You can fairly argue that this will be ineffective, but a lot of experts in this field have real, "humanity ending" concerns about AI, and I think it's a bit of a cop out to say "Well, genie's out of the bottle, nothing we can do as we barrel towards an unknown and scary future." Even Sam Altman has been yelling about the need for AI regulation for a long time now.
That's regulation that makes it harder for any competition to show up
But regulations for things like nuclear power plants, banks, insurance companies, elevator manufacturers, etc. are real because society recognizes the grave harm that happens when there are no additional checks on the system. Nobody says "Oh, all those big nuclear power plants just want regulations as a guard against competition." Certainly lots of crypto companies have said that about the banking system, and we all saw how that ended...
So fucking what if what’s his face want regulations for moats? It doesn’t detract for the real need of regulation.
It’s like if letting a baby fall to it’s death because if the main villain gets his hands on it he’ll get unlimited power
When the incumbents _oppose_ regulation that's usually a much better sign
While regulations might slightly impact OpenAI's bottom line, they can ultimately prove advantageous for large corporations like them by addressing their primary concern: the threat of competition. By raising barriers to entry, regulatory measures would help solidify OpenAI's market position and maintain its dominance.
- People are mostly incentivized to compete, not to cooperate
- Antibiotic resistance
- Clean water supply
- etc..
- What about if AI becomes AGI (whatever that actually means, it's not even clear)?
- Well, if that DID happen soon, which we can't actually know, well, what about if it tried to kill us all? (why? who the fuck knows, maybe it will chat us to death).
Meanwhile there is a very real certainty of catastrophic environmental damage that will decimate future generations, if it doesn't actually cause us to go extinct. And what do we get? People hand wringing over this ultimate what if, rather than signing every public statement document they can find to try to get an actual intervention on climate destruction.
I'm not talking (oh in 10 years maybe we'll have more EVs) kind of intervention, more like, let's get every country in the world to be off oil and gas in 5 years, not just for EVs but for almost everything possible, and where not possible let's use carbon neutral biofuel.
AI literally can end humanity, every single individual potentially. But definitely replace humans as the apex predator of the planet. It is also consistently voted the highest likelihood cause if humanity is to end in the next 100 years. https://riskfrontiers.com/insights/ranking-of-potential-caus...
We should stop the climate change fear mongering. Yeah we shouldn't burn fossil as if its consequence free. But New York and Santa Monica beach should've been under water 20 years ago if the climate alarmist are correct. That's a far cry from pretending it's some number 1 priority. It shouldn't be even close. Having climate to distract us from things that will actually end us is the dumbest own goal possible for our species.
https://www.sfu.ca/biology2/rEEding/pdfs/Leung_et_al_Cluster...
But it's a common theme. These claims get attention and journalists don't check, so they proliferate. Dig in to any given claim and you'll find they're all built on statistical quicksand.
What for example is Tallinn's medium- to long-term predictive track record on social issues? On technological development? Anyone can be concerned and have genuine reasons for concern, but that doesn't mean the outcomes materialize.
The people signing this are worried about AI that doesn't exist yet. No one died from nuclear weapons before they were invented.
[0]: https://www.slashgear.com/1202594/how-many-people-have-actua...
I'm all for pausing research on anything that seems to have any real chance of becoming an AGI or functioning in a way similar to one, but I don't see how even more advanced LLMs are going to get there. GPT4 and beyond might put the teens writing propaganda posts in Moldova out of jobs, but I the talk from some of the signatories about LLMs developing their own goals and planning on how to achieve them seems nonsensical when you look at how they actually function under the hood.
Like, if you ask ChatGPT to come up with a plan for you for how to accomplish some task, I'm not saying it is like, great at doing this in general, but it can do this to some degree at least, and I don't see any clear limiting principle for "a transformer based model that produces text cannot do [X]" as far as planning-in-text goes.
1. What is the ultimate AI are we trying to eventually build? 2. What are the consequences if we eventually succeed in building such an AI?
For me, the answers would be
1. A general AI that would equal and surpass human intelligence. 2. God only knows.
Will we get there? Who knows. We do know, however, that the consequences are great enough that only a fool would not at least attempt to prepare by putting some safeguards in place beforehand.
"Someone else should come up with something"
Like there's someone else out there (who aren't the people making the thing) who has a better idea on how to keep it safe.
2. Weapons and armament deals to stay relevant in a decaying world order.
Doesn’t Elon Musk continue to hold stake at OpenAI?
Source: https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-histor...