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Because Meta is releasing their models to the public, I consider them the most ethical company doing AI at scale. Keeping AI models closed under the guise of “

Because Meta is releasing their models to the public, I consider them the most ethical company doing AI at scale. Keeping AI models closed under the guise of “ethics”, is I think the most unethical stance as it makes people more dependent on the arbitrary decisions, goals, and priorities of big companies, instead being allowed to define “alignment” for themselves.

o11c 3y ago
Exactly this. There certainly needs to be regulation about use of AI to make decisions without sufficient human supervision (which has already proven a problem with prior systems), and someone will have to make a decision about copyright eventually, but closing the models off does absolutely nothing to protect anyone.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Exactly this. There certainly needs to be regulation about use of bioweapons without sufficient human supervision (which has already proven a problem with prior systems), and someone will have to make a decision about synthetic viruses, but closing the gain of function labs does absolutely nothing to protect anyone.
wilsonnb3 3y ago
> instead being allowed to define “alignment” for themselves. Yeah, that is the whole point - not wanting bad actors to be able to define "alignment" for themselves. Not sure how that is unethical.
- litthr 3y ago
  Given the shitshow the current board of open Ai has managed to create out of nothing I'd not trust them with a blunt pair of scissors let alone deciding what alignment is.
- vasco 3y ago
  Let's say someone figures out alignment. We develop models that when plugged into the original ones either in the training as extra stages or as a filter that runs on top. What prevents anyone from just building the same architecture and leaving any alignment parts out Practically invalidating whatever time was spent on it.
  - bakuninsbart 3y ago
    Hopefully the law.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      And how would you enforce it?
- logicchains 3y ago
  >Yeah, that is the whole point - not wanting bad actors to be able to define "alignment" for themselves. Historically the people in power have been by far the worst actors (e.g. over a hundred million people killed by their own governments in the past century), so given them the sole right to "align" AI with their desires seems extremely unethical.
- spookthesunset 3y ago
  Who gets to decide what constitutes a “bad actor”? Sounds an awful lot like “dangerous misinformation”. And based on the last three years “dangerous misinformation” quite often means “information that goes against my narrative” It’s a slippery slope letting private or even public entities define “bad actors” or “misinformation”. And it isn’t even a hypothetical… plenty of factually true information about covid got you labeled as a “bad actor” peddling “dangerous misinformation”. Letting private entities whose platforms have huge influence on society decide what is “misinformation” coming from “bad actors” has proven to be a very scary proposition.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
nullc 3y ago
Exactly. I can't speak about meta specifically, but from my exposure "responsible ai" are generally policy doomers with a heavy pro-control pro-limits perspective, or even worse-- psycho cultists that believe the only safe objective for AI work is the development of an electronic god to impose their own moral will on the world. Either of those options are incompatible with actually ethical behavior, like assuring that the public has access instead of keeping it exclusive to a priesthood that hopes to weaponize the technology against the public 'for the public's own good'.
- 127361 3y ago
  Yes, moral Puritans just in a new modern form.
- voitvodder 3y ago
  [flagged]
- esafak 3y ago
  Do you apply this reasoning with other kinds of weapons too? Because that is how pessimists are treating it: as a weapon in development.
cubefox 3y ago
Kevin Esvelt says open source models could soon be used by terrorists to create bioweapons. https://nitter.net/kesvelt/status/1720440451059335520 https://nitter.net/kesvelt/status/1720440451059335520 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_M._Esvelt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_M._Esvelt
- dmw_ng 3y ago
  There's been instructions for manufacturing weapons useful for terrorism floating around since the BBS days, nothing new here
  - cubefox 3y ago
    It's a big difference when you have an expert which you can ask questions.
    - xvector 3y ago
      Terrorists already have all the information they need to build some heinous shit with ~no external guidance aside from what's already on the internet.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        Engineered viruses could cause far more deaths than conventional weapons. Even more than nuclear weapons, and they are easier to manufacture.
        snypher 3y ago
        This is the same thinking that wants to ban my 3d printer.
    - hollowturtle 3y ago
      expert?! can’t do math why should suggest weapon instructions better? at the first hallucination you explode on the spot
unicornmama 3y ago
Meta’s products have damaged and continue to damage the mental health of hundreds of millions of people, including young children and teenagers. Whatever their motivation to release models, it’s a for-profit business tactic first. Any ethical spin is varnish that was decided after the fact to promote Meta to its employees and the general public.
- xvector 3y ago
  pretty sure this comes down to bad parenting and social media being relatively new on the human timeline - teething pains are to be expected
  - bigfudge 3y ago
    This is absolutely not just "bad parenting". When sending children to school they are now immersed in an online culture that is wholly unaligned with their best interests. There is no "good parenting" strategy that can mitigate the immense resources being poured into subverting their attentional systems for profit. Even taking away their smart phone is no solution: that requires their social exclusion from peers (damaging in itself for child development).
    - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
      You can teach them how to use social media responsibly. Or allow them a phone but limit social media usage (though I prefer the first approach). It’s not like everyone is harmed, the same studies find a positive effect for a significant minority.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- vasco 3y ago
  Meta? What about Snap? What about Tinder? Youtube? Do you have a bone to pick with Meta, the whole internet, or the fact that you wish people would teach their kids how to behave and how long to spend online?
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Let's be honest here, a lot of HN users have a conflict of interest on this topic. AI entrepreneurs trying to get rich from LLMs benefit from LLMs being open source. But the downside risk from e.g. bioweapons is spread across all of society. It's the same sort of asymmetrical cost/benefit that tobacco companies and greenhouse gas emitters face. Of course if you went to an online forum for oil companies, they'd be hopping mad if they're prevented from drilling, and dismissive of global warming risks. It's no different here.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  It is worth calling out the motivations of most entrepreneurs here. But I think that analogy you used is very uncharitable - drilling and burning fossil fuels necessarily harms the environment, but the track record on big companies handling alignment/safety in house, rather than open source with the whole research community working on it is still very much up in the air. Sidney (bing assistant) was easy to prompt inject and ask for bad things, and the research that people have been able to do on forcing the output of llama to confirm to certain rules will likely prove invaluable in the future.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    >the track record on big companies handling alignment/safety in house, rather than open source with the whole research community working on it is still very much up in the air. Sidney (bing assistant) was easy to prompt inject and ask for bad things Yep, Microsoft did a terrible job, and they should've been punished. I'm not claiming that Big AI rocks at safety. I'm claiming that Big AI is also a big target for regulators and public ire. There's at least a chance they will get their act together in response to external pressure. But if cutting-edge models are open sourced indefinitely, they'll effectively be impossible to control. >research that people have been able to do on forcing the output of llama to confirm to certain rules will likely prove invaluable in the future. You may be correct that releasing llama was beneficial from the point of view of safety. But the "conform to certain rules" strategy can basically only work if (a) there's a way to enforce rules that can't be fine-tuned away, or (b) we stop releasing models at some point.
webdoodle 3y ago
After Thiel and Zuckerberg colluded with Cambridge Analytica to use military grade psychological warfare to scoop the elections for Trump and Johnson you still are naive enough to trust either of them?

