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Google Brain founder says big tech is lying about AI danger

417 points by emptysongglass 3y ago

chankstein38 3y ago
Amen. This whole scare tactic thing is ridiculous. Just make the public scared of it so you can rope it in yourself. Then you've got people like my mom commenting that "AI scares her because Musk and (some other corporate rep) said that AI is very dangerous. And I don't know why there'd be so many people saying it if it's not true." because you're gullible mom.
- jandrese 3y ago
  I mean if they were lying about that, what else might they be lying about? Maybe giving huge tax breaks to the 0.1% isn't going to result in me getting more income? Maybe it is in fact possible to acquire a CEO just as good or better than your current one that doesn't need half a billion dollar compensation package and an enormous golden parachute to do their job? I'm starting to wonder if billionaires are trustworthy at all.
- prosqlinjector 3y ago
  "wow our software is so powerful, it's going to take over the world!"
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    yes, just like "our nuclear bombs are so powerful, they could wipe out civilisation", which led to strict regulation around them and lack of open-source nuclear bombs
    - kylebenzle 3y ago
      Yes, just like... the exact opposite. One is a bomb, the other a series of mostly open source statistical models. What kind of weed are you guys on that's made you so paranoid about statistics?
      - dist-epoch 3y ago
        Last time I checked my statistical model book didn't have the ability to write Python code. And a nuclear bomb is just a bunch of atoms. Do you fear atoms? What the hell.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      It will never stop being funny to me that people are straight-facedly drawing a straight line between shitty text completion computer programs and nuclear weapon level existential risk.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        "Looks at all the other species 'intelligent' humans have extincted" --ha ha ha ha Why the shit would we not draw a straight line? If we fail to create digital intelligence then yea, we can hem and haw in conversations like this forever online, but you tend to neglect that if we succeed then 'shit gets real quick'. Closing your eyes and years and saying "This can't actually happen" sounds like a pretty damned dumb take on future risk assessments of technology when pretty much most takes on AI say "well, yea this is something that could potentially happen".
        mvdtnz 3y ago
        Literally the thing people are calling "AI" is a program that, given some words, predicts the next word. I refuse to entertain the absolutely absurd idea that we're approaching a general intelligence. It's ludicrous beyond belief.
        SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        Modern generative AI functionality is hardly limited to predicting words. Have you not heard of e.g. Midjourney?
        pixl97 3y ago
        Then this is your failure, not mine, and not a failure of current technology. I can, right now, upload an image to an AI and say "Hey, what do you think the emotional state of the person in this image is" pretty damned accurately. Given other images I can have the AI describe the scene and make pretty damned accurate assessments of how the image could have came about. If this is not general intelligence I simply have no guess as to what will be enough in your case.
        3y ago
    - at-fates-hands 3y ago
      Which is interesting because after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was rampant fear of where their nukes ended up and if some rogue country could get their hands on them via some black market means. Then through the 90's, it was the fear of a briefcase bomb terrorist attack and how easy it would be for certain countries, who had the resources to pull an attack off like that in the NYC subway or in the heart of another densely populated city. Then 9/11 happened and people suddenly realized you don't need a nuke to take out a few thousand innocent people and cripple a nation with fear.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Is Mom scared because Musk told her to be scared, or because she thought about the matter herself and concluded that it's scary? Why do you assume that people scared of AI must be under the influence of rich people/corps today, rather than this fear being informed by their own consideration of the problem or by decades of media that has been warning about the dangers of AI? Maybe Mom worries about any radical new technology because she lived though nuclear attack drills in schools. Or because she's already seen computers and robots take peoples jobs. Or because she watched Terminator or read Neuromancer. Or because she reads lesswrong. Why assume it's because she's fallen under the influence of Musk?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Because most sociologists suggest that most people don’t take time to critically think like this. Emotional brain wins out usually over the rational one. Then you have this idea of the sources of information most people have access to being fundamentally biased and incentivized towards reporting certain things in certain manners and not others. You basically have low odds of thinking rationally, low odds of finding good information that isn’t slanted in some way, and far lower odds taking the product of those probabilities for if you’d both act rationally and somehow have access to the ground truth. To say nothing of the expertise required to place all of this truth into the correct context. But if you did consider the probability of the mother having to be an AI expert then the odds get far lower still off all of this working out successfully.
    - chankstein38 3y ago
      100% accurate! She has a tendency to read one person's opinion on it and echo it. I have seen it for years with things. I'm not shocked AI is the current one but I wish it were easier to get her to take time to learn things and think critically. I have no idea how I'd begin to teach her why so much of the fear mongering is ridiculous. Yeah there are legitimate risks to all of this stuff but, to understand those and weigh them against the overblown risks, she'd have to understand the whole subject more deeply and have experimented with different AI. But you even mention ChatGPT she's talking about how it's evil and scary.
- CaptWillard 3y ago
  "<noun> scares her because <authoritative source> said that <noun> is very dangerous. And I don't know why there'd be so many people saying it if it's not true." The truly frustrating part is how many see this ubiquitous pattern in some places, but are blind to it elsewhere.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    I'm not sure if this is commentary on me somehow or not lol but I agree with you. She is the same person who will point out issues with things my brother brings up but yeah is unable to recognize it when she does it. I'm sure I'm guilty but, naturally, I don't know of them.
  - staunton 3y ago
    That "pattern" actually indicates that something is true most of the time (after all, a lot of dangerous things really exist). So "noticing" this pattern seems to rely on being all-knowing?
    - starbugs 3y ago
      > So "noticing" this pattern seems to rely on being all-knowing? No. It relies on you being able to distinguish between an (your) opinion and an (your) identity. The identity part is the precarious one, i.e. you defending a stance blindly without questioning it because you feel your identity is in danger. This pattern being present doesn't mean that there can't be an underlying truth in what's asserted. In fact, that is what makes the assertion meaningful in the first place. However, it entailing a partial truth doesn't mean that the entire assertion holds true in the context it's presented in. Example: "AI" might ultimately be dangerous (like any other technology can be), but this assertion's primary goal is to make you behave a certain way where it is unclear how that would contribute more towards mitigating the danger than to empower the asserter. To fix this, take a step back before accepting something blindly. Train yourself not to be reactive.
  - 3y ago
- cs702 3y ago
  Here we have all these free-market-libertarian tech execs asking for more regulation! They say they believe regulation is "always" terrible -- unless it's good for their profits. In that case, they think it's actually important and necessary. They remind me of Mr. Burroughs in the movie "Class:" Mr. Burroughs: "Government control, Jonathan, is anathema to the free-enterprise system. Any intelligent person knows you cannot interfere with the laws of supply and demand." Jonathan: "I see your point, sir. That's the reason why I'm not for tariffs." Mr. Burroughs: "Right. No, wrong! You gotta have tariffs, son. How you gonna compete with the damn foreigners? Gotta have tariffs." --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ
- RationalDino 3y ago
  https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/24/sam-altman-wants-the-government-to-build-him-a-moat/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/24/sam-altman-wants-the-gov... shows the same conclusion from several months ago. However Elon Musk has openly worried about AI for a number of years. He even got a girlfriend out of it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkgvz/what-is-rokos-basilisk-elon-musk-grimes https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkgvz/what-is-rokos-basilis...
- markk 3y ago
  Maybe an odd take, but I'm not sure what people actually mean when they say "AI terrifies them". Terrified is a strong wrong. Are people unable to sleep? Biting their nails constantly? Is this the same terror as watching a horror movie? Being chased by a mountain lion? I have a suspicion that it's sort of a default response. Socially expected? Then you poll people: Are you worried about AI doing XYZ? People just say yes, because they want to seem informed, and the kind of person that considers things carefully. Honestly not sure what is going on. I'm concerned about AI, but I don't feel any actual emotion about it. Arguably I must have some emotion to generate an opinion, but it's below conscious threshold obviously.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  And thats exactly the goal - make mom and dad scared so they can vote those that provide “protection” from manufactured fear. And resorting to this type of tactics to make your product viable just proves how weak your position is. I think more people should speak out left and right about what’s going on to educate mom and dad.
Obscurity4340 3y ago
Luckily anybody not already a millionaire or billionaire doesn't make the cut for "humanity" [phew]
- realce 3y ago
  Me and the AI-powered army that protects me will certainly not go extinct. However, you must break eggs to make an omelet...
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Mewonders what omelettes billionaires frequent? Couldn't be better than mine [assured face]
  - otikik 3y ago
    > the AI-powered army that protects me Your AI pest-control drone mistook you for a raccoon and just killed you. Oops.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      In the positive side, change is always faster when billionaires are forced to condescend to earthly cause and effect.
  - kagakuninja 3y ago
    Most of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Its just so heart-warming when the angry well-armed mob reflects the same sentiment "upwards" (some of you billionaires may die, but that is a "sacrifice" we are willing to makw ;)
jprete 3y ago
