10 ms·

This is the message I shared with my senator (edited to remove information which could identify me). I hope others will send similar messages. Dear Senator [X]

by elil17 3y ago

This is the message I shared with my senator (edited to remove information which could identify me). I hope others will send similar messages. Dear Senator [X], I am an engineer working for [major employer in the state]. I am extremely concerned about the message that Sam Altman is sharing with the Judiciary committee today. Altman wants to create regulatory roadblocks to developing AI. My company produces AI-enabled products. If these roadblocks had been in place two years ago, my company would not have been able to invest into AI. Now, because we had the freedom to innovate, AI will be bringing new, high paying jobs to our factories in our state. While AI regulation is important, it is crucial that there are no roadblocks stopping companies and individuals from even trying to build AIs. Rather, regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use - this would allow companies and individuals to research new AIs freely while still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed. Altman and his ilk try to claim that aggressive regulation (which will only serve to give them a monopoly over AI) is necessary because an AI could hack it's way out of a laboratory. Yet, they cannot explain how an AI would accomplish this in practice. I hope you will push back against anyone who fear-mongers about sci-fi inspired AI scenarios. Congress should focus on the real impacts that AI will have on employment. Congress should also consider the realistic risks AI which poses to the public, such as risks from the use of AI to control national infrastructure (e.g., the electric grid) or to make healthcare decisions. Thank you, [My name]