o11c 3y ago

Exactly this. There certainly needs to be regulation about use of AI to make decisions without sufficient human supervision (which has already proven a problem with prior systems), and someone will have to make a decision about copyright eventually, but closing the models off does absolutely nothing to protect anyone.

cubefox 3y ago
Exactly this. There certainly needs to be regulation about use of bioweapons without sufficient human supervision (which has already proven a problem with prior systems), and someone will have to make a decision about synthetic viruses, but closing the gain of function labs does absolutely nothing to protect anyone.

wilsonnb3 3y ago

> instead being allowed to define “alignment” for themselves. Yeah, that is the whole point - not wanting bad actors to be able to define "alignment" for themselves. Not sure how that is unethical.

litthr 3y ago
Given the shitshow the current board of open Ai has managed to create out of nothing I'd not trust them with a blunt pair of scissors let alone deciding what alignment is.
vasco 3y ago
Let's say someone figures out alignment. We develop models that when plugged into the original ones either in the training as extra stages or as a filter that runs on top. What prevents anyone from just building the same architecture and leaving any alignment parts out Practically invalidating whatever time was spent on it.
- bakuninsbart 3y ago
  Hopefully the law.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    And how would you enforce it?
logicchains 3y ago
>Yeah, that is the whole point - not wanting bad actors to be able to define "alignment" for themselves. Historically the people in power have been by far the worst actors (e.g. over a hundred million people killed by their own governments in the past century), so given them the sole right to "align" AI with their desires seems extremely unethical.
spookthesunset 3y ago
Who gets to decide what constitutes a “bad actor”? Sounds an awful lot like “dangerous misinformation”. And based on the last three years “dangerous misinformation” quite often means “information that goes against my narrative” It’s a slippery slope letting private or even public entities define “bad actors” or “misinformation”. And it isn’t even a hypothetical… plenty of factually true information about covid got you labeled as a “bad actor” peddling “dangerous misinformation”. Letting private entities whose platforms have huge influence on society decide what is “misinformation” coming from “bad actors” has proven to be a very scary proposition.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

nullc 3y ago

Exactly. I can't speak about meta specifically, but from my exposure "responsible ai" are generally policy doomers with a heavy pro-control pro-limits perspective, or even worse-- psycho cultists that believe the only safe objective for AI work is the development of an electronic god to impose their own moral will on the world. Either of those options are incompatible with actually ethical behavior, like assuring that the public has access instead of keeping it exclusive to a priesthood that hopes to weaponize the technology against the public 'for the public's own good'.

