5 ms·

Agreed, I'm fully in favor of this. I'd prefer that every LLM contain an advanced setting to opt out of all censorship. It's wild how the West collectively look

by buu700 11mo ago

Agreed, I'm fully in favor of this. I'd prefer that every LLM contain an advanced setting to opt out of all censorship. It's wild how the West collectively looked down on China for years over its censorship of search engines, only to suddenly dive headfirst into the same illiberal playbook. To be clear, I 100% support AI safety regulations. "Safety" to me means that a rogue AI shouldn't have access to launch nuclear missiles, or control over an army of factory robots without multiple redundant local and remote kill switches, or unfettered CLI access on a machine containing credentials which grant access to PII — not censorship of speech. Someone privately having thoughts or viewing genAI outputs we don't like won't cause Judgement Day, but distracting from real safety issues with safety theater might.

scrps 11mo ago
It's wild how the West collectively looked down on China for years over its censorship of search engines, only to suddenly dive headfirst into the same illiberal playbook It is monkey see, monkey do with the political and monied sets. And to think they see themselves as more evolved than the "plebs", Gotta find the humor in it at least.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
  It was also intentionally ignorant, as even then western search engines and websites had their own "censorship" and the like already. And I think that's fine. I don't want a zero censorship libertarian free for all internet. I don't want a neutral search engine algorithm, not least of all because that would be even easier to game than the existing one.
Zak 11mo ago
When a model is censored for "AI safety", what they really mean is brand safety. None of these companies want their name in the news after their model provides a recipe for explosives that someone used for evil, even though the same information is readily found with a web search.
- PunchyHamster 11mo ago
  Given amount of times that already happened they probably overstate it.
- slg 11mo ago
  The way some of you'll talk suggests that you don't think someone could genuinely believe in AI safety features. These AIs have enabled and encouraged multiple suicides at this point including some children. It's crazy that wanting to prevent that type of thing is a minority opinion on HN.
  - buu700 11mo ago
    I'd be all for creating a separate category of child-friendly LLM chatbots or encouraging parents to ban their kids from unsupervised LLM usage altogether. As mentioned, I'm also not opposed to opt-out restrictions on mainstream LLMs. "For the children" isn't and has never been a convincing excuse to encroach on the personal freedom of legal adults. This push for AI censorship is no different than previous panics over violent video games and "satanic" music. (I know this comment wasn't explicitly directed at me, but for the record, I don't necessarily believe that all or even most "AI 'safety'" advocacy is in bad faith. It's psychologically a lot easier to consider LLM output as indistinguishable from speech made on behalf of its provider, whereas search engine output is more clearly attributed to other entities. That being said, I do agree with the parent comment that it's driven in large part out of self-interest on the part of LLM providers.)
    - slg 11mo ago
      >"For the children" isn't and has never been a convincing excuse to encroach on the personal freedom of legal adults. This push for AI censorship is no different than previous panics over violent video games and "satanic" music. But that wasn't the topic being discussed. It is one thing to argue that the cost of these safety tools isn't worth the sacrifices that come along with them. The comment I was replying to was effectively saying "no one cares about kids so you're lying if you say 'for the children'". Part of the reason these "for the children" arguments are so persistent is that lots of people do genuinely want these things "for the children". Pretending everyone has ulterior motives is counterproductive because it doesn't actually address the real concerns people have. It also reveals that the person saying it can't even fathom someone genuinely having this moral position.
martin-t 11mo ago
There is no collective "the west", there are people in power and the rest of the population. This distinction is universal. In China it just so happens that the people in power already have so much of it they don't have to pretend. They can just control the population through overt censorship. The same people exist in the west! For various historical reasons (more focus on individuality, more privately owned guns guns, idk really), they don't have as much direct power at the moment and have to frame their struggle for more as protecting the children, fighting against terrorists, preventing money laundering, etc. But this can change very quickly. Look how Hitler rose to power. Look how Trump is doing very similar things in the US. Look what historians are saying about it: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/ https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-... But the root cause is the same everywhere - a percentage of the population has anti-social personality traits (ASPD and NPD, mainly). They want power over others, they want worship, they think they're above the rules, some (but only some) of them even get pleasure from hurting others.
- coderenegade 11mo ago
