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For anyone who actually used those models for more than few days and learns their strengths and weaknesses it is completely obvious all this talk of "societal i

For anyone who actually used those models for more than few days and learns their strengths and weaknesses it is completely obvious all this talk of "societal impact", or as you called it self imposed limits are 100% bulls**. Everyone in the field knows it. 99% of those using this tactics use it to justify not releasing their models to avoid giving competition a leg up(Google, openAI) and to pretend they are for "open research". As I said this is 100% bull. The remaining 1% are either doing this to inflate their egos ("hey look how considerate and enlightened we are in everything we do!"), or they pander to media/silly politicians/various clueless commentators whose level of knowledge about this technology is null. They regurgitate the same set of "what ifs and horror stories" to scare the public into standing by when they attempt to over regulate another field so they can be kingmakers within it(if you want an example how it works look at the energy sector). All this sillyness accomplishes is to raise a barrier to entry for potential commercial competition. Bad actors will have enough money/lack scruples to train their own models or to steal your best ones regardless how "impact conscious" your company it. Now, I don't claim everyone should be forced to publish their AI models. No, if you spent lots of money on training your model it is yours. But you can't lock all your work behind closed doors and call yourself open. It doesn't work like this. One important point is that there is value even in just publishing a paper demonstrating some achievements of a proprietary model, but if the experiment can't be reproduces based on description given that is not science and for sure it is not open.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
Like what kind of "bad actors" are they even talking about when they say they don't want their code to fall into the wrong hands? Organised crime? If a big enough organised crime group wanted it you'd get stuffed into the back of a van. CIA? MI6? You'd get stuffed into the back of a van. FSB? They'd invade the country to stuff you into the back of a van then bum 20 quid off you for diesel. Mossad? They'd break into your house and replace your computer with an identical fully-functional one made of polonium *while you were using it* and say they didn't do it, while showing AI-generated footage of a Russian doing it on TV and crediting you for the software they totally didn't steal.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- no-dr-onboard 4y ago
  > while you were using it* and say they didn't do it Had a good chuckle. Didn’t know Tom Clancy frequented hacker news.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Small and medium-sized bad actors. As you say, the big bads have means regardless, and probably don't need it because they're often big enough to hire a lot of humans to do e.g. propaganda for them. Now, imagine a conspiracy theorist. Not a harmless moon landing denier, but someone who is convinced that pizzagate was a real thing, and gets AI to fake mountains of "evidence" until the politicians that he or she is convinced did those things, are lynched, or at the very least become politically toxic. Think it can't happen? Fake porn is already being used to harm random women, and real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse. AI is a tool that can make anyone more competent, but it doesn't make us better or wiser or kinder.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    > ... real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse. I'll do you one better than that. Farms use a lot of seasonal workers and small farms in particular will hire people in for a week or so when things are busy. I know a farmer who hired in a bunch of folk to help over the shearing. It turns out that two of the people he hired wanted to film around the farm to capture some of the animal abuse that absolutely must be going on because farmers have nothing better to do, but they didn't find any. So figuring that they were never going to let themselves into the "inner secret animal abuse lair" or whatever the fuck was going through their stoned little minds, they decided to... yup... ... film themselves kicking fuck out of some sheep, and pretend it was common practice among farm workers.
throwaway382938 4y ago
Personal opinion: These models are capable of generating photorealistic child pornography. That's why they're not being released. I have no evidence to back this up, other than anecdotal. All the hand waving vague posts from SD, DALLE etc read like PR tactics to avoid getting the spotlight from the media and governments. No one wants to post about this but I think everyone knows it's true, as soon as Congress realizes what these models can be used for there's going to be a moral panic. EDIT: All of the replies are assuming I'm saying this is a good reason for not releasing these models. I don't say that anywhere nor do I agree with it.
- Salgat 4y ago
  Photoshop can achieve the same thing. So can women hired by pornography companies that are 18 but look younger and intentionally dress like school girls. This excuse is nonsense in the context of what's already available.
  - scarby2 4y ago
    > So can women hired by pornography companies that are 18 but look younger and intentionally dress like school girls. I've yet to see an 18 year old that looks like an actual child regardless of how they're dressed however I'm also not looking for this sort of thing so...
    - dymk 4y ago
      How could you know you’ve never met one? Do you ask every person who looks younger than 18 if they’re actually a minor or not?
    - dudeinjapan 4y ago
