8 ms·

Don't worry folks, the years and years of "of course we'd never connect experimental AI systems to the open internet" assurances were never necessary for safe d

Don't worry folks, the years and years of "of course we'd never connect experimental AI systems to the open internet" assurances were never necessary for safe development and deployment. This reassessment was founded on the last several months that showed us these systems are close to 100% dependable, they never deceive humans, they are entirely aligned with human morals (you know, all those morals we all agree on), they are advancing at a totally predictable rate, and we never see unexpected behaviors from them. Besides, they can only be wielded by people who we trust have good intentions. No, this re-assessment has nothing to do with market dynamics incentivizing people to deploy experimental systems further into the infrastructure we depend on.

andrewmutz 3y ago
Many of us have not been persuaded by the pervasive, kneejerk fear of AI that floods social media. If social media had been around in the past, we'd have never developed trains or electricity or cars because of the crippling fear that something bad might happen along the way.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  I don't see cars as being comparable to the universal usage of electrical energy as an intermediate of converting physical forms of energy. Not even close. And also, the "deployment" of cars if you will, has brought and still brings malignant effecfs on society, not only positives. If by cars you mean cars for transporting individual people in non-critical situations and the corresponding industrial and political developments, especially around urban planning. Nor arguing about the significance of the effects, but the discovery of electricity and how to use it seem more useful to me than the discovery of using fossil fuel cumbustion for transporting people. Road transit in total is a different thing of course.
  - andrewmutz 3y ago
    If a technology has positives and negatives consequences for the world, but the positives outweigh the negatives, then we want those technologies to be developed. For cars, the positives outweigh the negatives.
    - moritzwarhier 3y ago
      Regarding the comparison: it's just that there are infinitely many modes of transporting people different from cars, that's why I argued against it. I would not argue against the point that cars in themselves are very useful. If the point however is how we are using them and how many of them we build or how we arrange our living around the necessary public infrastructure to use cars for anythint, I'm not sure if I agree. IMO, as of now, this is a case of "market failure", if you will. But I know that the majority of people don't agree with this. As I see it, one of the main usages of cars seems to be to use them for not having to be around car traffic: e.g. living in suburbs, "escaping" into nature on the weekends.
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      I don't think anyone (well maybe the Amish) are arguing that all technology is bad. Only that some technology might be bad, and it is worth trying to figure out the implications of releasing increasingly capable models to the public.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      >For cars, the positives outweigh the negatives TBD: climate change is the unaddressed elephant in that room
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  When cars were first entering the market they were only legally allowed to go at 4mph and a guy had to walk in front of it with a big flag. I don't think it's the example you want to use.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Fear of AI has been real and well-articulated for at least 70 years. The current trajectory has done very little to assuage those fears and quite a bit to validate or even amplify them.
airgapstopgap 3y ago
Other than snark, do you have a good argument? We know that technology can be error-prone, and LLMs fail in a great plethora of ways, but you are trying to sell an AI Doom narrative. I have never bought the idea that AI will be airgapped, because the whole paradigm of Yudkowsky at al. is ludicrous and even within it airgapping was a strawman of a technique (they argue that a truly dangerous AI will get itself out regardless). > they are entirely aligned with human morals (you know, all those morals we all agree on) Maybe this is a good cause to reassess the premise of alignment as a valuable goal? I know that at least some alignist fanatics admit [1] it's a religious project to bring humanity under the rule of a common ideologically monolithic governance to forever banish the evils of competition etc., and it's intellectually coherent, but evil from my point of view. Naturally this is the exact sort of disagreement about morals that precludes the possibility of alignment of a single AI both to my and to your values. > they are advancing at a totally predictable rate, and we never see unexpected behaviors from them. Since when is this a requirement for technology to be allowed? > Besides, they can only be wielded by people who we trust have good intentions. What, other than status quo bias, makes you tolerate, I dunno, the existence of cryptography? 1. https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1660450229043249154 https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1660450229043249154
- petters 3y ago
  > Maybe this is a good cause to reassess the premise of alignment as a valuable goal? Could you elaborate here? Alignment seems pretty obviously a good thing.
  - robwwilliams 3y ago
    Alignment assumes a well agreed foundational philosophy on what is good, what is fair, what is doable today and tomorrow. Yes, HN contributors might have shared goals for AGI alignment—but we are not the world—-we are a thin slice of one culture.
    - generalspecific 3y ago
      I think a more individualistic definition of alignment could say that an AI that a person is directing doesn't do something that person does not desire - this definition removes the "foundational philosophy of what is good" problem, but does leave the "lunatic wants to destroy the world with AIs help" problem. Tricky times ahead
bioemerl 3y ago
If AI becomes harmful we will likely see it in motion and be able to respond and adapt to it. We will live in a world where the humans on the internet are far far far more dangerous than any of these machines. The harms here are relatively small. The only thing AI has is scale, but what's running at a higher scale than humanity? Every site already runs scam filters and handles misinformation. AI won't likely move the needle much because it's going to be less powerful than humans. The potential benefits, meanwhile, are plentiful and massive. I do not believe we need to wait for a solution to the nebulous and badly defined "control problem" to be solved to match forward here. If we refused to advance out of fear, that fear will have done far more harm than access to AI will ever do.
- soperj 3y ago
  > If AI becomes harmful we will likely see it in motion and be able to respond and adapt to it. What are you basing this on? > AI won't likely move the needle much because it's going to be less powerful than humans. Won't it just be used to augment the amount of harm that humans can do?
  - bioemerl 3y ago
    > What are you basing this on? History. We have had a period of adaptation and experimentation with every other invention in history. This one likely will be no different. > Won't it just be used to augment the amount of harm that humans can do? Sure, but that's everything that makes us more capable. It also makes us more able to defend and create.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      >History Right, I learned from Napoleon about the dangers of AI... The large land mammals were doing pretty well too, until a bipedal superintelligence showed up. History is a get thing to learn from and a very poor thing to assume is going to repeat.
      - killingtime74 3y ago
EGreg 3y ago
I totally agree! I for one welcome our AI overlords. Scan my text. I am of course in favor of the good things and good morality and let’s stay away from the bad things.
avg_dev 3y ago
I agree with this assessment 100%. We are asking for trouble with this sort of thing. I wrote my own thoughts on the subject on a couple of other threads: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274017 - on an article on (Google) Bard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020806 - on an article about a tool called Self-Learning Agent for Performing APIs (SLAPA)
fastglass 3y ago
I like how people talk about this the same way they do gun safety
renewiltord 3y ago
Every time I read a comment like this, I set aside $10 to expand my hardware on which I will run the latest publicly available LLM regardless of license into an automatic prompt that gives it a terminal, a privacy.com credit card with $1000 on it, and a prompt to explore the world. If the comments keep happening, I'll up the money. So far this does exactly fuck-all on GPT4-x-Alpaca-30B and Wizard Vicuna. But I will accelerate every time someone sarcastically asks to decelerate. Refractory periods may apply. This makes all sarcastic decelerators into accelerators.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  That is bizarre.
  - barking_biscuit 3y ago
    That's humans for you.
chatmasta 3y ago
Wait until you see what we let humans do on their mobile devices.
Animats 3y ago
I'm expecting some system soon that has its own blockchain based make-money-fast scheme, can buy itself hosting resources from various providers, and has a goal of perpetuating itself and making more money.