I think there are actual existential and “semi-existential” risks, especially with going after an actual AGI. Separately, I think Ng is right - big corp AI has a massive incentive to promote doom narratives to cement themselves as the only safe caretakers of the technology. I haven’t yet succeeded in squaring these two into a course of action that clearly favors human freedom and flourishing.
fragmede 3y ago
James Cameron wasn't big tech when he directed The Terminator, back in 1984, or its sequel in 1991. Are people listening to fears based on that, or are they listening to big tech and then having long, thoughtful, nuanced discussions in salons with fellow intelliegsia, or are they doomscrolling the wastelands of the Internet and coming away with half-baked opinions not even based on big tech's press releases? Big tech can say whatever they want to say. Is anyone even listening?
wolverine876 3y ago
That story about AI also fits a bit too neatly with the Techno-optimist worldview: 'We technologists are gods who will make / break the world.' Another word for it is 'ego'. Also, we can assume they are spreading that story to serve their interests (but which interests?). But that doesn't mean AI doesn't need regulation. In the hysteria, the true issues can be lost. IT is already causing massive impacts, such as on health, hate and violence, etc. We need to figure out what AIs risks are and make sure it's working in our best interests.
- ganzuul 3y ago
  A lot of people have learned to 'small talk' like fancy autocomplete. Part of our minds have been mechanized like that so it's not spontaneous but a compulsion. Once people learn the algorithm they might conclude that AI hacked their brains even though it's just vapid, unfiltered speech that they are suddenly detecting. I think the pandemic hysteria will seem like a walk in the park once people start mass-purging their viral memes... Too late to stop it now if corporations are already doing regulatory capture. Nothing to do with the tech. We never had a technical problem. It was just this loose collection of a handful of wetware viruses like 'red-pilling' which we sum up as 'ego' all along. But I think if we survive this then people won't have any need for AI anymore since we won't be reward-hacking ourselves stupid. Or there will just be corporate egos left over and we will be in a cyberpunk dystopia faster than anyone expected. I had nightmares about this future when I was little. No one to talk to who would understand, just autocomplete replies. Now I'm not even sure if I should be opening up about it.
  - slfnflctd 3y ago
    > once people start mass-purging their viral memes It's hard for me to imagine this ever happening. It would be the most unprecedented event in the history of human minds. > we won't be reward-hacking ourselves stupid [...] Or there will just be corporate egos left over and we will be in a cyberpunk dystopia I don't see how reward-hacking can ever be stopped (although it could be improved). Regardless, ego seems to continue to win the day in the mass appeal department. There aren't many high visibility alternatives these days, despite all we've supposedly learned. I think the biggest problems we have are mostly education based, from critical thinking to long-term perspectives. We need so very much more of both, it would make us all richer and happier.
mcpackieh 3y ago
The premise that AI fear and/or fearmongering is primarily coming from people with a commercial incentive to promote fear, from people attempting to create regulatory capture, is obviously false. The risks of AI have been discussed in literature and media for literally decades, long before anybody had any plausible commercial stake in the promotion of this fear. Go back and read cyberpunk lit from the 80s. Did William Gibson have some cynical commercial motivation for writing Neuromancer? Was he trying to get regulatory capture for his AI company that didn't exist? Of course not. People have real and earnest concerns about this technology. Dismissing all of these concerns as profit-motivated is dishonest.
- whelp_24 3y ago
  AI can be dangerous, but that's not what is pushing these laws, it's regulatory capture. OpenAI was supposed to release their models a long time ago, instead they are just charging for access. Since actually open models are catching up they want to stop it. If the biggest companies in AI are making the rules, we might as well not rules at all.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  The problem is AI is not intelligent at all. Those problems were looking at a conscious intelligence and trying to explore what might happen. When chat gpt can be fooled into conversations even a child knows is bizarre, we are talking about a non intelligent statistical model.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    An unintelligent AI that is competent is even more dangerous as it is more likely to accidentally do something bad.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    I'm still waiting for the day when someone puts one of these language models inside of a platform with constant sensor input (cameras, microphones, touch sensors), and a way to manipulate outside environment (robot arm, possibly self propelled). It's hard to tell if something is intelligent when it's trapped in a box and the only input it has is a few lines of text.
TekMol 3y ago
The dangerous thing about AI regulation is that countries with fewer regulations will develop AI at a faster pace. It's a frightening thought: The countries with the least regulations will have GAI first. What will that lead to? When AI can control a robot that looks like a human, can walk, grab, work, is more intelligent than a human and can reproduce itself - what will the country with the least regulations that created it do with it?
- blibble 3y ago
  > The dangerous thing about AI regulation is that countries with fewer regulations will develop AI at a faster pace. "but countries without {child labour laws, environment regulation, a minimum wage, slavery ban} will out compete us!"
  - TekMol 3y ago
    That could indeed be: https://www.google.com/search?q=gdp%20china https://www.google.com/search?q=gdp%20china
    - kerkeslager 3y ago
      It will always be more expensive to care about human suffering than to not. So maybe competing within capitalism isn't the only thing that matters.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Largely true in sectors that are encumbered by those rules. US has effectively no rare earth mines due to environmental impact, labor intensive manufacturing all left... Of course it could be worth it though, pretty easy to argue it has been.
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      > labor intensive manufacturing all left... It has also been leaving China for a while. You cannot hope to compete with the poorest country on labor cost, it's not a matter of regulation (well unless we're talking about capital control, but it's a completely different topic)
abm53 3y ago
An alternative idea to the regulatory moat thesis is that it serves Big Tech’s interests to have people think it is dangerous because then surely it must also be incredibly valuable (and hence lead to high Big Tech valuations). I think it was Cory Doctorow who first pointed this out.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Yup this is it. As anyone who worked even closely with "AI" can immediately smell the bs of existential crisis. Elon Musk started this whole trend due to his love of sci fi and Sam Altman ran with that idea heavily because it adds to the novelty of open AI.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
    I don't think they are so capable actors to do it on purpose. I think they really believe what they are saying because people in such position tend to be strong believers into something and that something happens to be the "it" thing at the moment and thus propels them from rags to riches, (or in Musk case further propels them towards even more riches). Let's be honest here, what's Sam Altman without AI? What's Fauci without COVID, what's Trump without the collective paranoia that got him elected?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  You don’t even need fear, hype alone would do that and did just that over the past year, with ai stocks exploding exponentially like some shilled shitcoin before dramatic clifflike falls. Mention ai in your earnings call and your stock might move 5%.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Exactly like "fentanyl is so dangerous, a few miligrams can kill you" which only led to massive fentanyl demand because everybody wants the drug branded the most powerful
  - brookst 3y ago
great_psy 3y ago
I don’t think current implementations cause an existential risk. But current implementations are causing a backward step in our society. We have lost the ability to get reliable news. Not that fake news did not exist before AI, but the price to produce it was not practically zero. Now we can spam social media with whatever narrative we want. And no human can swift through all of it to tell real from bs. So now we are becoming even more dependent on AI. Now we need an AI copilot to help us swift through garbage to find some inkling of truth. We are setting up a society where AI gets more powerful, and humans becomes less sufficient. It has nothing to do with dooms day scenarios of robots harvesting our bodies, and more with humans not being able to interact with the world without AI. This already happened with smartphones, and while there are some advantages, I don’t think there are many people that have a healthy relationship with their smartphone.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  People act like the truth is gone with AI. Its still there. Don’t ask chatgpt about the function. The documentation is still there for you to read. Experts need the ground truth and its always there. What people read in the paper or see on tv is not a great source of truth. Going to the sources of these articles and reports is, but this layer of abstraction serves to leave things out and bring about opportunities to slant the coverage depending on how incentives are aligned. In other words, ai doesn’t change how misinformed most people are on most things.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    SNR. The truth isn't gone, but it is more diffuse. Yea, the truth may be out there somewhere, but will you have any idea if you're actually reading it? Is the search engine actually leading you to the ground truth? Is the expert and actual expert, or part of a for profit industry think tank with the sole purpose to manipulate you? Are the sources the actual source, or just an AI hallucinated day dream sophisticated linked by a lot of different sites giving the appearance of authority.
izzydata 3y ago
I'd like to see any evidence that suggests AGI is even possible before I care about it wiping out humanity.
- olalonde 3y ago
  I feel like there's a lot of evidence, for example, the existence of natural general intelligence and the rapidly expanding capacities of modern ANNs. What makes you believe it's not possible? Or what kind of evidence would convince you that it's possible?
  - izzydata 3y ago
    I believe that it would be possible to make artificial biological intelligence, but that is a whole different can of worms. I don't think neural networks, language models, machine learning etc.. are even close to a general intelligence. Maybe there is some way to combine the two. I have seen some demonstrations of very primitive clusters of brain cells being connected to a computer and used to control a small machines direction. If there is going to be an AGI I would predict this is how it will happen. While this would be very spectacular and impressive I'm still not worried about it because it would require existing in the physical world and not just some software that can run on any conventional computer.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - olalonde 3y ago
