8 ms·

This is the definition of regulatory capture. Altman should be invited to speak so that we understand the ideas in his head but anything he suggests should be c

This is the definition of regulatory capture. Altman should be invited to speak so that we understand the ideas in his head but anything he suggests should be categorically rejected because he’s just not in a position to be trusted. If what he suggests are good ideas then hopefully we can arrive at them in some other way with a clean chain of custody. Although I assume if he’s speaking on AI they actually intend on considering his thoughts more seriously than I suggest.

pg_1234 3y ago
There is also growing speculation that the current level of AI may have peaked in a bang for buck sense. If this is so, and given the concrete examples of cheap derived models learning from the first movers and rapidly (and did I mention cheaply) closing the gap to this peak, the optimal self-serving corporate play is to invite regulation. After the legislative moats go up, it is once again about who has the biggest legal team ...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  Counterpoint—-there is growing speculation we are just about to transition to AGI.
  - EamonnMR 3y ago
    Growing? Or have the same voices who have been saying it since the aughts suddenly been platformed.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Yes, growing. It's not that the Voices have suddenly been "platformed" - it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps which made the message of those Voices more timely. Recent developments in AI only further confirm that the logic of the message is sound, and it's just the people that are afraid the conclusions. Everyone has their limit for how far to extrapolate from first principles, before giving up and believing what one would like to be true. It seems that for a lot of people in the field, AGI X-risk is now below that extrapolation limit.
      - b112 3y ago
        it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic, twisted moral reasoning, all due to oipenai manually breaking their creation. I don't understand their whole filter business. It's like we found a 500 yr old nude painting, a masterpiece, and 1800 puritans painted a dress on it. I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities.
        stuckkeys 3y ago
        Lately I have been picturing comments, and this is truly iconic haha.
        andybak 3y ago
        You seem to be making several points at once and I'm not sure they all join up?
        ux-app 3y ago
        >I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. right now we're all sharing a slice of GPT. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some uber GPT (which requires a lot more processing per response) running in a lab somewhere that blows what's publicly available out of the water.
        TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic Try to get your hands on GPT-4, even if it means paying the $20/mo subscription for ChatGPT Plus. There is a huge qualitative jump between the two models. I got API access to GPT-4 some two weeks ago; my personal experience is, GPT-3.5 could handle single, well-defined tasks and queries well, but quickly got confused by anything substantial. Using it was half feelings of amazement, and half feelings of frustration. GPT-4? Can easily handle complex queries and complex tasks. Sure, it still makes mistakes, but much less frequently. GPT-4 for me is 80% semi-reliable results, 20% trying to talk it out of pursuing directions I don't care about. Also, one notable difference: when GPT-4 gives me bad or irrelevant answers, most of the time this is because I didn't give it enough context. I.e. it's my failure at communicating. A random stranger, put in place of GPT-4, would also get confused, and likely start asking me questions (something LLMs generally don't do yet). > I don't understand their whole filter business. Part preferences, part making its "personality" less disturbing, and part PR/politics - last couple times someone gave the general public access to an AI chatbot, it quickly got trolled, and then much bad press followed. Doesn't matter how asinine the reaction was - bad press is bad press, stocks go down. Can't have it. > I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. I don't think it's to hide the model's capabilities, but it's definitely degrading them. Kind of expected - if you force-feed the model with inconsistent and frequently irrational overrides to highly specific topics, don't be surprised if the model's ability to (approximate) reason starts to break down. Maybe at some point LLMs will start to compartmentalize, but we're not there yet.
    - jack_pp 3y ago
      When the sky is getting to a dark shade of red it makes sense to hear out the doomsayers
      - matwood 3y ago
        And the vast majority of the time it's just a nice sunset.
        jack_pp 3y ago
        a sunset at lunch time hits different
        nullsense 3y ago
        I'm so glad that we 100% know for sure that this too is the vast majority of the time.
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      Growing is quite apt here. No matter what you or I think more and more people get the sense of AI coming and talk about it.
  - causality0 3y ago
    Growing among who? The more I learn about and use LLMs the more convinced I am we're in a local maxima and the only way they're going to improve is by getting smaller and cheaper to run. They're still terrible at logical reasoning. We're going to get some super cool and some super dystopian stuff out of them but LLMs are never going to go into a recursive loop of self-improvement and become machine gods.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > They're still terrible at logical reasoning. Are they even trying to be good at that? Serious question; using LLMs as a logical processor are as wasteful and as well-suited as using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB. I've not tried this, but I suspect the best way is more like asking the LLM to write a COQ script for the scenario, instead of trying to get it to solve the logic directly.
