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Comment by jdblair | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the real danger of AI is that models will be used by humans to make decisions about about other humans without human accountability. This will enable new kinds of systematic abuse without people in the loop, and mostly underprivileged groups will be victims because they will lack the resources to respond effectively.

I didn't see this risk addressed anywhere in their safety model.

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Already happening since before ChatGPT.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/health-insurance-humana-uni...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/21/137783/algorithm...

I don’t see how it removes accountability. In the former case I believe the AI was rejecting 90% of claims, you could write `if (rand() < .9) return REJECT;` and call it AI. And nameless, faceless people deny and reject appeals electronically without even reading them.

This has been my primary concern the whole time.

I see all these thought leaders talking about AI safety and the end of humanity but the real problem is one that already exists. How these systems are implemented is to me the real concern and one that already exists today. What about the company that identifies drug traffickers based on street video cameras. They use the type of car along with license plates and who knows what else to tell law enforcement which cars to pull. That is concerning to me but again, I never see these thought leaders talk about. Maybe it’s too small of a problem.

Maybe I am wrong and humanity will lose the fight in the next decade. I am still not so sure we will be unable to just pull the plug.

> I see all these thought leaders talking about AI safety and the end of humanity but the real problem is one that already exists.

Because the job of those thought leaders is to deflect and distract from the problems that already exist, particularly the ones that benefit the most powerful.

Yes. The real danger to humans are humans. Always have been. AI is the latest, shiniest tool for human exploitation and oppression.

Like all other such tools, it is now capable enough to be produced en masse and tested in the real world.

Soon enough AI will become a proxy for abuse, a convenient scapegoat. The oppression will continue.

AI does not solve a single meaningful problem for humans. And it opened a whole new can of worms.

But that's driven by the institutions and culture, like it's always been. A realistic accounting of the sheer scale of inequality and it's consequences shows that this is not in any way a new problem, or one caused by technology.

It is enhanced , by a lot, by technology, though. It's pretty damn common that a new technology enables a different quantity of something so much that it effectively is a different quality of interaction.

Isn't this where regulation comes in? Make it so that AI actions are ultimately accountable to humans.

I highly doubt that will happen. We already can't hold business leaders accountable for the awful shit their companies do under their watch.

OpenAI are asking to be regulated, but it is regulation to their conception of safety, not human responsibility.

This is unlikely to happen to the extent necessary, because it would take away from the cost savings that motivate AI adoption.

Why bring this up? It's the current state of affairs without AI. I don't understand what you want.

If something is currently a problem and then a new thing appears that potentially makes the problem significantly worse - isn't that a good time to do something about it?

Yes but finally doing something about a familiar pain is probably a good thing. Right now it's just theory so on paper we are doing great.

I don't want the problem to get worse, for cruelty to be further industrialized. I also find all the talk about AI "safety" to avoid a fictional singularity event to be a giant distraction from what is a new consolidation of power.

If we're going to have regulation, let's regulate to protect people from real risks today.

Which cruelty are we talking about here?

This is almost an equally high risk with an LLM as it is with a logistic regression

It happens with logistic regression right now. The difference is LLMs are far more general and far less accurate in specific scenarios (like crime statistics)

That's my main concern on using self driving cars as killers without owner knowing and being accountable. Already happening [0].

0 - https://fortune.com/2023/12/15/tesla-driver-to-pay-23k-in-re...

Nah, AI is the gateway to the holy grail end state of capitalism:

Pseudo-Pharoah Egypt, with a couple extremely rich people and mountains of poor laborers with no middle class.

Capitalism is ultimately about the rich being comparatively richer than other people to the maximum extent possible, because that represents actual power.

This.

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