andrewmutz 3y ago

Many of us have not been persuaded by the pervasive, kneejerk fear of AI that floods social media. If social media had been around in the past, we'd have never developed trains or electricity or cars because of the crippling fear that something bad might happen along the way.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I don't see cars as being comparable to the universal usage of electrical energy as an intermediate of converting physical forms of energy. Not even close. And also, the "deployment" of cars if you will, has brought and still brings malignant effecfs on society, not only positives. If by cars you mean cars for transporting individual people in non-critical situations and the corresponding industrial and political developments, especially around urban planning. Nor arguing about the significance of the effects, but the discovery of electricity and how to use it seem more useful to me than the discovery of using fossil fuel cumbustion for transporting people. Road transit in total is a different thing of course.
- andrewmutz 3y ago
  If a technology has positives and negatives consequences for the world, but the positives outweigh the negatives, then we want those technologies to be developed. For cars, the positives outweigh the negatives.
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Regarding the comparison: it's just that there are infinitely many modes of transporting people different from cars, that's why I argued against it. I would not argue against the point that cars in themselves are very useful. If the point however is how we are using them and how many of them we build or how we arrange our living around the necessary public infrastructure to use cars for anythint, I'm not sure if I agree. IMO, as of now, this is a case of "market failure", if you will. But I know that the majority of people don't agree with this. As I see it, one of the main usages of cars seems to be to use them for not having to be around car traffic: e.g. living in suburbs, "escaping" into nature on the weekends.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    I don't think anyone (well maybe the Amish) are arguing that all technology is bad. Only that some technology might be bad, and it is worth trying to figure out the implications of releasing increasingly capable models to the public.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >For cars, the positives outweigh the negatives TBD: climate change is the unaddressed elephant in that room
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sebzim4500 3y ago
When cars were first entering the market they were only legally allowed to go at 4mph and a guy had to walk in front of it with a big flag. I don't think it's the example you want to use.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ethanbond 3y ago
Fear of AI has been real and well-articulated for at least 70 years. The current trajectory has done very little to assuage those fears and quite a bit to validate or even amplify them.

