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I enjoyed this lovely rant by Timnit Gebru today. It's titled something like "AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms," h

• rphv 9d ago
  How cynical. What if the fears of extinction are _rational_? Given the stakes, we're obligated to treat the threat as a real possibility until proven otherwise. People will go to great lengths to avoid believing truths that dramatically challenge their worldviews. Consider the case of Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, who escaped from Auschwitz and were initially met with disbelief when they described the atrocities they'd witnessed.
  • majewsky 8d ago
    I agree. AI skeptics are widely met with disbelief when describing the atrocities that LLM operators are inflicting on society right now.
  • AlexandrB 8d ago
    > Given the stakes, we're obligated to treat the threat as a real possibility until proven otherwise. No we're not. The seventh day adventists also believe that the world is about to end, why are we not obligated to treat that threat as real?
  • queenkjuul 8d ago
    Nobody ever gives a real reason why extinction is a plausible threat from current model development, and Chinese researchers don't seem to agree that it's plausible either.