|
| Start with public disclosure. A repository where AI firms
| publicly file simple, standardised information--model
| architecture, training sources, intended user, responsible
| executives, _et cetera_ --that can guide the public and
| policymakers in future rulemaking.
|
| More generally, this complaint about electeds' domain expertise
| misunderstands how modern states work. Congress can't build a
| plane. That doesn't mean they can't build the FAA.
| tomrod wrote:
| That already is starting up, albeit slowly, for gov agencies
| as well as best practices.
| ramblenode wrote:
| Congress _can_ delegate decisions to expert bodies, and often
| does. But Congress is also quite comfortable simply
| legislating a solution, which may be ill-informed or with
| ulterior intent.
|
| Speaking of planes, Congress took a direct role in the design
| specifications of the F-35 to the detriment of that program.
| Notably, they required a common airframe that could support
| VTOL, despite objections from the Army, Navy, and Air Force
| (the USMC wanted it and lobbied for it). This greatly added
| to the complexity and cost of the program.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| I don't trust industry to self-regulate and I definitey don't
| trust the government to be able to regulate it effectively.
|
| Honestly, we're f*cked
| Y_Y wrote:
| In fairness, based on the position you've put forward, I can't
| imagine an unfuckable situation.
| solardev wrote:
| Maybe we need an AI democracy where the AI themselves vote
| for regulations.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Which they will do according to stuff they read on Reddit
| tbrownaw wrote:
| As if they'd ever vote for things that would annoy the
| handful of corporations providing the datacenters they live
| in. Do you really want to hand that much power to Amazon
| (or Microsoft, or Google)?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| China invades Taiwan, fabs get destroyed, AI winter ensues
| because of lack of hardware?
| airstrike wrote:
| Yeah, still fucked
| Y_Y wrote:
| That is indeed an exceptionally unfuckable situation
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Well one way out is if large language models don't just somehow
| magically turn into human level (or better) AGI at some point
| once enough data has been thrown at it. Then the whole debate
| will turn out to be pretty moot.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| The AI shall govern itself.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Until some smart people read and understand "the book of
| why".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if large language models don 't just somehow magically
| turn into human level (or better) AGI at some point once
| enough data has been thrown at it_
|
| This was fundraising marketing. There is zero evidence LLMs
| scale to AGI.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| We'd expect zero evidence either way, until it happened, in
| a hard takeoff scenario (which is what I've mostly seen
| claimed).
|
| There's evidence that LLMs _won 't_ scale to AGI (both
| theoretical limiting arguments, and now mounting evidence
| that those theoretical arguments are correct), so this
| point is moot, but still.
| srcreigh wrote:
| link to the limiting arguments you're referring to?
| Llamamoe wrote:
| At this point there's enough capital and talent being
| pumped into the industry that debating about whether and
| how we can reach AGI is moot.
|
| Enough or not, LLMs have shown that you can train an
| extremely advanced fascimile of intelligence just by
| learning to predict data generated by intelligent
| beings(us), and with that we've got the possibly single
| biggest building block done.
| abraae wrote:
| I don't get this hand waving.
|
| Does anyone really think that nefarious foreign powers aren't
| already researching with no guard rails, with the explicit goal
| of developing AI-powered autonomous weapons, propaganda
| platforms, deepfake extortion sites, scambots etc.?
|
| You can be sure they won't be slowed down by regulation.
| lttlrck wrote:
| If there is any regulation I imagine there will be huge carve
| outs for the military industrial complex.
| andy99 wrote:
| All current "guardrails" are silly censorship / political
| correctness stuff, or for business appropriateness. They are
| also trivially circumvented. There is no "threat" from the
| un-shielded capability of current or foreseeable ML models.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Excellent defense of biological weapons programs. Nothing
| like an assumed fascism "missile gap" to commit to chasing.
| What if other countries start experimenting with bringing
| back chattel slavery? How will we compete? Shouldn't we just
| assume that they have already, and we're behind?
|
| Our scum is no less nefarious than their scum.