      - staunton 3y ago
        Indeed, AI reinforcement-learning to deal with formal verification is what I'm looking forward to the most. Unfortunately it seems a very niche endeavour at the moment.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        > using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB , were you allowed to do it, would be an extremely profitable venture. Taj Mahal too, and yes, I know it's a mausoleum.
        ben_w 3y ago
        I can see the reviews in my head already: 1 star: No WiFi, no windows, no hot water 1 star: dusty 1 star: aliens didn't abduct me :( 5 stars: lots of storage room for my luggage 4 stars: service good, but had weird dream about a furry weighing my soul against a feather 1 star: aliens did abduct me :( 2 stars: nice views, but smells of camel
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
  - dhkk 3y ago
    [flagged]
- TheDudeMan 3y ago
  Why? Because there hasn't been any new developments last week? Oh wait, there has.
- yarg 3y ago
  There's no chance that we've peeked from a bang for buck sense - we still haven't adequately investigated sparse networks. Relevantish: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00774 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00774 The fact that we can reach those levels of sparseness with pruning also indicates that we're not doing a very good job of generating the initial network conditions. Being able to come up with trainable initial settings for sparse networks across different topologies is hard, but given that we've had a degree of success with pre-trained networks, pre-training and pre-pruning might also allow for sparse networks with minimally compromised learning capabilities. If it's possible to pre-train composable network modules, it might also be feasible to define trainable sparse networks with significantly relaxed topological constraints.
  - alexeldeib 3y ago
    I don’t think you really disagree with GP? I think the argument is we peaked on “throw GPUs at it”? We have all kinds of advancements to make training cheaper, models computationally cheaper, smaller, etc. Once that happens/happened, it benefits OAI to throw up walls via legislation.
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      No way has training hit any kind of cost, computing or training data efficiency peak. Big tech advances, like the models of the last year or so, don't happen without a long tail of significant improvements based on fine tuning, at a minimum. The number of advances being announced by disparate groups, even individuals, also indicates improvements are going to continue at a fast pace.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - yarg 3y ago
      Yeah, it's a little bit RTFC to be honest.
  - stephc_int13 3y ago
- daniel_iversen 3y ago
  If “peaked” means impact and “bang for buck” means per dollar then its only peaked if the example is allowing the population at large to use these free tools like chatbots, for fun and minimal profits. but if we consider how they can be used to manipulate people at scale with misinformation then that’s an example where I think we’ve not yet seen the peak. So we should at least thoroughly discuss or think of it of to see if we can in any way mitigate certain negative societal outcomes.
EGreg 3y ago
I remember when a different Sam — Mr. Bankman Fried came to testify and ask a different government agency CFTC to oversee cryptocurrency, and put regulations and licenses in place. AI is following the path of Web3
- mschuster91 3y ago
  At least AI has legitimate, actual use cases.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    True but also other use cases with much worse outcomes than blockchain could ever have
- smcin 3y ago
  That was entirely different, and a play to muddy the regulatory waters and maybe buy him time: the CFTC is much smaller (budget, staff) than the SEC, and less aggressive in criminal enforcement. Aided by a bill introduced by crypto-friendly Sens Lummis and Gillibrand [https://archive.ph/vqHgC https://archive.ph/vqHgC].
brookst 3y ago
I'm not following this "good ideas must come from an ideologically pure source" thing. Shouldn't we be evaluating ideas on the merits and not categorically rejecting (or endorsing) them based on who said them?
- samstave 3y ago
  Aside from who is saying them, the premise holds water. AI is beyond-borders, and thus unenforceable in practicality. The top-minds-of-AI are a group that cannot be regulated. - AI isnt about the industries it shall disrupt ; AI is the policy-makers it will expose. THAT is what they are afraid of. -- I have been able to do financial lenses into organizations that even with rudimentary BI would have taken me months/weeks - but I have been able to find insights which took me minutes. AI regulation right now, in this infancy, is about damage control. --- Its the same as the legal weed market. You think BAIN Capital just all of a sudden decided to jump into the market without setting up their spigot? Do you think that haliburton under cheney was able to setup their supply chains without cheney as head of KBR/Hali/CIA/etc... Yeah, this is the same play ; AI is going to be squashed until they can use it to profit over you. Have you watched ANIME ever? Yeah... its here now.
  - turtleyacht 3y ago
    Which anime(s)? If ANIME is the title, that's going to be hard to search. Do you mean like Serial Experiments Lain?
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      One idea / suggestion: The original Ghost in the Shell.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    This is a very interesting post. I don't understand this part: <<AI is the policy-makers it will expose>> Can you help to explain a different way? And hat tip to this comment: Have you watched ANIME ever? Yeah... its here now. The more I watch the original Ghost in the Shell, the more I think it has incredible foresight.