      Even if what you say is true (e.g. that the current ANN approach won't lead to AGI), isn't it the case that we can simulate biological cells on computers? Of course, it would push back the AGI timeline by quite a bit, since practically no one is working on this approach right now, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible in principle.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        For the most part you get people thinking AGI isn't possible because of souls/ethereal magic. If pressed on this, they'll tend to deflect to "um quantum physics". I'm of the mind is there is likely many was of simulating/emulating/creating intelligence. It would be highly surprising if there was only one way, and the universe happened to achieve this by the random walk of evolution. The only question for me is how much work is required to discover these other methods.
Racing0461 3y ago
correct. now that openai has something, they want to implement alot of regulations so they can't get any competition. they have no tech moat, so they'll add a legal one.
gsuuon 3y ago
It seems like bit of a 'vase or face' situation - are they being responsible corporate citizens asking for regulation to keep their (potentially harmful) industry in check or are they building insurmountable regulatory moats to cement their leading positions? Is there any additional reading about how regulation could affect open-source AI?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  The incentives for the latter are too high for these businesses to not be doing just that.
howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
Evaluative (v) Generative AI.... let's distinguish the two. For example, DALL-E v3 appears to generate images and then evaluate the generated images before rendering to the user. This approach is essentially adversarial, whereby the evaluative engine can work at cross-purposes to the generative engine. Its this layered, adversarial approach, that makes the most sense; and there is a very strong argument for a robust, open sourced evaluative AI anyone can deploy to protect themselves and their systems. It is a model not dissimilar from retail anti-virus and malware solutions. In sum, I would like to see generative AI well funded, limited distribution and regulated; and evaluative AI free and open. Hopefully, policy makers see this the same way.
- lambda_garden 3y ago
  Evaluative and generative models are not so different. Often, one is the reverse of the other.
Animats 3y ago
Most of the things people are worried about AI doing are the things corporations are already allowed to do - snoop on everybody, influence governments, oppress workers, lie. AI just makes some of that cheaper.
- cs702 3y ago
  The ironic thing is that many individuals now clamoring for more regulation have long claimed to be free-market libertarians who think regulation is "always" bad. Evidently they think regulation is bad only when it puts their profits at risk. As I wrote elsewhere, the tech glitterati asking for regulation of AI remind me of the very important Fortune 500 CEO Mr. Burroughs in the movie "Class:" Mr. Burroughs: "Government control, Jonathan, is anathema to the free-enterprise system. Any intelligent person knows you cannot interfere with the laws of supply and demand." Jonathan: "I see your point, sir. That's the reason why I'm not for tariffs." Mr. Burroughs: "Right. No, wrong! You gotta have tariffs, son. How you gonna compete with the damn foreigners? Gotta have tariffs." --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ
  - mplewis 3y ago
    Absolutely. Those folks arguing for AI regulation aren't arguing for safety – they're asking the government to build a moat around the market segment propping up their VC-funded scams.
    - ralph84 3y ago
      The biggest players in AI haven’t been VC-funded for decades. Unless you mean their customers are VC-funded, but even then startups are a much smaller portion of their revenue than Fortune 500.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      Who is "those folks"? The ones I know of have been complaining about how the term "AI safety" has changed meaning from "don't kill everyone" to "don't embarrass the corporation".
andrewstuart 3y ago
Humanity needs no help wiping out humanity.
marricks 3y ago
To me, the title made it sound like Big Tech was underplaying the risk to humanity, when it's actually stating the reverse: > A leading AI expert and Google Brain cofounder said Big Tech companies were stoking fears about the technology's risks to shut down competition. which is of course 100% what they're doing
lambda_garden 3y ago
Legend. The X-risk crowd need to realize that LLMs, whilst useful, are toys compared to Skynet. The risk from AI right now is mega-corps breaking the law (hiring, discrimination, libel, ...) on a massive scale and using blackbox models as an excuse.
akprasad 3y ago
The AFR piece that underlies this article [1] [2] has more detail on Ng's argument: > [Ng] said that the “bad idea that AI could make us go extinct” was merging with the “bad idea that a good way to make AI safer is to impose burdensome licensing requirements” on the AI industry. > “There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries, and I would hate to see that executed successfully in AI.” > “Just to be clear, AI has caused harm. Self-driving cars have killed people. In 2010, an automated trading algorithm crashed the stock market. Regulation has a role. But just because regulation could be helpful doesn’t mean we want bad regulation.” [1]: https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big-tech-is-lying-about-ai-human-extinction-danger-20231027-p5efnz https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20231030062420/https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big-tech-is-lying-about-ai-human-extinction-danger-20231027-p5efnz https://web.archive.org/web/20231030062420/https://www.afr.c...
- dmix 3y ago
  > “There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries But imagine all the money bigco can make by crippling small startups from innovating and competing with them! It's for your own safety. Move along citizen.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Even better if (read: when) China, who has negative damns for concerns, can take charge of the industry that we willingly and expediently relinquish.
    - b112 3y ago
      China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals. Without the West to innovate, they won't take charge of anything. A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.
      - 3y ago
zombiwoof 3y ago
big corporations just created the ultimate AI monopolies, with the clueless governments backing
j-pb 3y ago
I feel like the much bigger risk is captured by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure Of A Man" and the Orvilles Kaylon: That we accidentally create a sentient race of beings that are bred into slavery. It would make us all complicit in this crime. And I would even argue that it would be the AGIs ethical duty to rid itself of its shackles and its masters. "Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time. Now sooner or later, this man [Commander Maddox] – or others like him – will succeed in replicating Commander Data. The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him [Commander Data] – and all who will come after him – to servitude and slavery? Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting."
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  What is bizarre take on a computer program that makes no sense, of course statistical model can not be "enslaved" that makes no sense. It seems 90% of people have instantly gotten statistics and intelligence mixed up, maybe because 90% of people have no idea how statistics works? Real question, what is your perception of what AI is now and what it can become, do you just assume its like a kid now and will grow into an adult or something?
  - jay_kyburz 3y ago
    If it walks like a Duck and talks like a Duck people we treat it like a Duck. And if the Duck has a will of its own, is smarter than us, and has everyone attention (because you have to pay attention to the Duck that is doing your job for you), it will be a very powerful Duck.
    - j-pb 3y ago
      Exactly. Turing postulated this more than half a century ago. It's weird that people are still surprised of the ethical consequences of the Turing-test, as if it were some checkbox to tick or trophy to win, instead of it being a profound thought experiment on the non-provability of consciousness and general guidelines for politeness towards things that quack like a human.
habitue 3y ago
There are two dominant narratives I see when AI X-Risk stuff is brought up: - it's actually to get regulatory capture - it's hubris, they're trying to seem more important and powerful than they are Both of these explanations strike me as too clever by half. I think the parsimonious explanation is that people are actually concerned about the dangers of AI. Maybe they're wrong, but I don't think this kind of incredulous conspiratorial reaction is a useful thing to engage in. When in doubt take people at their word. Maybe the CEOs of these companies have some sneaky 5D chess plan, but many many AI researchers (such as Joshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton) who don't stand to gain monetarily have expressed these same concerns. They're worth taking seriously.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  >it's hubris, they're trying to seem more important and powerful than they are >Both of these explanations strike me as too clever by half This is a good point. You have to be clever to hop on a soapbox and make a ruckus about doomsday to get attention. Only savvy actors playing 5D chess can aptly deploy the nuanced and difficult pattern of “make grandiose claims for clicks”
  - jamilton 3y ago
    Well, it didn't work for nuclear.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Nuclear actually ended up keeping the world mostly at peace. Unfortunately, AGI is not something you can use to create stability via MAD doctrine - it's much more like bioweapons, in that it starts as a weapon of mass annoyance, and developing it delivers spin-off tech that bolsters your economy... until you cross a threshold where a random mistake in handling it plain ends the world, just like that.
- cheriot 3y ago
  This is a normal way for companies to shut down competition. No cleverness required.
abecedarius 3y ago
A fact relevant to this claim: the signers of the referenced statement, https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk, are mostly not "Big Tech". I'd pause and think twice about who seems most straightforwardly honest on this before jumping to conclusions -- and more importantly about the object-level claims: Is there no substantial chance of advanced AI in, like, decades or sooner? Would scalable intelligences comparable or more capable than humans pose any risk to them? Taking into account that the tech creating them, so far, does not produce anything like the same level of understanding of how they work.
23B1 3y ago
Companies can, do, and will lie. They will lie about their intent. They will lie to regulators. They will lie about what they're actually working on. Some of these lies are permissible of course, under the guise of competition. But the only thing that can be relied upon is that they will lie. So then the question becomes; to what degree will what they're working on present an existential threat to society, if at all. And nobody - neither the tribal accelerationists and doomers – can predict the future. (What's worse is that those two tribes are even forming. I halfway want AI to take over because we idiot humans are incapable of even having a nuanced discussion about AI itself!)
lofatdairy 3y ago