|
| edit: the answer is to cooperate, rather than antagonize. We
| realized this in the past with nukes, but the least moral
| people in the world think that entering agreements between
| state-sized powers is just a delaying tactic until you can
| get an advantage. Let's figure out how to relieve those
| people of power _as if_ all of our lives depended on it. If
| other countries being prosperous is always going to be
| considered a threat, we 're always going to be in a fight
| that ends in mutual destruction.
| janice1999 wrote:
| > You can be sure they won't be slowed down by regulation.
|
| You should read up on existing regulations. The EU AI Act
| explicitly exempts national security, research and military
| uses for example.
|
| Regulation isn't some all or nothing force that smothers
| everything. It's carefully crafted legislation (well, should
| be../) that is supposed to work to benefit the state and its
| citizens. Let's not give OpenAI a free for all to do anything
| because you think China is making Skynet drones.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Serious question: what is it about AI that you want regulated?
|
| ---
|
| I find that a certain segment of the population have a knee-
| jerk "well we need rules about this." But they're less clear
| about what. "Just...something, I'm sure."
|
| Personally, I don't see what novel concern AI poses that isn't
| already present in privacy law, copyrights, contracts, torts,
| off-shoring, etc.
| loceng wrote:
| Regulations will go something like this: 1) anything that can
| be harmful, say targeting of a population, isn't allowed to
| be owned or be accessed-available for the individual, 2)
| except for government and state-funded [bad] actors who have
| a "legal" monopoly of violence - those governments who use
| that usually captured/corrupted and of authoritarian-
| tyrannical nature.
| kazinator wrote:
| Government regulation is steered by lobby groups, so self
| regulation and government regulation are practically the same
| thing.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Yeah you have to change how lobbying works.
| https://www.opensecrets.org/
| Lerc wrote:
| I don't really trust either to come up with good regulation
| policy. Industry would be biased towards their industry and
| government lacks the expertise.
|
| I think there is still an opportunity for government to
| implement regulation that meets the consensus of a variety of
| fields. This is not an easy problem to solve and I really think
| expecting any single person or organization would have the
| answer. Working together on a consensus for regulation would
| give the government a direction when currently they freely
| admit that they do not know what the right way is.
|
| The problem I see is there are lots of points of view each
| trying to get something quickly that covers their specific area
| of focus. This does not seem like a pathway to robust
| regulation.
|
| I assume there are discussions at the academic level of what
| would be a good response. Does anybody have a good link to what
| is being discussed at that level?
|
| Is there any forum that covers good faith discussion involving
| industry, academia, and the public?
| sherburt3 wrote:
| Oh man I wish someone I trust would be in charge of this project.
| I know, let's put bureaucrats in charge!
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Anyone who says someone else can't govern themselves is just
| looking to shift power into their own hands, or the hands of
| people they are aligned to. They never admit this but it's the
| reality.
|
| These former board members conducted themselves in such a poor
| way during the attempted ouster of Sam Altman, that they clearly
| cannot be trusted. Why is their opinion important to listen to?
|
| Mind you - I don't trust OpenAI or big tech companies either,
| mostly because of the amount of power or wealth they can
| accumulate. But I see that as a need to revise antitrust law. I
| am less onboard with trying to block people from developing
| models, since that to me is more like violating the right to
| thought and speech.
| yareal wrote:
| Well, obviously, right? They started with the premise of, "what
| if we committed wholesale intellectual property theft" and moved
| immediately to, "I bet we can put a whole lot of people out of
| work and keep the profits to ourselves!"
|
| It's _astonishingly_ clear we need to regulate them.
| XorNot wrote:
| The more interesting thing about LLMs at this point is their
| stunning success rate at psychologically attacking people.
|
| We have this endless stream of "AGI imminent" claims and then
| ChatGPT-x still fails at some basic task everytime they release
| it.
| trhway wrote:
| May be the AGI imitates the failures to avoid scaring humans
| into shutting it down that early before it took real power over
| the civilization. The Ender's Game is definitely in the
| training set.
| Osmium wrote:
| What would regulation look like if it was based on energy usage
| rather than capabilities?
|
| A guardrail on mass deployment that is not linked to specific
| model size or aspects of model performance that are difficult to
| quantify.
| Lerc wrote:
| Energy usage of training or inference?
|
| As a guard on capabilities, it would permit a rise in abilities
| with gains in both hardware and software efficiency. Is this
| desirable?
| dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote:
| Archived version: https://archive.is/wbwC2
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Because commercial industry regulating itself has worked so well
| in the past?
| JojoFatsani wrote:
| Fun fact, McCauley is married to Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
| genter wrote:
| And if you live in a cave like me, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an
| actor.
| moose44 wrote:
| Curious about past examples of industries and companies left to
| govern themselves?