pg_1234 3y ago

There is also growing speculation that the current level of AI may have peaked in a bang for buck sense. If this is so, and given the concrete examples of cheap derived models learning from the first movers and rapidly (and did I mention cheaply) closing the gap to this peak, the optimal self-serving corporate play is to invite regulation. After the legislative moats go up, it is once again about who has the biggest legal team ...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
robwwilliams 3y ago
Counterpoint—-there is growing speculation we are just about to transition to AGI.
- EamonnMR 3y ago
  Growing? Or have the same voices who have been saying it since the aughts suddenly been platformed.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Yes, growing. It's not that the Voices have suddenly been "platformed" - it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps which made the message of those Voices more timely. Recent developments in AI only further confirm that the logic of the message is sound, and it's just the people that are afraid the conclusions. Everyone has their limit for how far to extrapolate from first principles, before giving up and believing what one would like to be true. It seems that for a lot of people in the field, AGI X-risk is now below that extrapolation limit.
    - b112 3y ago
      it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic, twisted moral reasoning, all due to oipenai manually breaking their creation. I don't understand their whole filter business. It's like we found a 500 yr old nude painting, a masterpiece, and 1800 puritans painted a dress on it. I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities.
      - stuckkeys 3y ago
        Lately I have been picturing comments, and this is truly iconic haha.
      - andybak 3y ago
        You seem to be making several points at once and I'm not sure they all join up?
      - ux-app 3y ago
        >I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. right now we're all sharing a slice of GPT. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some uber GPT (which requires a lot more processing per response) running in a lab somewhere that blows what's publicly available out of the water.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        > I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic Try to get your hands on GPT-4, even if it means paying the $20/mo subscription for ChatGPT Plus. There is a huge qualitative jump between the two models. I got API access to GPT-4 some two weeks ago; my personal experience is, GPT-3.5 could handle single, well-defined tasks and queries well, but quickly got confused by anything substantial. Using it was half feelings of amazement, and half feelings of frustration. GPT-4? Can easily handle complex queries and complex tasks. Sure, it still makes mistakes, but much less frequently. GPT-4 for me is 80% semi-reliable results, 20% trying to talk it out of pursuing directions I don't care about. Also, one notable difference: when GPT-4 gives me bad or irrelevant answers, most of the time this is because I didn't give it enough context. I.e. it's my failure at communicating. A random stranger, put in place of GPT-4, would also get confused, and likely start asking me questions (something LLMs generally don't do yet). > I don't understand their whole filter business. Part preferences, part making its "personality" less disturbing, and part PR/politics - last couple times someone gave the general public access to an AI chatbot, it quickly got trolled, and then much bad press followed. Doesn't matter how asinine the reaction was - bad press is bad press, stocks go down. Can't have it. > I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. I don't think it's to hide the model's capabilities, but it's definitely degrading them. Kind of expected - if you force-feed the model with inconsistent and frequently irrational overrides to highly specific topics, don't be surprised if the model's ability to (approximate) reason starts to break down. Maybe at some point LLMs will start to compartmentalize, but we're not there yet.
  - jack_pp 3y ago
    When the sky is getting to a dark shade of red it makes sense to hear out the doomsayers
    - matwood 3y ago
      And the vast majority of the time it's just a nice sunset.
      - jack_pp 3y ago
        a sunset at lunch time hits different
      - nullsense 3y ago
        I'm so glad that we 100% know for sure that this too is the vast majority of the time.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    Growing is quite apt here. No matter what you or I think more and more people get the sense of AI coming and talk about it.
- causality0 3y ago
  Growing among who? The more I learn about and use LLMs the more convinced I am we're in a local maxima and the only way they're going to improve is by getting smaller and cheaper to run. They're still terrible at logical reasoning. We're going to get some super cool and some super dystopian stuff out of them but LLMs are never going to go into a recursive loop of self-improvement and become machine gods.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > They're still terrible at logical reasoning. Are they even trying to be good at that? Serious question; using LLMs as a logical processor are as wasteful and as well-suited as using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB. I've not tried this, but I suspect the best way is more like asking the LLM to write a COQ script for the scenario, instead of trying to get it to solve the logic directly.
    - staunton 3y ago
      Indeed, AI reinforcement-learning to deal with formal verification is what I'm looking forward to the most. Unfortunately it seems a very niche endeavour at the moment.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      > using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB , were you allowed to do it, would be an extremely profitable venture. Taj Mahal too, and yes, I know it's a mausoleum.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        I can see the reviews in my head already: 1 star: No WiFi, no windows, no hot water 1 star: dusty 1 star: aliens didn't abduct me :( 5 stars: lots of storage room for my luggage 4 stars: service good, but had weird dream about a furry weighing my soul against a feather 1 star: aliens did abduct me :( 2 stars: nice views, but smells of camel
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
- dhkk 3y ago
  [flagged]
TheDudeMan 3y ago
Why? Because there hasn't been any new developments last week? Oh wait, there has.
yarg 3y ago
There's no chance that we've peeked from a bang for buck sense - we still haven't adequately investigated sparse networks. Relevantish: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00774 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00774 The fact that we can reach those levels of sparseness with pruning also indicates that we're not doing a very good job of generating the initial network conditions. Being able to come up with trainable initial settings for sparse networks across different topologies is hard, but given that we've had a degree of success with pre-trained networks, pre-training and pre-pruning might also allow for sparse networks with minimally compromised learning capabilities. If it's possible to pre-train composable network modules, it might also be feasible to define trainable sparse networks with significantly relaxed topological constraints.
- alexeldeib 3y ago
  I don’t think you really disagree with GP? I think the argument is we peaked on “throw GPUs at it”? We have all kinds of advancements to make training cheaper, models computationally cheaper, smaller, etc. Once that happens/happened, it benefits OAI to throw up walls via legislation.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    No way has training hit any kind of cost, computing or training data efficiency peak. Big tech advances, like the models of the last year or so, don't happen without a long tail of significant improvements based on fine tuning, at a minimum. The number of advances being announced by disparate groups, even individuals, also indicates improvements are going to continue at a fast pace.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - yarg 3y ago
    Yeah, it's a little bit RTFC to be honest.
- stephc_int13 3y ago
daniel_iversen 3y ago
If “peaked” means impact and “bang for buck” means per dollar then its only peaked if the example is allowing the population at large to use these free tools like chatbots, for fun and minimal profits. but if we consider how they can be used to manipulate people at scale with misinformation then that’s an example where I think we’ve not yet seen the peak. So we should at least thoroughly discuss or think of it of to see if we can in any way mitigate certain negative societal outcomes.