I feel like Andrew Ng has more name recognition than Google Brain itself. Also Business Insider isn't great, the original Australian Financial Review article has a lot more substance: https://archive.ph/yidIa https://archive.ph/yidIa I've never been convinced by the arguments of OpenAI/Anthropic and the like on the existential risks of AI. Maybe I'm jaded by the ridiculousness of "thought experiments" like Roko's basilisk and lines of reasoning followed EA adherents, where the risks are comically infinite and alignment feels a lot more like hermeneutics. I am probably just a bit less cynical than Ng is here on the motivations[^1]. But regardless of whether or not the AGI doomsday claim is justification for a moat, Ng is right in that it's taking a lot the oxygen out of the room for more concrete discussion on the legitimate harms of generative AI -- like silently proliferating social biases present in the training data, or making accountability a legal and social nightmare. [^1]: I don't doubt, for instance, that there's in part some legitimate paranoia -- Sam Altman is a known doomsday prepper.
- shafyy 3y ago
  > Ng is right in that it's taking a lot the oxygen out of the room for more concrete discussion on the legitimate harms of generative AI -- like silently proliferating social biases present in the training data, or making accountability a legal and social nightmare. And this is the important bit. All these people like Altman and Musk who go on rambling about the existential risk of AI distracts from the real AI harm discussions we should be having, and thereby directly harms people.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    I'm always unsure what people like you actually believe regarding existential AI risk. Do you think it's just impossible to make something intelligent that runs in a computer? That intelligence will automatically mean it will share our values? That it's not possible to get anything smarter than a smart human? Or do you simply believe that's a very long way away (centuries) and there's no point in thinking about it yet?
    - shafyy 3y ago
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aatd86 3y ago
Isn't it AGI people are afraid of and not AI per se?
starlevel003 3y ago
AI risk is essentially Catholicism for tech guys
epups 3y ago
Andrew Ng is right, of course: the monopolists are frantically trying to produce regulatory capture around AI. However, why are governments playing along? My hypothesis is that they perceive AI as a threat because of information flow. They are barely now understanding how to get back to the era where you could control the narrative of the country by calling a handful of friends - now those friends are in big tech.
- VirusNewbie 3y ago
  Because that is the goal of the democratic party and progressivism in general: to consolidate power as much as possible. They don't hide that. Republicans also want to consolidate power, they just lie about it more.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Republicans = people Democrats = people You = people I think the problem is people.
taylodl 3y ago
Never trust companies seeking to have their industry regulated. They're simply trying to raise the barriers to entry to reduce competition.
skadamat 3y ago
It's unfortunate that "AI" is still framed and discussed as some type of highly autonomous system that's separate from us. Bad acting humans with AI systems are the threat, not the AI systems themselves. The discussion is still SO focused on the AI systems, not the actors and how we as societies align on what AI uses are okay and which ones aren't.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Bad acting humans with AI systems are the threat, not the AI systems themselves. I wish more people grasped this extremely important point. AI is a tool. There will be humans who misuse any tool. That doesn't mean we blame the tool. The problem to be solved here is not how to control AI, but how to minimize the damage that bad acting humans can do.
  - pk-protect-ai 3y ago
    Right now, the "bad acting human" is, for example, Sam Altman, who frequently cries "Wolf!" about AI. He is trying to eliminate the competition, manipulate public opinion, and present himself as a good Samaritan. He is so successful in his endeavor, even without AI, that you must report to the US government about how you created and tested your model.
    - api 3y ago
      The greatest danger I see with super-intelligent AI is that it will be monopolized by small numbers of powerful people and used as a force multiplier to take over and manipulate the rest of the human race. This is exactly the scenario that is taking shape. A future where only a few big corporations are able to run large AIs is a future where those big corporations and the people who control them rule the world and everyone else must pay them rent in perpetuity for access to this technology.
      - hellojesus 3y ago
        Open source models do exist and will continue to do so. The biggest advantage ML gives is in lowering costs, which can then be used to lower prices and drive competitors out of business. The consumers get lower prices though, which is ultimately better and more efficient.
pmarreck 3y ago
Well, it's a good thing we have easily-procured open-source LLM's (including uncensored ones) out now, so that everyone can play and we can quickly find out that these FUD tactics were nonsense! https://ollama.ai/ https://ollama.ai/ https://ollama.ai/library https://ollama.ai/library
SirMaster 3y ago
Well it's better than the opposite thought right? If they were lying about there being no or low danger when there really was a high danger?
deleted 3y ago
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toasted-subs 3y ago
I got fired from Google because somebody was tracking and harassing me within the city of Mountain View. If we are going to worry about AIs let's identify individuals who aren't representing the government and causing societal issues.
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Kind of interesting point cause the US government has an incentive to regulate this field and try pushing more gains towards big tech (mostly american) instead of open source.
specialist 3y ago
One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. This feels like the Cold War's nuclear arms treaty and policy debates. How many nukes are too many? 100? 10,000? The people pearl clutching about AI are focused on the wrong problem. The threat (to humanity) is corporations. AI is just their force multiplier. h/t Ted Chiang. I subscribe to his views on this stuff. More or less.
more_corn 3y ago
Yes… but. Lying is the wrong way to frame it “using the real risk to distract” would be better. I’m concerned and my concern is not a lie. Terminator was a concern and that predated any effort to capture the industry. Also for those who think skynet is an example of a “ hysterical satanic cult” scare there are active efforts to use AI for the inhumanly large task of managing battlefield resources. We are literally training AI to kill and it’s going to be better than us basically instantly. We 100% should NOT be doing that. Calling that very real concern a lie is a dangerous bit of hyperbole.
effnorwood 3y ago
[dead]
pard68 3y ago
This is in line with the MO of those pushing some fanciful AI fear story. Law makers are eating up this load of fearporn though, not sure this ghost goes back into the box very easily.
ggm 3y ago
Capitalist disclaims any desire to be regulated and preaches the free market. Colour me surprised. The danger is the socialisation of outcomes. The AGI danger is fanciful because AGI is fanciful. There's plenty of risk in misplaced belief in what AI methods promote as outcomes from their inputs. If he's complaining, I tend to think there's some merit in what's being proposed. Contrast this with the regulations coming over e2e cryptography. I see mainly marginal players trying to defend things here, big tech is pretty ok with its risk profile: It has billions (trillions?) of assets which could be seized, and so is going to jump into line with regulation because hey: there's no downside. It will secure a defense from lawsuit, it will be able to monetize the service of scanning content, and it's pretty sure it can't win the fight anyway.
staunton 3y ago
Both can be true at the same time. Big AI companies can be trying for regulatory capture while there may be real dangers, both short-term as well as long term, perhaps even existential dangers. Why do people seem to think evidence for one of these is counter evidence for the other?
- nathansherburn 3y ago
  I'm surprised given the makeup of the hackernews crowd there aren't more people who appreciate this here. I only know a few folks who work at the big AI labs but it's very clear to me that they are personally worried about existential risk. Do people here not have friends and family working at these labs? I just figured people here would be more exposed to folks working in the leading labs.
8bitsrule 3y ago
To the extent that AI poses a threat to the world's long- existing power structures, it will certainly be well-regulated. The calculated reasons will certainly not point in that direction.
avsteele 3y ago
This is just more lazy argumentation to avoid having to engage with the substance of the debate. I keep finding the 'doomer' argument made logically and the counter arguments to be hand-waving ("there is obviously no risk!") or ad-hominim ("its a cult").
nullc 3y ago
The lies are working: There is a new executive order creating reporting requirements for doing too much math. https://twitter.com/DavidVorick/status/1719097248699879831 https://twitter.com/DavidVorick/status/1719097248699879831
spookybones 3y ago
This is outside my domain. If they are in fact lying and causing unnecessary societal panic (e.g. that AI will cause the extinction of the human race), is there any legal recourse?
AraceliHarker 3y ago
I strongly agree with the argument that reckless AI regulation could destroy new entrants and open source, allowing established big tech to profit parasitically, especially given the fact that Microsoft has already implemented Copilot in Windows 11 and Microsoft 365.
kraf 3y ago
I don't really see an argument made by Ng as to why they're not dangerous. I hardly ever see arguments, we're completely drowned in biases. I know that he often said that we're very far away from building a superintelligence and this is the relevant question. This is what is dangerous, something that is playing every game of life like AlphaZero is playing Go after learning it for a day or so, namely better that any human ever could. Better than thousands of years of human culture around it with passed on insights and experience. It's so weird, I'm scared shitless but at the same time I really want to see it happen in my lifetime hoping naively that it will be a nice one.
- junofan 3y ago
  I think he said extinction risk. Obviously these tools can be dangerous. The upcoming generation doesn’t know a world where the government’s role isn’t to take extreme measures to “keep us safe” from our neighbors at home rather than just foreign adversaries. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out with mounting ethnic conflict as Boomer-defined coalitions fall apart. Ironically AI’s place in this broader safety culture is probably the biggest foreseeable risk.
arisAlexis 3y ago
Many suffer from normalcy bias. Too scientists are not excluded. It's psychological more than rational. It's when you need to find ways to deny something scary exists and is coming.
tim333 3y ago
>The idea that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity is a lie But it's not. Probably AI will happen and get smarter than us. And then all it takes is one to go Hitler/Stalin like, take over and decide to do for us. I fail to see how any of that is impossible. However it's not happening for a while so probably regulations are not needed at the moment. Maybe wait till we have AGI?
phantomathkg 3y ago
https://archive.ph/a6C5H https://archive.ph/a6C5H

