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I don't know how much "hidden" knowledge there is in AI research. In biotech stuff, those can make or break an experiment easily and there is just so many of th

I don't know how much "hidden" knowledge there is in AI research. In biotech stuff, those can make or break an experiment easily and there is just so many of them and they are all trivial when known but absolutely critical. Some of them actually has zero reason to exist but they still exist, similar to a block of legacy code that was commented as "do not remove, shit breaks when removed". Nobody knows why and everybody just follow it religiously. So the same approach may or may not work for AI. Forcing stuff to go underground in AI research may not hinder them that much...

jasonhansel 4y ago
The issue is that most "underground" groups do not have access to top researchers or experienced engineers; those tend to be public figures, or people who want to become public figures. Furthermore, complete secrecy requires tightly restricting communication in a way that makes collaboration even within an organization harder; note how terrorist groups have to operate in isolated "cells." I'm sure that anyone could replicate GPT-4, but creating radical new advances would be very hard to do in secret. Furthermore, while many such groups (particularly state actors) have plenty of funding, for other groups it will take a great deal of time and effort to raise or steal the necessary cash in secret, potentially making the costs outweigh the the benefits. If you make a profit, you'll also need to launder the resulting profits, which reasonable crypto regulations would make harder. Ultimately, nobody can entirely stop "underground" AI. If you think AI will bring about the singularity and destroy mankind, laws cannot stop it. But if your worries are more pedestrian, merely reducing the prevalence of such systems is more than enough.