7 ms·

Remember when the world freaked out over encryption, thinking every coded message was a digital skeleton key to anarchy? Yeah, the 90s were wild with the whole

• jj999 3y ago
  The fight against encryption continue to this day and while https is now ubiquitous, large-scale cdns makes it somewhat a moot point and emails are still largely plaintext.
  • solatic 3y ago
    > emails are still largely plaintext But people's private digital communications have largely moved to platforms like WhatsApp and Messenger which enjoy end-to-end encryption. Email, at least between major providers, today enjoys TLS over the wire while being sent. I'm sure there are various flaws and weaknesses and maybe even backdoors, but trying to make it sound like we lost the fight for encryption because emails are in plaintext is rather disingenuous.
    • oez 3y ago
      I'm not sure Facebook and a now Facebook owned platform are good examples for private communications. There was an article posted here a week or two ago detailing how Facebook sold access to the contents of users private messages to advertisers.
      • spacebanana7 3y ago
        It represents a step forward from the 90s for the vast majority of people. E2E in messenger and WhatsApp is still painful for LEO. The article last week (assuming you're referring to this [1]) involved users consenting for Netflix to see their messages. A user from the 90s could have made the same mistake sharing plaintext emails. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858850
    • sidewndr46 3y ago
      If you think Facebook is providing you private communications, you might want to rethink your operational security.
    • guappa 3y ago
      > like WhatsApp and Messenger which enjoy end-to-end encryption They aren't open source. For all we know they have backdoors.
• opdahl 3y ago
  Off-topic but this user seems to be using ChatGPT or something similar for almost every single comment. Does Hacker News have a stance on this or is the thinking that it is allowed as long as the content is good?
  • BoorishBears 3y ago
    It's important not to jump to conclusions about how others are participating in discussions, especially based on the content or style of their comments alone. Many users might have a consistent way of expressing themselves, or they may be leveraging various tools and resources to enhance their contributions. The key focus should always be on the quality and relevance of the content shared.
    • wruza 3y ago
      That doesn't only feel odd, it also is empty prose based on a far-fetched analogy. Apologies to the root commenter if they wrote it themselves, but quality and relevance is lacking here. 99% sure some of their posts are at least heavily augmented.
    • criddell 3y ago
      This comment reads like a GPT-generated comment! When I look at your history, your other comments seem genuine. I’m probably totally wrong, but I do like the idea of using GPT to counter anti-GPT sentiment. :)
    • mdale 3y ago
      I imagine AI is out there defending it's right to exist where we don't pick up on it's pose.
    • CamperBob2 3y ago
      golf clap
  • stareatgoats 3y ago
    There is indeed a stance, adding autogenerated comments can get you banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628
• Nevermark 3y ago
  Well, that was a healthy rant Life, all biological life with us as a kind of pinnacle, is about to go through radical change. There is no risk free path. It isn’t guaranteed that a single human will be alive in 100 years - because we failed, or even because technologically we succeeded But a degree of openness is necessary for our best ideas, our most good faith collaborations, to have a chance It is more chaotic to trust each other, en masse. But I also think it is our best bet The dice must be rolled. Best we throw them bold
• ben_w 3y ago
  > Just like code was the battleground back then, open model weights are the new frontier. Think about it—code is just a bunch of instructions, right? Well, model weights are pretty much the same; they're the brains behind AI, telling it how to think and learn. Saying "nah, you can't share those" is like trying to put a genie back in its bottle after it's shown you it can grant wishes. I think telling a genie "I wish for no more wishes" is a common enough trope. I'd agree that making weights available is basically irreversible; however making it illegal to make new sets of weights available is probably fairly achievable… at present. - Some of the issues with "winning" the battle for encryption include: 1) We also need it to defend normal people from attackers 2) It's simple enough to print onto a T-shirt 3) The developers recognised the value and wanted to share this The differences with AI include: 1) The most capable models don't fit on most personal devices at present, let alone T-shirts 2) 95% of the advantages can be had from centralised systems without needing to distribute the models directly to everyone 3) A huge number of developers have signed an open letter which is basically screaming "please regulate us! We don't want to be in an arms race with each other to make this more capable! We don't know what we're doing or what risks this has!"
  • SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    As long as everyone admits that number 3 “please regulate us” is really just asking for regulatory capture and is in no way a good faith move, but rather protectionism. Then I’m good to proceed with these conversations. These people have not just suddenly developed consciouses. This is a game move.
    • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Numbers 1 and 2 are the same thing though: 1) You can run a very large model on existing cheap hardware, with poor performance, but it will run. Also, "most personal devices at present" is doing all the work here. Obviously if there is now demand for devices with hundreds of GB of VRAM then sellers will soon make them and buyers will buy them. That amount of memory is not actually that expensive. And it's presenting a false dichotomy where the only alternatives are companies the size of Microsoft and the ability to run GPT-4 locally on your existing iPhone. There are thousands of medium-sized companies that can afford five to six figures in hardware, and any individual could rent big hardware on any cloud provider -- requiring them to compete with each other -- instead of locking each model behind a single monopoly service. 2) Claiming that the benefit of people being able to run the models locally is only 5% is absurd. The privacy benefit of not sending your sensitive data to a third party is worth more than that by itself, much less setting up some huge institutions to have an oligopoly over the technology and subject everyone to all the abuses inherent in uncompetitive markets. But from the perspective of those institutions they want to classify those benefits as costs, so they try to come up with some malarkey about how they need to gatekeep for "safety" because so they can control you is unsympathetic.