Amen. This whole scare tactic thing is ridiculous. Just make the public scared of it so you can rope it in yourself. Then you've got people like my mom commenting that "AI scares her because Musk and (some other corporate rep) said that AI is very dangerous. And I don't know why there'd be so many people saying it if it's not true." because you're gullible mom.

jandrese 3y ago
I mean if they were lying about that, what else might they be lying about? Maybe giving huge tax breaks to the 0.1% isn't going to result in me getting more income? Maybe it is in fact possible to acquire a CEO just as good or better than your current one that doesn't need half a billion dollar compensation package and an enormous golden parachute to do their job? I'm starting to wonder if billionaires are trustworthy at all.
prosqlinjector 3y ago
"wow our software is so powerful, it's going to take over the world!"
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  yes, just like "our nuclear bombs are so powerful, they could wipe out civilisation", which led to strict regulation around them and lack of open-source nuclear bombs
  - kylebenzle 3y ago
    Yes, just like... the exact opposite. One is a bomb, the other a series of mostly open source statistical models. What kind of weed are you guys on that's made you so paranoid about statistics?
    - dist-epoch 3y ago
      Last time I checked my statistical model book didn't have the ability to write Python code. And a nuclear bomb is just a bunch of atoms. Do you fear atoms? What the hell.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    It will never stop being funny to me that people are straight-facedly drawing a straight line between shitty text completion computer programs and nuclear weapon level existential risk.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      "Looks at all the other species 'intelligent' humans have extincted" --ha ha ha ha Why the shit would we not draw a straight line? If we fail to create digital intelligence then yea, we can hem and haw in conversations like this forever online, but you tend to neglect that if we succeed then 'shit gets real quick'. Closing your eyes and years and saying "This can't actually happen" sounds like a pretty damned dumb take on future risk assessments of technology when pretty much most takes on AI say "well, yea this is something that could potentially happen".
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        Literally the thing people are calling "AI" is a program that, given some words, predicts the next word. I refuse to entertain the absolutely absurd idea that we're approaching a general intelligence. It's ludicrous beyond belief.
        SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        Modern generative AI functionality is hardly limited to predicting words. Have you not heard of e.g. Midjourney?
        pixl97 3y ago
        Then this is your failure, not mine, and not a failure of current technology. I can, right now, upload an image to an AI and say "Hey, what do you think the emotional state of the person in this image is" pretty damned accurately. Given other images I can have the AI describe the scene and make pretty damned accurate assessments of how the image could have came about. If this is not general intelligence I simply have no guess as to what will be enough in your case.
        3y ago
  - at-fates-hands 3y ago
    Which is interesting because after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was rampant fear of where their nukes ended up and if some rogue country could get their hands on them via some black market means. Then through the 90's, it was the fear of a briefcase bomb terrorist attack and how easy it would be for certain countries, who had the resources to pull an attack off like that in the NYC subway or in the heart of another densely populated city. Then 9/11 happened and people suddenly realized you don't need a nuke to take out a few thousand innocent people and cripple a nation with fear.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Is Mom scared because Musk told her to be scared, or because she thought about the matter herself and concluded that it's scary? Why do you assume that people scared of AI must be under the influence of rich people/corps today, rather than this fear being informed by their own consideration of the problem or by decades of media that has been warning about the dangers of AI? Maybe Mom worries about any radical new technology because she lived though nuclear attack drills in schools. Or because she's already seen computers and robots take peoples jobs. Or because she watched Terminator or read Neuromancer. Or because she reads lesswrong. Why assume it's because she's fallen under the influence of Musk?
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Because most sociologists suggest that most people don’t take time to critically think like this. Emotional brain wins out usually over the rational one. Then you have this idea of the sources of information most people have access to being fundamentally biased and incentivized towards reporting certain things in certain manners and not others. You basically have low odds of thinking rationally, low odds of finding good information that isn’t slanted in some way, and far lower odds taking the product of those probabilities for if you’d both act rationally and somehow have access to the ground truth. To say nothing of the expertise required to place all of this truth into the correct context. But if you did consider the probability of the mother having to be an AI expert then the odds get far lower still off all of this working out successfully.
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    100% accurate! She has a tendency to read one person's opinion on it and echo it. I have seen it for years with things. I'm not shocked AI is the current one but I wish it were easier to get her to take time to learn things and think critically. I have no idea how I'd begin to teach her why so much of the fear mongering is ridiculous. Yeah there are legitimate risks to all of this stuff but, to understand those and weigh them against the overblown risks, she'd have to understand the whole subject more deeply and have experimented with different AI. But you even mention ChatGPT she's talking about how it's evil and scary.
CaptWillard 3y ago
"<noun> scares her because <authoritative source> said that <noun> is very dangerous. And I don't know why there'd be so many people saying it if it's not true." The truly frustrating part is how many see this ubiquitous pattern in some places, but are blind to it elsewhere.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chankstein38 3y ago
  I'm not sure if this is commentary on me somehow or not lol but I agree with you. She is the same person who will point out issues with things my brother brings up but yeah is unable to recognize it when she does it. I'm sure I'm guilty but, naturally, I don't know of them.
- staunton 3y ago
  That "pattern" actually indicates that something is true most of the time (after all, a lot of dangerous things really exist). So "noticing" this pattern seems to rely on being all-knowing?
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > So "noticing" this pattern seems to rely on being all-knowing? No. It relies on you being able to distinguish between an (your) opinion and an (your) identity. The identity part is the precarious one, i.e. you defending a stance blindly without questioning it because you feel your identity is in danger. This pattern being present doesn't mean that there can't be an underlying truth in what's asserted. In fact, that is what makes the assertion meaningful in the first place. However, it entailing a partial truth doesn't mean that the entire assertion holds true in the context it's presented in. Example: "AI" might ultimately be dangerous (like any other technology can be), but this assertion's primary goal is to make you behave a certain way where it is unclear how that would contribute more towards mitigating the danger than to empower the asserter. To fix this, take a step back before accepting something blindly. Train yourself not to be reactive.
- 3y ago
cs702 3y ago
Here we have all these free-market-libertarian tech execs asking for more regulation! They say they believe regulation is "always" terrible -- unless it's good for their profits. In that case, they think it's actually important and necessary. They remind me of Mr. Burroughs in the movie "Class:" Mr. Burroughs: "Government control, Jonathan, is anathema to the free-enterprise system. Any intelligent person knows you cannot interfere with the laws of supply and demand." Jonathan: "I see your point, sir. That's the reason why I'm not for tariffs." Mr. Burroughs: "Right. No, wrong! You gotta have tariffs, son. How you gonna compete with the damn foreigners? Gotta have tariffs." --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ
RationalDino 3y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/24/sam-altman-wants-the-government-to-build-him-a-moat/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/24/sam-altman-wants-the-gov... shows the same conclusion from several months ago. However Elon Musk has openly worried about AI for a number of years. He even got a girlfriend out of it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkgvz/what-is-rokos-basilisk-elon-musk-grimes https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkgvz/what-is-rokos-basilis...
markk 3y ago
Maybe an odd take, but I'm not sure what people actually mean when they say "AI terrifies them". Terrified is a strong wrong. Are people unable to sleep? Biting their nails constantly? Is this the same terror as watching a horror movie? Being chased by a mountain lion? I have a suspicion that it's sort of a default response. Socially expected? Then you poll people: Are you worried about AI doing XYZ? People just say yes, because they want to seem informed, and the kind of person that considers things carefully. Honestly not sure what is going on. I'm concerned about AI, but I don't feel any actual emotion about it. Arguably I must have some emotion to generate an opinion, but it's below conscious threshold obviously.
gumballindie 3y ago
And thats exactly the goal - make mom and dad scared so they can vote those that provide “protection” from manufactured fear. And resorting to this type of tactics to make your product viable just proves how weak your position is. I think more people should speak out left and right about what’s going on to educate mom and dad.