lettergram 3y ago
I made something just for writing your congress person / senator, using generative AI ironically: https://vocalvoters.com/ https://vocalvoters.com/
- samsolomon 3y ago
  Cool product! Your pay button appears to be disabled though.
  - lettergram 3y ago
    Should enable once you add valid info — if not, let me know
- blibble 3y ago
  AI generated persuasion is pretty much what they're upset about
throwaway71271 3y ago
[flagged]
- pjc50 3y ago
  Quite. Meanwhile on the rest of the internet people are gleefully promoting AI as a means of firing every single person who writes words for a living. Or draws art.
  - dmix 3y ago
    GPT is so far from threatening “every single person who writes words for a living” anyway. Unless you’re writing generic SEO filler content. Not sure who is claiming that but they don’t understand how it works if they do exist at scale. Writing has always been a low paid shrinking job well before AI. Besides a tiny group of writers at the big firms. I took a journalism course for fun at UofT in my spare time and the professors had nothing but horror stories for trying to make a job out of writing (ie getting a NYT bestseller and getting $1 cheques in the mail). They basically told the students to only do it as a hobby unless you have some engaged niche audience. Which is more about the writer being interesting rather than the generic writing process.
    - 0ct4via 3y ago
      You say that... then we encounter cases like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919753 While AI isn't going to put anyone out of a job immediately (like automation didn't), there are legitimate risks already in that regard -- in both fiction and nonfiction sites, folk are experimenting with having AI basically write stories/pieces for them -- and the results are often good enough to have potentially put someone out of the job of writing a piece in the first place.
- elil17 3y ago
  I mean, it will? Not universally, but for the specific products I work on we use additional labor when we include AI-enabled features (due to installing and wiring processors and sensors). I think that that the sorts of AI that smaller companies make will be more likely to create jobs as opposed to getting rid of them since they are more likely to be integrated with physical products.
freedomben 3y ago
> Altman and his ilk IANA senator, but if I were you lost me there. The personal insults make it seem petty and completely overshadow the otherwise professional-sounding message.
- elil17 3y ago
  I don't mean it as a personal insult at all! The word ilk actually means "a type of people or things similar to those already referred to," it is not an insult or rude word.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    TIL! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk still, there are probably a lot of people like me who have heard it used (incorrectly it seems) as an insult so many times that it's an automatic response :-(
    - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
      Don't worry, you're not a senator. And, if there's one thing politicians are know for it's got to be ad hominem.
    - DANmode 3y ago
      Tone, intended or otherwise, is a pretty important part of communication!
      - nerpderp82 3y ago
        There is this idea that the shape of a word, how it makes your mouth and face move when you say it connotes meaning on its own. This is called "phonosemantics", just saying "ilk" makes one feel like they are flinging off some sticky aggressive slime. Ilk almost always has a negative connotation regardless of what the dictionary says.
  - mitch3x3 3y ago
kubota 3y ago
You lost me at "While AI regulation is important" - nope, congress does not need to regulate AI.
- silveraxe93 3y ago
  They might have lost you. But starting with "congress shouldn't regulate AI" would lose the senator. Which one do you think is more important to convince?
  - polski-g 3y ago
    "Congress cannot regulate AI" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
- tessierashpool 3y ago
  "important" does not mean "good." if you are in the field of AI, AI regulation is absolutely important, whether good or bad.
- wnevets 3y ago
  > nope, congress does not need to regulate AI. Not regulating the air quality we breathe for decades turned out amazing for millions of the Americas. Yes, lets do the same with AI! What could possibility go wrong?
  - pizza 3y ago
    I think this is a great argument in the opposite direction.. atoms matter, information isn’t. A small group of people subjugated many others to poisonous matter. That matter affected their bodies and a causal link could be made. Even if you really believe that somewhere in the chain of consequences derived from LLMs there could be grave and material damage or other affronts to human dignity, there is almost always a more direct causal link that acts as the thing which makes that damage kinetic and physical. And that’s the proper locus for regulation. Otherwise this is all just a bit reminiscent of banning numbers and research into numbers. Want to protect people’s employment? Just do that! Enshrine it in law. Want to improve the safety of critical infrastructure and make sure they’re reliable? Again, just do that! Want to prevent mass surveillance? Do that! Want to protect against a lack of oversight in complex systems allowing for subterfuge via bad actors? Well, make regulation about proper standards of oversight and human accountability. AI doesn’t obviate human responsibility, and a lack of responsibility on the part of humans who should’ve been responsible, and who instead cut corners, doesn’t mean that the blame falls on the tool that cut the corners, but rather the corner-cutters themselves.
dist-epoch 3y ago
Can you please share what ChatGPT prompt you used to generate this letter template?
- elil17 3y ago
  I used this old-fashioned method of text generation called "writing" - crazy, I know
circuit10 3y ago
The worries about AI taking over things are founded and important, even if many sci-go depictions of it are inaccurate. I’m not sure if this would be the best solution but please don’t dismiss the issue entirely
- circuit10 3y ago
  *sci-fi but I can’t edit it now
- alfalfasprout 3y ago
  Seriously, I'm very concerned by the view being taken here. AI has the capacity to do a ton of harm very quickly. A couple of examples: - Scamming via impersonation - Misinformation - Usage of AI in a way that could have serious legal ramifications for incorrect responses - Severe economic displacement Congress can and should examine these issues. Just because OP works at an AI doesnt' mean that company can't exist in a regulated industry. I too work in the AI space and welcome thoughtful regulation.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run. We've been through this song and dance with cryptography. Trying to keep it out of the hands of bad actors will be a waste of time, effort, and money. These resources should be spent lessening the impact rather than trying to completely control it.
    - staunton 3y ago
      > You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run. You absolutely can. Maybe you can't effectively enforce that regulation but you can regulate and you can take measures that make violating the regulation impractical or risky for most people. By the way, the "crypto-wars" never ended and are ongoing all around the world (UK, EU, India, US...)
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      I hate to say this because it would be shocking, but computers as we know them could be taken off people. Again it sounds extreme but in an extreme situation it could happen / not impossible.
abeppu 3y ago
> regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use - this would allow companies and individuals to research new AIs freely while still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed. While in general I share the view that _research_ should be unencumbered, but deployment should be regulated, I do take issue with your view that safety only matters once they are ready for "widespread use". A tool which is made available in a limited beta can still be harmful, misleading, or too-easily support irresponsible or malicious purposes, and in some cases the harms could be _enabled_ by the fact that the release is limited. For example, if next month you developed a model that could produce extremely high quality video clips from text and reference images, you did a small, gated beta release with no PR, and one of your beta testers immediately uses it to make e.g. highly realistic revenge porn. Because almost no one is aware of the stunning new quality of outputs produced by your model, most people don't believe the victim when they assert that the footage is fake. I would suggest that the first non-private (e.g. non-employee) release of a tool should make it subject to regulation. If I open a restaurant, on my first night I'm expected to be in compliance with basic health and safety regulations, no matter how few customers I have. If I design and sell a widget that does X, even for the first one I sell, my understanding is there's an concept of an implied requirement that my widgets must actually be "fit for purpose" for X; I cannot sell a "rain coat" made of gauze which offers no protection from rain, and I cannot sell a "smoke detector" which doesn't effectively detect smoke. Why should low-volume AI/ML products get a pass?