• anileated 3y ago
  Weights is derivative work, and as such should follow the licensing of the original works. If those works are public domain or were appropriately licensed, distributing weights openly should be protected as free speech. And let’s not anthropomorphize of ML. Models don’t “think” or “learn”. The only party with free will and agency is whoever makes or operates them; trying to paint an unthinking tool as a human is just a means of waiving responsibility for them.
  • andy99 3y ago
    > Weights is derivative work, and as such should follow the licensing of the original works. No that's something you made up.
    • owisd 3y ago
      Property rights in general are a thing made up by people, we're just arguing over where to draw the line.
      • idle_zealot 3y ago
        Ideally somewhere between "you're not allowed to take my things" and "you're not allowed to learn from what I tell you".
      • PeterisP 3y ago
        Not really - "arguing over where to draw the line" would be a discussion about how a hypothetical new law should treat model weights; however, assertions about whether they are a derivative work (or even "work" as such, in the sense of copyright law - noncreative transformations aren't copyrightable works, no matter how much "sweat of brow" or money they took) is a discussion about where the old copyright laws have drawn the line, and the "should's" don't matter there, it's about how the courts will interpret the precedent, and at the moment they haven't said that they are derived works, and while they could declare that, there are all kinds of arguments why they also might declare the opposite.
      • zoobab 3y ago
• nathansherburn 3y ago
  I share your concerns and think you're broadly correct. I think it's worth adding some nuance though. When you drill into specifics there are almost always exceptions. For instance, in your example about sharing research, there are certainly some types of research we shouldn't automatically and immediately make publicly available like biological superviruses or software vulnerabilities. I think the same can be said about AI. We should aim to be as open as we can but I'd be hesitant about being an open source absolutist.
  • from-nibly 3y ago
    No absolutely not. To assume that there even are "good guys" that can "do it safely" is INSANE. Any attempt to prevent democratizing AI is just a capitalist ploy to make a monopoly over their market. There is no saftey play here. The FED needs to stay the frik away from this.
    • nathansherburn 3y ago
      I agree we want to democratize AI and we should be very, very weary of powerful people trying to get a monopoly on AI. But I'm not ready to say absolutely everything should immediately be shared with everyone. At least not until it's clear we know what we're dealing with. I know it can be hard to trust people but the fact is we have to. Even today, there are many people with the power to end the world (nuclear weapons, viruses etc) but we trust the people who have these capabilities not to abuse their power. We do this because we don't want anyone to have the right to launch nuclear weapons. And I think that's wise. I definitely don't know for sure but AI may be another one of these technologies. Either way, you can fight against regulatory capture, the downsides of capitalism etc without being an open source absolutist.
• nrawe 3y ago
  I don't think this analogy is wholly applicable, simply given the scale and potential blast radius of certain classes of models. A more apt analogy would be nuclear technology. There are the Atomic Gardeners on the one hand, who believe in only the good and see the promise of the technology and peoples intent, and then there is the bitter struggle for power and threat which hinges on it. In most cases, ML models have the capability to revolutionise or at least augment/optimise problems in predictable ways. In extreme cases, deepfake technology and the like can erode at the tenuous levels of trust which hold societies together. We have seen what happens when disinformation, mistrust, and even basic levels of technology meet: look at students being lynched in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere due to WhatsApp group messages claiming blasphemy; or the practice of SWOTing; or the insinuation of CSE gangs leading to a pizza parlour in the US being stormed by someone with a machine gun. The stakes here are a lot larger than pure technologists, todays Atomic Gardeners, may perceive. In that context, legislation is trying to provide a counterweight to the pace of change to allow for some – any – breathing room, and particularly to prevent an increasingly hostile cast of nation states from weaponising that technology, even in small ways. For example, OSINT of North Koreas operations show that the basic parts needed for making baby powder are also capable of being used for weapons development.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • fnordlord 3y ago
    I think all the issues that you've listed are serious. They're the things that keep me up at night. But I don't think the content is really problematic (except maybe deep fakes), it's the untraceable nature of their sources. To me, it's anonymity that gives them their power. If we knew that the content was posted by a specific REAL person/company/government, we could judge it's authenticity and hold them liable if it's criminal in some way. Not saying there isn't a place for anonymity on the internet but to me, that's the problem that needs to be solved more so than AI.
  • mlsu 3y ago
    imho, and you can call me an atomic gardener if you wish, nuclear tech is a bad example. If we had actually gone "all in" on nuclear to produce electricity, our and the world's clean energy footprint might result in warming of entire degC's less than it's currently projected to be. Climate change is a global problem -- what stakes could possibly be higher than ecological collapse? I actually cannot think of any example where successfully withholding technology has helped people thrive and prosper. People using this tech to sow distrust is outweighed, so obviously and so massively, by the benefit of having an intelligent machine companion under their complete control. Every "weapons technology" in human history has been used for good. Every single one.
• unethical_ban 3y ago
  Encryption was about ensuring trust and privacy. AI is about destroying trust (in the short term). Give every script kiddie, bored teenager, Mexican cartel and scammer an AI that can mimic anyone's voice and likeness, and the world will get a lot messier. I don't think they're the same. I wish we could put the genie back in the bottle. I think AI will make humanity less special. I'm not convinced society will be better with AI. The benefits must push down cost of living for the masses, improve quality of life for the masses, all without destroying society with disinformation and shattering job loss.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  I think LLMs have considerably more probability to make the world worse overall than cryptography does (the sheer level of information bullshit they can develop for pennies is going to transform our society and I doubt it is going to be for the better). Still I don't see the point of banning open weight models and LLMs that don't have guardrails. And I'm not sure you can realistically construct laws that would do it accurately. The genie is out of the bottle, pandora's box is opened, etc, etc. And locking down models with guardrails is only something that corporations have to do in order to avoid having a public racist chatbot problem and the associated headlines.