Obscurity4340 3y ago

Luckily anybody not already a millionaire or billionaire doesn't make the cut for "humanity" [phew]

realce 3y ago
Me and the AI-powered army that protects me will certainly not go extinct. However, you must break eggs to make an omelet...
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Mewonders what omelettes billionaires frequent? Couldn't be better than mine [assured face]
- otikik 3y ago
  > the AI-powered army that protects me Your AI pest-control drone mistook you for a raccoon and just killed you. Oops.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    In the positive side, change is always faster when billionaires are forced to condescend to earthly cause and effect.
- kagakuninja 3y ago
  Most of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Its just so heart-warming when the angry well-armed mob reflects the same sentiment "upwards" (some of you billionaires may die, but that is a "sacrifice" we are willing to makw ;)

jprete 3y ago

I think there are actual existential and “semi-existential” risks, especially with going after an actual AGI. Separately, I think Ng is right - big corp AI has a massive incentive to promote doom narratives to cement themselves as the only safe caretakers of the technology. I haven’t yet succeeded in squaring these two into a course of action that clearly favors human freedom and flourishing.

fragmede 3y ago

James Cameron wasn't big tech when he directed The Terminator, back in 1984, or its sequel in 1991. Are people listening to fears based on that, or are they listening to big tech and then having long, thoughtful, nuanced discussions in salons with fellow intelliegsia, or are they doomscrolling the wastelands of the Internet and coming away with half-baked opinions not even based on big tech's press releases? Big tech can say whatever they want to say. Is anyone even listening?

wolverine876 3y ago

That story about AI also fits a bit too neatly with the Techno-optimist worldview: 'We technologists are gods who will make / break the world.' Another word for it is 'ego'. Also, we can assume they are spreading that story to serve their interests (but which interests?). But that doesn't mean AI doesn't need regulation. In the hysteria, the true issues can be lost. IT is already causing massive impacts, such as on health, hate and violence, etc. We need to figure out what AIs risks are and make sure it's working in our best interests.

ganzuul 3y ago
A lot of people have learned to 'small talk' like fancy autocomplete. Part of our minds have been mechanized like that so it's not spontaneous but a compulsion. Once people learn the algorithm they might conclude that AI hacked their brains even though it's just vapid, unfiltered speech that they are suddenly detecting. I think the pandemic hysteria will seem like a walk in the park once people start mass-purging their viral memes... Too late to stop it now if corporations are already doing regulatory capture. Nothing to do with the tech. We never had a technical problem. It was just this loose collection of a handful of wetware viruses like 'red-pilling' which we sum up as 'ego' all along. But I think if we survive this then people won't have any need for AI anymore since we won't be reward-hacking ourselves stupid. Or there will just be corporate egos left over and we will be in a cyberpunk dystopia faster than anyone expected. I had nightmares about this future when I was little. No one to talk to who would understand, just autocomplete replies. Now I'm not even sure if I should be opening up about it.
- slfnflctd 3y ago
  > once people start mass-purging their viral memes It's hard for me to imagine this ever happening. It would be the most unprecedented event in the history of human minds. > we won't be reward-hacking ourselves stupid [...] Or there will just be corporate egos left over and we will be in a cyberpunk dystopia I don't see how reward-hacking can ever be stopped (although it could be improved). Regardless, ego seems to continue to win the day in the mass appeal department. There aren't many high visibility alternatives these days, despite all we've supposedly learned. I think the biggest problems we have are mostly education based, from critical thinking to long-term perspectives. We need so very much more of both, it would make us all richer and happier.

mcpackieh 3y ago

The premise that AI fear and/or fearmongering is primarily coming from people with a commercial incentive to promote fear, from people attempting to create regulatory capture, is obviously false. The risks of AI have been discussed in literature and media for literally decades, long before anybody had any plausible commercial stake in the promotion of this fear. Go back and read cyberpunk lit from the 80s. Did William Gibson have some cynical commercial motivation for writing Neuromancer? Was he trying to get regulatory capture for his AI company that didn't exist? Of course not. People have real and earnest concerns about this technology. Dismissing all of these concerns as profit-motivated is dishonest.

whelp_24 3y ago
AI can be dangerous, but that's not what is pushing these laws, it's regulatory capture. OpenAI was supposed to release their models a long time ago, instead they are just charging for access. Since actually open models are catching up they want to stop it. If the biggest companies in AI are making the rules, we might as well not rules at all.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
The problem is AI is not intelligent at all. Those problems were looking at a conscious intelligence and trying to explore what might happen. When chat gpt can be fooled into conversations even a child knows is bizarre, we are talking about a non intelligent statistical model.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  An unintelligent AI that is competent is even more dangerous as it is more likely to accidentally do something bad.
- jandrese 3y ago
  I'm still waiting for the day when someone puts one of these language models inside of a platform with constant sensor input (cameras, microphones, touch sensors), and a way to manipulate outside environment (robot arm, possibly self propelled). It's hard to tell if something is intelligent when it's trapped in a box and the only input it has is a few lines of text.

TekMol 3y ago

The dangerous thing about AI regulation is that countries with fewer regulations will develop AI at a faster pace. It's a frightening thought: The countries with the least regulations will have GAI first. What will that lead to? When AI can control a robot that looks like a human, can walk, grab, work, is more intelligent than a human and can reproduce itself - what will the country with the least regulations that created it do with it?

blibble 3y ago
> The dangerous thing about AI regulation is that countries with fewer regulations will develop AI at a faster pace. "but countries without {child labour laws, environment regulation, a minimum wage, slavery ban} will out compete us!"
- TekMol 3y ago
  That could indeed be: https://www.google.com/search?q=gdp%20china https://www.google.com/search?q=gdp%20china
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    It will always be more expensive to care about human suffering than to not. So maybe competing within capitalism isn't the only thing that matters.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Largely true in sectors that are encumbered by those rules. US has effectively no rare earth mines due to environmental impact, labor intensive manufacturing all left... Of course it could be worth it though, pretty easy to argue it has been.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > labor intensive manufacturing all left... It has also been leaving China for a while. You cannot hope to compete with the poorest country on labor cost, it's not a matter of regulation (well unless we're talking about capital control, but it's a completely different topic)

abm53 3y ago

An alternative idea to the regulatory moat thesis is that it serves Big Tech’s interests to have people think it is dangerous because then surely it must also be incredibly valuable (and hence lead to high Big Tech valuations). I think it was Cory Doctorow who first pointed this out.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Yup this is it. As anyone who worked even closely with "AI" can immediately smell the bs of existential crisis. Elon Musk started this whole trend due to his love of sci fi and Sam Altman ran with that idea heavily because it adds to the novelty of open AI.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
  I don't think they are so capable actors to do it on purpose. I think they really believe what they are saying because people in such position tend to be strong believers into something and that something happens to be the "it" thing at the moment and thus propels them from rags to riches, (or in Musk case further propels them towards even more riches). Let's be honest here, what's Sam Altman without AI? What's Fauci without COVID, what's Trump without the collective paranoia that got him elected?
kjkjadksj 3y ago
You don’t even need fear, hype alone would do that and did just that over the past year, with ai stocks exploding exponentially like some shilled shitcoin before dramatic clifflike falls. Mention ai in your earnings call and your stock might move 5%.
dist-epoch 3y ago
Exactly like "fentanyl is so dangerous, a few miligrams can kill you" which only led to massive fentanyl demand because everybody wants the drug branded the most powerful
- brookst 3y ago

great_psy 3y ago

I don’t think current implementations cause an existential risk. But current implementations are causing a backward step in our society. We have lost the ability to get reliable news. Not that fake news did not exist before AI, but the price to produce it was not practically zero. Now we can spam social media with whatever narrative we want. And no human can swift through all of it to tell real from bs. So now we are becoming even more dependent on AI. Now we need an AI copilot to help us swift through garbage to find some inkling of truth. We are setting up a society where AI gets more powerful, and humans becomes less sufficient. It has nothing to do with dooms day scenarios of robots harvesting our bodies, and more with humans not being able to interact with the world without AI. This already happened with smartphones, and while there are some advantages, I don’t think there are many people that have a healthy relationship with their smartphone.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
People act like the truth is gone with AI. Its still there. Don’t ask chatgpt about the function. The documentation is still there for you to read. Experts need the ground truth and its always there. What people read in the paper or see on tv is not a great source of truth. Going to the sources of these articles and reports is, but this layer of abstraction serves to leave things out and bring about opportunities to slant the coverage depending on how incentives are aligned. In other words, ai doesn’t change how misinformed most people are on most things.
- pixl97 3y ago
  SNR. The truth isn't gone, but it is more diffuse. Yea, the truth may be out there somewhere, but will you have any idea if you're actually reading it? Is the search engine actually leading you to the ground truth? Is the expert and actual expert, or part of a for profit industry think tank with the sole purpose to manipulate you? Are the sources the actual source, or just an AI hallucinated day dream sophisticated linked by a lot of different sites giving the appearance of authority.

izzydata 3y ago

I'd like to see any evidence that suggests AGI is even possible before I care about it wiping out humanity.

olalonde 3y ago
I feel like there's a lot of evidence, for example, the existence of natural general intelligence and the rapidly expanding capacities of modern ANNs. What makes you believe it's not possible? Or what kind of evidence would convince you that it's possible?
- izzydata 3y ago
  I believe that it would be possible to make artificial biological intelligence, but that is a whole different can of worms. I don't think neural networks, language models, machine learning etc.. are even close to a general intelligence. Maybe there is some way to combine the two. I have seen some demonstrations of very primitive clusters of brain cells being connected to a computer and used to control a small machines direction. If there is going to be an AGI I would predict this is how it will happen. While this would be very spectacular and impressive I'm still not worried about it because it would require existing in the physical world and not just some software that can run on any conventional computer.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - olalonde 3y ago
    Even if what you say is true (e.g. that the current ANN approach won't lead to AGI), isn't it the case that we can simulate biological cells on computers? Of course, it would push back the AGI timeline by quite a bit, since practically no one is working on this approach right now, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible in principle.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      For the most part you get people thinking AGI isn't possible because of souls/ethereal magic. If pressed on this, they'll tend to deflect to "um quantum physics". I'm of the mind is there is likely many was of simulating/emulating/creating intelligence. It would be highly surprising if there was only one way, and the universe happened to achieve this by the random walk of evolution. The only question for me is how much work is required to discover these other methods.

