Hacker News Reader

Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

This is entertaining in a way, and interesting to follow. But should I, as an ordinary member of mankind, root for one outcome or another? Is it going to matter for me how this ends up? Will AI be more or less safe one or other way, will it be bad for competition, prices, etc etc?

View on HN

My guesses: (1) bad for safety no matter what happens. This will cement the idea that caring about safety and being competitive are incompatible. (I don't know if the idea is right or wrong.) (2) good for competition, in different ways depending on what happens, but either the competitiveness of OpenAI will increase, or current and potential competitors will get a shot in the arm, or both. (3) prices... no idea, but I feel like current prices are very short term and temporary regardless of what happens. This stuff is too young and fast-moving for things to have come anywhere near settling down.

And will it matter how this ends up? Probably a lot, but I can't predict how or why.

My idea about AI safety is that the biggest unsafety of AI comes from it being monopolized by a small elite, rather than the general public, or at least multiple competing entities having access to it.

No, but it also shows that those who supposedly care about AI alignment and whatnot, care more about money. Which is why AI alignment is becoming an oxymoron.

If you use ChatGPT or find it to be a compelling technology, there’s good reason to root for a reversion to the status quo. This could set back the state of the art consumer AI product quite a few months as teams reinvent the wheel in a way that doesn’t get them sued when they relaunch.

The outcome that is good for humanity, assuming Ilya is right to worry about AI safety, is already buried in the ground. You should care and shed a single tear for the difficulty of coordination.

The way I see it is, it's not going to matter if I "care" about it in one way/outcome or another, so I just focus my attention on 1. How this could affect me (for now, the team seems committed to keeping the APIs up and running) and 2. What lessons can I take away from this (some preliminary lessons, such as "take extra care with board selection" and "listen to the lawyers when they tell you to do a Delaware C Corp").

Otherwise, no use in getting invested in one outcome or another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com