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I think what most of the people here are missing is how big, how paranoid, and how influential the "AI alignment" movement is. From everything I've heard and s
by gwd 4y ago
I think what most of the people here are missing is how big, how paranoid, and how influential the "AI alignment" movement is. From everything I've heard and seen, the actual researchers at OpenAI are trying to take seriously the risk that a super-intelligent AI might destroy the human race. To you it looks like they're being overly careful and paranoid, perhaps as an excuse to set up a monopoly silo to extract money. But a lot of the people they work closely with -- people deep in the "AI alignment" community -- are telling them that they're being wantonly reckless, helping set the human race on a path for certain doom.
From that perspective, the opening of ChatGPT has actually been very effective at raising awareness. All the way back in GPT-1 they were trying to raise warnings, but those warnings didn't get much popular traction. Now that so many people have used ChatGPT (or Bing), I'm now having conversations about what computers "know" and "want" with my aunt on Facebook.
Furthermore, if OpenAI has the best tools and sells them to everyone at a reasonable price, then there's a reduced incentive for other people to make their own tools. Whereas, if they were to close off access to the API, and only offer it to large corporations, there would be much more incentive for people to experiment with AI on their own -- and in doing so, possibly create an "un-aligned" super-intelligent AI which would destroy the human race.
So my prediction is that given their motivations, they will 1) stop releasing details of their models to anyone other than research organizations they consider careful enough 2) continue to sell reasonably-priced access to the APIs, to reduce the risk that other people will step up to fill the demand who are less careful.
- anonymousDan 4y agoWhat a bunch of BS. The only reason they are keeping it private is for commercial gain .
- UncleEntity 4y agoJust look at how much flak the stable diffusion folks got for the deep fake porn (and whatever else people were pearl grasping over) and tell me how a corporation will ever release a model. Meta was a fluke but they also did due diligence and made it look like they tried to do a responsible release — right up until someone put it on BitTorrent.
- robertlagrant 4y agoI don't really understand this - it's like trying to explain a colleague's behaviour by saying they're doing something so they get their salary. Of course they need to have commercial gain in mind. But you need to be more specific.
- anonymousDan 4y agoFrom my reading of the parent's comment, they are saying the reason the models are not being made available is because of a fear they will effectively turn into SkyNet - am I being uncharitable?
- robertlagrant 4y agoNot sure - I'm just replying to the immediate parent comment.
- BeetleB 4y agoYes.
- gwd 4y agoSee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1sNLL6yg4 To be clear, nobody thinks GPT itself is capable of doing anything really bad. (They actually tried to coach GPT-4 to escape onto the internet and it failed.) It's that more that 1) they think we're definitely within 5-10 years of creating something which could become SkyNet, and 2) we don't actually know how to ensure that that an AI wouldn't decide to just kill us, and 3) the nature of competition means everyone is going to try to get there first in spite of #2, and therefore 4) we're all doomed. I'm not as pessimistic as Yudowski, but I do think that his fears are worth considering. It looks like OpenAI are in a similar place.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago> with -- people deep in the "AI alignment" community -- are telling them that they're being wantonly reckless, helping set the human race on a path for certain doom. There is a term of art in politics for such people: useful idiots.