Establishment of the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute
commerce.gov
commerce.gov
Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067314 - Oct 2023 (334 comments)
According to EO's guidelines on commpute, something like GPT4 probably falls under reporting guidelines. Also, in the last 10 years GPU compute capabilities grew 1000x. What will be happening even 2 or 5 years from now?
Edit: yes, regulations are necessary but we should regulate applications of AI, not fundamental research in it.
You can't trust companies to self-regulate.
The American man said "I am so free I could walk up to the White house right now and scream 'I hate Ronald Reagan he is an incompetent buffoon.' Without getting arrested."
The Russian man responded "That is not any more free than me I too could walk up to the Kremlin and scream 'I hate Ronald Reagan he is an incompetent buffoon.' without getting in any trouble."
Unlike Biden's silly EO which puts restrictions on foundation model compute levels.
And the interest is: “whatever is on the mind of an aging, non-elected dictator and his favorites”.
The Chinese are busy studying “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", the Russians are busy getting wasted in Ukraine and the Iranians are busy checking if women are properly wearing their hijabs and smuggling weapons into Gaza.
My point is that applications of AI must be regulated, not fundamental research.
Alright, you hooked me in. What are they?
A dramatic reduction in cost and increase in effectiveness of some undesirable behavior is exactly when you should look for new ways to address it. The goal of making things illegal is to prevent their occurrence, and if they get suddenly much cheaper and more effective, then your prior methods of deterring them will no longer work.
Making drugs illegal didn't stop people from using drugs. Only a person can stop themselves from doing something, that's not something a law does.
> Making murder illegal didn't stop people from murdering. Only a person can stop themselves from doing something, that's not something a law does.
Should we not have rape, murder, arson, or fraud laws?
Turns out drug laws for adults are bad because a huge portion of the population does them. This said very few would agree that we should start letting kids do drugs.
Nuance is important and many people don't seem to grasp that distinction on things that hit close to home with them.
The AIs like Copilot et al are trained on code poorly written with bad security practices (there is a lot more than you think), hence reproducing these bad practices on produced code.
Because also AI are fallible, the spreading of misinformation more than we already have. The retrieval of credentials with prompt hacking, because people push their credentials.
Because they are generated by AI, the misuse of deepfakes, for example a spanish girl was blackmailed with alleged naked pictures of her, but could be used for far worse.
And I did not scratch the copyright/artistic side of AI.
It's not the AI per se the risk, but what people can do with it. Everything is not beautiful. But there are also good things with AI, I agree.
I think there is the need for some form of regulation in a way or another, the sooner the better. I don't expect the regulation to restrain creativity, but to help prevent bad stuff happening.
1. There are risks specific to AI or specifically aggravated by AI (easy)
2. Federal regulation of AI safety will reduce those risks (good luck)
When articulating your arguments for point 2, I would recommend addressing the thorny issue of proliferation.
But don't you agree at least some legal questions should be asked about this overhype of AI ? Because I don't see any so far.
Edit : this is the kind of legal question I was talking about, just learned it now : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38102760
I have trouble answering that question as you've asked it. It seems like we agree on several things, namely:
1. that any technology is subject to worst-case analysis; and,
2. that it is appropriate in principle for law to govern the use of technology.
Here's what I'm having trouble unpacking in your question:
1. What are the exact legal questions you think should be asked, and aren't? (N.B. Your link is paywalled, and doesn't seem to refer to a specific legal question)
2. What is it about AI exactly that you think is overhyped, and seem to think I disagree with?
I don't have a lot of context to go on, so some of my questions may also contain unwarranted assumptions. I hope you'll point them out :)
1. Have you thought about the difficulties involved in legislating around AI? Specifically, I've found it very difficult to articulate what is and isn't appropriate use of AI with any real precision. Let me give an example. I think we can all agree that "nudifying" photographs of minors is at least in poor taste, if not outright dangerous, and that it is fair game to make this particular usage of technology illegal. However, where do you stand on the idea that regulators should disallow the "nudification" use altogether? I can think of several legitimate (if a bit niche) uses, ranging from the creation of medical diagrams and teaching materials to filming love scenes in mainstream cinema with cloths-on and removing the cloths in post-processing. Do you think it's fair game to disallow these uses? If so, should this be absolute liability or should there be a notion of intent? If you think, as I do, that the technical capability should be unrestricted except insofar as it is employed to illegal ends, then we don't need any new laws. We simply apply the laws against, say, involuntary pornography and sexual exploitation of minors, and the problem is solved from a legal perspective; it is now a job for the executive branch.
2. I would appreciate it if you could speak to the risk of misclassification. Many of the proposed regulations involve training AI systems to monitor other AI systems (or themselves, as with the case of prompt engineering). What happens when the black box makes mistakes? Do we accept that a small number of innocent people will be labeled X by AI? How should the law take this possibility into account? Again, do we accept that legitimate uses are de facto crippled or entirely disabled? That's one outcome I would very much like to avoid.
3. On a macro-scale, how do we deal with the fact that other (perhaps less scrupulous) nations will have access to unrestricted AI?
