7 ms·

Nothing makes me think of Altman as a grifter more than his trying to spook uneducated lawmakers with sci-fi notions like "superintelligence" for which there ar

by lsy 3y ago

Nothing makes me think of Altman as a grifter more than his trying to spook uneducated lawmakers with sci-fi notions like "superintelligence" for which there are no plausible mechanisms or natural analogues, and for which the solution is to lobby government build a moat around his business and limit his competitors. We do not even have a consensus around a working definition of "intelligence", let alone any evidence that it is a linear or unbounded phenomenon, and even if it were, there is no evidence ChatGPT is a route to even human-level intelligence. The sum total of research into this "field" is a series of long chains of philosophical leaps that rapidly escape any connection to reality, which is no basis for a wide-ranging government intervention.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
adamisom 3y ago
> We do not even have a consensus around a working definition of "intelligence" I’m sorry but if you really think this is relevant, you just aren’t paying attention. This is my number one giveaway sign that someone just doesn’t have any idea why lots of people are concerned about ai x-risk.
peripitea 3y ago
What do you mean there are no plausible mechanisms? This reads like one of those "it will take 1-10 million years for man to fly" kind of statements.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Exactly! How can so many people at HN not see this?
filoleg 3y ago
Thanks for putting into words what I couldn't articulate well, but what has been bothering me for a while. Very concise and to the point, saved your comment. It is just tiring seeing all those fearmongering articles in the news media about omnipotent god-like AGI, based on nothing but self-aggrandizing statements from "experts" (with large followings that have nothing to do with the topic they are authoritatively talking about) like Sam Altman. It got to the point, where seeing those articles makes me question things over and over in my head, only to come to the same conclusion (as nothing material has changed to lead me to a different conclusion this time compared to previous times). Almost feels like I am being gaslighted. And it feels so strong, I cannot even blame people outside of tech falling for all of this (let alone people of the typical US senators' age and tech literacy). Which is the exact part that makes me feel the most uneasy - people who understand this game like Sam Altman does and who have no issues with capitalizing on that using this dishonest rhetoric (to the major detriment of the rest of the people). /rantover
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
idopmstuff 3y ago
The problem is that once you have proof of these things, it may be too late. That's an even larger problem when you consider the speed at which our government moves on things. I recognize why many folks see it as Altman bringing up the ladder, and I'm certainly cynical enough not to discount that. Still, I don't think the facts that you're citing here are evidence that he's doing that. > We do not even have a consensus around a working definition of "intelligence" This doesn't seem like a good reason not to regulate - intelligence has been around for a very long time, and you're correct that we don't have a consensus around how to define it. There's no reason to believe we'll get to a consensus on that soon, so if you're saying that we should wait to get there before we regulate, you're effectively saying we should never regulate.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > The problem is that once you have proof of these things, it may be too late. If the thing you're worried about is Skynet, regulation isn't going to do anything. Once someone builds it, you lose regardless of whatever the law says, and the person building it may not even be in your jurisdiction. If the thing you're worried about is AI being used for copyright infringement or something, in what sense will it be "too late" if that sort of thing happens for a period of time before any laws are passed?
samwillis 3y ago
Exactly, I also struggle to take seriously the "security" concerns of an organisation that releases this product with plugins and no proper way to restrict them and what they can do. The prompt injections are just ridiculous and show a complete lack of thought going into the design [0]. "move fast and break things" It very much feels like they are trying to build a legislative moat, blocking out competitors and even open source projects. Ridiculous. I don't fear what this technology does to us, I fear what we do to each other because of it. This is just the start. 0: https://twitter.com/wunderwuzzi23/status/1659411665853779971 https://twitter.com/wunderwuzzi23/status/1659411665853779971 > Let ChatGPT visit a website and have your email stolen. > Plugins, Prompt Injection and Cross Plug-in Request Forgery.
- 1827163 3y ago
