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> GPT2 was considered too dangerous to release This is how ridiculous this industry is. Regulation-seeking panic over nothing. Drama in search of a moat. Ever
by echelon 1mo ago
> GPT2 was considered too dangerous to release
This is how ridiculous this industry is. Regulation-seeking panic over nothing. Drama in search of a moat.
Everything is "too dangerous". GPT2 is going to invent a time machine and break crypto and genetically engineer super rabies.
They sell knives, guns, combustible materials, and multi-ton heavy machinery in stores. That's what's actually dangerous.
- janalsncm 1mo agoMy impression at the time was they were perhaps overly cautious but this was a bunch of researchers who wanted to self-regulate. Anthropic didn’t exist, deepmind was also much less product-focused and relatively cautious. Chinese models weren’t really a factor either. Government regulation was really not in the picture either in 2020 or 2021 tbh. The government was still trying to beat a pandemic. Some of the Biden admin eventually wanted to but it wasn’t very serious.
- alightsoul 1mo agowhy are chinese models a consideration at all?
- idiotsecant 1mo agoParent post is saying there was no community of peer models, just some people figuring it out as they went and with lots of slack to go slow if they wanted
- alightsoul 1mo agoOh it's the typical china race thing, we can't let the antithesis of the us be better than the us etc. American exceptionalism
- idiotsecant 1mo agoThe 'china' part is irrelevant. You're addicted to being mad. Parent post is just saying there were no other players
- alightsoul 1mo agoThere were other players, china included, but it wasn't relevant until LLMs became profitable? China is being singled out as usual because it's the antithesis of the us
- hansvm 1mo agoBut... there weren't. The other "players," China included, had duck all to show for it. Did they have the same potential capabilities? Sure, maybe. It wasn't just a profitability thing though. Their models sucked. China is being singled out in that comment because their models are exceptional, with very few competitors, so when you're talking about a history of the competition not being any good you _have_ to acknowledge one of the only good present-day models.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- hodgehog11 1mo agoI agree that this should be something that researchers reflect on. GPT-2 is one of the primary models to research on nowadays, and many recent developments have come from studying it as a test bench. Imagine if CRISPR was considered "too dangerous" to publish because of the potential ethical ramifications, and that only a special few should be aware. It is utter self-righteousness, and it is shameful behaviour. The world cannot adjust itself to what it cannot see, so you risk greater catastrophe by keeping it secret. The open dissemination of knowledge at every increment is the only way for society to truly deal with what is to come.
- slashdave 1mo agoWell, no. Without controls, a language model can drive sensitive individuals to violence or suicide. The idea of releasing a frontier model without RL is frightening based on what we have learned.
- anon373839 1mo ago> The idea of releasing a frontier model without RL is frightening In case you were not aware, strong base models (no post training at all) have been available for quite some time now. Including ones that eclipse “scary” frontier models from even a year ago.
- SV_BubbleTime 1mo agoSo… Words out of a magic box on a computer can’t make you kill yourself. Perhaps the people that would use that as encouragement are already mentally ill enough that it really doesn’t matter what the trigger is? On a more callus but fully serious note, evolution starts out physical, that the species that don’t eat and breed as well, die. What happens when you remove that? When life is so safe that you basically wont stave, get eaten, catch a disease, don’t really need to compete all that hard for scarce resources, etc? Do you think evolution just stops? Or perhaps does a social or mental evolution become the predominant differentiator for successful reproduction over time?
- latentsea 1mo agoWhat are your thoughts on the HuggingFace incident?
- CamperBob2 1mo ago"Drama in search of a moat" is hard to beat.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 1mo agoOptimal next token generation disguised as something more.
- CamperBob2 1mo agoWhat else is there?
- latentsea 1mo agoWell... maybe optimal next token generation is all you need? Reductive as that is. I'm not even sure _why_ that actually matters? It can still result in accidents that impact the real world. My bet is 2027 we see an agentic worm make global headlines.
- onion2k 1mo agoThat's what's actually dangerous. It's a different sort of danger. Knives, guns, etc are locally dangerous. The threat from AI is globally dangerous. Despite being a much lower risk of it happening, the blast radius is massively bigger, which means the overall danger is greater. Also, maybe both things some be considered. Many countries manage the sale of knives, guns, etc. You don't need to accept that risk just because AI exists, or vice versa.
- bandrami 1mo agoI gave up on gun control as a political question when I realized you can buy a flamethrower at Home Depot
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- Yoric 1mo agoAs I understood it at the time, the rationale was that GPT2 made it too easy to produce content at scale and could easily be used for propaganda, phishing or other kinds of cons. Which turned out to be true.
- CamperBob2 1mo agoAnd which says more about people being stupid and gullible than it does about AI models being smart or dangerous. I'm tired of allowing stupid and gullible people to determine how the rest of us live, work, play, and create.
- Nevermark 1mo ago> Everything is "too dangerous". GPT2 is going to invent a time machine and break crypto and genetically engineer super rabies. You are hyperbolically judging a post-hoc cherry-picked subset of a great spectrum of concern, with hindsight experience nobody had at the time. Safely navigating the future isn't an accuracy contest. Risk mitigation has to account for the distribution of costs for different signs of error, where novelty, uncertainty, and any potential for compounding effects all greatly multiply the need for hedging.
- vikramkr 1mo agoThey were worried it would make it easy to generate a flood of misinformation. They were correct.