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Comment by evolve2k | Hacker News Reader

I read it very differently. Recent AI developments have headed us into crazy town, towards a enevitable seeming break down of our social structures. A “Fake news 2.0” amongst other challenges.

It’s ludicrous to watch our tech leaders release new AI models without ethical consideration or any form of reponsibility.

I work within a university and socially impactful research goes through rigorous ethics committees before being approved. Where was this with Open AI’s release of ChatGPT for example? Sam Altman just tweets after release words to the effect of, oh regulators should probably be considering the ethics around this. What a farce! Where are the ethics of those releasing these half baked tools?

Having the White House step in and provide leadership and bring it’s power to bear is totally appropriate and responsible in this moment.

Edit: spelling

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> I work within a university and socially impactful research goes through rigerous ethics committees before being approved

This is a gross exaggeration. Only a small portion of academic research requires IRB approval, and it's mostly limited to experiments on humans or animals.

If we were to start requiring IRB pre-approval for all research that might be "socially impactful", it would be the end of progress as we know it.

The first step would be to determine what counts as "socially impactful". You couldn't limit it to just AI. What about security and privacy? Why not all of CS? And then, why not Economics or History?

Source: worked for various universities doing research, first as graduate assistant, then scientist, then tenure-track professor, for 19 or 20 years.

I think there's a big difference between "socially impactful" and "enevitable seeming break down of our social structures"; that difference being the potential (direct) downside. It seems unlikely that most history or economic research would have the same downsides as AI.

Some things in CS are already regulated such as encryption via EAR: https://web.stanford.edu/group/export/encrypt_ear.html

Are you working in medical/health? There are very different ethics bars for different fields. Do you see no value in having ethics committees?

Is your argument that they took appropriate precautions before releasing their paid tools publically?

My point isn’t that these AI research houses should have the same ethics committee as a university, it’s that they should have ethics committee appropriate to the risks around the work they are doing.

The issue is that "ethics" are not universal.

By all means, if you believe (as it sounds like you do) that this will result in the affirmation and expansion of your worldview this is good news for you.

If you suspect, at any level, that maybe the current formulation of what is "ethical" and what is not may, at any point in the future, be called into question, than designing the fabric of super intelligent computational processes to presumptively adhere to your preconceptions is at best ill conceived at at worst malicious.

Enjoy the basilisk.

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