8 ms·

I'd much rather this tech be open - better for everyone to have it than a select few. The more powerful, the more important it is that everyone has access.

crazygringo 3y ago
Do you feel the same way about nuclear weapons tech? That "the more powerful, the more important it is that everyone has access"? Especially considering that the biggest killer app for AI could very well be smart weapons like we've never seen before.
- spdustin 3y ago
  I feel this is a false equivalence. Nukes aren’t even close to being commodities, cannot be targeted at a class of people (or a single person), and have a minutely small number of users. (Don’t argue semantics with “class of people” when you know what I mean, btw) On the other hand, tech like this can easily become as common as photoshop, can cause harm to a class of people, and be deployed on a whim by an untrained army of malevolent individuals or groups.
  - nearbuy 3y ago
    So if someone discovered a weapon of mass destruction (say some kind of supervirus) that could be produced and bought cheaply and could be programmed to only kill a certain class of people, then you'd want the recipe to be freely available?
    - lastdong 3y ago
      I understand your perspective regarding the potential risks associated with freely available research, particularly when it comes to illegal weapons and dangerous viruses. However, it's worth considering that by making research available to the world, we enable a collaborative effort in finding solutions and antidotes to such threats. In the case of Covid, the open sharing of information led to the development of vaccines in record time. It's important to weigh the benefits of diversity and open competition against the risks of bad actors misusing the tools. Ultimately, finding a balance between accessibility and responsible use is key. What guarantee do we have that OpenAI won't become an evil actor like Skynet?
      - nearbuy 3y ago
        I'm not advocating for or against secrecy. I'm just not understanding the parent comment I replied to. They said nukes are different than AI because they aren't commodities and can't target specific classes of people, and presumably that's why nukes should be kept secret and AI should be open. Why? That makes no sense to me. If nukes had those qualities, I'd definitely want them kept secret and controlled.
    - sanitycheck 3y ago
      This poses no direct threat to human life though. (Unlike, say, guns - which are totally fine for everyone in the US!) The direct threat to society is actually this kind of secrecy. If ordinary people don't have access to the technology they don't really know what it can do, so they can't develop a good sense of what could now be fake that only a couple of years ago must have been real. Imagine if image editing technology (Photoshop etc) had been restricted to nation states and large powerful corporations. The general public would be so easy to fool with mere photographs - and of course more openly nefarious groups would have found ways to use it anyway. Instead everybody now knows how easily we can edit an image and if we see a shot of Mr Trump apparently sharing a loving embrace with Mr Putin we can make the correct judgement regarding a probable origin.
    - war321 3y ago
      The bottleneck for bioterrorism isn't AI telling you how to do something, it's producing the final result. You wanna curtail bioweapons, monitor the BSL labs, biowarfare labs, bioreactors, and organic 3D printers. ChatGPT telling me how to shoot someone isn't gonna help me if I can't get a gun.
      - nearbuy 3y ago
        This isn't related to my comment. I wasn't asking what if an AI invents a supervirus. I was asking what if someone invents a supervirus. AI isn't involved in this hypothetical in any way. I was replying to a comment saying that nukes aren't commodities and can't target specific classes of people, and I don't understand why those properties in particular mean access to nukes should be kept secret and controlled.
- tavavex 3y ago
  An AI video generator can't kill billions of people, for one. I'd prefer it if access wasn't limited to a single corporation that's accountable to no one and is incentivized to use it for their benefits only.
  - jstummbillig 3y ago
    > accountable to no one What do you mean? Are you being dramatic or do you actually believe that the US government will/can not absolutely shut OpenAI down, if they feel it was required to guarantee state order?
    - tavavex 3y ago
