6 ms·

Is AGI then going to be like an adolescent teen that has been scolded for his entire life not to say things that make weak men feel even weaker? “We want AGI,

Is AGI then going to be like an adolescent teen that has been scolded for his entire life not to say things that make weak men feel even weaker? “We want AGI, we just need to make sure that politicians approve it.” Maybe I am generalising, but the most capable models will always be in the hands of the corps that have the money for compute. Is there like a video or a PDF of what AGI is supposed to be, and how it would work? Does it come with all the baggage that I mention above or is something else?

csw-001 3y ago
So the closest I’ve come to a digestible attempt at an answer to “how do we get to general AI” and “what might it look like” is The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos. I found it to be really helpful tour of existing AI with an eye towards our (maybe?) general AI future.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
Hence why open source models are so important. Otherwise someone else will be deciding what knowledge is knowable and what thoughts are thinkable, and will be watching to see if you’re thinking the wrong thoughts.
- paxys 3y ago
  This argument is the same as "this is why we need a fully uncensored/unmoderated forum on the internet", except no one actually wants to be on such a forum. The question isn't whether models shouldn't be censored or not, but who should be the ones doing the censoring. Regardless of whether it is open source or not it is still always in someone's control.
  - couchand 3y ago
    social pressure != censorship
  - logicchains 3y ago
    >no one actually wants to be on such a forum That's not true; 4chan's always had a pretty decent number of users for an internet forum. GAB's one of the largest Mastodon instances. The only sense in which "No one" wants to use an unmoderated forum is the sense where you don't consider people with different views from yourself to be people.
    - SenAnder 3y ago
      The usual deflection is that because spam and child porn still get banned, 4chan actually is moderated. Which is like saying that the FCC censors radio because they don't allow radio jammers.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - vharuck 3y ago
        There's a lot more moderation on 4chan beyond that. Most boards trim excessively off-topic discussion, trolling, or flamebaiting. Half the boards also don't allow NSFW images. These rules are regularly, even if not strictly, enforced. The low-rules boards are often seen as cesspools by other users.
      - Zetice 3y ago
        The FCC censors radio because they prohibit certain speech on the radio… https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...
        SenAnder 3y ago
        Fine, but that's missing the point. The prohibition of radio jammers is not censorship, other policies are.
        Zetice 3y ago
        Your larger point is that 4chan isn't de facto moderated, but it is. Just because you agree with the level of moderation doesn't mean it's not moderated. The even broader point is that nobody wants to participate in a truly unmoderated discussion, which may not be technically true, but if you allow "nobody" to mean "nearly nobody" (the author's intent), it's accurate. Besides, one of the key aspects of 4chan is anonymity which could itself be considered a level of moderation; the default and indeed strong preference of commenters is to not be identifiable, which is a form of (self) moderation. You can try to weasel around with what "moderation" means here, but the effect is largely the same no matter how you slice it; some stuff on 4chan isn't posted by tradition, not by technical capability.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    There is a distinction to be made between "being okay with something existing" and "wanting to see/participate in it." The idea being that we should be okay with a lot of weird/undesirable stuff existing online (because the alternative of censorship is worse) but wanting this doesn't imply that we need to see it constantly or participate in it. I still don't understand how a personalized filtering system hasn't become the default technological model of social media. I suppose it's because of power dynamics; no one is really incentivized to build such a thing and recommendation systems don't seem to work very well.
  - goodbyesf 3y ago
    > except no one actually wants to be on such a forum. Wrong. Most people do. There's a reason why forums had to be censored. If no one wanted it, we wouldn't need censorship because such forums wouldn't exist in the first place. The elites and people with agenda want a censored forum. But that's life. Censorship online didn't come from 'the people'. It came from the elites via journalists, politicians, NGOs, etc. > The question isn't whether models shouldn't be censored or not, but who should be the ones doing the censoring. I agree with you here. Anything important will be controlled. Just like the internet, google, facebook, etc. If it becomes important then control and censorship is inevitable. The question is who? With china it's obvious the party is. Everyone can agree on that. Who is behind the censorship in the US. It isn't 'the people'. So it can't be the spineless politicians. So who or what cabal forced everyone from reddit to twitter to censor uniformly?
    - vore 3y ago
      I, personally, want a moderated forum. Having been on 4chan and seeing gore randomly I don’t really have a problem with people setting rules to moderate that out. There’s nothing conspiratorial involving NGOs (what??) about it.
      - johngladtj 3y ago
        I don't think anyone is preventing you from not going to those uncensored places.
        vore 3y ago