- nvegater 3y ago
  I think by "widespread use" he means the reach of the AI System. Dangerous analogy but just to get the idea across: In the same way there is higher tax rates to higher incomes, you should increase regulations in relation to how many people could be potentially affected by the AI system. E.G a Startup with 10 daily users should not be in the same regulation bracket as google. If google deploys an AI it will reach Billions of people compared to 10. This would require a certain level of transparency from companies to get something like an "AI License type" which is pretty reasonable given the dangers of AI (the pragmatic ones not the DOOMsday ones)
  - 3y ago
stevespang 3y ago
[dead]
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use What would you say to a simple registration requirement? You give a point of contact and a description of training data, model, and perhaps intended use (could be binary: civilian or dual use). One page, publicly visible. This gives groundwork for future rulemaking and oversight if necessary.
- elil17 3y ago
  Personally I think a simple registration requirement would be a good idea, if it were truly simple and accessible to independent researchers.
- catiopatio 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
    Yet
  - ygjb 3y ago
    Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. We know, we have watched this argument unfold in the United States over the last 100 years. It sure does seem like a few people are using guns to kill a lot of people. The point of regulating AI should be to explicitly require every single use of AI and machine learning to be clearly labelled so that when people seek remedy for the injustices that are already being perpetrated, that it is clearly understood that the people who chose to use not just ML or AI technology, but those specific models and training criteria can be held accountable if they should be. Regulation doesn't have to be a ban, or limits on how it can be used, it can simply be a requirement for clearly marked disclosure. It could also include clear regulations for lawful access to the underlying math, training data, and intended use cases, and with financially significant penalties for non-compliance to discourage companies from treating it as a cost of doing business.
    - 3y ago
jameshart 3y ago
> Now, because we had the freedom to innovate, AI will be bringing new, high paying jobs to our factories in our state. Do we really have to play this game? If what you’re arguing for is not going to specifically advantage your state over others, and the thing you’re arguing against isn’t going to create an advantage for other states over yours, why make this about ‘your state’ in the first place? The point of elected representatives is to represent the views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages for their constituents.
- Pet_Ant 3y ago
  > The point of elected representatives is to represent the views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages for their constituents. That is painfully naive, a history of pork projects speaks otherwise.
  - hkt 3y ago
    To the best of my knowledge this doesn't happen so much in more functional democracies. It seems to be more of an anglophone thing.
    - Aperocky 3y ago
      This is a product of incentives encouraged by the system (i.e. a federal republic), it has nothing to do with languages.
      - hkt 3y ago
        It has much to do with culture though - which is transmitted via language.
        Pet_Ant 3y ago
        I think it's more like culture carries language with it. Along with other things, but language is one of the more recognizable ones.
nerpderp82 3y ago
Lets not focus on "the business" and instead focus on the safety. Altman can an ulterior motive, but it doesn't mean that we should strive for having some sort of handle on AI safety. It could be that Altman and OpenAI know exactly how this will look and the backlash that will ensue that we get ZERO oversight and we rush headlong into doom. Short term we need to focus on the structural unemployment that is about to hit us. As the AI labs use AI to make better AI, it will eat all the jobs until we have a relative handful of AI whisperers.
reaperducer 3y ago
This is the message I shared with my senator If you sent it by e-mail or web contact form, chances are you wasted your time. If you really want attention, you'll send it as a real letter. People who take the time to actually send real mail are taken more seriously.
discardedrefuse 3y ago
What's the point of these letters? Everyone knows this is rent-seeking behavior by OpenAI, and they're going to pay off the right politicians to get it passed. Dear Senator [X], It's painfully obvious that Sam Altman's testimony before the judiciary committee is an attempt to set up rent-seeking conditions for OpenAI, and to snuff out competition from the flourishing open source AI community. We will be carefully monitoring your campaign finances for evidence of bribery. Hugs and Kiss, [My Name]
- verdverm 3y ago
  If you want to influence the politicians without money, this is not the way.
  - mark_l_watson 3y ago
    You are exactly correct. I have sent correspondence about ten times to my Congressmen and Senators. I have received a good reply (although often just saying there is nothing that they can do) except for the one time I contacted Jon Kyl and unfortunately mentioned data about his campaign donations from Monsanto - I was writing about a bill he sponsored that I thought would have made it difficult for small farmers to survive economically and make community gardens difficult because of regulations. No response on that correspondence.
    - StillBored 3y ago
      I'm 99% sure that that vast majority of federal congress people (which represent ~1 million people each) never see your emails/letters. Your largely speaking to interns/etc who work in the office unless you happen to make a physical appointment and show up in person. Those interns have a pile of form letters they send for about 99% of (e)mail they get, and if you happen to catch their attention you might get more than than the usual tick mark in a spreadsheet (for/against X). Which at best might be as much as a sentence or two in a weekly correspondence summary which may/may not be read by your representative depending on how seriously they take their job.
brookst 3y ago
What specific ideas has Altman proposed that you disagree with? And where has he said AI could hack its way out of a laboratory? I agree with being skeptical of proposals from those with vested interests, but are you just arguing against what you imagine Altman will say, or did I miss some important news?
simonh 3y ago
> ..is necessary because an AI could hack it's way out of a laboratory. Yet, they cannot explain how an AI would accomplish this in practice. I’m sympathetic to your position in general, but I can’t believe you wrote that with a straight face. “I don’t know how it would do it, therefore we should completely ignore the risk that it could be done.” I’m no security expert, but I’ve been following the field incidentally and dabbling since writing login prompt simulators for the Prime terminals at college to harvest user account passwords. When I was a Unix admin I used to have fun figuring out how to hack my own systems. Security is unbelievably hard. An AI eventually jail braking is an eventual almost certainty we need to prepare for.
- elil17 3y ago
  It’s less about how it could be hacked and more about why an AI would do that or have the capability to do it without any warning.
  - simonh 3y ago
    That’s the alignment problem. We don’t know what the actual goals of an AI trained neural net are. We know what criteria we trained it against, but it turns out that’s not at all the same thing. I highly recommend Rob Miles channel on YouTube. Here’s a good one, but they’re all fascinating. It turns out training an AI to have the actual goals we want it to have is fiendishly difficult. https://youtu.be/hEUO6pjwFOo https://youtu.be/hEUO6pjwFOo
johnalbertearle 3y ago
I'm not American even, so I cannot, but what a good idea! I hope the various senators hear this message.
rlytho 3y ago
So you sent a letter saying “Mr Congress save my job that is putting others jobs at risk.” You think voice actors and writers are not saying the same? When do we accept capitalism as we know it is just a bullshit hallucination we grew up with? It’s no more an immutable feature of reality than a religion? I don’t owe propping up some rich person’s figurative identity, or yours for that matter.
cabaalis 3y ago
Sending this to my senator would just notify her of what company she should reach out to for a campaign contribution.

