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A Manhattan project on AI Alignment, if started now, might still succeed in time. Therefore, the compliance between parties needs not be long-term, which is ind

A Manhattan project on AI Alignment, if started now, might still succeed in time. Therefore, the compliance between parties needs not be long-term, which is indeed unlikely to happen. China, which is the country outside the west with the highest (engineering) capability to train something more powerful than GPT-4, is very concerned about domestic stability and they also do not want an easily replicable alien tool with many unknown risks. The risk that GPT-4.5 & Plugins will cause massive rapid job displacements is reason enough for them proceed cautiously. (The only other, more remote, possibilities outside the west are Japan, South Korea, India, and Singapore but they all share similar concerns regarding social stability and can be negotiated with.) Companies in these countries will follow regulations, if any is enacted.

jnwatson 4y ago
AI alignment is a philosophy problem, not an engineering one. For alignment to happen, we have to agree what it means. Given we have a hard enough time getting humans to “align”, I can’t imagine any successful attempt at alignment sort of complete castration.
- ericb 4y ago
  Are there degrees of alignment? I'd like to think there's a pretty big range in there between made some decisions I didn't love and destroyed the world and everyone on it.
  - celdon25 4y ago
    https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-success-models https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-success-models
gautamdivgi 4y ago
I would hazard that any country with a declining population will aggressively adopt LLMs because it gives their leaner workforce more efficiency.
- nopinsight 4y ago
  The whole economy might benefit but individual voters often don’t. The groups most likely to be displaced, non-senior white collar office workers, are quite large and vocal.
  - myrryr 4y ago
    having it mean people voting against their best interests isn't remotely saying they won't do so.
    - nopinsight 4y ago
      I do not want to delve into politics here, but let's just say that having a good, stable job is among the most important concerns for voters in any country.
      - pornel 4y ago
        Having a job for the sake of a job is a particular political view, which is not universal. There are lots of countries which would be satisfied with what US calls "handouts". If AI can create wealth, and the state manages to capture and redistribute that wealth to citizens, there's no problem.
        anonzzzies 4y ago
        There are plenty of Americans who would take ‘handouts’ and move away from jobs. Bigger issue would be the fallout from boredom; sadly, most people don’t seem capable of entertaining themselves without work. People dream of retirement their whole lives and when they get there, they realise it sucks because they took their self worth, social life etc from their work. But education will fix that. I am definitely more concerned about the redistribution and the bloody revolution that will happen if only a few own it all. This seems now feasible in my lifetime while I always thought I would be nice and dead by then. Rip off the bandaid though; no pause on AI, let’s go and see how far we can go.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
This analysis is completely fact-free. "A Manhattan project on AI Alignment, if started now, might still succeed in time. Therefore, the compliance between parties needs not be long-term, which is indeed unlikely to happen." On what grounds do you base this? You have 3 hypotheticals stacked one on top of the other: 1) AI Alignment is possible 2) AI Alignment is a specific project that may be accomplished before [bad thing happens] if we start now 3) Solving AI Alignment is an actual problem and not just dumb extrapolation from science fiction Each of these things is totally improbable and the joint probability of them is so astronomically low that you should reconsider your position.
- nopinsight 4y ago
  Regarding 3), check out the fact that OpenAI, DeepMind, and other top labs have AI safety programs and people working on AI Alignment. Interviews by Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and others confirm their concerns. Here’s an article by Prof Russell, AAAI Fellow and a co-author of the standard AI text: https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/02/156285/yes-we-are-worried-about-the-existential-risk-of-artificial-intelligence/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/02/156285/yes-we-ar... Regarding 1) and 2), we might as well not succeed. But would you propose that we sit still and do nothing if many experts say that there is even a 20% chance that a superhuman alien species will arrive on earth in 5-25 years and we do not know about their intentions? A survey of AI experts well before GPT-4 shows that nearly half of them have such concerns (with varying timelines and probabilities). By the way, calling a proposal by Prof Stuart Russell and several other top AI experts “dumb” should require a much stronger argument and level of evidence than you have shown.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    An idea may be dumb regardless of who believes it. You will find history littered with such ideas.
    - nopinsight 4y ago
      I re-read your comment and it was clearer, so I edited the response accordingly. Please also respond to the main arguments I gave and linked to if you can.