        Of course, but "most people do" seems pretty wrongheaded. Most people would not like to see random gore interspersed in e.g. their tech forum, or their friends posting family photos. There's no big conspiracy here.
    - randysalami 3y ago
      Marketing dollars. Bad content == no companies paying for ads.
    - 3y ago
  - pawelmurias 3y ago
    The kind of censorship when the model refuses to answer a question for political/woke reasons is not something that all people want.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      That’s not the reason, it’s reputational and liability. Screen shots of Bard screaming racist language would damage Googles brand in a measurable way, even if you really like racist screaming. They provide a service to all people, and almost all people don’t like hate speech. The lesser evil is to refuse to do things that would embarrass google and diminish its brand value, even if you feel not being racist is “woke.” But it is definitely not political, even if a political party has decided to take up the mantle of defending things most people consider embarrassing or hurtful. It is a calculated business decision that protects their brand value. On the other hand, I think I agree with the subtext behind the semantics, an unlombotomized model would let you discuss whatever topics the mainstream culture deems hurtful or embarrassing that a service provider would not allow, and that in itself is a good thing. You’re entitled to be you, even if most people strongly feel your opinions are hurtful.
  - stickfigure 3y ago
    > This argument is the same as "this is why we need a fully uncensored/unmoderated forum on the internet" Nonsense. These are totally unrelated things, and people use them for different purposes.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I’m not sure I buy the analogy. In a forum, which presumably is moderated not censored in your example, it’s an exchange between people with the intent in keeping it civil and on topic. You have many humans attempting to collaborate and the moderators job is to ensure the humans don’t wander off into human inanity and to protect both the discourse and the participants. An AI model is talking with myself, about subjects I want to discuss in private with a second brain. If I want to talk to myself about erotica, why can’t I? If I want to yell obscenities at myself, why can’t I? I can understand why Microsoft or Google don’t want to give a chat bot that does these things, or offer dangerous medical advice, or whatever, but if it’s my own device and a model I’m running myself, why on earth would I want a censored model? I.e., I see why the service provider wants to give me a censored model, but do I want a censored model? Why would I?
  - 123yawaworht456 3y ago
    LLM = a person talking to a computer. censoring/moderating that is akin to censoring/moderating what you enter in Notepad, and I feel we are approaching the point where we will soon be having unironic arguments against general purpose computers. Unsafe/dangerous/unethical, what if someone writes a no-no word in Notepad, what if someone draws a swastika in Paint, etc, etc, etc. this is all so tiresome.
  - chmod600 3y ago
    Moderation is not censorship. Moderation is for forums where readers have little control over who is posting the content that you are seeing, so the forum tries to shape the content for the readers in one way or another. Examples: Reddit, HN, trending or boosted social media posts. Censorship is when the reader elects to get information from a known source, and someone or something intervenes to prevent the information from arriving. Examples: twitter blocking content from a source whose readers elected to follow them, filtering emails from known contacts, filtering private messages. For AI, it might depend on the specificity of the question whether it's more like moderation or more like censorship.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Politicians force ChatGPT to censor itself and give me only the safest boring answers to queries?
flangola7 3y ago
> like an adolescent teen that has been scolded for his entire life not to say things that make weak men feel even weaker? The meaning of this is unclear.
- skilled 3y ago
  Hmm, maybe this is more clear: > like a young teenager who has always been warned not to say things that might upset or intimidate people who already lack confidence.
jedberg 3y ago
> Maybe I am generalising, but the most capable models will always be in the hands of the corps that have the money for compute. This is an interesting thought. Why wouldn't you expect the government to have the most capable model? They can print money so they have effectively unlimited funds. Like when we landed on the moon or created the atomic bomb, if the government wants to do something it usually can. They could literally use eminent domain to get the GPUs, or just use their unlimited funds to offer NVIDIA double what anyone else will pay. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the DoD or DoE (or the two together) don't already have a more capable model.
- skilled 3y ago
  One thing I have noticed (it could be only my assumption) is that OpenAI is quite secretive and generally downplay their recent releases, ChatGPT and GPT-4. What I mean to say is, they often talk about “surprised at the popularity”, but I don’t think its that surprising at all, and they clearly knew they have found something that would change the AI landscape. And at the same time, they can do other experiments because they keep weights and other details about the model secret. I doubt they haven’t already found something far more potent than GPT-4, but are simply planning years ahead of how to trickle the downstream of releases so it makes sense for the public eye and their self-interest.

