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The only more generous interpretation I can see is that OpenAI actually did intend to be open, but only between December 11th 2015 to January 2nd 2016, at which

The only more generous interpretation I can see is that OpenAI actually did intend to be open, but only between December 11th 2015 to January 2nd 2016, at which point they had changed their mind.

ben_w 2y ago
The paragraph immediately preceding the quotation is: "The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff." The article in question appears to be: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/ Which opens with: """H.G. Wells’ 1914 sci-fi book The World Set Free did a pretty good job predicting nuclear weapons: They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands…before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city""" and, I hope I'm summarising usefully rather than cherry-picking because it's quite long, also says: """Once again: The decision to make AI findings open source is a tradeoff between risks and benefits. The risk is that in a world with hard takeoffs and difficult control problems, you get superhuman AIs that hurl everybody off cliffs. The benefit is that in a world with slow takeoffs and no control problems, nobody will be able to use their sole possession of the only existing AI to garner too much power. But the benefits just aren’t clear enough to justify that level of risk. I’m still not even sure exactly how the OpenAI founders visualize the future they’re trying to prevent. Are AIs fast and dangerous? Are they slow and easily-controlled? Does just one company have them? Several companies? All rich people? Are they a moderate advantage? A huge advantage? None of those possibilities seem dire enough to justify OpenAI’s tradeoff against safety.""" and """Elon Musk famously said that AIs are “potentially more dangerous than nukes”. He’s right – so AI probably shouldn’t be open source any more than nukes should."" This is what OpenAI and Musk were discussing in the context of responding to "I've seen you […] doing a lot of interviews recently extolling the virtues of open sourcing AI, but I presume you realise that this is not some sort of panacea that will somehow magically solve the safety problem?"

The only more generous interpretation I can see is that OpenAI actually did intend to be open, but only between December 11th 2015 to January 2nd 2016, at which point they had changed their mind.

ben_w 2y ago

The paragraph immediately preceding the quotation is: "The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff." The article in question appears to be: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/ Which opens with: """H.G. Wells’ 1914 sci-fi book The World Set Free did a pretty good job predicting nuclear weapons: They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands…before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city""" and, I hope I'm summarising usefully rather than cherry-picking because it's quite long, also says: """Once again: The decision to make AI findings open source is a tradeoff between risks and benefits. The risk is that in a world with hard takeoffs and difficult control problems, you get superhuman AIs that hurl everybody off cliffs. The benefit is that in a world with slow takeoffs and no control problems, nobody will be able to use their sole possession of the only existing AI to garner too much power. But the benefits just aren’t clear enough to justify that level of risk. I’m still not even sure exactly how the OpenAI founders visualize the future they’re trying to prevent. Are AIs fast and dangerous? Are they slow and easily-controlled? Does just one company have them? Several companies? All rich people? Are they a moderate advantage? A huge advantage? None of those possibilities seem dire enough to justify OpenAI’s tradeoff against safety.""" and """Elon Musk famously said that AIs are “potentially more dangerous than nukes”. He’s right – so AI probably shouldn’t be open source any more than nukes should."" This is what OpenAI and Musk were discussing in the context of responding to "I've seen you […] doing a lot of interviews recently extolling the virtues of open sourcing AI, but I presume you realise that this is not some sort of panacea that will somehow magically solve the safety problem?"