by elil17 3y ago

lettergram 3y ago

I made something just for writing your congress person / senator, using generative AI ironically: https://vocalvoters.com/ https://vocalvoters.com/

samsolomon 3y ago
Cool product! Your pay button appears to be disabled though.
- lettergram 3y ago
  Should enable once you add valid info — if not, let me know
blibble 3y ago
AI generated persuasion is pretty much what they're upset about

throwaway71271 3y ago

[flagged]

pjc50 3y ago
Quite. Meanwhile on the rest of the internet people are gleefully promoting AI as a means of firing every single person who writes words for a living. Or draws art.
- dmix 3y ago
  GPT is so far from threatening “every single person who writes words for a living” anyway. Unless you’re writing generic SEO filler content. Not sure who is claiming that but they don’t understand how it works if they do exist at scale. Writing has always been a low paid shrinking job well before AI. Besides a tiny group of writers at the big firms. I took a journalism course for fun at UofT in my spare time and the professors had nothing but horror stories for trying to make a job out of writing (ie getting a NYT bestseller and getting $1 cheques in the mail). They basically told the students to only do it as a hobby unless you have some engaged niche audience. Which is more about the writer being interesting rather than the generic writing process.
  - 0ct4via 3y ago
    You say that... then we encounter cases like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35919753 While AI isn't going to put anyone out of a job immediately (like automation didn't), there are legitimate risks already in that regard -- in both fiction and nonfiction sites, folk are experimenting with having AI basically write stories/pieces for them -- and the results are often good enough to have potentially put someone out of the job of writing a piece in the first place.
elil17 3y ago
I mean, it will? Not universally, but for the specific products I work on we use additional labor when we include AI-enabled features (due to installing and wiring processors and sensors). I think that that the sorts of AI that smaller companies make will be more likely to create jobs as opposed to getting rid of them since they are more likely to be integrated with physical products.