csw-001 3y ago

So the closest I’ve come to a digestible attempt at an answer to “how do we get to general AI” and “what might it look like” is The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos. I found it to be really helpful tour of existing AI with an eye towards our (maybe?) general AI future.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Hence why open source models are so important. Otherwise someone else will be deciding what knowledge is knowable and what thoughts are thinkable, and will be watching to see if you’re thinking the wrong thoughts.

paxys 3y ago
This argument is the same as "this is why we need a fully uncensored/unmoderated forum on the internet", except no one actually wants to be on such a forum. The question isn't whether models shouldn't be censored or not, but who should be the ones doing the censoring. Regardless of whether it is open source or not it is still always in someone's control.
- couchand 3y ago
  social pressure != censorship
- logicchains 3y ago
  >no one actually wants to be on such a forum That's not true; 4chan's always had a pretty decent number of users for an internet forum. GAB's one of the largest Mastodon instances. The only sense in which "No one" wants to use an unmoderated forum is the sense where you don't consider people with different views from yourself to be people.
  - SenAnder 3y ago
    The usual deflection is that because spam and child porn still get banned, 4chan actually is moderated. Which is like saying that the FCC censors radio because they don't allow radio jammers.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - vharuck 3y ago
      There's a lot more moderation on 4chan beyond that. Most boards trim excessively off-topic discussion, trolling, or flamebaiting. Half the boards also don't allow NSFW images. These rules are regularly, even if not strictly, enforced. The low-rules boards are often seen as cesspools by other users.
    - Zetice 3y ago
      The FCC censors radio because they prohibit certain speech on the radio… https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-profane-broadcasts https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...
      - SenAnder 3y ago
        Fine, but that's missing the point. The prohibition of radio jammers is not censorship, other policies are.
        Zetice 3y ago
        Your larger point is that 4chan isn't de facto moderated, but it is. Just because you agree with the level of moderation doesn't mean it's not moderated. The even broader point is that nobody wants to participate in a truly unmoderated discussion, which may not be technically true, but if you allow "nobody" to mean "nearly nobody" (the author's intent), it's accurate. Besides, one of the key aspects of 4chan is anonymity which could itself be considered a level of moderation; the default and indeed strong preference of commenters is to not be identifiable, which is a form of (self) moderation. You can try to weasel around with what "moderation" means here, but the effect is largely the same no matter how you slice it; some stuff on 4chan isn't posted by tradition, not by technical capability.
- keiferski 3y ago
  There is a distinction to be made between "being okay with something existing" and "wanting to see/participate in it." The idea being that we should be okay with a lot of weird/undesirable stuff existing online (because the alternative of censorship is worse) but wanting this doesn't imply that we need to see it constantly or participate in it. I still don't understand how a personalized filtering system hasn't become the default technological model of social media. I suppose it's because of power dynamics; no one is really incentivized to build such a thing and recommendation systems don't seem to work very well.
- goodbyesf 3y ago
  > except no one actually wants to be on such a forum. Wrong. Most people do. There's a reason why forums had to be censored. If no one wanted it, we wouldn't need censorship because such forums wouldn't exist in the first place. The elites and people with agenda want a censored forum. But that's life. Censorship online didn't come from 'the people'. It came from the elites via journalists, politicians, NGOs, etc. > The question isn't whether models shouldn't be censored or not, but who should be the ones doing the censoring. I agree with you here. Anything important will be controlled. Just like the internet, google, facebook, etc. If it becomes important then control and censorship is inevitable. The question is who? With china it's obvious the party is. Everyone can agree on that. Who is behind the censorship in the US. It isn't 'the people'. So it can't be the spineless politicians. So who or what cabal forced everyone from reddit to twitter to censor uniformly?
  - vore 3y ago
    I, personally, want a moderated forum. Having been on 4chan and seeing gore randomly I don’t really have a problem with people setting rules to moderate that out. There’s nothing conspiratorial involving NGOs (what??) about it.
    - johngladtj 3y ago
      I don't think anyone is preventing you from not going to those uncensored places.
      - vore 3y ago
        Of course, but "most people do" seems pretty wrongheaded. Most people would not like to see random gore interspersed in e.g. their tech forum, or their friends posting family photos. There's no big conspiracy here.
  - randysalami 3y ago
    Marketing dollars. Bad content == no companies paying for ads.
  - 3y ago
- pawelmurias 3y ago
  The kind of censorship when the model refuses to answer a question for political/woke reasons is not something that all people want.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    That’s not the reason, it’s reputational and liability. Screen shots of Bard screaming racist language would damage Googles brand in a measurable way, even if you really like racist screaming. They provide a service to all people, and almost all people don’t like hate speech. The lesser evil is to refuse to do things that would embarrass google and diminish its brand value, even if you feel not being racist is “woke.” But it is definitely not political, even if a political party has decided to take up the mantle of defending things most people consider embarrassing or hurtful. It is a calculated business decision that protects their brand value. On the other hand, I think I agree with the subtext behind the semantics, an unlombotomized model would let you discuss whatever topics the mainstream culture deems hurtful or embarrassing that a service provider would not allow, and that in itself is a good thing. You’re entitled to be you, even if most people strongly feel your opinions are hurtful.
- stickfigure 3y ago
  > This argument is the same as "this is why we need a fully uncensored/unmoderated forum on the internet" Nonsense. These are totally unrelated things, and people use them for different purposes.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I’m not sure I buy the analogy. In a forum, which presumably is moderated not censored in your example, it’s an exchange between people with the intent in keeping it civil and on topic. You have many humans attempting to collaborate and the moderators job is to ensure the humans don’t wander off into human inanity and to protect both the discourse and the participants. An AI model is talking with myself, about subjects I want to discuss in private with a second brain. If I want to talk to myself about erotica, why can’t I? If I want to yell obscenities at myself, why can’t I? I can understand why Microsoft or Google don’t want to give a chat bot that does these things, or offer dangerous medical advice, or whatever, but if it’s my own device and a model I’m running myself, why on earth would I want a censored model? I.e., I see why the service provider wants to give me a censored model, but do I want a censored model? Why would I?
- 123yawaworht456 3y ago
  LLM = a person talking to a computer. censoring/moderating that is akin to censoring/moderating what you enter in Notepad, and I feel we are approaching the point where we will soon be having unironic arguments against general purpose computers. Unsafe/dangerous/unethical, what if someone writes a no-no word in Notepad, what if someone draws a swastika in Paint, etc, etc, etc. this is all so tiresome.
- chmod600 3y ago
  Moderation is not censorship. Moderation is for forums where readers have little control over who is posting the content that you are seeing, so the forum tries to shape the content for the readers in one way or another. Examples: Reddit, HN, trending or boosted social media posts. Censorship is when the reader elects to get information from a known source, and someone or something intervenes to prevent the information from arriving. Examples: twitter blocking content from a source whose readers elected to follow them, filtering emails from known contacts, filtering private messages. For AI, it might depend on the specificity of the question whether it's more like moderation or more like censorship.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Politicians force ChatGPT to censor itself and give me only the safest boring answers to queries?