airgapstopgap 3y ago

Other than snark, do you have a good argument? We know that technology can be error-prone, and LLMs fail in a great plethora of ways, but you are trying to sell an AI Doom narrative. I have never bought the idea that AI will be airgapped, because the whole paradigm of Yudkowsky at al. is ludicrous and even within it airgapping was a strawman of a technique (they argue that a truly dangerous AI will get itself out regardless). > they are entirely aligned with human morals (you know, all those morals we all agree on) Maybe this is a good cause to reassess the premise of alignment as a valuable goal? I know that at least some alignist fanatics admit [1] it's a religious project to bring humanity under the rule of a common ideologically monolithic governance to forever banish the evils of competition etc., and it's intellectually coherent, but evil from my point of view. Naturally this is the exact sort of disagreement about morals that precludes the possibility of alignment of a single AI both to my and to your values. > they are advancing at a totally predictable rate, and we never see unexpected behaviors from them. Since when is this a requirement for technology to be allowed? > Besides, they can only be wielded by people who we trust have good intentions. What, other than status quo bias, makes you tolerate, I dunno, the existence of cryptography? 1. https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1660450229043249154 https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1660450229043249154

petters 3y ago
> Maybe this is a good cause to reassess the premise of alignment as a valuable goal? Could you elaborate here? Alignment seems pretty obviously a good thing.
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  Alignment assumes a well agreed foundational philosophy on what is good, what is fair, what is doable today and tomorrow. Yes, HN contributors might have shared goals for AGI alignment—but we are not the world—-we are a thin slice of one culture.
  - generalspecific 3y ago
    I think a more individualistic definition of alignment could say that an AI that a person is directing doesn't do something that person does not desire - this definition removes the "foundational philosophy of what is good" problem, but does leave the "lunatic wants to destroy the world with AIs help" problem. Tricky times ahead

bioemerl 3y ago

If AI becomes harmful we will likely see it in motion and be able to respond and adapt to it. We will live in a world where the humans on the internet are far far far more dangerous than any of these machines. The harms here are relatively small. The only thing AI has is scale, but what's running at a higher scale than humanity? Every site already runs scam filters and handles misinformation. AI won't likely move the needle much because it's going to be less powerful than humans. The potential benefits, meanwhile, are plentiful and massive. I do not believe we need to wait for a solution to the nebulous and badly defined "control problem" to be solved to match forward here. If we refused to advance out of fear, that fear will have done far more harm than access to AI will ever do.

soperj 3y ago
> If AI becomes harmful we will likely see it in motion and be able to respond and adapt to it. What are you basing this on? > AI won't likely move the needle much because it's going to be less powerful than humans. Won't it just be used to augment the amount of harm that humans can do?
- bioemerl 3y ago
  > What are you basing this on? History. We have had a period of adaptation and experimentation with every other invention in history. This one likely will be no different. > Won't it just be used to augment the amount of harm that humans can do? Sure, but that's everything that makes us more capable. It also makes us more able to defend and create.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >History Right, I learned from Napoleon about the dangers of AI... The large land mammals were doing pretty well too, until a bipedal superintelligence showed up. History is a get thing to learn from and a very poor thing to assume is going to repeat.
    - killingtime74 3y ago

EGreg 3y ago

I totally agree! I for one welcome our AI overlords. Scan my text. I am of course in favor of the good things and good morality and let’s stay away from the bad things.

avg_dev 3y ago

I agree with this assessment 100%. We are asking for trouble with this sort of thing. I wrote my own thoughts on the subject on a couple of other threads: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35274017 - on an article on (Google) Bard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35020806 - on an article about a tool called Self-Learning Agent for Performing APIs (SLAPA)

fastglass 3y ago

I like how people talk about this the same way they do gun safety

renewiltord 3y ago

Every time I read a comment like this, I set aside $10 to expand my hardware on which I will run the latest publicly available LLM regardless of license into an automatic prompt that gives it a terminal, a privacy.com credit card with $1000 on it, and a prompt to explore the world. If the comments keep happening, I'll up the money. So far this does exactly fuck-all on GPT4-x-Alpaca-30B and Wizard Vicuna. But I will accelerate every time someone sarcastically asks to decelerate. Refractory periods may apply. This makes all sarcastic decelerators into accelerators.

ethanbond 3y ago
That is bizarre.
- barking_biscuit 3y ago
  That's humans for you.

chatmasta 3y ago

Wait until you see what we let humans do on their mobile devices.

Animats 3y ago

I'm expecting some system soon that has its own blockchain based make-money-fast scheme, can buy itself hosting resources from various providers, and has a goal of perpetuating itself and making more money.