Point 3 is particularly troubling from a regulation perspective, because the penchant of software for proliferation is astronomically higher than that of, say, nuclear weapons. This feels like the 90's crypto export-controls all over again, which is minimally a gigantic waste of resources and maximally a crippling economical vulnerability.
P.S.: My friend, it is exactly your job to argue your case when speaking about public issues. The term for this is "civic duty".
Regulate AI applications, not fundamental research in it.
A healthy regulatory body provides for that by setting standards and holding the relatively few vendors liable for conformance rather than the countless users.
It does interfere with innovation for those vendors doing foundational research, but it enables richly funded innovation in applications. It seems like we're at a point where lots of people want to start working on applications using current/near technology; failure to provide them the liability protections they need is what will stifle practical, commercial innovation and would leave AI applications in the hands of the few specialist technology companies who are confident in their models and have the wealth to absorb any liability issues that arise.
GPT4 may not generate world class code, but it does it at a scale and speed unmatched by humanity. Alpha Zero took a week to go from nothing to better than any human in history at Go.
As for reporting minimums, the ones in the EO are explicitly temporary. Quoting directly: "...shall define, and thereafter update as needed on a regular basis, the set of technical conditions for models and computing clusters that would be subject to the reporting requirements..." "Until such technical conditions are defined, the Secretary shall require compliance with these reporting requirements..."
So, my question is: why are you ignoring the actual things happening in favor of complaining about phantoms?
Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory... damn
(I'm not endorsing this regulation. It's not at all clear than any regulation could be helpful. As you say, these regulations aren't going to slow non-US research efforts.)
[1] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
Edit: To elaborate, it's pretty easy to cherry-pick cases of either over and under regulation and use that to "prove" either side of the argument. There's nothing in the Bill Gurley talk that provides any insight into whether AI should be regulated or not because it doesn't directly engage with issues around AI specifically. Instead, it just says: "tech regulation bad".
I have been afraid of over-regulation of AI but standards and testing environments don't sound so bad.
It does not sound like they are implementing legal regulations that will protect incumbents at the expense of AI innovation, at least at this point.
Give them a minute, an agency needs to exist before it can be captured. There hasn't been time yet for a single revolving-door hire.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
Netizen Safety Agency?
Citizens(/Consumers) Browsing in Privacy?
to repurpose a couple.
"(a) prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce;
(b) seek monetary redress and other relief for conduct injurious to consumers;
(c) prescribe rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive, and establishing requirements designed to prevent such acts or practices;
(d) gather and compile information and conduct investigations relating to the organization, business, practices, and management of entities engaged in commerce; and
(e) make reports and legislative recommendations to Congress and the public. "
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/federal-tr...
Even in feedback loop systems where a model might "learn" from the outcomes of its actions, this learning is typically constrained by the objectives set by human operators. The model itself doesn't have the ability to decide what it wants to learn or how it wants to act; it's merely optimizing for a function that was determined by its creators.
Furthermore, any tendency to "meander and drift outside the scope of their original objective" would generally be considered a bug rather than a feature indicative of agency. Such behavior usually implies that the system is not performing as intended and needs to be corrected or constrained.
In summary, while machine learning models are becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable, they do not possess agency in the way living organisms do. Their actions are a result of algorithms and programming, not independent thought or desire. As a result, questions about their "autonomy" are often less about the models themselves developing agency and more about the ethical and practical implications of the tasks we delegate to them."
The above is from the horse's mouth (ChatGPT4)
My commentary:
We have yet to achieve the kind of agency a jelly fish has, which operates with a nervous system comprised of roughly 10K neurons (vs 100B in humans) and no such thing as a brain. We have not yet been able to replicate the Agency present in a simple nervous system.
I would say even an Amoeba has more agency than a $1B+ OpenAI model since the Amoeba can feed itself and grow in numbers far more successfully and sustainably in the wild with all the unpredictability in its environment than an OpenAI based AI Agent, which ends up stuck in loops or derailed.
What is my point?
We're jumping the gun with these regulations. That's all I'm saying. Not that we should not keep an eye and have a healthy amount of concern and make sure we're on top of it, but we are clearly jumping the gun since we the AI agents so far are unable to compete with a jelly fish in open-ended survival mode (not to be confused with Minecraft survival mode) due to the AI's lack of agency (as a unitary agent and as a collective).
So I'm assuming some of you have seen more details - can someone share where they can be found?
It is against HN rules to call out a commenter for having not read the article, and earlier comments set the tone of the discussion when a post hits the front page. For many posts, by the time it hits the front page, the top-voted comments often include hot takes from someone who just saw the title and wrote a comment about whatever they imagined the article to be.
Legislative action would theoretically be best, but our current congress couldn't produce a better bill than a wet speak and spell.
It can only help existing companies to stifle competition and guarantee revenue.
edit: if you plant to draw a distinction between executive order regulation and standard regulation, they're against that too. Everything coming from the Libertarian party is against regulation and government interference in general.