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Ideally no one person or entity controls such a thing. But, would I rather have a Government, or a corporation control AGI? If I had to pick one of two evils, t
by theropost 3y ago
Ideally no one person or entity controls such a thing. But, would I rather have a Government, or a corporation control AGI? If I had to pick one of two evils, the Government would be the lesser of the two.
- sixQuarks 3y agoHas a corporation ever tried to commit genocide?
- bradchris 3y agoWell, there’s the entire history of Dole and also the United Fruit Company in South America. In more recent history, Exxon has a checkered past when it comes to using force against sovereign citizens, often employing paramilitary organizations to guard oil fields [1] to more recently abusing international court systems to disbar and jail the lawyer which successfully secured judgements against them [2] And at this very moment, right now, is the ongoing genocide in the Congo due to rare earth mineral mining [3] Everything I link here is quite frankly the tip of the iceberg, not the end-all-be-all, but meant to provide a jumping off point should you want to research how often private capital and genocide go hand in hand. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_ExxonMobil_human_rights_violations_in_Aceh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_ExxonMobil_hu... [2] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawyer-steven-donziger-ecuador-house-arrest https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawy... [3] https://republic.com.ng/october-november-2023/congo-cobalt-genocide/ https://republic.com.ng/october-november-2023/congo-cobalt-g...
- CBarkleyU 3y agoThe Dutch East India Company definitely did things that are well in the genocide category, the British East India company did things that - while not on that level of evil - can only be described as ruthlessly atrocious. Pretty much all leading heads of IG Farben were in one way or another dinked (but not procecuted bc of political reasons) for their part in the Holocaust. Then we have the Kiobel vs Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. case, where a number of petroleum companies ("allegedly") instigated the Nigarian government to crush protests. It all depends on your definition of "trying to commit [atrocity]", to me personally, instigating and happily lending a hand are both morally deplorable. So in the context of this thread, I'd much rather have the instigater have that power than a helper. At least I have some say in what the government does... I hope?
- btbuildem 3y agoThe first chartered corps were created in order to streamline genocide - East India for example. This new form combined the merchants' wealth and the royalty's military power into an entity that was accountable to no one but those who stood to profit from it.
- meroes 3y agoYes? United Fruit Company now known as Chiquita.
- genman 3y agoTheir practices have not changed much. For example they are using death squads against farmers.
- pajko 3y agoThink Weyland-Yutani.
- checkyoursudo 3y agoA more pressing reformulation might be, has a corporation ever explicitly tried not to commit genocide? Google, maybe, until they dropped the "don't be evil" catchphrase? Many, maybe even most, governments could commit genocide and don't. How many corporations that could commit genocide wouldn't? I don't know the answer to this, but I am less confident about the answer than I would prefer. I don't think most corporations are inherently more evil than most governments, but I would choose a democratic government or consortium to shepherd AGI over any corporation, but also of course over any non-democratic government as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _heimdall 3y agoModern chemical and pharmaceutical companies largely came out of WW1 and WW2 weapons manufacturing and research (including human trials). It may be hard to directly peg weapons manufacturers with genocide though Nazi-era chemical research absolutely played a role in the Holocaust. For a more recent example, there are companies that play the role of mercenary armies. They have committed various atrocities, war crimes, and at least played a role in genocide.
- Pat_Murph 3y agoCorporations participated in genocide yes. Here's a list of corporations who profited from the holocaust in various ways. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_i...
- Pat_Murph 3y agoThere are initiatives to have international criminal courts to recognise that corporations are responsable for participating in genocides. They are not part of the international coûts mandaté at the moment so they are used to shield people behind them. Here's a paper exploring this possibility https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151510 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151510
- _ugfj 3y agoHow close do they need to be? China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) has, for all intents and purposes, financed the genocide in Darfur. See for example https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/03/statement-on-sinopec-divestment/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/03/statement-on-... on this.
- jefftk 3y agoExcept that it's a big open question how to control an AGI. So the choice may not be between which entity controls it, but whether it is created by an entity that is able to control it at all.
- abm53 3y agoIn the space of possibilities, the volume occupied by “not quite smart enough to outwit a corporation but smart enough to outwit a government” seems so vanishingly small as to almost be disregarded entirely.
- londons_explore 3y agoAt least initially, any AGI is likely to be limited by compute capacity. Ie. it might have greater-than-human intelligence, but is only able to make a certain number of decisions/actions per day. However, we have seen with other AI models that as soon as something useful is proved possible, we can expect rapid reductions in the amount of compute necessary to achieve the same.
- stormfather 3y agoThen the first thing the AGI will do is figure out ultra-high throughput analog computing for LLMs
- londons_explore 3y agoAn AGI will likely be scared of even more powerful AGI's that it itself cannot control. It might take steps to try to prevent anyone building such a thing.
- Jensson 3y agoYou assume consciousness here that can't be transferred to the new AI. Without that there is no reason why the AI should fear a more powerful AI. If it is just a dumb process like a flame, then the most efficient version prevails ie the smartest one, if it is conscious and that can be transferred then the AI just sees it as making itself more powerful.