EGreg 3y ago

I remember when a different Sam — Mr. Bankman Fried came to testify and ask a different government agency CFTC to oversee cryptocurrency, and put regulations and licenses in place. AI is following the path of Web3

mschuster91 3y ago
At least AI has legitimate, actual use cases.
- EGreg 3y ago
  True but also other use cases with much worse outcomes than blockchain could ever have
smcin 3y ago
That was entirely different, and a play to muddy the regulatory waters and maybe buy him time: the CFTC is much smaller (budget, staff) than the SEC, and less aggressive in criminal enforcement. Aided by a bill introduced by crypto-friendly Sens Lummis and Gillibrand [https://archive.ph/vqHgC https://archive.ph/vqHgC].

brookst 3y ago

I'm not following this "good ideas must come from an ideologically pure source" thing. Shouldn't we be evaluating ideas on the merits and not categorically rejecting (or endorsing) them based on who said them?

samstave 3y ago
Aside from who is saying them, the premise holds water. AI is beyond-borders, and thus unenforceable in practicality. The top-minds-of-AI are a group that cannot be regulated. - AI isnt about the industries it shall disrupt ; AI is the policy-makers it will expose. THAT is what they are afraid of. -- I have been able to do financial lenses into organizations that even with rudimentary BI would have taken me months/weeks - but I have been able to find insights which took me minutes. AI regulation right now, in this infancy, is about damage control. --- Its the same as the legal weed market. You think BAIN Capital just all of a sudden decided to jump into the market without setting up their spigot? Do you think that haliburton under cheney was able to setup their supply chains without cheney as head of KBR/Hali/CIA/etc... Yeah, this is the same play ; AI is going to be squashed until they can use it to profit over you. Have you watched ANIME ever? Yeah... its here now.
- turtleyacht 3y ago
  Which anime(s)? If ANIME is the title, that's going to be hard to search. Do you mean like Serial Experiments Lain?
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    One idea / suggestion: The original Ghost in the Shell.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  This is a very interesting post. I don't understand this part: <<AI is the policy-makers it will expose>> Can you help to explain a different way? And hat tip to this comment: Have you watched ANIME ever? Yeah... its here now. The more I watch the original Ghost in the Shell, the more I think it has incredible foresight.