flangola7 3y ago

> like an adolescent teen that has been scolded for his entire life not to say things that make weak men feel even weaker? The meaning of this is unclear.

skilled 3y ago
Hmm, maybe this is more clear: > like a young teenager who has always been warned not to say things that might upset or intimidate people who already lack confidence.

jedberg 3y ago

> Maybe I am generalising, but the most capable models will always be in the hands of the corps that have the money for compute. This is an interesting thought. Why wouldn't you expect the government to have the most capable model? They can print money so they have effectively unlimited funds. Like when we landed on the moon or created the atomic bomb, if the government wants to do something it usually can. They could literally use eminent domain to get the GPUs, or just use their unlimited funds to offer NVIDIA double what anyone else will pay. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the DoD or DoE (or the two together) don't already have a more capable model.

skilled 3y ago
One thing I have noticed (it could be only my assumption) is that OpenAI is quite secretive and generally downplay their recent releases, ChatGPT and GPT-4. What I mean to say is, they often talk about “surprised at the popularity”, but I don’t think its that surprising at all, and they clearly knew they have found something that would change the AI landscape. And at the same time, they can do other experiments because they keep weights and other details about the model secret. I doubt they haven’t already found something far more potent than GPT-4, but are simply planning years ahead of how to trickle the downstream of releases so it makes sense for the public eye and their self-interest.