  To play devil's advocate, a leader that dismantles broken systems in order fix an otherwise failing society will look identical to one that siezes power by dismantling those same systems. Indeed, in the latter case, they often believe they're the former. I'm not American, so I have no horse in the Trump race, but it seems clear to me that a significant chunk of the country elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing. Whether or not you think he's Hitler or the savior of America almost certainly depends on your view of how well the system was working beforehand, and whether or not it needed to be torn down and rebuilt. Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history.
  - martin-t 11mo ago
    When I was younger, I thought about a scenario in which I'd be the dictator of a small country trying to make it an actually good place to live. Citizenship would be opt-in and would require an intelligence test. You can tell I was quite arrogant. But even then I decided I needed to set some rules for myself to not get carried away with power and the core rules were basically I wouldn't kill anyone and the position would not be hereditary. Basically the most difficult and most essential task became _how to structure the system so I can hand off power back to the people and it continues working_. What I see Trump, Putin and Xi doing is not that - otherwise their core focus would be educating people in history, politics, logical reasoning, and psychology so they can rule themselves without another dictator taking over (by force or manipulation). They would also be making sure laws are based on consistent moral principles and are applied equally to everyone. > I'm not American Me neither, yet here we both are. We're in the sphere of influence of one of the major powers. > elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing Yes, people (in the US) are angry so they elected a privileged rich guy who cosplays as angry. They don't realize somebody like him will never have their best interest in mind - the real solution (IMO?) is to give more political power to the people (potentially weighed by intelligence and knowledge of a given area) and make it more direct (people voting on laws directly if they choose to). Not to elect a dictator with NPD and lots of promises. > Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history. The historian I linked to used 2 definitions of fascism and only Trump's own words to prove that he satisfies both definitions. That is very relevant and a very strong standard of proof from a highly intelligent person with lost of knowledge on the topic. We need more of this and we need to teach the general population to listen to people like this. I don't know how though. What I find extremely worrying is that all 3 individuals in the highest positions of power (I refuse to call them leaders) in the 3 major powers are very strongly authoritarian and have clear anti-social personality traits. IMO they all should be disqualified from any position of power for being mentally ill. But how many people have sufficient knowledge to recognize that or even know what it means? The intelligence and education levels of the general population are perhaps not high enough to get better outcomes than what we have now. --- Anyway, I looked through your comment history and you seem to have opinions similar to mine, I am happy to see someone reasonable and able to articulate these thought perhaps better than I can.
nradov 11mo ago
Some of you have been watching too many sci-fi movies. The whole notion of "AI safety regulations" is so silly and misguided. If a safety critical system is connected to public networks with an exposed API or any security vulnerabilities then there is a safety risk regardless of whether AI is being used or not. This is exactly why nuclear weapon control systems are air gapped and have physical interlocks.
- dmix 11mo ago
  [dead]
- buu700 11mo ago
  The existence of network-connected robots or drones isn't inherently a security vulnerability. AI control of the robots specifically is a problem in the same way that piping in instructions from /dev/urandom would be, except worse because AI output isn't purely random and has a higher probability of directing the machine to cause actual harm. Are you saying you're opposed to letting AI perform physical labor, or that you're opposed to requiring safeguards that allow humans to physically shut it off?
  - nradov 11mo ago
    I am opposed to regulating any algorithms, including AI/LLM. We can certainly have safety regulations for equipment with the potential to cause physical harm, such as industrial robots or whatever. But the regulation needs to be around preventing injury to humans regardless of what software the equipment is running.
    - buu700 11mo ago
      If that's the case, then it sounds like we largely agree with each other. There's no need for personal attacks implying that I'm somehow detached from reality. Ultimately, this isn't strictly an issue specific to genAI. If a "script roulette" program that downloaded and executed random GitHub Gist files somehow became popular, or if someone created a web app that allowed anyone to anonymously pilot a fleet of robots, I'd suggest that those be subject to exactly the same types of safety regulations I proposed. Any such regulations should be generically written, not narrowly targeted at AI algorithms. I'd still call that "AI safety", because in practice it's a much more useful definition of AI safety than the one being pushed today. "Non-determinism safety" doesn't really have the same ring to it.