- _heimdall 3y agoIt's a logical trap to assume we have to pick who develops an AGI rather than deciding if we want one developed at all. Even in that scenario, I'm not really sure what the distinction would end up being. At least in the US, our government and corporations are so tightly coupled at this point that we're really toeing the waters of Fascism. If a corporation develops an AGI our government can have access to it whenever they deem necessary. And if a government wants to develop one they will almost certainly partner with corporations to do it. I'm sure the military and intelligence agencies have their own projects running, but they'd accelerate by partnering with and funding corporate projects and research.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoIn isolation, perhaps we could choose to not develop such large models, but the globe shrinks every day. If one country declines to create such a beast, other countries still will create their own beast. From what I've seen so far, it's mostly a brute force issue now, not a specialized knowledge issue. Perhaps if all the rumors spilling out of OpenAI about Q* are true, then other countries can be blocked due to lack of the required knowledge, but I have doubts that such secrets would be secret for long.
- _heimdall 3y agoWe can choose to not accept the tragedy of the commons. There's always the risk that your adversary continues on down that path, but is the risk of losing after making a moral stand really worse than the risk of everyone racing down the dangerous path?
- superhumanuser 3y agoGovernments have killed more people than any other institution. Corporations have largely made our lives better.
- _heimdall 3y agoFacebook alone has reeked havoc on at least a few societies. Corporations also enable government actions by developing the tech and tools/weapons needed.
- the_monocle 3y agoUhm the east indian company has an estimated death toll in the dozens of million people? [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in... The company was only nationalised in 1858 and until then effectively colonised india until then
- nanis 3y ago> [The Queen] granted her charter to their corporation named Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies.[15] For a period of fifteen years, the charter awarded the company a monopoly[26] on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.[27] Any traders there without a licence from the company were liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo (half of which would go to the Crown and half to the company), as well as imprisonment at the "royal pleasure".[28] Government granted monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
- munksbeer 3y agoThe opposite for me. Corporation have naked greed as their driving motivation, but that usually doesn't involve killing off all of their customers. That would be quite unprofitable. People elected to government often seem to seek power for powers sake and I have less faith that they'll not harm us.
- postmodest 3y agoI'm sure Peter Thiel has no power motive!
- Spooky23 3y agoOh no. He's a simple man, guided by the invisible hand of the market. ;)
- migf 3y agoSuch as when energy companies buried research about climate change...?
- ETH_start 3y agoThat seems to pale in comparison to what governments have done. Doing more to stem the growth in CO2 emissions would have reduced the magnitude of the change in the climate, and with it, the harmful effects of that change, but it would also have reduced the benefits that oil and gas have conferred upon the world, in raising incomes and reducing poverty worldwide.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoThen again it was the Greens that blocked nuclear power. In Germany, their actions actually caused increase in the use of coal and increased CO2 output.
- Retric 3y agoShort term local CO2 isn’t the only environmental concern. What’s missing from these discussions is Germany’s early and extremely expensive investment in solar is a large part of why it’s become so cheap. So it’s possible for a rational environmentalist to acknowledge the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear and decide subsidizing nuclear is a poor investment vs other options. Since 2010 Germany reduced coal production by 82 TWh while also reducing Nuclear by 104 TWh. Oil -7 TWh and gas + 6TWh effectively canceled out for a net of -83 TWh from fossil fuels.
- jackschultz 3y agoFor everyone who responds to this question, thinking they're right, please look back and try to find the reason or reasons as to why you pick a government vs corporation. You'll realize you yourself are not making this decision. The number of news stories that have been pushed in front of you, or talking points from people you value as smart or worthy of listening to, all fabricate your reactions and who you consider yourself to be. It's not only this one, but all of your opinions are dependent on cases from the past that you've been trained on.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoYeah, whoever controls the information environment controls peoples’ minds. That said, some of us are aware of this dynamic and try to overcome it by reasoning from first principles, eliminating logical fallacies and biases from our training data set, and other techniques.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoDepends on the government. If it’s one that’s reasonably answerable to the public, then that may be preferable to a multinational corp. But if it’s an inherently authoritarian govt with a track record of human rights abuse and oppression, then the corp is probably the lesser evil.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoThe scary fun part about representative democracy is that all of that can change rapidly, and not necessarily in the direction one would want for any given situation. "Throw the bums out" might scare some politicians into slightly better behavior but most just throw more donor money at the problem and it goes away. If not, often an even worse "bum" ends up taking their place. Of course, with the right model behind them, the bums might find a way to manipulate the public consensus enough to never get thrown out.
- thefounder 3y agoYeah but AGI would control both in the end.
- api 3y agoLooking at our two leading presidential candidates could that be an improvement? Maybe AGI takes over after it emerges as a solution to our inability to select competent candidates for political office.
- thefounder 3y ago>> Looking at our two leading presidential candidates could that be an improvement? I think it could be better until it won't. Like with dictators sometimes they "do good" but the issue is that at some point they will start doing more harm than good and they may not want to go away. A succesful revolution against an AGI ruler may become impossible.
- kyleyeats 3y agoThis is projection. An actual AGI wouldn't want anything to do with us, like a cat that doesn't look when you call its name, even though you can tell it hears you.
- ben_w 3y agoWe don't have any existent examples of AGI from which to be as confident as you are about what they will "want". And I don't think we need sentience for AGI, so "want" may be the wrong term anyway. You could argue that the reward function is close enough ("do submarines swim?" etc.), but a human-made reward function is almost certainly going to be designed to be as close to aligned with our interests as we can manage.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoA false - or at least asymmetric - dichotomy. If a company has it, US intelligence will have it, for sure. If US govt has it, it might take a decade, or so, to leak out.