      The day I turned 18 I still looked like I was 17.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      Reminded of how the first film role for veteran British character actress Helen Mirren was playing a naked 17 year old in a film called, er, Age of Consent. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063991/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063991/ ; she was 24. This kind of thing happened a lot, and I think more than one entirely "mainstream" director in the 60s/70s filmed nude actresses below the age of 18. Fortunately it's a lot harder to get away with that these days. Not to mention (Weinstein and many, many others) sexually assaulting the actresses off screen.
f0e4c2f7 4y ago
There is a move large companies do where after innovating they pull the ladder up behind them by trying to drag regulators into the space. Regulation establishes a moat and allows them to cruise on that innovation until enough external pressure builds up that the dam breaks (people innovating in countries without that regulation for example). I'm not quite sure what the solution is to this by the way. I don't think the answer is no regulation, but how to improve the quality of regulation.
- dd36 4y ago
  Name a large company that has successfully done that recently?
  - f0e4c2f7 4y ago
    Yet to be seen if it will be successful yet but Meta lobbying to congress to trim or eliminate section 230 comes to mind as a recent example.
- imnotreallynew 4y ago
  Is there any evidence that companies (or rather senior staff at those companies) knowingly do that, or is it simply that once some innovation results in a new, large market, a government tries to get involved?
  - akimball 4y ago
    There is a substantial literature documenting regulatory capture in the modern bureaucratic state, but the business model dates back centuries. This is almost like asking for evidence of air.
    - karpierz 4y ago
      I think this is conflating two phenomenon. The parent poster was asking: Do companies push for the creation regulatory bodies to stifle competition? Whereas regulatory capture is the process by which companies shape existing regulatory bodies to serve their interests. But it presumes the existence of a body to regulate them; regulatory capture can't occur if there isn't regulation to start with.
moralestapia 4y ago
It's profit all the way-o. Simple as. As for what they say to the public, well, fraudsters gonna fraud. It's a tale as old as time [1]. 1: https://www.biography.com/news/famous-grifters-stealers-swindlers-conartists https://www.biography.com/news/famous-grifters-stealers-swin...
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
As someone who has worked for OpenAI and with Google as a consultant, I completely and wholeheartedly agree. 1. This is absolutely a gatekeeping, ladder pulling measure. 2. The commercial face of this industry is rife with dogmas of self importance. It’s nearly comical.
- chuckster563 4y ago
  These models cost millions of dollars to create. Not only do they have incentive to keep them when the technology has the ability to change industry like alphafold(which alone could have been a multimillion dollar company). Add to this mix the USA trying to prevent China copying cutting edge AI technology and this was bound to happen sooner or later. It's no longer research it's near market viability.
  - fock 4y ago
    > Add to this mix the USA trying to prevent China copying cutting edge AI technology ML-tech from the past century seems to work just fine for killing each other (have a look at Ukraine). I would be rather more concerned about the foe having better batteries at this point.
    - chuckster563 4y ago
      Does it never interest you that the US have never discussed what types of AI models it has produced? What do you think unlimited funds dumped into AI for military applications can do? The US KNOWS this is a big deal, so much so that it has destroyed China's ability to conduct top end research.
      - akudha 4y ago
        Genuinely curious - what more weapons do we need? Especially western superpowers? Do we not have enough weaponry to destroy this planet million times over? What more destructive power can AI provide, beyond the already existing drones/biological etc etc?
silvestrov 4y ago
This of how dangerous it will be if everybody can write a book. We must limit bookwriting to only educated and responsible people with the proper education in ethics and morals. /s This happends with every new technology.
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  Except nobody has issues when the tech is meant to exploit somebody but isn't public. The morality angle disappears with sunlight
ben_w 4y ago
The actual quality of the currently public models is why they decided to release them. The worst case scenario of the currently public models is why they want to take it slow. It's like the lottery in one of the episodes of the TV show Sliders: you probably won't win, but if you do win, you die. Unfortunately, most people are really bad at grokking probably, and, by extension, risk, especially in scenarios like this. > Bad actors will have enough money/lack scruples to train their own models or to steal your best ones regardless how "impact conscious" your company it. Indeed, totally correct. But this is also on the list titled "why AI alignment is hard and why we need to go slow because we have not solved these things yet". Saying "it doesn't matter if we keep this secret, someone else will publish anyway" is exactly the same failure mode as "it doesn't matter if we keep polluting, someone else will pollute anyway".
hintymad 4y ago
As history repeated shows, righteousness works really well. I don't have to painstakingly make the nuanced arguments. Instead, I can simply cite "social responsibility" or whatever social justice in fashion or simply attack my critique's morality.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