  You can host your open source AI project in Belarus or Russia or whatever. You can even VPN into the country and pretend you're actually developing it there. And we also have Tor, I2P, etc. to hide where you're coming from. And we will likely have anti-stylometric tools so it will be very difficult to identify the author of the code. So it's unlikely the government will be able to put a stop to it. Especially given AI is a technology that many will find very useful. They can't even put a stop to child sexual abuse material on the Internet, material which is universally hated. How are they ever going to stop AI development then? It's all going to go underground, on the darknet. And restricting the development of open source software likely will be found unconstitutional, on First Amendment grounds, in the US. And it's likely to spur civil disobedience as well.
  - startupsfail 3y ago
    Last time the US was afraid of Germany developing nukes this resulted in nukes actually being developed and then promptly stolen by the Soviets. Admittedly, at the time, socialist/communist were to some degree supported by the U.S. intellectuals - were’ve been quite a few that were sympathizing. So recruitment was easy. Hopefully this is not the case now. As it is quite clear that there is no good reason to support Putin, unless you happen to be his buddy, crony or an asset (i.e. Trump).
famouswaffles 3y ago
>and even if it were, there is no evidence ChatGPT is a route to even human-level intelligence. People who say this nonsense need to start properly defining human level intelligence because nearly anything you throw at GPT-4 it performs at at least average human level, often well above. Give criteria that 4 fails that a significant chunk of the human population doesn't also fail and we can talk. Else this is just another instance of people struggling to see what's right in front of them. Just blows my mind the lengths some will go to ignore what is already easily verifiable right now. "I'll know agi when i see it", my ass.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > People who say this nonsense need to start properly defining human level intelligence because nearly anything you throw at GPT-4 it performs at at least average human level, often well above. "Average human level" is pretty boring though. Computers have been doing arithmetic at well above "average human level" since they were first invented. The premise of AGI isn't that it can do something better than people, it's that it can do everything at least as well. Which is clearly still not the case.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    > The premise of AGI isn't that it can do something better than people, it's that it can do everything at least as well. Which is clearly still not the case. I imagine an important concern is the learning & improvement velocity. Humans get old, tired, etc. GPUs do not. It isn't the case now, but it is fuzzy how fast we could collectively get there. Break out problem domains into modules, off to the silicon dojos until your models exceed human capabilities, and then roll them up. You can pick from OpenGPT plugins, why wouldn't an LLM hypervisor/orchestrator do the same? https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
sberens 3y ago
> The sum total of research into this "field" is a series of long chains of philosophical leaps that rapidly escape any connection to reality Well, 10 years we had just gotten image classification barely working. Now, we have something with reasoning abilities close to the average human. Is it really a philosophical leap to imagine in another 10 years we will have made significant further progress?
mindslight 3y ago
Giving Altman the benefit of the doubt would be a lot more plausible if OpenAI actually released their products rather than presenting them as locked down web services [0], and if they didn't continually use this alarmist word "safety" to describe things like preventing an LLM from writing things that could cause political controversy. They're so obviously missing the larger picture in favor of their own business interests, that it's impossible to consider these grandiose calls for regulation to be anything but plays for regulatory capture. [0] I can't even play with ChatGPT any more, even though I had acquiesced to giving them my phone number. Now they've seemingly added IP-based discrimination, in line with the common lust for ever more control.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  But surely, if safety is an issue, releasing them in the capacity that you describe would be a far greater problem?
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Releasing their models for direct use would make any actual problems present themselves sooner, before more advanced models are created that intensify those problems. Right now the stance is basically going full speed ahead on creating the thing that might be a problem, while they're going to "solve" it with bespoke content-based filters and banning users. That is the setup for green lighting problematic-but-profitable uses - ie bog standard corporate behavior.
samstave 3y ago
As much as I LOVE AI, and OpenAI -- and as much as I am about Alignment and such... Its really weird for me, personally, When I know its @sama that is driving. YC is the bastion of the future of tech.. and I feel, personally, its kind of a weird, nuanced, conflict with the former head of YC to be the head of AI whereby YC (HN) is a primary gearbox in the driving of the narrative behind AI. Ive watched @sama on lex at least 3 times. His reasonings are sound, but they are a veneer... his ego seeps through the whitespace to reveal what he is really after... (if I am wrong correct me) but @sama wants to go down as basically the Father of generally accepted AI as a service which is profitable. - Thats the one thing I am interested - how many back-door deals is OpenAI running with [name entity who will ultimately become an enemy] I'd assume it is >0
