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That doesn't actually answer my question, and also seems a bit confused. OpenAI is not in the business of renting GPUs. And I've seen some Google DeepMind peopl

by kalkin 3y ago

That doesn't actually answer my question, and also seems a bit confused. OpenAI is not in the business of renting GPUs. And I've seen some Google DeepMind people talking about x-risk, but not the other cloud players (or Nvidia or TSMC).

jazzyjackson 3y ago
> OpenAI is not in the business of renting GPUs. MS Azure Cloud is. Anthropic (very alignment/safety-centered company) is backed by Google and their cloud. Any API tokens sold are just cloud credits with markup. So to me the doomerism does come from those entities acting as fronts to the major players that would very much like to build a regulatory trench.
- kalkin 3y ago
  If I have this right, you think academic signatories are being manipulated by OpenAI and Anthropic, who in turn are being manipulated by the major cloud players, all to sell GPUs? Setting aside the plausibility of this degree of coordination, I don't even see the alignment of interests. What does Google or Azure care of whether they sell GPUs to quasi-monopoly or a bunch of smaller competitors? In fact, isn't the standard economic argument that monopolies underproduce, so competition should if anything sell more GPUs? Meanwhile, promoting doomerism seems pretty risky for the GPU business - they have to promote it just enough to get hype and regulatory capture, but not enough that their ability to buy and use GPUs is actually restricted. Seems like a risky bet for a corporate exec to make, unless they can really control the doomers with puppet-like precision...
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    alignment doesn't require coordination or manipulation what gets published by academia is based entirely on who gets funded my conspiracy theory is a stretch, granted, but to clarify: It behooves the cloud providers for their customers to believe that their latest $1/hour l/user upcharge is revolutionary (so much so that ethicists are shouting please, stop, you know not what you do!) OpenAI and Anthropic need the public to trust them and only them as providers of "safe" AI (not like the other open-source AI that might turn into an especially persuasive holocaust denier any minute) - so from the regulatory angle they want to play up the theoretical dangers of AI while assuring the public the technology is in good hands. As for the academics, well it's not like anyone gets funding for writing boring papers about how nothing is going to happen and everything is fine. No one has to be puppeteered, they just need to look around and see what hype train might direct some funding their way.

by kalkin 3y ago

jazzyjackson 3y ago

> OpenAI is not in the business of renting GPUs. MS Azure Cloud is. Anthropic (very alignment/safety-centered company) is backed by Google and their cloud. Any API tokens sold are just cloud credits with markup. So to me the doomerism does come from those entities acting as fronts to the major players that would very much like to build a regulatory trench.

kalkin 3y ago
If I have this right, you think academic signatories are being manipulated by OpenAI and Anthropic, who in turn are being manipulated by the major cloud players, all to sell GPUs? Setting aside the plausibility of this degree of coordination, I don't even see the alignment of interests. What does Google or Azure care of whether they sell GPUs to quasi-monopoly or a bunch of smaller competitors? In fact, isn't the standard economic argument that monopolies underproduce, so competition should if anything sell more GPUs? Meanwhile, promoting doomerism seems pretty risky for the GPU business - they have to promote it just enough to get hype and regulatory capture, but not enough that their ability to buy and use GPUs is actually restricted. Seems like a risky bet for a corporate exec to make, unless they can really control the doomers with puppet-like precision...
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  alignment doesn't require coordination or manipulation what gets published by academia is based entirely on who gets funded my conspiracy theory is a stretch, granted, but to clarify: It behooves the cloud providers for their customers to believe that their latest $1/hour l/user upcharge is revolutionary (so much so that ethicists are shouting please, stop, you know not what you do!) OpenAI and Anthropic need the public to trust them and only them as providers of "safe" AI (not like the other open-source AI that might turn into an especially persuasive holocaust denier any minute) - so from the regulatory angle they want to play up the theoretical dangers of AI while assuring the public the technology is in good hands. As for the academics, well it's not like anyone gets funding for writing boring papers about how nothing is going to happen and everything is fine. No one has to be puppeteered, they just need to look around and see what hype train might direct some funding their way.