Like what kind of "bad actors" are they even talking about when they say they don't want their code to fall into the wrong hands? Organised crime? If a big enough organised crime group wanted it you'd get stuffed into the back of a van. CIA? MI6? You'd get stuffed into the back of a van. FSB? They'd invade the country to stuff you into the back of a van then bum 20 quid off you for diesel. Mossad? They'd break into your house and replace your computer with an identical fully-functional one made of polonium *while you were using it* and say they didn't do it, while showing AI-generated footage of a Russian doing it on TV and crediting you for the software they totally didn't steal.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
> while you were using it* and say they didn't do it Had a good chuckle. Didn’t know Tom Clancy frequented hacker news.
ben_w 4y ago
Small and medium-sized bad actors. As you say, the big bads have means regardless, and probably don't need it because they're often big enough to hire a lot of humans to do e.g. propaganda for them. Now, imagine a conspiracy theorist. Not a harmless moon landing denier, but someone who is convinced that pizzagate was a real thing, and gets AI to fake mountains of "evidence" until the politicians that he or she is convinced did those things, are lynched, or at the very least become politically toxic. Think it can't happen? Fake porn is already being used to harm random women, and real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse. AI is a tool that can make anyone more competent, but it doesn't make us better or wiser or kinder.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > ... real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse. I'll do you one better than that. Farms use a lot of seasonal workers and small farms in particular will hire people in for a week or so when things are busy. I know a farmer who hired in a bunch of folk to help over the shearing. It turns out that two of the people he hired wanted to film around the farm to capture some of the animal abuse that absolutely must be going on because farmers have nothing better to do, but they didn't find any. So figuring that they were never going to let themselves into the "inner secret animal abuse lair" or whatever the fuck was going through their stoned little minds, they decided to... yup... ... film themselves kicking fuck out of some sheep, and pretend it was common practice among farm workers.

throwaway382938 4y ago

Personal opinion: These models are capable of generating photorealistic child pornography. That's why they're not being released. I have no evidence to back this up, other than anecdotal. All the hand waving vague posts from SD, DALLE etc read like PR tactics to avoid getting the spotlight from the media and governments. No one wants to post about this but I think everyone knows it's true, as soon as Congress realizes what these models can be used for there's going to be a moral panic. EDIT: All of the replies are assuming I'm saying this is a good reason for not releasing these models. I don't say that anywhere nor do I agree with it.

Salgat 4y ago
Photoshop can achieve the same thing. So can women hired by pornography companies that are 18 but look younger and intentionally dress like school girls. This excuse is nonsense in the context of what's already available.
- scarby2 4y ago
  > So can women hired by pornography companies that are 18 but look younger and intentionally dress like school girls. I've yet to see an 18 year old that looks like an actual child regardless of how they're dressed however I'm also not looking for this sort of thing so...
  - dymk 4y ago
    How could you know you’ve never met one? Do you ask every person who looks younger than 18 if they’re actually a minor or not?
  - dudeinjapan 4y ago
    The day I turned 18 I still looked like I was 17.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Reminded of how the first film role for veteran British character actress Helen Mirren was playing a naked 17 year old in a film called, er, Age of Consent. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063991/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063991/ ; she was 24. This kind of thing happened a lot, and I think more than one entirely "mainstream" director in the 60s/70s filmed nude actresses below the age of 18. Fortunately it's a lot harder to get away with that these days. Not to mention (Weinstein and many, many others) sexually assaulting the actresses off screen.

