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>> same sorts of safeguards as nuclear weapons Seems impossible. If making a nuclear weapon required merely a few branches of a willow tree and baking powder,

>> same sorts of safeguards as nuclear weapons Seems impossible. If making a nuclear weapon required merely a few branches of a willow tree and baking powder, regulation would be pretty hard. We would just have to live with the risks. It seems we will be at this level with AI at some point fairly soon.

lkbm 4y ago
Training a state-of-the-art LLM is currently at least in the $100ks. That stands to drop rapidly, but it's currently more along the lines of "the branches of one million willow trees". So long as it's not something an individual can easily achieve, regulations can seriously hinder development. The FDA kept the COVID vaccine from general use for nearly a year because they have a regulatory apparatus that companies know better than to ignore. We had a baby formula shortage because the FDA said "no, you can't use EU-approved baby formula until we approve it. Now there's an Adderall shortage because the government said "make less of this" and everyone said "yes, sir, whatever you say sir." There's certainly a good deal of regulation-violation and wrist-slapping in our world, but regulations get mostly followed, especially when the enforcement is severe enough.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If the $100k is just “gpu time” it’s certainly within the reach of many people - not even super rich. And maybe bitcoin miners could be repurposed for it or something.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    This may be in the $10^7 category now, but is there any reason to believe it will never be $10^3? Oddly the most pressing concern is “increased productivity”.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Unless it has something like the intentional self-latching of bitcoin mining, I do not see how it wouldn't rapidly drop in price. And if the models can be built once and then distributed, then it will certainly leak at some point, even if just intentionally by a hostile actor.
      - osigurdson 4y ago
        I can’t see how it could be conceived To work like bitcoin. The only reason that works is because a majority of humans agree to use the same code.
bombcar 4y ago
Machine guns are more of a n analogy. You can make them with common metalworking tools, and any factory that can produce basic machines can be retooled for fully automatic weapons. Barrel is the hardest part and that’s a pretty well known technique. But we have laws against rogue machine gun manufacture and they work reasonably well inside countries. But there’s no way to prohibit countries from having them. Even nukes have been hard to stop countries from obtaining if they really want (see North Korea). Software regulation and such is way closer to the first than the second once the “idea” is out (see the PGP munitions ban years ago).

lkbm 4y ago

Training a state-of-the-art LLM is currently at least in the $100ks. That stands to drop rapidly, but it's currently more along the lines of "the branches of one million willow trees". So long as it's not something an individual can easily achieve, regulations can seriously hinder development. The FDA kept the COVID vaccine from general use for nearly a year because they have a regulatory apparatus that companies know better than to ignore. We had a baby formula shortage because the FDA said "no, you can't use EU-approved baby formula until we approve it. Now there's an Adderall shortage because the government said "make less of this" and everyone said "yes, sir, whatever you say sir." There's certainly a good deal of regulation-violation and wrist-slapping in our world, but regulations get mostly followed, especially when the enforcement is severe enough.

bombcar 4y ago
If the $100k is just “gpu time” it’s certainly within the reach of many people - not even super rich. And maybe bitcoin miners could be repurposed for it or something.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  This may be in the $10^7 category now, but is there any reason to believe it will never be $10^3? Oddly the most pressing concern is “increased productivity”.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Unless it has something like the intentional self-latching of bitcoin mining, I do not see how it wouldn't rapidly drop in price. And if the models can be built once and then distributed, then it will certainly leak at some point, even if just intentionally by a hostile actor.
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      I can’t see how it could be conceived To work like bitcoin. The only reason that works is because a majority of humans agree to use the same code.

bombcar 4y ago

Machine guns are more of a n analogy. You can make them with common metalworking tools, and any factory that can produce basic machines can be retooled for fully automatic weapons. Barrel is the hardest part and that’s a pretty well known technique. But we have laws against rogue machine gun manufacture and they work reasonably well inside countries. But there’s no way to prohibit countries from having them. Even nukes have been hard to stop countries from obtaining if they really want (see North Korea). Software regulation and such is way closer to the first than the second once the “idea” is out (see the PGP munitions ban years ago).