Ilverin 3y ago
Altman doesn't have equity in OpenAI, so that's a bit of evidence that he believes ai could be valuable or important to him or humanity even without his gaining value in equity.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Or that his name begins to carry weight and that there's opportunities for consulting, a book deal, Netflix dramatization et al.
api 3y ago
If you don't think he's a grifter just search for "worldcoin." Then there's the fact that Altman appropriated a non-profit and closed the technology. Both of these things are very damning to his character, especially when taken together. If AI really is dangerous then this is an argument for all AI research to be required to be done fully in public view. No proprietary models, no closed platform plays, nothing that isn't done fully in the open. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. That way if something starts to behave in really dangerous alarming ways we can all learn about it and prepare to deal with it. This was OpenAI's original mission before Altman took it private and closed. Remember? The most plausible dangerous scenario for AI is that it will end up in the hands of a small number of people who will use it as a force multiplier to control and conquer other groups of people at tremendous scale. Other scenarios like autonomous AGIs trying to take over or exterminate humans are significantly less plausible, especially since these models so far have precisely zero ability to self-reflect or exercise independent agency. They only do what we tell them to do after being trained on data that we created and fed them. Now check out that "worldcoin" thing and ask me if the people behind that (and behind appropriating and closing a non-profit) are the people who should be in exclusive control of closed massively powerful AIs with a regulatory moat in place to prevent anyone else from creating anything that equals them. The most plausible of the scary scenarios is the one Altman is trying to bring into being: a small oligopoly empowered with AI beyond anything anyone else possesses. He's either completely delusional or a grifter... or perhaps both since the best grifters are often delusional. Some of the shadiest people I have ever met are full of hot air about how enlightened they are and the purity of their motives. When someone starts tooting their own horn about how pure and wise and altruistic they are, check their basement for mounds of loose dirt and their closets and drawers for little baggies of human hair and clippings of clothing.
nickfromseattle 3y ago
What I don't get is: #1 - All of his recent moves are being judged with an assumption of malicious intent. #2 - I assume Paul Graham and Michael Siebel are a good judge of character. #3 - Sam Altman claims (in his congressional hearing) he doesn't have equity in OpenAi. I've been struggling to develop an answer for #1 - malicious intent, while also accounting for #2 and #3. Any speculation?
- stonogo 3y ago
  We would have to unravel the structure of openai to get these answers. It was founded as a nonprofit, funded with millions of donations, then spun out a private company owned by the nonprofit, with none of the donors getting equity in that, but all of the IP owned by it. The whole situation is bizarre and many of the donors, notably Elon Musk, have expressed displeasure with how things have been orchestrated. How much of this is grift and how much is just burned goodwill is hard to say from the outside.
notacoward 3y ago
> sci-fi notions like "superintelligence" That echoes my own first impression - that the whole point here was to get "superintelligence" into the lexicon, and to imply that OpenAI might be able to produce such a thing. Stealth advertising at its worst. > lobby government build a moat around his business That was my second impression. Altman and his ilk don't care about regulation as something to do with public good. As far as they're concerned, it's just another lever they can pull to get or stay ahead of competitors. Kind of funny seeing him try to build the moat before he's actually built anything resembling a castle, but that's VC thinking I guess. So, I guess what I'm really saying here is: thank you. Well said.
cubefox 3y ago
Superintelligence is not a "sci-fi" notion. That would be like saying, a few years before the Wright brothers, that human powered flight is a sci-fi notion. The last ten years have seen massive progress in AI, and another 10 years of such massive progress could very plausibly lead do superhuman intelligence. It's not sci-fi at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tivert 3y ago
  > That would be like saying, a few years before the Wright brothers, that human powered flight is a sci-fi notion. That would have been exactly correct at the time. The difference between real and sci-fi is implemented technology. There are certainly classes of sci-fi technology that we know are likely impossible fantasies, but that doesn't mean the rest of it is real.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    The OP obviously meant with "sci-fi" that the 10 years projected by Altman & Co are completely unrealistic, implying superintelligence being definitely far further away.