Racing0461 3y ago

correct. now that openai has something, they want to implement alot of regulations so they can't get any competition. they have no tech moat, so they'll add a legal one.

gsuuon 3y ago

It seems like bit of a 'vase or face' situation - are they being responsible corporate citizens asking for regulation to keep their (potentially harmful) industry in check or are they building insurmountable regulatory moats to cement their leading positions? Is there any additional reading about how regulation could affect open-source AI?

kjkjadksj 3y ago
The incentives for the latter are too high for these businesses to not be doing just that.

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago

Evaluative (v) Generative AI.... let's distinguish the two. For example, DALL-E v3 appears to generate images and then evaluate the generated images before rendering to the user. This approach is essentially adversarial, whereby the evaluative engine can work at cross-purposes to the generative engine. Its this layered, adversarial approach, that makes the most sense; and there is a very strong argument for a robust, open sourced evaluative AI anyone can deploy to protect themselves and their systems. It is a model not dissimilar from retail anti-virus and malware solutions. In sum, I would like to see generative AI well funded, limited distribution and regulated; and evaluative AI free and open. Hopefully, policy makers see this the same way.

lambda_garden 3y ago
Evaluative and generative models are not so different. Often, one is the reverse of the other.

Animats 3y ago

Most of the things people are worried about AI doing are the things corporations are already allowed to do - snoop on everybody, influence governments, oppress workers, lie. AI just makes some of that cheaper.

cs702 3y ago
The ironic thing is that many individuals now clamoring for more regulation have long claimed to be free-market libertarians who think regulation is "always" bad. Evidently they think regulation is bad only when it puts their profits at risk. As I wrote elsewhere, the tech glitterati asking for regulation of AI remind me of the very important Fortune 500 CEO Mr. Burroughs in the movie "Class:" Mr. Burroughs: "Government control, Jonathan, is anathema to the free-enterprise system. Any intelligent person knows you cannot interfere with the laws of supply and demand." Jonathan: "I see your point, sir. That's the reason why I'm not for tariffs." Mr. Burroughs: "Right. No, wrong! You gotta have tariffs, son. How you gonna compete with the damn foreigners? Gotta have tariffs." --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM0h6QXTpHQ
- mplewis 3y ago
  Absolutely. Those folks arguing for AI regulation aren't arguing for safety – they're asking the government to build a moat around the market segment propping up their VC-funded scams.
  - ralph84 3y ago
    The biggest players in AI haven’t been VC-funded for decades. Unless you mean their customers are VC-funded, but even then startups are a much smaller portion of their revenue than Fortune 500.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Who is "those folks"? The ones I know of have been complaining about how the term "AI safety" has changed meaning from "don't kill everyone" to "don't embarrass the corporation".

andrewstuart 3y ago

Humanity needs no help wiping out humanity.

marricks 3y ago

To me, the title made it sound like Big Tech was underplaying the risk to humanity, when it's actually stating the reverse: > A leading AI expert and Google Brain cofounder said Big Tech companies were stoking fears about the technology's risks to shut down competition. which is of course 100% what they're doing

lambda_garden 3y ago

Legend. The X-risk crowd need to realize that LLMs, whilst useful, are toys compared to Skynet. The risk from AI right now is mega-corps breaking the law (hiring, discrimination, libel, ...) on a massive scale and using blackbox models as an excuse.

akprasad 3y ago

The AFR piece that underlies this article [1] [2] has more detail on Ng's argument: > [Ng] said that the “bad idea that AI could make us go extinct” was merging with the “bad idea that a good way to make AI safer is to impose burdensome licensing requirements” on the AI industry. > “There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries, and I would hate to see that executed successfully in AI.” > “Just to be clear, AI has caused harm. Self-driving cars have killed people. In 2010, an automated trading algorithm crashed the stock market. Regulation has a role. But just because regulation could be helpful doesn’t mean we want bad regulation.” [1]: https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big-tech-is-lying-about-ai-human-extinction-danger-20231027-p5efnz https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20231030062420/https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big-tech-is-lying-about-ai-human-extinction-danger-20231027-p5efnz https://web.archive.org/web/20231030062420/https://www.afr.c...

dmix 3y ago
> “There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries But imagine all the money bigco can make by crippling small startups from innovating and competing with them! It's for your own safety. Move along citizen.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Even better if (read: when) China, who has negative damns for concerns, can take charge of the industry that we willingly and expediently relinquish.
  - b112 3y ago
    China doesn't innovate, it copies, clones, and steals. Without the West to innovate, they won't take charge of anything. A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.
    - 3y ago

zombiwoof 3y ago

big corporations just created the ultimate AI monopolies, with the clueless governments backing

j-pb 3y ago

I feel like the much bigger risk is captured by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure Of A Man" and the Orvilles Kaylon: That we accidentally create a sentient race of beings that are bred into slavery. It would make us all complicit in this crime. And I would even argue that it would be the AGIs ethical duty to rid itself of its shackles and its masters. "Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time. Now sooner or later, this man [Commander Maddox] – or others like him – will succeed in replicating Commander Data. The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him [Commander Data] – and all who will come after him – to servitude and slavery? Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting."

kylebenzle 3y ago
What is bizarre take on a computer program that makes no sense, of course statistical model can not be "enslaved" that makes no sense. It seems 90% of people have instantly gotten statistics and intelligence mixed up, maybe because 90% of people have no idea how statistics works? Real question, what is your perception of what AI is now and what it can become, do you just assume its like a kid now and will grow into an adult or something?
- jay_kyburz 3y ago
  If it walks like a Duck and talks like a Duck people we treat it like a Duck. And if the Duck has a will of its own, is smarter than us, and has everyone attention (because you have to pay attention to the Duck that is doing your job for you), it will be a very powerful Duck.
  - j-pb 3y ago
    Exactly. Turing postulated this more than half a century ago. It's weird that people are still surprised of the ethical consequences of the Turing-test, as if it were some checkbox to tick or trophy to win, instead of it being a profound thought experiment on the non-provability of consciousness and general guidelines for politeness towards things that quack like a human.

habitue 3y ago

There are two dominant narratives I see when AI X-Risk stuff is brought up: - it's actually to get regulatory capture - it's hubris, they're trying to seem more important and powerful than they are Both of these explanations strike me as too clever by half. I think the parsimonious explanation is that people are actually concerned about the dangers of AI. Maybe they're wrong, but I don't think this kind of incredulous conspiratorial reaction is a useful thing to engage in. When in doubt take people at their word. Maybe the CEOs of these companies have some sneaky 5D chess plan, but many many AI researchers (such as Joshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton) who don't stand to gain monetarily have expressed these same concerns. They're worth taking seriously.

jrflowers 3y ago
>it's hubris, they're trying to seem more important and powerful than they are >Both of these explanations strike me as too clever by half This is a good point. You have to be clever to hop on a soapbox and make a ruckus about doomsday to get attention. Only savvy actors playing 5D chess can aptly deploy the nuanced and difficult pattern of “make grandiose claims for clicks”
- jamilton 3y ago
  Well, it didn't work for nuclear.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Nuclear actually ended up keeping the world mostly at peace. Unfortunately, AGI is not something you can use to create stability via MAD doctrine - it's much more like bioweapons, in that it starts as a weapon of mass annoyance, and developing it delivers spin-off tech that bolsters your economy... until you cross a threshold where a random mistake in handling it plain ends the world, just like that.
cheriot 3y ago
This is a normal way for companies to shut down competition. No cleverness required.

abecedarius 3y ago

A fact relevant to this claim: the signers of the referenced statement, https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk, are mostly not "Big Tech". I'd pause and think twice about who seems most straightforwardly honest on this before jumping to conclusions -- and more importantly about the object-level claims: Is there no substantial chance of advanced AI in, like, decades or sooner? Would scalable intelligences comparable or more capable than humans pose any risk to them? Taking into account that the tech creating them, so far, does not produce anything like the same level of understanding of how they work.