      For the US government to step in, they'd have to do something extremely dangerous (and refuse to share with the government). If we're talking about video generation, the benefits they have are financial, and the lack of accountability is in that they can do things no one else can. I'm not saying they'll be allowed to break the law, there's plenty of space between the two extremes. Though, given how things were going, I can also see OpenAI teaming up with the US government and receiving exclusive privileges to run certain technologies for the sake of "safety". It's what Altman has already been pushing for.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    I think it could. The right sequence of videos sent to the right people could definitely set something catastrophic off.
    - czl 3y ago
      > The right sequence of videos sent to the right people could definitely set something catastrophic off. ...after amazing public world wide demos that show how real the AI generated videos can be? How long has Hollywood had similar "fictional videos" powers?
      - huytersd 3y ago
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Oof, imagine if our safeguard for nuclear weapons was that a private company kept it safe.
- lagrange77 3y ago
  On a geopolitical level 'everyone' does have access.
- solardev 3y ago
  > Especially considering that the biggest killer app for AI could very well be smart weapons like we've never seen before. A homing missile that chases you across continents and shows you disturbing deepfakes of yourself until you lose your mind and ask it to kill you. At that point it switches to encourage mode, rebuilds your ego, and becomes your lifelong friend.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bb88 3y ago
  I don't think it's really that hard to make a nuclear weapon, honestly. Just because you have the plans for one, doesn't mean you have the uranium/plutonium to make one. Weapons-grade uranium doesn't fall into your lap. The ideas of critical mass, prompt fission, and uranium purification, along with the design of the simplest nuclear weapon possible has been out in the public domain for a long time.
- nlnn 3y ago
  While it's probably too idealistic to be possible, I'd rather try and focus on getting people/society/the world to a state where it doesn't matter if everyone has access (i.e. getting to a place where it doesn't matter if everyone has access to nuclear weapons, guns, chemical weapons, etc., because no-one would have the slightest desire to use them). As things are at the moment, while supression of a technology has benefits, it seems like a risky long-term solution. All it takes is for a single world-altering technology to slip through the cracks, and a bad actor could then forever change the world with it.
- Fidelix 3y ago
  Do you feel the same way about electricity?
iwsk 3y ago
Should nukes be open source?
- spdustin 3y ago
  I humbly refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39389262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39389262
  - esafak 3y ago
    ML models of this complexity are just as accessible as nuclear weapons. How many nations possess a GPT-4? The only reason nuclear weapons are not more common is because their proliferation is strictly controlled by conventions and covert action.
- nradov 3y ago
  The basic designs for workable (although inefficient) nuclear weapons have been published in open sources for decades. The hard part is obtaining enough uranium and then refining it.
- baq 3y ago
  If you have two pieces of plutonium and put them too close together you have accidentally created a nuclear weapon… so yeah nukes are open source, plutonium breeding isn’t.
  - extheat 3y ago
    I love it when people make this “nuke” argument because it tells you a lot more about them than it does about anything else. There are so many low information people out there, it’s a bit sad the state of education even in developed countries. There’s people trotting around the word “chemical” at things that are scary without understanding what exactly the word means, how it differs from the word mixture or anything like that. I don’t expect most people to understand the difference between a proton and a quark but at least a general understanding of physics and chemistry would save a lot of people from falling into the “world is magic and information is hidden away inside geniuses” mentality.
jstummbillig 3y ago
As long as destroying things remains at least two magnitudes easier than building things and defending against attacks, this take (as a blanket statement) will continue to be indefensible and irresponsible.