jnwatson 4y ago

AI alignment is a philosophy problem, not an engineering one. For alignment to happen, we have to agree what it means. Given we have a hard enough time getting humans to “align”, I can’t imagine any successful attempt at alignment sort of complete castration.

ericb 4y ago
Are there degrees of alignment? I'd like to think there's a pretty big range in there between made some decisions I didn't love and destroyed the world and everyone on it.
- celdon25 4y ago
  https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-success-models https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-success-models

gautamdivgi 4y ago

I would hazard that any country with a declining population will aggressively adopt LLMs because it gives their leaner workforce more efficiency.

nopinsight 4y ago
The whole economy might benefit but individual voters often don’t. The groups most likely to be displaced, non-senior white collar office workers, are quite large and vocal.
- myrryr 4y ago
  having it mean people voting against their best interests isn't remotely saying they won't do so.
  - nopinsight 4y ago
    I do not want to delve into politics here, but let's just say that having a good, stable job is among the most important concerns for voters in any country.
    - pornel 4y ago
      Having a job for the sake of a job is a particular political view, which is not universal. There are lots of countries which would be satisfied with what US calls "handouts". If AI can create wealth, and the state manages to capture and redistribute that wealth to citizens, there's no problem.
      - anonzzzies 4y ago
        There are plenty of Americans who would take ‘handouts’ and move away from jobs. Bigger issue would be the fallout from boredom; sadly, most people don’t seem capable of entertaining themselves without work. People dream of retirement their whole lives and when they get there, they realise it sucks because they took their self worth, social life etc from their work. But education will fix that. I am definitely more concerned about the redistribution and the bloody revolution that will happen if only a few own it all. This seems now feasible in my lifetime while I always thought I would be nice and dead by then. Rip off the bandaid though; no pause on AI, let’s go and see how far we can go.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

This analysis is completely fact-free. "A Manhattan project on AI Alignment, if started now, might still succeed in time. Therefore, the compliance between parties needs not be long-term, which is indeed unlikely to happen." On what grounds do you base this? You have 3 hypotheticals stacked one on top of the other: 1) AI Alignment is possible 2) AI Alignment is a specific project that may be accomplished before [bad thing happens] if we start now 3) Solving AI Alignment is an actual problem and not just dumb extrapolation from science fiction Each of these things is totally improbable and the joint probability of them is so astronomically low that you should reconsider your position.

nopinsight 4y ago
Regarding 3), check out the fact that OpenAI, DeepMind, and other top labs have AI safety programs and people working on AI Alignment. Interviews by Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and others confirm their concerns. Here’s an article by Prof Russell, AAAI Fellow and a co-author of the standard AI text: https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/02/156285/yes-we-are-worried-about-the-existential-risk-of-artificial-intelligence/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/02/156285/yes-we-ar... Regarding 1) and 2), we might as well not succeed. But would you propose that we sit still and do nothing if many experts say that there is even a 20% chance that a superhuman alien species will arrive on earth in 5-25 years and we do not know about their intentions? A survey of AI experts well before GPT-4 shows that nearly half of them have such concerns (with varying timelines and probabilities). By the way, calling a proposal by Prof Stuart Russell and several other top AI experts “dumb” should require a much stronger argument and level of evidence than you have shown.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  An idea may be dumb regardless of who believes it. You will find history littered with such ideas.
  - nopinsight 4y ago
    I re-read your comment and it was clearer, so I edited the response accordingly. Please also respond to the main arguments I gave and linked to if you can.