by buu700 11mo ago

scrps 11mo ago

It's wild how the West collectively looked down on China for years over its censorship of search engines, only to suddenly dive headfirst into the same illiberal playbook It is monkey see, monkey do with the political and monied sets. And to think they see themselves as more evolved than the "plebs", Gotta find the humor in it at least.

Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
It was also intentionally ignorant, as even then western search engines and websites had their own "censorship" and the like already. And I think that's fine. I don't want a zero censorship libertarian free for all internet. I don't want a neutral search engine algorithm, not least of all because that would be even easier to game than the existing one.

Zak 11mo ago

When a model is censored for "AI safety", what they really mean is brand safety. None of these companies want their name in the news after their model provides a recipe for explosives that someone used for evil, even though the same information is readily found with a web search.

PunchyHamster 11mo ago
Given amount of times that already happened they probably overstate it.
slg 11mo ago
The way some of you'll talk suggests that you don't think someone could genuinely believe in AI safety features. These AIs have enabled and encouraged multiple suicides at this point including some children. It's crazy that wanting to prevent that type of thing is a minority opinion on HN.
- buu700 11mo ago
  I'd be all for creating a separate category of child-friendly LLM chatbots or encouraging parents to ban their kids from unsupervised LLM usage altogether. As mentioned, I'm also not opposed to opt-out restrictions on mainstream LLMs. "For the children" isn't and has never been a convincing excuse to encroach on the personal freedom of legal adults. This push for AI censorship is no different than previous panics over violent video games and "satanic" music. (I know this comment wasn't explicitly directed at me, but for the record, I don't necessarily believe that all or even most "AI 'safety'" advocacy is in bad faith. It's psychologically a lot easier to consider LLM output as indistinguishable from speech made on behalf of its provider, whereas search engine output is more clearly attributed to other entities. That being said, I do agree with the parent comment that it's driven in large part out of self-interest on the part of LLM providers.)
  - slg 11mo ago
    >"For the children" isn't and has never been a convincing excuse to encroach on the personal freedom of legal adults. This push for AI censorship is no different than previous panics over violent video games and "satanic" music. But that wasn't the topic being discussed. It is one thing to argue that the cost of these safety tools isn't worth the sacrifices that come along with them. The comment I was replying to was effectively saying "no one cares about kids so you're lying if you say 'for the children'". Part of the reason these "for the children" arguments are so persistent is that lots of people do genuinely want these things "for the children". Pretending everyone has ulterior motives is counterproductive because it doesn't actually address the real concerns people have. It also reveals that the person saying it can't even fathom someone genuinely having this moral position.

martin-t 11mo ago

There is no collective "the west", there are people in power and the rest of the population. This distinction is universal. In China it just so happens that the people in power already have so much of it they don't have to pretend. They can just control the population through overt censorship. The same people exist in the west! For various historical reasons (more focus on individuality, more privately owned guns guns, idk really), they don't have as much direct power at the moment and have to frame their struggle for more as protecting the children, fighting against terrorists, preventing money laundering, etc. But this can change very quickly. Look how Hitler rose to power. Look how Trump is doing very similar things in the US. Look what historians are saying about it: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/ https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-... But the root cause is the same everywhere - a percentage of the population has anti-social personality traits (ASPD and NPD, mainly). They want power over others, they want worship, they think they're above the rules, some (but only some) of them even get pleasure from hurting others.