freedomben 3y ago

> Altman and his ilk IANA senator, but if I were you lost me there. The personal insults make it seem petty and completely overshadow the otherwise professional-sounding message.

elil17 3y ago
I don't mean it as a personal insult at all! The word ilk actually means "a type of people or things similar to those already referred to," it is not an insult or rude word.
- freedomben 3y ago
  TIL! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ilk still, there are probably a lot of people like me who have heard it used (incorrectly it seems) as an insult so many times that it's an automatic response :-(
  - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
    Don't worry, you're not a senator. And, if there's one thing politicians are know for it's got to be ad hominem.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Tone, intended or otherwise, is a pretty important part of communication!
    - nerpderp82 3y ago
      There is this idea that the shape of a word, how it makes your mouth and face move when you say it connotes meaning on its own. This is called "phonosemantics", just saying "ilk" makes one feel like they are flinging off some sticky aggressive slime. Ilk almost always has a negative connotation regardless of what the dictionary says.
- mitch3x3 3y ago

kubota 3y ago

You lost me at "While AI regulation is important" - nope, congress does not need to regulate AI.

silveraxe93 3y ago
They might have lost you. But starting with "congress shouldn't regulate AI" would lose the senator. Which one do you think is more important to convince?
- polski-g 3y ago
  "Congress cannot regulate AI" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
tessierashpool 3y ago
"important" does not mean "good." if you are in the field of AI, AI regulation is absolutely important, whether good or bad.
wnevets 3y ago
> nope, congress does not need to regulate AI. Not regulating the air quality we breathe for decades turned out amazing for millions of the Americas. Yes, lets do the same with AI! What could possibility go wrong?
- pizza 3y ago
  I think this is a great argument in the opposite direction.. atoms matter, information isn’t. A small group of people subjugated many others to poisonous matter. That matter affected their bodies and a causal link could be made. Even if you really believe that somewhere in the chain of consequences derived from LLMs there could be grave and material damage or other affronts to human dignity, there is almost always a more direct causal link that acts as the thing which makes that damage kinetic and physical. And that’s the proper locus for regulation. Otherwise this is all just a bit reminiscent of banning numbers and research into numbers. Want to protect people’s employment? Just do that! Enshrine it in law. Want to improve the safety of critical infrastructure and make sure they’re reliable? Again, just do that! Want to prevent mass surveillance? Do that! Want to protect against a lack of oversight in complex systems allowing for subterfuge via bad actors? Well, make regulation about proper standards of oversight and human accountability. AI doesn’t obviate human responsibility, and a lack of responsibility on the part of humans who should’ve been responsible, and who instead cut corners, doesn’t mean that the blame falls on the tool that cut the corners, but rather the corner-cutters themselves.

dist-epoch 3y ago

Can you please share what ChatGPT prompt you used to generate this letter template?

elil17 3y ago
I used this old-fashioned method of text generation called "writing" - crazy, I know

circuit10 3y ago

The worries about AI taking over things are founded and important, even if many sci-go depictions of it are inaccurate. I’m not sure if this would be the best solution but please don’t dismiss the issue entirely

circuit10 3y ago
*sci-fi but I can’t edit it now
alfalfasprout 3y ago
Seriously, I'm very concerned by the view being taken here. AI has the capacity to do a ton of harm very quickly. A couple of examples: - Scamming via impersonation - Misinformation - Usage of AI in a way that could have serious legal ramifications for incorrect responses - Severe economic displacement Congress can and should examine these issues. Just because OP works at an AI doesnt' mean that company can't exist in a regulated industry. I too work in the AI space and welcome thoughtful regulation.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run. We've been through this song and dance with cryptography. Trying to keep it out of the hands of bad actors will be a waste of time, effort, and money. These resources should be spent lessening the impact rather than trying to completely control it.
  - staunton 3y ago
    > You're never going to be able to regulate what a person's computer can run. You absolutely can. Maybe you can't effectively enforce that regulation but you can regulate and you can take measures that make violating the regulation impractical or risky for most people. By the way, the "crypto-wars" never ended and are ongoing all around the world (UK, EU, India, US...)
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I hate to say this because it would be shocking, but computers as we know them could be taken off people. Again it sounds extreme but in an extreme situation it could happen / not impossible.