f0e4c2f7 4y ago

There is a move large companies do where after innovating they pull the ladder up behind them by trying to drag regulators into the space. Regulation establishes a moat and allows them to cruise on that innovation until enough external pressure builds up that the dam breaks (people innovating in countries without that regulation for example). I'm not quite sure what the solution is to this by the way. I don't think the answer is no regulation, but how to improve the quality of regulation.

dd36 4y ago
Name a large company that has successfully done that recently?
- f0e4c2f7 4y ago
  Yet to be seen if it will be successful yet but Meta lobbying to congress to trim or eliminate section 230 comes to mind as a recent example.
imnotreallynew 4y ago
Is there any evidence that companies (or rather senior staff at those companies) knowingly do that, or is it simply that once some innovation results in a new, large market, a government tries to get involved?
- akimball 4y ago
  There is a substantial literature documenting regulatory capture in the modern bureaucratic state, but the business model dates back centuries. This is almost like asking for evidence of air.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    I think this is conflating two phenomenon. The parent poster was asking: Do companies push for the creation regulatory bodies to stifle competition? Whereas regulatory capture is the process by which companies shape existing regulatory bodies to serve their interests. But it presumes the existence of a body to regulate them; regulatory capture can't occur if there isn't regulation to start with.

moralestapia 4y ago

It's profit all the way-o. Simple as. As for what they say to the public, well, fraudsters gonna fraud. It's a tale as old as time [1]. 1: https://www.biography.com/news/famous-grifters-stealers-swindlers-conartists https://www.biography.com/news/famous-grifters-stealers-swin...

no-dr-onboard 4y ago

As someone who has worked for OpenAI and with Google as a consultant, I completely and wholeheartedly agree. 1. This is absolutely a gatekeeping, ladder pulling measure. 2. The commercial face of this industry is rife with dogmas of self importance. It’s nearly comical.

chuckster563 4y ago
These models cost millions of dollars to create. Not only do they have incentive to keep them when the technology has the ability to change industry like alphafold(which alone could have been a multimillion dollar company). Add to this mix the USA trying to prevent China copying cutting edge AI technology and this was bound to happen sooner or later. It's no longer research it's near market viability.
- fock 4y ago
  > Add to this mix the USA trying to prevent China copying cutting edge AI technology ML-tech from the past century seems to work just fine for killing each other (have a look at Ukraine). I would be rather more concerned about the foe having better batteries at this point.
  - chuckster563 4y ago
    Does it never interest you that the US have never discussed what types of AI models it has produced? What do you think unlimited funds dumped into AI for military applications can do? The US KNOWS this is a big deal, so much so that it has destroyed China's ability to conduct top end research.
    - akudha 4y ago
      Genuinely curious - what more weapons do we need? Especially western superpowers? Do we not have enough weaponry to destroy this planet million times over? What more destructive power can AI provide, beyond the already existing drones/biological etc etc?

silvestrov 4y ago

This of how dangerous it will be if everybody can write a book. We must limit bookwriting to only educated and responsible people with the proper education in ethics and morals. /s This happends with every new technology.

loa_in_ 4y ago
Except nobody has issues when the tech is meant to exploit somebody but isn't public. The morality angle disappears with sunlight

ben_w 4y ago

The actual quality of the currently public models is why they decided to release them. The worst case scenario of the currently public models is why they want to take it slow. It's like the lottery in one of the episodes of the TV show Sliders: you probably won't win, but if you do win, you die. Unfortunately, most people are really bad at grokking probably, and, by extension, risk, especially in scenarios like this. > Bad actors will have enough money/lack scruples to train their own models or to steal your best ones regardless how "impact conscious" your company it. Indeed, totally correct. But this is also on the list titled "why AI alignment is hard and why we need to go slow because we have not solved these things yet". Saying "it doesn't matter if we keep this secret, someone else will publish anyway" is exactly the same failure mode as "it doesn't matter if we keep polluting, someone else will pollute anyway".

hintymad 4y ago

As history repeated shows, righteousness works really well. I don't have to painstakingly make the nuanced arguments. Instead, I can simply cite "social responsibility" or whatever social justice in fashion or simply attack my critique's morality.