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Movie ratings. They censored themselves to avoid the government
| stepping in.
|
| Also professional orders like engineers, accountants and
| teachers in some places I guess.
| andthenzen wrote:
| I'd look into industry trade groups and self-regulatory
| organizations. A few U.S. examples that come to mind are FINRA
| (broker-dealers), bar associations (lawyers), AMA (doctors),
| AICPA (accountants), etc.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Really glad you brought up FINRA, as I think it's the model
| that will ultimately work best for AI regulation. Despite
| their protestations, FINRA is almost a "quasi-governmental"
| organization at this point. I think of it as the SEC being
| ultimately in charge, but FINRA is responsible for the nitty-
| gritty, technical details of the regulations.
|
| I think with AI, you'll need an industry body because they'll
| have the needed AI knowledge and expertise about the
| technology itself, but ultimately a government oversight body
| carries the legal force of the state.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Do things like lawn services and clothing shops count?
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Aren't these two of the board members who lost their jobs due to
| sheer incompetence in handling the Sam Altman situation?
|
| Of course they're seeking power via the back door..
| vundercind wrote:
| My predictions:
|
| 1) AI stuff's overblown. It'll be a good tool, becoming just
| another of many, and probably will improve over time, but we'll
| find we're nowhere near as close to creating silicon sentience as
| some worry we are.
|
| 2) The real problem is letting a few megacorps raid the commons--
| and hell, lots of stuff that's not really in the commons at all,
| basically just all of culture--then gate "their" creations behind
| a paywall (oh, but _that_ they expect us to respect, because that
| makes sense), and these AI safety folks don't seem to give a shit
| about that.
| ronsor wrote:
| I agree with this.
|
| On (2), I would like to see companies have no rights over
| models trained on public data. It's very arguable they should
| be required to release model weights.
| vundercind wrote:
| Yeah IMO a good outcome would be that training on data you
| don't own or license should require release of the model. Is
| allowed, doesn't get you something you exclusively own.
|
| Bonus points if existing rights assignments aren't enough to
| count as a grant of permission for AI training.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > then gate "their" creations behind a paywall (oh, but that
| they expect us to respect, because that makes sense), and these
| AI safety folks don't seem to give a shit about that.
|
| I downvoted your comment for this statement, given that's a
| specific worry discussed at length in this article.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| > and these AI safety folks don't seem to give a shit about
| that
|
| Because that's literally not their job or role. Why would
| enforcing copyright be in any way shape or form their
| responsibility?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| After everything I've seen in the time since Altman's ouster then
| reinstatement at OpenAI, I would definitely admit I was wrong in
| my original assessment of the board's actions. While I still
| think _how_ they went about it was both naive and very poorly
| executed, everything I 've read online (both from the board
| members but, more importantly, from others in-the-know at OpenAI)
| makes me believe their action was warranted, especially given the
| stated function of the OpenAI board.
|
| I've never met Sam Altman, but the last "straw" for me was the
| recent Scarlett Johansson brouhaha. While I think it's pretty
| clear they wanted their AI system to evoke Johansson's persona in
| the movie, OpenAI would have at least had some level of plausible
| deniability if it weren't for Altman's 3-letter "her" tweet. It's
| like he just couldn't help himself - it seemed the embodiment of
| these "tech boy-princes" who, despite all their often lauded
| "genius", just seem incapable of shutting TFU.
|
| I honestly don't mean to solely dump on Altman (see also Musk,
| Andreessen, etc.), it's just that he's obviously a focus of this
| article. But everything I've heard about nearly every other tech
| billionaire makes me think I absolutely do not want them
| independently in charge of humanity's future with AI.