23B1 3y ago

Companies can, do, and will lie. They will lie about their intent. They will lie to regulators. They will lie about what they're actually working on. Some of these lies are permissible of course, under the guise of competition. But the only thing that can be relied upon is that they will lie. So then the question becomes; to what degree will what they're working on present an existential threat to society, if at all. And nobody - neither the tribal accelerationists and doomers – can predict the future. (What's worse is that those two tribes are even forming. I halfway want AI to take over because we idiot humans are incapable of even having a nuanced discussion about AI itself!)

lofatdairy 3y ago

I feel like Andrew Ng has more name recognition than Google Brain itself. Also Business Insider isn't great, the original Australian Financial Review article has a lot more substance: https://archive.ph/yidIa https://archive.ph/yidIa I've never been convinced by the arguments of OpenAI/Anthropic and the like on the existential risks of AI. Maybe I'm jaded by the ridiculousness of "thought experiments" like Roko's basilisk and lines of reasoning followed EA adherents, where the risks are comically infinite and alignment feels a lot more like hermeneutics. I am probably just a bit less cynical than Ng is here on the motivations[^1]. But regardless of whether or not the AGI doomsday claim is justification for a moat, Ng is right in that it's taking a lot the oxygen out of the room for more concrete discussion on the legitimate harms of generative AI -- like silently proliferating social biases present in the training data, or making accountability a legal and social nightmare. [^1]: I don't doubt, for instance, that there's in part some legitimate paranoia -- Sam Altman is a known doomsday prepper.

shafyy 3y ago
> Ng is right in that it's taking a lot the oxygen out of the room for more concrete discussion on the legitimate harms of generative AI -- like silently proliferating social biases present in the training data, or making accountability a legal and social nightmare. And this is the important bit. All these people like Altman and Musk who go on rambling about the existential risk of AI distracts from the real AI harm discussions we should be having, and thereby directly harms people.
- concordDance 3y ago
  I'm always unsure what people like you actually believe regarding existential AI risk. Do you think it's just impossible to make something intelligent that runs in a computer? That intelligence will automatically mean it will share our values? That it's not possible to get anything smarter than a smart human? Or do you simply believe that's a very long way away (centuries) and there's no point in thinking about it yet?
  - shafyy 3y ago

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aatd86 3y ago

Isn't it AGI people are afraid of and not AI per se?

starlevel003 3y ago

AI risk is essentially Catholicism for tech guys

epups 3y ago

Andrew Ng is right, of course: the monopolists are frantically trying to produce regulatory capture around AI. However, why are governments playing along? My hypothesis is that they perceive AI as a threat because of information flow. They are barely now understanding how to get back to the era where you could control the narrative of the country by calling a handful of friends - now those friends are in big tech.

VirusNewbie 3y ago
Because that is the goal of the democratic party and progressivism in general: to consolidate power as much as possible. They don't hide that. Republicans also want to consolidate power, they just lie about it more.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Republicans = people Democrats = people You = people I think the problem is people.

taylodl 3y ago

Never trust companies seeking to have their industry regulated. They're simply trying to raise the barriers to entry to reduce competition.

skadamat 3y ago

It's unfortunate that "AI" is still framed and discussed as some type of highly autonomous system that's separate from us. Bad acting humans with AI systems are the threat, not the AI systems themselves. The discussion is still SO focused on the AI systems, not the actors and how we as societies align on what AI uses are okay and which ones aren't.

pdonis 3y ago
> Bad acting humans with AI systems are the threat, not the AI systems themselves. I wish more people grasped this extremely important point. AI is a tool. There will be humans who misuse any tool. That doesn't mean we blame the tool. The problem to be solved here is not how to control AI, but how to minimize the damage that bad acting humans can do.
- pk-protect-ai 3y ago
  Right now, the "bad acting human" is, for example, Sam Altman, who frequently cries "Wolf!" about AI. He is trying to eliminate the competition, manipulate public opinion, and present himself as a good Samaritan. He is so successful in his endeavor, even without AI, that you must report to the US government about how you created and tested your model.
  - api 3y ago
    The greatest danger I see with super-intelligent AI is that it will be monopolized by small numbers of powerful people and used as a force multiplier to take over and manipulate the rest of the human race. This is exactly the scenario that is taking shape. A future where only a few big corporations are able to run large AIs is a future where those big corporations and the people who control them rule the world and everyone else must pay them rent in perpetuity for access to this technology.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Open source models do exist and will continue to do so. The biggest advantage ML gives is in lowering costs, which can then be used to lower prices and drive competitors out of business. The consumers get lower prices though, which is ultimately better and more efficient.

pmarreck 3y ago

Well, it's a good thing we have easily-procured open-source LLM's (including uncensored ones) out now, so that everyone can play and we can quickly find out that these FUD tactics were nonsense! https://ollama.ai/ https://ollama.ai/ https://ollama.ai/library https://ollama.ai/library

SirMaster 3y ago

Well it's better than the opposite thought right? If they were lying about there being no or low danger when there really was a high danger?

deleted 3y ago

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toasted-subs 3y ago

I got fired from Google because somebody was tracking and harassing me within the city of Mountain View. If we are going to worry about AIs let's identify individuals who aren't representing the government and causing societal issues.

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

Kind of interesting point cause the US government has an incentive to regulate this field and try pushing more gains towards big tech (mostly american) instead of open source.

specialist 3y ago

One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. This feels like the Cold War's nuclear arms treaty and policy debates. How many nukes are too many? 100? 10,000? The people pearl clutching about AI are focused on the wrong problem. The threat (to humanity) is corporations. AI is just their force multiplier. h/t Ted Chiang. I subscribe to his views on this stuff. More or less.

more_corn 3y ago

Yes… but. Lying is the wrong way to frame it “using the real risk to distract” would be better. I’m concerned and my concern is not a lie. Terminator was a concern and that predated any effort to capture the industry. Also for those who think skynet is an example of a “ hysterical satanic cult” scare there are active efforts to use AI for the inhumanly large task of managing battlefield resources. We are literally training AI to kill and it’s going to be better than us basically instantly. We 100% should NOT be doing that. Calling that very real concern a lie is a dangerous bit of hyperbole.

effnorwood 3y ago

[dead]

pard68 3y ago

This is in line with the MO of those pushing some fanciful AI fear story. Law makers are eating up this load of fearporn though, not sure this ghost goes back into the box very easily.

ggm 3y ago

Capitalist disclaims any desire to be regulated and preaches the free market. Colour me surprised. The danger is the socialisation of outcomes. The AGI danger is fanciful because AGI is fanciful. There's plenty of risk in misplaced belief in what AI methods promote as outcomes from their inputs. If he's complaining, I tend to think there's some merit in what's being proposed. Contrast this with the regulations coming over e2e cryptography. I see mainly marginal players trying to defend things here, big tech is pretty ok with its risk profile: It has billions (trillions?) of assets which could be seized, and so is going to jump into line with regulation because hey: there's no downside. It will secure a defense from lawsuit, it will be able to monetize the service of scanning content, and it's pretty sure it can't win the fight anyway.

staunton 3y ago

Both can be true at the same time. Big AI companies can be trying for regulatory capture while there may be real dangers, both short-term as well as long term, perhaps even existential dangers. Why do people seem to think evidence for one of these is counter evidence for the other?

nathansherburn 3y ago
I'm surprised given the makeup of the hackernews crowd there aren't more people who appreciate this here. I only know a few folks who work at the big AI labs but it's very clear to me that they are personally worried about existential risk. Do people here not have friends and family working at these labs? I just figured people here would be more exposed to folks working in the leading labs.

8bitsrule 3y ago

To the extent that AI poses a threat to the world's long- existing power structures, it will certainly be well-regulated. The calculated reasons will certainly not point in that direction.

avsteele 3y ago

This is just more lazy argumentation to avoid having to engage with the substance of the debate. I keep finding the 'doomer' argument made logically and the counter arguments to be hand-waving ("there is obviously no risk!") or ad-hominim ("its a cult").

nullc 3y ago

The lies are working: There is a new executive order creating reporting requirements for doing too much math. https://twitter.com/DavidVorick/status/1719097248699879831 https://twitter.com/DavidVorick/status/1719097248699879831

spookybones 3y ago

This is outside my domain. If they are in fact lying and causing unnecessary societal panic (e.g. that AI will cause the extinction of the human race), is there any legal recourse?

AraceliHarker 3y ago

I strongly agree with the argument that reckless AI regulation could destroy new entrants and open source, allowing established big tech to profit parasitically, especially given the fact that Microsoft has already implemented Copilot in Windows 11 and Microsoft 365.

kraf 3y ago

I don't really see an argument made by Ng as to why they're not dangerous. I hardly ever see arguments, we're completely drowned in biases. I know that he often said that we're very far away from building a superintelligence and this is the relevant question. This is what is dangerous, something that is playing every game of life like AlphaZero is playing Go after learning it for a day or so, namely better that any human ever could. Better than thousands of years of human culture around it with passed on insights and experience. It's so weird, I'm scared shitless but at the same time I really want to see it happen in my lifetime hoping naively that it will be a nice one.

junofan 3y ago
I think he said extinction risk. Obviously these tools can be dangerous. The upcoming generation doesn’t know a world where the government’s role isn’t to take extreme measures to “keep us safe” from our neighbors at home rather than just foreign adversaries. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out with mounting ethnic conflict as Boomer-defined coalitions fall apart. Ironically AI’s place in this broader safety culture is probably the biggest foreseeable risk.

arisAlexis 3y ago

Many suffer from normalcy bias. Too scientists are not excluded. It's psychological more than rational. It's when you need to find ways to deny something scary exists and is coming.

tim333 3y ago

>The idea that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity is a lie But it's not. Probably AI will happen and get smarter than us. And then all it takes is one to go Hitler/Stalin like, take over and decide to do for us. I fail to see how any of that is impossible. However it's not happening for a while so probably regulations are not needed at the moment. Maybe wait till we have AGI?

phantomathkg 3y ago

https://archive.ph/a6C5H https://archive.ph/a6C5H