abeppu 3y ago

> regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use - this would allow companies and individuals to research new AIs freely while still ensuring that AI products are properly reviewed. While in general I share the view that _research_ should be unencumbered, but deployment should be regulated, I do take issue with your view that safety only matters once they are ready for "widespread use". A tool which is made available in a limited beta can still be harmful, misleading, or too-easily support irresponsible or malicious purposes, and in some cases the harms could be _enabled_ by the fact that the release is limited. For example, if next month you developed a model that could produce extremely high quality video clips from text and reference images, you did a small, gated beta release with no PR, and one of your beta testers immediately uses it to make e.g. highly realistic revenge porn. Because almost no one is aware of the stunning new quality of outputs produced by your model, most people don't believe the victim when they assert that the footage is fake. I would suggest that the first non-private (e.g. non-employee) release of a tool should make it subject to regulation. If I open a restaurant, on my first night I'm expected to be in compliance with basic health and safety regulations, no matter how few customers I have. If I design and sell a widget that does X, even for the first one I sell, my understanding is there's an concept of an implied requirement that my widgets must actually be "fit for purpose" for X; I cannot sell a "rain coat" made of gauze which offers no protection from rain, and I cannot sell a "smoke detector" which doesn't effectively detect smoke. Why should low-volume AI/ML products get a pass?

nvegater 3y ago
I think by "widespread use" he means the reach of the AI System. Dangerous analogy but just to get the idea across: In the same way there is higher tax rates to higher incomes, you should increase regulations in relation to how many people could be potentially affected by the AI system. E.G a Startup with 10 daily users should not be in the same regulation bracket as google. If google deploys an AI it will reach Billions of people compared to 10. This would require a certain level of transparency from companies to get something like an "AI License type" which is pretty reasonable given the dangers of AI (the pragmatic ones not the DOOMsday ones)
- 3y ago

stevespang 3y ago

[dead]

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> regulation should focus on ensuring the safety of AIs once they are ready to be put into widespread use What would you say to a simple registration requirement? You give a point of contact and a description of training data, model, and perhaps intended use (could be binary: civilian or dual use). One page, publicly visible. This gives groundwork for future rulemaking and oversight if necessary.

elil17 3y ago
Personally I think a simple registration requirement would be a good idea, if it were truly simple and accessible to independent researchers.
catiopatio 3y ago
[flagged]
- web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
  Yet
- ygjb 3y ago
  Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. We know, we have watched this argument unfold in the United States over the last 100 years. It sure does seem like a few people are using guns to kill a lot of people. The point of regulating AI should be to explicitly require every single use of AI and machine learning to be clearly labelled so that when people seek remedy for the injustices that are already being perpetrated, that it is clearly understood that the people who chose to use not just ML or AI technology, but those specific models and training criteria can be held accountable if they should be. Regulation doesn't have to be a ban, or limits on how it can be used, it can simply be a requirement for clearly marked disclosure. It could also include clear regulations for lawful access to the underlying math, training data, and intended use cases, and with financially significant penalties for non-compliance to discourage companies from treating it as a cost of doing business.
  - 3y ago

jameshart 3y ago

> Now, because we had the freedom to innovate, AI will be bringing new, high paying jobs to our factories in our state. Do we really have to play this game? If what you’re arguing for is not going to specifically advantage your state over others, and the thing you’re arguing against isn’t going to create an advantage for other states over yours, why make this about ‘your state’ in the first place? The point of elected representatives is to represent the views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages for their constituents.