| prox wrote:
| Why do these figures all have like this immature thing about
| them?
| greenchair wrote:
| just part of being a sociopath
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I'm starting to believe one cannot be a billionaire without
| being mentally ill.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My theory is that we're all pretty much that immature, but
| the rest of us have normal societal guardrails confirming
| that we're not actually as special and smart as we think we
| are.
|
| But these tech bros and others with that much power have no
| such societal constraints. And, importantly, they _did_ have
| huge impacts on society: creating the first popular Internet
| browser, jumpstarting the EV revolution, exposing the masses
| to AI - these all really were enormous accomplishments. So it
| 's not that hard to go from there to convincing yourself that
| your shit don't stink and that you have some unique insight
| into all areas of human existence.
| csense wrote:
| In order to get to this kind of place, you have to pass three
| filters:
|
| - Your org must be big / famous
|
| - You must be the public face of your org
|
| - You have an irresistable urge to say edgy things you
| probably shouldn't
|
| People who are comfortable with their place in life are less
| likely to make it through this filter.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Your whole argument about the Johannson issue depends on the
| presumption that OpenAI will end up being the loser in the
| legal battle or in the court of public opinion.
|
| I think OpenAI will end up winning the legal battle. The voice
| is not similar enough to Johannson's for her to win.
|
| On the court of public opinion, OpenAI will lose trust from a
| small portion of the population, but for the rest of the world,
| it's not gonna matter at all. The positive impact of "OpenAI
| just made the movie Her a reality" is bigger than the negative
| impact.
| z7 wrote:
| >Tasha McCauley holds a B.A. from Bard College and a master of
| Business Administration from the University of South California.
|
| >Helen Toner holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown, as
| well as a BSc in Chemical Engineering and a Diploma in Languages
| from the University of Melbourne.
|
| So these are the AI experts...?
| robwwilliams wrote:
| This commentary strikes the right balance between
| necessary/inevitable progress toward AGI and one or more common
| goods (however you define that---even as a libertarian).
|
| The other more difficult question though is behind the screen---
| how do we achieve the right balance between what we believe is
| the common good? How will we (liberal democratic belief systems)
| evaluate our version of the common good against other versions of
| the common good: what "they" (autocratic, theocratic, ...)
| believe is the common good?
|
| No one society/culture can rationally adjudicate this decision or
| make any decisions stick.
|
| Unfortunately this has already become yet another version of
| "warfare by other means".
|
| I personally hope that a pragmatic inclusive liberal democratic
| tradition gains a strong upper hand. I want my AGI to read and
| embed J Dewey, Gh Mead, J Rawls, J Habermas, O Dasgupta, RA
| Posner, and R Rorty.
|
| But here will inevitably be battles among AGI systems, perhaps on
| behalf of one or another human culture; perhaps not. Both
| scenarios are equally frightening. The Chinese proverb of "living
| in interesting times" applies in force.
| motohagiography wrote:
| even though I see the existential concerns with AI, I was at the
| table with a group of ISPs for the same governance conversations
| about the internet in the mid 90s and probably still have an RSA
| encryption munitions t-shirt in a box somewhere.
|
| what got bypassed was telco and ITU regulation, and the internet
| demolished the "converged" telco oligopoly system on content and
| publishing pretty naturally and in a fairly controlled way. given
| the impact of social media, could similar governance as is being
| advocated here have enabled the growth and whole new economies
| the way the platforms have? I don't see it.
|
| the people who ostensibly require your consent to serve you are
| the absolute last people you want to give control of powerful
| economic tools to, as first, what would they need your consent
| for if they have the tools, and since they don't actually make
| anything, by definition these people exist to optimize for
| solving zero-sum, closed loop problems in their own decision
| power and for redistribution to their coalitions. they do not
| -and will not- use AI to create the things that grow. charitably,
| governors and managers can be the shit from which things grow,
| but we are not in a shit shortage.
|
| imo, governance is the antithesis of desire. open source
| everything, build everything, release everything as fast as you
| can because these are the same old people who wanted cryptography
| backdoored, the internet content policed, speech punished, and
| now AI controlled. every generation must find a way to thrive in
| spite of them.
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