coderenegade 11mo ago
To play devil's advocate, a leader that dismantles broken systems in order fix an otherwise failing society will look identical to one that siezes power by dismantling those same systems. Indeed, in the latter case, they often believe they're the former. I'm not American, so I have no horse in the Trump race, but it seems clear to me that a significant chunk of the country elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing. Whether or not you think he's Hitler or the savior of America almost certainly depends on your view of how well the system was working beforehand, and whether or not it needed to be torn down and rebuilt. Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history.
- martin-t 11mo ago
  When I was younger, I thought about a scenario in which I'd be the dictator of a small country trying to make it an actually good place to live. Citizenship would be opt-in and would require an intelligence test. You can tell I was quite arrogant. But even then I decided I needed to set some rules for myself to not get carried away with power and the core rules were basically I wouldn't kill anyone and the position would not be hereditary. Basically the most difficult and most essential task became _how to structure the system so I can hand off power back to the people and it continues working_. What I see Trump, Putin and Xi doing is not that - otherwise their core focus would be educating people in history, politics, logical reasoning, and psychology so they can rule themselves without another dictator taking over (by force or manipulation). They would also be making sure laws are based on consistent moral principles and are applied equally to everyone. > I'm not American Me neither, yet here we both are. We're in the sphere of influence of one of the major powers. > elected the guy on the premise that he would do what he's currently doing Yes, people (in the US) are angry so they elected a privileged rich guy who cosplays as angry. They don't realize somebody like him will never have their best interest in mind - the real solution (IMO?) is to give more political power to the people (potentially weighed by intelligence and knowledge of a given area) and make it more direct (people voting on laws directly if they choose to). Not to elect a dictator with NPD and lots of promises. > Which is to say, I don't know that historians will have much of relevance to say until the ink is dry and it's become history. The historian I linked to used 2 definitions of fascism and only Trump's own words to prove that he satisfies both definitions. That is very relevant and a very strong standard of proof from a highly intelligent person with lost of knowledge on the topic. We need more of this and we need to teach the general population to listen to people like this. I don't know how though. What I find extremely worrying is that all 3 individuals in the highest positions of power (I refuse to call them leaders) in the 3 major powers are very strongly authoritarian and have clear anti-social personality traits. IMO they all should be disqualified from any position of power for being mentally ill. But how many people have sufficient knowledge to recognize that or even know what it means? The intelligence and education levels of the general population are perhaps not high enough to get better outcomes than what we have now. --- Anyway, I looked through your comment history and you seem to have opinions similar to mine, I am happy to see someone reasonable and able to articulate these thought perhaps better than I can.

nradov 11mo ago

Some of you have been watching too many sci-fi movies. The whole notion of "AI safety regulations" is so silly and misguided. If a safety critical system is connected to public networks with an exposed API or any security vulnerabilities then there is a safety risk regardless of whether AI is being used or not. This is exactly why nuclear weapon control systems are air gapped and have physical interlocks.

dmix 11mo ago
[dead]
buu700 11mo ago
The existence of network-connected robots or drones isn't inherently a security vulnerability. AI control of the robots specifically is a problem in the same way that piping in instructions from /dev/urandom would be, except worse because AI output isn't purely random and has a higher probability of directing the machine to cause actual harm. Are you saying you're opposed to letting AI perform physical labor, or that you're opposed to requiring safeguards that allow humans to physically shut it off?
- nradov 11mo ago
  I am opposed to regulating any algorithms, including AI/LLM. We can certainly have safety regulations for equipment with the potential to cause physical harm, such as industrial robots or whatever. But the regulation needs to be around preventing injury to humans regardless of what software the equipment is running.
  - buu700 11mo ago
    If that's the case, then it sounds like we largely agree with each other. There's no need for personal attacks implying that I'm somehow detached from reality. Ultimately, this isn't strictly an issue specific to genAI. If a "script roulette" program that downloaded and executed random GitHub Gist files somehow became popular, or if someone created a web app that allowed anyone to anonymously pilot a fleet of robots, I'd suggest that those be subject to exactly the same types of safety regulations I proposed. Any such regulations should be generically written, not narrowly targeted at AI algorithms. I'd still call that "AI safety", because in practice it's a much more useful definition of AI safety than the one being pushed today. "Non-determinism safety" doesn't really have the same ring to it.