Pet_Ant 3y ago
> The point of elected representatives is to represent the views of their constituents, not to obtain special advantages for their constituents. That is painfully naive, a history of pork projects speaks otherwise.
- hkt 3y ago
  To the best of my knowledge this doesn't happen so much in more functional democracies. It seems to be more of an anglophone thing.
  - Aperocky 3y ago
    This is a product of incentives encouraged by the system (i.e. a federal republic), it has nothing to do with languages.
    - hkt 3y ago
      It has much to do with culture though - which is transmitted via language.
      - Pet_Ant 3y ago
        I think it's more like culture carries language with it. Along with other things, but language is one of the more recognizable ones.

nerpderp82 3y ago

Lets not focus on "the business" and instead focus on the safety. Altman can an ulterior motive, but it doesn't mean that we should strive for having some sort of handle on AI safety. It could be that Altman and OpenAI know exactly how this will look and the backlash that will ensue that we get ZERO oversight and we rush headlong into doom. Short term we need to focus on the structural unemployment that is about to hit us. As the AI labs use AI to make better AI, it will eat all the jobs until we have a relative handful of AI whisperers.

reaperducer 3y ago

This is the message I shared with my senator If you sent it by e-mail or web contact form, chances are you wasted your time. If you really want attention, you'll send it as a real letter. People who take the time to actually send real mail are taken more seriously.

discardedrefuse 3y ago

What's the point of these letters? Everyone knows this is rent-seeking behavior by OpenAI, and they're going to pay off the right politicians to get it passed. Dear Senator [X], It's painfully obvious that Sam Altman's testimony before the judiciary committee is an attempt to set up rent-seeking conditions for OpenAI, and to snuff out competition from the flourishing open source AI community. We will be carefully monitoring your campaign finances for evidence of bribery. Hugs and Kiss, [My Name]

verdverm 3y ago
If you want to influence the politicians without money, this is not the way.
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  You are exactly correct. I have sent correspondence about ten times to my Congressmen and Senators. I have received a good reply (although often just saying there is nothing that they can do) except for the one time I contacted Jon Kyl and unfortunately mentioned data about his campaign donations from Monsanto - I was writing about a bill he sponsored that I thought would have made it difficult for small farmers to survive economically and make community gardens difficult because of regulations. No response on that correspondence.
  - StillBored 3y ago
    I'm 99% sure that that vast majority of federal congress people (which represent ~1 million people each) never see your emails/letters. Your largely speaking to interns/etc who work in the office unless you happen to make a physical appointment and show up in person. Those interns have a pile of form letters they send for about 99% of (e)mail they get, and if you happen to catch their attention you might get more than than the usual tick mark in a spreadsheet (for/against X). Which at best might be as much as a sentence or two in a weekly correspondence summary which may/may not be read by your representative depending on how seriously they take their job.

brookst 3y ago

What specific ideas has Altman proposed that you disagree with? And where has he said AI could hack its way out of a laboratory? I agree with being skeptical of proposals from those with vested interests, but are you just arguing against what you imagine Altman will say, or did I miss some important news?

simonh 3y ago

> ..is necessary because an AI could hack it's way out of a laboratory. Yet, they cannot explain how an AI would accomplish this in practice. I’m sympathetic to your position in general, but I can’t believe you wrote that with a straight face. “I don’t know how it would do it, therefore we should completely ignore the risk that it could be done.” I’m no security expert, but I’ve been following the field incidentally and dabbling since writing login prompt simulators for the Prime terminals at college to harvest user account passwords. When I was a Unix admin I used to have fun figuring out how to hack my own systems. Security is unbelievably hard. An AI eventually jail braking is an eventual almost certainty we need to prepare for.

elil17 3y ago
It’s less about how it could be hacked and more about why an AI would do that or have the capability to do it without any warning.
- simonh 3y ago
  That’s the alignment problem. We don’t know what the actual goals of an AI trained neural net are. We know what criteria we trained it against, but it turns out that’s not at all the same thing. I highly recommend Rob Miles channel on YouTube. Here’s a good one, but they’re all fascinating. It turns out training an AI to have the actual goals we want it to have is fiendishly difficult. https://youtu.be/hEUO6pjwFOo https://youtu.be/hEUO6pjwFOo

johnalbertearle 3y ago

I'm not American even, so I cannot, but what a good idea! I hope the various senators hear this message.

rlytho 3y ago

So you sent a letter saying “Mr Congress save my job that is putting others jobs at risk.” You think voice actors and writers are not saying the same? When do we accept capitalism as we know it is just a bullshit hallucination we grew up with? It’s no more an immutable feature of reality than a religion? I don’t owe propping up some rich person’s figurative identity, or yours for that matter.

cabaalis 3y ago

Sending this to my senator would just notify her of what company she should reach out to for a campaign contribution.