competition too intense
dangerous technology should not be open source
So, the actionable suggestions from this article are: reduce competition and ban open source.
I guess what it is really about, is using fear to make sure AI remains in the hands of a few…
Yes, this the setup for regulatory capture before regulation has even been conceived. The likes of OpenAI would like nothing more than to be legally declared the only stewards of this “dangerous” technology. The constant doom laden hype that people keep falling for is all part of the plan.
I think calling it “dangerous” in quotes is a bit disingenuous - because there is real potential for danger in the future - but what this article seems to want is totally not the way to manage that.
It would be an obvious attempt at pulling up the ladder if we were to see regulation on ai before we saw regulation on data collection from social media companies. Wen have already seen that weaponized. Why are we going to regulate something before it gets weaponized when we have other recent tech, unregulated, being weaponized?
I saw a post the other day about how people crowd sourced scraping grocery store prices. Using that data they could present a good case for price fixing and collusion. Web scraping is already pretty taboo and this AI fear mongering will be the thing that is used to make it illegal.
It won’t be illegal because there is repeated court precedent for it to be categorically legal.
so chatgpt can scrap data?
Yes.
It’s not unlike recording someone in public. Anything publicly available on the internet is legal for you to access and download. There is no expectation of that datas privacy.
I’m going to need a legal framework to be able to DMCA any comments I see online in case they were created with an AI trained on Sara Silverman’s books
That’s exactly what it is.
But… shouldn’t it? I mean, if everyone had a nuke, the world would look a whole lot different
Since I don’t think this analogy works, you shouldn’t stop there, but actually explain how the world would look like if everyone had access to AI technology (advanced enough to be comparable to a nuke), vs how it would look like if only a small elite had access to it.
We could all do our taxes for free. Fix grammatical errors. Have a pocket legal, medical advice. A niche hobby advisor. Pocket professor. A form completion tool. All in one assistant especially for people who might not know how to navigate a lot of tasks in life. Or we could ban it because I fear maybe someone will use it to make memes. Lots of lazy articles convinced me the AI sky is falling
Okay, well, if everyone had access to an AGI, anyone could design and distribute a pathogen that could wipe out a significant portion of the population. Then again, you’d have the collective force of everyone else’s AI countering that plot.
I think that putting that kind of power into the hands of everyone shouldnt be done lightly.
There are papers online on how to design viruses. Now to get funding for a lab and staff, because this is nothing like Breaking Bad.
I would say the risk of having AI be limited to the ruling elite is worse, though - because there wouldn’t be everyone else’s AI to counter them.
And if AI is limited to a few, those few WILL become the new ruling elite.
And people would be less likely to identify what AI can and can’t do if we convince ourselves to limit our access to it.
Are we back to freaking out about the anarchists cookbook
You can google how to make a nuke. Of course, you’re gonna get your hands on the plutonium, which is something even countries struggle with.
I had Max Tegmark as a professor when I was an undergrad. I loved him. He is a great physicist and educator, so it pains me greatly to say that he has gone off the deep end with his effective altruism stuff. His work through the Future of Life Institute should not be taken seriously. For anyone interested, I responded to Tegmark’s concerns about AI and Effective Altruism in general on The Luddite when they first got a lot of media attention earlier this year.
I argue that EA is an unserious and self-serving philosophy, and the concern about AI is best understood as a bad faith and self-aggrandizing justification for capitalist control of technology. You can see that here. Other commenters are noting his opposition to open sourcing “dangerous technologies.” This is the inevitable conclusion of a philosophy that, as discussed in the linked post, reifies existing power structures to decide how to do the most good within them. EA necessarily excludes radical change by focusing on measurable outcomes. It’s a fundamentally conservative and patronizing philosophy, so it’s no surprise when its conclusions end up agreeing with the people in charge.
I think Max Tegmark is like other public intellectuals, for example, Michio Kaku, that have to say something controversial periodically to stay in he news and maintain their reputation.
Maybe. It had been almost 15 years since I last heard of him until the EA stuff started going mainstream, but he was a very well respected physicist, especially for how young he was back then. After having taken several very small classes with him, it would surprise me if he was a clout chaser. People are complicated though, so who knows.