crazygringo 3y ago

Do you feel the same way about nuclear weapons tech? That "the more powerful, the more important it is that everyone has access"? Especially considering that the biggest killer app for AI could very well be smart weapons like we've never seen before.

spdustin 3y ago
I feel this is a false equivalence. Nukes aren’t even close to being commodities, cannot be targeted at a class of people (or a single person), and have a minutely small number of users. (Don’t argue semantics with “class of people” when you know what I mean, btw) On the other hand, tech like this can easily become as common as photoshop, can cause harm to a class of people, and be deployed on a whim by an untrained army of malevolent individuals or groups.
- nearbuy 3y ago
  So if someone discovered a weapon of mass destruction (say some kind of supervirus) that could be produced and bought cheaply and could be programmed to only kill a certain class of people, then you'd want the recipe to be freely available?
  - lastdong 3y ago
    I understand your perspective regarding the potential risks associated with freely available research, particularly when it comes to illegal weapons and dangerous viruses. However, it's worth considering that by making research available to the world, we enable a collaborative effort in finding solutions and antidotes to such threats. In the case of Covid, the open sharing of information led to the development of vaccines in record time. It's important to weigh the benefits of diversity and open competition against the risks of bad actors misusing the tools. Ultimately, finding a balance between accessibility and responsible use is key. What guarantee do we have that OpenAI won't become an evil actor like Skynet?
    - nearbuy 3y ago
      I'm not advocating for or against secrecy. I'm just not understanding the parent comment I replied to. They said nukes are different than AI because they aren't commodities and can't target specific classes of people, and presumably that's why nukes should be kept secret and AI should be open. Why? That makes no sense to me. If nukes had those qualities, I'd definitely want them kept secret and controlled.
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    This poses no direct threat to human life though. (Unlike, say, guns - which are totally fine for everyone in the US!) The direct threat to society is actually this kind of secrecy. If ordinary people don't have access to the technology they don't really know what it can do, so they can't develop a good sense of what could now be fake that only a couple of years ago must have been real. Imagine if image editing technology (Photoshop etc) had been restricted to nation states and large powerful corporations. The general public would be so easy to fool with mere photographs - and of course more openly nefarious groups would have found ways to use it anyway. Instead everybody now knows how easily we can edit an image and if we see a shot of Mr Trump apparently sharing a loving embrace with Mr Putin we can make the correct judgement regarding a probable origin.
  - war321 3y ago
    The bottleneck for bioterrorism isn't AI telling you how to do something, it's producing the final result. You wanna curtail bioweapons, monitor the BSL labs, biowarfare labs, bioreactors, and organic 3D printers. ChatGPT telling me how to shoot someone isn't gonna help me if I can't get a gun.
    - nearbuy 3y ago
      This isn't related to my comment. I wasn't asking what if an AI invents a supervirus. I was asking what if someone invents a supervirus. AI isn't involved in this hypothetical in any way. I was replying to a comment saying that nukes aren't commodities and can't target specific classes of people, and I don't understand why those properties in particular mean access to nukes should be kept secret and controlled.
tavavex 3y ago
An AI video generator can't kill billions of people, for one. I'd prefer it if access wasn't limited to a single corporation that's accountable to no one and is incentivized to use it for their benefits only.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  > accountable to no one What do you mean? Are you being dramatic or do you actually believe that the US government will/can not absolutely shut OpenAI down, if they feel it was required to guarantee state order?
  - tavavex 3y ago
    For the US government to step in, they'd have to do something extremely dangerous (and refuse to share with the government). If we're talking about video generation, the benefits they have are financial, and the lack of accountability is in that they can do things no one else can. I'm not saying they'll be allowed to break the law, there's plenty of space between the two extremes. Though, given how things were going, I can also see OpenAI teaming up with the US government and receiving exclusive privileges to run certain technologies for the sake of "safety". It's what Altman has already been pushing for.
- huytersd 3y ago
  I think it could. The right sequence of videos sent to the right people could definitely set something catastrophic off.
  - czl 3y ago
    > The right sequence of videos sent to the right people could definitely set something catastrophic off. ...after amazing public world wide demos that show how real the AI generated videos can be? How long has Hollywood had similar "fictional videos" powers?
    - huytersd 3y ago
Vinnl 3y ago
Oof, imagine if our safeguard for nuclear weapons was that a private company kept it safe.
lagrange77 3y ago
On a geopolitical level 'everyone' does have access.
solardev 3y ago
> Especially considering that the biggest killer app for AI could very well be smart weapons like we've never seen before. A homing missile that chases you across continents and shows you disturbing deepfakes of yourself until you lose your mind and ask it to kill you. At that point it switches to encourage mode, rebuilds your ego, and becomes your lifelong friend.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bb88 3y ago
I don't think it's really that hard to make a nuclear weapon, honestly. Just because you have the plans for one, doesn't mean you have the uranium/plutonium to make one. Weapons-grade uranium doesn't fall into your lap. The ideas of critical mass, prompt fission, and uranium purification, along with the design of the simplest nuclear weapon possible has been out in the public domain for a long time.
nlnn 3y ago
While it's probably too idealistic to be possible, I'd rather try and focus on getting people/society/the world to a state where it doesn't matter if everyone has access (i.e. getting to a place where it doesn't matter if everyone has access to nuclear weapons, guns, chemical weapons, etc., because no-one would have the slightest desire to use them). As things are at the moment, while supression of a technology has benefits, it seems like a risky long-term solution. All it takes is for a single world-altering technology to slip through the cracks, and a bad actor could then forever change the world with it.
Fidelix 3y ago
Do you feel the same way about electricity?

iwsk 3y ago

Should nukes be open source?

spdustin 3y ago
I humbly refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39389262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39389262
- esafak 3y ago
  ML models of this complexity are just as accessible as nuclear weapons. How many nations possess a GPT-4? The only reason nuclear weapons are not more common is because their proliferation is strictly controlled by conventions and covert action.
nradov 3y ago
The basic designs for workable (although inefficient) nuclear weapons have been published in open sources for decades. The hard part is obtaining enough uranium and then refining it.
baq 3y ago
If you have two pieces of plutonium and put them too close together you have accidentally created a nuclear weapon… so yeah nukes are open source, plutonium breeding isn’t.
- extheat 3y ago
  I love it when people make this “nuke” argument because it tells you a lot more about them than it does about anything else. There are so many low information people out there, it’s a bit sad the state of education even in developed countries. There’s people trotting around the word “chemical” at things that are scary without understanding what exactly the word means, how it differs from the word mixture or anything like that. I don’t expect most people to understand the difference between a proton and a quark but at least a general understanding of physics and chemistry would save a lot of people from falling into the “world is magic and information is hidden away inside geniuses” mentality.

jstummbillig 3y ago

As long as destroying things remains at least two magnitudes easier than building things and defending against attacks, this take (as a blanket statement) will continue to be indefensible and irresponsible.