by lsy 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

adamisom 3y ago

> We do not even have a consensus around a working definition of "intelligence" I’m sorry but if you really think this is relevant, you just aren’t paying attention. This is my number one giveaway sign that someone just doesn’t have any idea why lots of people are concerned about ai x-risk.

peripitea 3y ago

What do you mean there are no plausible mechanisms? This reads like one of those "it will take 1-10 million years for man to fly" kind of statements.

cubefox 3y ago
Exactly! How can so many people at HN not see this?

filoleg 3y ago

Thanks for putting into words what I couldn't articulate well, but what has been bothering me for a while. Very concise and to the point, saved your comment. It is just tiring seeing all those fearmongering articles in the news media about omnipotent god-like AGI, based on nothing but self-aggrandizing statements from "experts" (with large followings that have nothing to do with the topic they are authoritatively talking about) like Sam Altman. It got to the point, where seeing those articles makes me question things over and over in my head, only to come to the same conclusion (as nothing material has changed to lead me to a different conclusion this time compared to previous times). Almost feels like I am being gaslighted. And it feels so strong, I cannot even blame people outside of tech falling for all of this (let alone people of the typical US senators' age and tech literacy). Which is the exact part that makes me feel the most uneasy - people who understand this game like Sam Altman does and who have no issues with capitalizing on that using this dishonest rhetoric (to the major detriment of the rest of the people). /rantover

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

idopmstuff 3y ago

The problem is that once you have proof of these things, it may be too late. That's an even larger problem when you consider the speed at which our government moves on things. I recognize why many folks see it as Altman bringing up the ladder, and I'm certainly cynical enough not to discount that. Still, I don't think the facts that you're citing here are evidence that he's doing that. > We do not even have a consensus around a working definition of "intelligence" This doesn't seem like a good reason not to regulate - intelligence has been around for a very long time, and you're correct that we don't have a consensus around how to define it. There's no reason to believe we'll get to a consensus on that soon, so if you're saying that we should wait to get there before we regulate, you're effectively saying we should never regulate.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> The problem is that once you have proof of these things, it may be too late. If the thing you're worried about is Skynet, regulation isn't going to do anything. Once someone builds it, you lose regardless of whatever the law says, and the person building it may not even be in your jurisdiction. If the thing you're worried about is AI being used for copyright infringement or something, in what sense will it be "too late" if that sort of thing happens for a period of time before any laws are passed?

samwillis 3y ago

Exactly, I also struggle to take seriously the "security" concerns of an organisation that releases this product with plugins and no proper way to restrict them and what they can do. The prompt injections are just ridiculous and show a complete lack of thought going into the design [0]. "move fast and break things" It very much feels like they are trying to build a legislative moat, blocking out competitors and even open source projects. Ridiculous. I don't fear what this technology does to us, I fear what we do to each other because of it. This is just the start. 0: https://twitter.com/wunderwuzzi23/status/1659411665853779971 https://twitter.com/wunderwuzzi23/status/1659411665853779971 > Let ChatGPT visit a website and have your email stolen. > Plugins, Prompt Injection and Cross Plug-in Request Forgery.

1827163 3y ago
You can host your open source AI project in Belarus or Russia or whatever. You can even VPN into the country and pretend you're actually developing it there. And we also have Tor, I2P, etc. to hide where you're coming from. And we will likely have anti-stylometric tools so it will be very difficult to identify the author of the code. So it's unlikely the government will be able to put a stop to it. Especially given AI is a technology that many will find very useful. They can't even put a stop to child sexual abuse material on the Internet, material which is universally hated. How are they ever going to stop AI development then? It's all going to go underground, on the darknet. And restricting the development of open source software likely will be found unconstitutional, on First Amendment grounds, in the US. And it's likely to spur civil disobedience as well.
- startupsfail 3y ago
  Last time the US was afraid of Germany developing nukes this resulted in nukes actually being developed and then promptly stolen by the Soviets. Admittedly, at the time, socialist/communist were to some degree supported by the U.S. intellectuals - were’ve been quite a few that were sympathizing. So recruitment was easy. Hopefully this is not the case now. As it is quite clear that there is no good reason to support Putin, unless you happen to be his buddy, crony or an asset (i.e. Trump).