Anyone against FOSS adoption of LLMs is straight up a capitalist fascist
They love the AI ethics issue, it’s so vague and morally superior that they can use it to shut down anything they like.
The letter warned of an “out-of-control race” to develop minds that no one could “understand, predict, or reliably control”
And this is why people who don’t understand that LLMs are essentially big hallucinating math machines should have no voice in things they fundamentally do not understand
You might be able to assert they are full of shit after hearing the arguments. Accusing them of being fascist for not agreeing with you is extremely intolerant and authoritarian aka facist.
Being anti foss is being anti freedom, full stop
the thing is that you don’t want to become the thing you are fighting. you can be right in every case, as long as it’s in a case by case basis. it would be different if you explain why the arguments are bad faith arguments or why they are facists, that is also perfectly fine.
There are things that are just true like that, like racism or slavery don’t have a case by case basis where they’re bad, but that’s getting to be an extreme comparison here, just saying absolute statements can be true like that. When is FOSS not about freedom?
this seems a bit more complicated than the examples you share where things are more evident. even if they are wrong, they can be wrong for reasons other than them being facists.
edit: to show some nuance, would people not be against open software that is purposefully crafted for a nefarious purpose? be it ransomware, or software for a DIY automated blinding laser weapons? I know UN would probably not like the second example, regardless of it being FOSS.
I think it’s pretty valid to point out that somebody who is against free software in the XXI century has a strong authoritarian posture.
Granted, the use of “fascist” might be incorrect (mainly because it’s a quite specific autoritarian ideology and it’s hard to, for example, find indications in this that the guy supports other elements of it such as hypernationalism) and the word suffers from overuse in a sloganized way (i.e. it’s commonly parroted in a mindless way), but in this case it’s not a bad shortcut to pass the idea.
I think using that term is fully regressing to tribalism. I believe that in some cases we can reach the goal by building consensus with the opposition. I’m sure we can see the world with more than 1 bit of resolution.
Yeah, I do agree with that point of view.
Consider, however, that had you made it in that original response as you did it just now in this one, it would’ve come out as a perfectably rational and acceptable take rather than as just angry.
Whilst I understand being angry at people throwing “fascist” around like a slogan, I find an angry response to be counter-productive, not as much for the tribalist parrots who normally throw slogans around like that (those are beyond saving, IMHO) but for the audience.
I could be wrong. but since I really didn’t intend to appear angry, and i was not angry I am not reading that in the comment. perhaps it’s the accusation of facism that riles people up. which was precisely my point. and if we are talking about my emotions. in truth i feel mostly sad because the people that are making this comments have strong opinons on the issue and care enough to try to make things better.
Hah, the bit that really makes me angry is exactly that people running around parroting whatever the leaders of “their” “tribe” say (and who will do things like use “fascism” to describe things that are slightly autoritarian) do care enough to try to make things better.
They often have the best of intentions whilst damaging their cause and even being led by the nose like useful idiots (that’s the thing with tribalism: once people run around identifying with “the tribe” and following the “leaders” of “the tribe” they’re extremelly easy to manipulate).
It’s very frustrating to see just how many people run around thinking themselves lefties whilst, by following herd/pack instincts and parroting others rather than using their brains to think, acting in ways that don’t really advance the cause of “the greatest good for the greatest number”.
Everyone’s focusing on LLMs. Idiots. LamgChain is where the first “AI” systems will come from. And anyone can do that shit.
It’s literally nothing without the llms, how fucking stupid are you
By themselves, limited capabilities. I’ll accept the downvotes :) My market
???
You’re not even writing whole thoughts. You’re not being rejected because you’re too smart, or unique or above other people you’re just contributing poorly
An LLM is a tool, not the entire solution. ChatGPT isn’t an LLM in isolation. It’s used is a series of loops (a chain). LangChain and similar strategies expose this value of a series of decisions in sequence. A series of decisions could also be called a thought. A handful of people are already doing this.
In other words: LLM in isolation, meh. But any given LLM used in sequence: Gold