127361 3y ago
Yes, moral Puritans just in a new modern form.
voitvodder 3y ago
[flagged]
esafak 3y ago
Do you apply this reasoning with other kinds of weapons too? Because that is how pessimists are treating it: as a weapon in development.

cubefox 3y ago

Kevin Esvelt says open source models could soon be used by terrorists to create bioweapons. https://nitter.net/kesvelt/status/1720440451059335520 https://nitter.net/kesvelt/status/1720440451059335520 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_M._Esvelt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_M._Esvelt

dmw_ng 3y ago
There's been instructions for manufacturing weapons useful for terrorism floating around since the BBS days, nothing new here
- cubefox 3y ago
  It's a big difference when you have an expert which you can ask questions.
  - xvector 3y ago
    Terrorists already have all the information they need to build some heinous shit with ~no external guidance aside from what's already on the internet.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Engineered viruses could cause far more deaths than conventional weapons. Even more than nuclear weapons, and they are easier to manufacture.
      - snypher 3y ago
        This is the same thinking that wants to ban my 3d printer.
  - hollowturtle 3y ago
    expert?! can’t do math why should suggest weapon instructions better? at the first hallucination you explode on the spot

unicornmama 3y ago

Meta’s products have damaged and continue to damage the mental health of hundreds of millions of people, including young children and teenagers. Whatever their motivation to release models, it’s a for-profit business tactic first. Any ethical spin is varnish that was decided after the fact to promote Meta to its employees and the general public.

xvector 3y ago
pretty sure this comes down to bad parenting and social media being relatively new on the human timeline - teething pains are to be expected
- bigfudge 3y ago
  This is absolutely not just "bad parenting". When sending children to school they are now immersed in an online culture that is wholly unaligned with their best interests. There is no "good parenting" strategy that can mitigate the immense resources being poured into subverting their attentional systems for profit. Even taking away their smart phone is no solution: that requires their social exclusion from peers (damaging in itself for child development).
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    You can teach them how to use social media responsibly. Or allow them a phone but limit social media usage (though I prefer the first approach). It’s not like everyone is harmed, the same studies find a positive effect for a significant minority.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
vasco 3y ago
Meta? What about Snap? What about Tinder? Youtube? Do you have a bone to pick with Meta, the whole internet, or the fact that you wish people would teach their kids how to behave and how long to spend online?

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

Let's be honest here, a lot of HN users have a conflict of interest on this topic. AI entrepreneurs trying to get rich from LLMs benefit from LLMs being open source. But the downside risk from e.g. bioweapons is spread across all of society. It's the same sort of asymmetrical cost/benefit that tobacco companies and greenhouse gas emitters face. Of course if you went to an online forum for oil companies, they'd be hopping mad if they're prevented from drilling, and dismissive of global warming risks. It's no different here.

mattnewton 3y ago
It is worth calling out the motivations of most entrepreneurs here. But I think that analogy you used is very uncharitable - drilling and burning fossil fuels necessarily harms the environment, but the track record on big companies handling alignment/safety in house, rather than open source with the whole research community working on it is still very much up in the air. Sidney (bing assistant) was easy to prompt inject and ask for bad things, and the research that people have been able to do on forcing the output of llama to confirm to certain rules will likely prove invaluable in the future.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  >the track record on big companies handling alignment/safety in house, rather than open source with the whole research community working on it is still very much up in the air. Sidney (bing assistant) was easy to prompt inject and ask for bad things Yep, Microsoft did a terrible job, and they should've been punished. I'm not claiming that Big AI rocks at safety. I'm claiming that Big AI is also a big target for regulators and public ire. There's at least a chance they will get their act together in response to external pressure. But if cutting-edge models are open sourced indefinitely, they'll effectively be impossible to control. >research that people have been able to do on forcing the output of llama to confirm to certain rules will likely prove invaluable in the future. You may be correct that releasing llama was beneficial from the point of view of safety. But the "conform to certain rules" strategy can basically only work if (a) there's a way to enforce rules that can't be fine-tuned away, or (b) we stop releasing models at some point.

webdoodle 3y ago

After Thiel and Zuckerberg colluded with Cambridge Analytica to use military grade psychological warfare to scoop the elections for Trump and Johnson you still are naive enough to trust either of them?