famouswaffles 3y ago

>and even if it were, there is no evidence ChatGPT is a route to even human-level intelligence. People who say this nonsense need to start properly defining human level intelligence because nearly anything you throw at GPT-4 it performs at at least average human level, often well above. Give criteria that 4 fails that a significant chunk of the human population doesn't also fail and we can talk. Else this is just another instance of people struggling to see what's right in front of them. Just blows my mind the lengths some will go to ignore what is already easily verifiable right now. "I'll know agi when i see it", my ass.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> People who say this nonsense need to start properly defining human level intelligence because nearly anything you throw at GPT-4 it performs at at least average human level, often well above. "Average human level" is pretty boring though. Computers have been doing arithmetic at well above "average human level" since they were first invented. The premise of AGI isn't that it can do something better than people, it's that it can do everything at least as well. Which is clearly still not the case.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  > The premise of AGI isn't that it can do something better than people, it's that it can do everything at least as well. Which is clearly still not the case. I imagine an important concern is the learning & improvement velocity. Humans get old, tired, etc. GPUs do not. It isn't the case now, but it is fuzzy how fast we could collectively get there. Break out problem domains into modules, off to the silicon dojos until your models exceed human capabilities, and then roll them up. You can pick from OpenGPT plugins, why wouldn't an LLM hypervisor/orchestrator do the same? https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...
  - dragonwriter 3y ago

sberens 3y ago

> The sum total of research into this "field" is a series of long chains of philosophical leaps that rapidly escape any connection to reality Well, 10 years we had just gotten image classification barely working. Now, we have something with reasoning abilities close to the average human. Is it really a philosophical leap to imagine in another 10 years we will have made significant further progress?

mindslight 3y ago

Giving Altman the benefit of the doubt would be a lot more plausible if OpenAI actually released their products rather than presenting them as locked down web services [0], and if they didn't continually use this alarmist word "safety" to describe things like preventing an LLM from writing things that could cause political controversy. They're so obviously missing the larger picture in favor of their own business interests, that it's impossible to consider these grandiose calls for regulation to be anything but plays for regulatory capture. [0] I can't even play with ChatGPT any more, even though I had acquiesced to giving them my phone number. Now they've seemingly added IP-based discrimination, in line with the common lust for ever more control.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
But surely, if safety is an issue, releasing them in the capacity that you describe would be a far greater problem?
- mindslight 3y ago
  Releasing their models for direct use would make any actual problems present themselves sooner, before more advanced models are created that intensify those problems. Right now the stance is basically going full speed ahead on creating the thing that might be a problem, while they're going to "solve" it with bespoke content-based filters and banning users. That is the setup for green lighting problematic-but-profitable uses - ie bog standard corporate behavior.

samstave 3y ago

As much as I LOVE AI, and OpenAI -- and as much as I am about Alignment and such... Its really weird for me, personally, When I know its @sama that is driving. YC is the bastion of the future of tech.. and I feel, personally, its kind of a weird, nuanced, conflict with the former head of YC to be the head of AI whereby YC (HN) is a primary gearbox in the driving of the narrative behind AI. Ive watched @sama on lex at least 3 times. His reasonings are sound, but they are a veneer... his ego seeps through the whitespace to reveal what he is really after... (if I am wrong correct me) but @sama wants to go down as basically the Father of generally accepted AI as a service which is profitable. - Thats the one thing I am interested - how many back-door deals is OpenAI running with [name entity who will ultimately become an enemy] I'd assume it is >0

Ilverin 3y ago

Altman doesn't have equity in OpenAI, so that's a bit of evidence that he believes ai could be valuable or important to him or humanity even without his gaining value in equity.

hammyhavoc 3y ago
Or that his name begins to carry weight and that there's opportunities for consulting, a book deal, Netflix dramatization et al.

api 3y ago

If you don't think he's a grifter just search for "worldcoin." Then there's the fact that Altman appropriated a non-profit and closed the technology. Both of these things are very damning to his character, especially when taken together. If AI really is dangerous then this is an argument for all AI research to be required to be done fully in public view. No proprietary models, no closed platform plays, nothing that isn't done fully in the open. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. That way if something starts to behave in really dangerous alarming ways we can all learn about it and prepare to deal with it. This was OpenAI's original mission before Altman took it private and closed. Remember? The most plausible dangerous scenario for AI is that it will end up in the hands of a small number of people who will use it as a force multiplier to control and conquer other groups of people at tremendous scale. Other scenarios like autonomous AGIs trying to take over or exterminate humans are significantly less plausible, especially since these models so far have precisely zero ability to self-reflect or exercise independent agency. They only do what we tell them to do after being trained on data that we created and fed them. Now check out that "worldcoin" thing and ask me if the people behind that (and behind appropriating and closing a non-profit) are the people who should be in exclusive control of closed massively powerful AIs with a regulatory moat in place to prevent anyone else from creating anything that equals them. The most plausible of the scary scenarios is the one Altman is trying to bring into being: a small oligopoly empowered with AI beyond anything anyone else possesses. He's either completely delusional or a grifter... or perhaps both since the best grifters are often delusional. Some of the shadiest people I have ever met are full of hot air about how enlightened they are and the purity of their motives. When someone starts tooting their own horn about how pure and wise and altruistic they are, check their basement for mounds of loose dirt and their closets and drawers for little baggies of human hair and clippings of clothing.

nickfromseattle 3y ago

What I don't get is: #1 - All of his recent moves are being judged with an assumption of malicious intent. #2 - I assume Paul Graham and Michael Siebel are a good judge of character. #3 - Sam Altman claims (in his congressional hearing) he doesn't have equity in OpenAi. I've been struggling to develop an answer for #1 - malicious intent, while also accounting for #2 and #3. Any speculation?

stonogo 3y ago
We would have to unravel the structure of openai to get these answers. It was founded as a nonprofit, funded with millions of donations, then spun out a private company owned by the nonprofit, with none of the donors getting equity in that, but all of the IP owned by it. The whole situation is bizarre and many of the donors, notably Elon Musk, have expressed displeasure with how things have been orchestrated. How much of this is grift and how much is just burned goodwill is hard to say from the outside.

notacoward 3y ago

> sci-fi notions like "superintelligence" That echoes my own first impression - that the whole point here was to get "superintelligence" into the lexicon, and to imply that OpenAI might be able to produce such a thing. Stealth advertising at its worst. > lobby government build a moat around his business That was my second impression. Altman and his ilk don't care about regulation as something to do with public good. As far as they're concerned, it's just another lever they can pull to get or stay ahead of competitors. Kind of funny seeing him try to build the moat before he's actually built anything resembling a castle, but that's VC thinking I guess. So, I guess what I'm really saying here is: thank you. Well said.

cubefox 3y ago

Superintelligence is not a "sci-fi" notion. That would be like saying, a few years before the Wright brothers, that human powered flight is a sci-fi notion. The last ten years have seen massive progress in AI, and another 10 years of such massive progress could very plausibly lead do superhuman intelligence. It's not sci-fi at all.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tivert 3y ago
> That would be like saying, a few years before the Wright brothers, that human powered flight is a sci-fi notion. That would have been exactly correct at the time. The difference between real and sci-fi is implemented technology. There are certainly classes of sci-fi technology that we know are likely impossible fantasies, but that doesn't mean the rest of it is real.
- cubefox 3y ago
  The OP obviously meant with "sci-fi" that the 10 years projected by Altman & Co are completely unrealistic, implying superintelligence being definitely far further away.