An OpenAI Strategist Says AI Labs Should Rival Government Power
ai-updates.net
ai-updates.net
Upvoted not because this is an agreeable idea, but so more people see their insanity for what it is.
They forget how it was literally initial government investments into DARPA and other organizations that laid the foundation for the long ascendance of the tech industry in Northern California, aside from huge pool of talented people imported from mostly Asia.
Even a good chunk of artificial neural network and "AI" research was NSF/government-funded, iirc.
I've been noticing a level of dislike for the tech industry that I haven't ever seen before among my fellow tech peers, and it's all squarely pointed at one thing — insane concentration of wealth, power and compute at the hands of private corporations.
It is interesting that a role like "Head of Strategic Futures" both exists and attracts insane people.
"Head of" + "Strategic" + "Futures"...?
hard to not attract insane people
Nothing about this technology makes it special. What’s allowing for such conversations is entirely traceable to unsupported claims made by the very companies now looking to cement their control by excluding themselves from all regulation.
A rival to global governmental power. That is the deranged, power hungry goal that is driving the shape of its technology.
* Regulatory capture - AI Labs [partially] capture government functions, i.e., take over. In practice this equates to oligarchy.
* Nationalization - Government takes over AI labs through some form of direct or indirect control (e.g., dirigisme).
The article discussion does not seem to consider either of them. And the idea that AI labs would act in the interest of citizens at large seems laughable. In practice it looks like California Forever [0], which is quite the opposite.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Forever
edit: clarity
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1. We're not there yet. LLM's are great at some things, but we have yet to find out if AI companies are on the fast track to AGI or merely trapped in a deceptively promising local maxima.
2. AI companies, should they build AI capable of replacing more humans, could, potentially, one day, wield economic clout that's disproportionate compared to their own human workforce (instead of just debt). Is political power meant to represent economic output or people though? I would argue that, no matter the impact on the economy, a tech CEO should have one vote, the same as any bum on the street. It may not be the current reality, but that's the ideal of democracy. If we abandon it, the disillusioned masses might not be so complacent about it. Are AI CEO's seriously proposing they be granted a portion of the state's monopoly on violence? Hell no!
3. Couldn't most of this just be done with a competent regulatory body? The current U.S. government doesn't appear capable of regulating lemonade stands and we're always going to be four years or less from another potential bout of gross incompetence. That's what independent regulators are for. Establish a body full of field experts and academics that has the right mix of abilities to figure out what AI companies are doing and how they should be best constrained so that they don't become a net negative to human society. Then put them in an organization that doesn't get hollowed out every four years on the basis of politics.
4. If AI corps really want to make the case that they should be treated differently than other corporations, they need to set better standards of behaviour for themselves. This needs to happen before the conversation we're having now, or it will just be laughably ridiculous, as it is now.
As complexity/unpredictability rises in any system its natual that govt will shed power. We have already seen this with setting of interest rates.
There is a long list of reasons why the Treasury Dept, President, House, Senate, Supreme Court or NASA doesnt get to set the rate.
Why did they hand over that power to the central bank? Read some financial system evolution history. Mindlessly ambitious people, the kind who run things hardly ever hand over power to someone else unless they see weilding the power puts a giant bulls eye on their head when the inevitable unpredictable/uncontrolable event occurs. Same goes with the Church or Religious institutions. Why does govt stay out of that lane? Why did Italy hand over the Vatican to the Church?
the central bank is semi part of the state, AI Labs are not, AI Labs are fully under directly control of a extremely small number of people in a way which has nothing to do with democracy
founding a Organisation like the FCC but for AI oversight is a completely different topic, but that isn't what he is proposing
> Italy hand over the Vatican to the Church?
because it always had been a nano country under Church control, this is not comparable at all
> Church or Religious institutions.
most democracies have a separation of state and religion where religion has little to no governing power. When this isn't the case it's a failure of the state (often for historic reason). This isn't desirable at all.
Nevertheless, if one were to turn their backs on existing research, not only would they draw the ire of academics (idc that much), but also would have to do a lot of stuff from scratch themselves, which usually is quite the undertaking.
These flamewars are not uncommon in CS, and usually involve forces and intellects much bigger than mine, and we often end up looking back at viable things left behind in computing history, just because the mainstream decided to go a different way.
If we are to outsource thinking to AI models, we will outsource these consensus driven 'rational' decisions to them, and then AI companies will have a pretty large say on what 'correct' opinions will look like.
An astute reader of History could comment that they are just mirroring the structure of power in fascist dictatorships.
(If you want a rabbit hole, Beaumarchais is a nice one. He bankrolled the American war of independence and was instrumental in getting support from the King of France. As an enlightenment philosopher he contributed to the ideology of the Revolution, and then died in 1799. He was instrumental in establishing copyright law in France and founded the first rights management association. He was also a spy and a writer).
at least in a democracy, even if flawed, power comes from the people, that is the fundamental raison d'être for people allowing a government to exist
this isn't the case of "AI Labs"
what he is proposing is nothing less then establishing at least partial oligarchy, or in other words while indirectly he is relatively openly saying he wants to overthrow not just the US constitution but more or all every democracies constitution (at least in spirit)
EDIT: Assuming AI Labs == existing private AI Labs like OpenAI. Something analog to the FCC for AI or similar is a completely different topic. But this wouldn't be called AI Labs as it wouldn't be a AI Lab. But a faster moving, less bureaucratic, commission (or similar group) which works in tight communication with AI Labs. So I'm pretty sure he means giving OpenAI and co. power officially comparable to the government in some sectors. Which means practical including corruption etc. it might be above that of the government.
What makes it a lot more fun is that Oracle's existence depends on OpenAI making it through the bubble.
But it doesn’t really rival government power, given that the government would most likely crush anything that truly tries to compete.
(and if you don’t have the power to compete, do you truly rival it?)
He also has to pay for his subscription/usage out of pocket. Of course they didn’t tell him this until after on-boarding.
The corpo fucks want their cake and to eat it too. That’s where we are headed. Having the privilege to pay to have a bot do our jobs for us.
It's like telling someone they have to drive none stop for their job but neither giving them a company car or nor a budget for it.
(To be clear done and companies get away with it != legal. I know companies sometimes get away with exactly the example I named in some cases.)
Unless California updated their laws recently either I don’t think coding agents count as “hand tools”.
this is a bit misleading
at-will deployment and "can basically make up whatever rules" aren't necessary required to go hand in hand, you can have at-will deployment and still proper enforce labor laws by giving appropriate penalties and protection to employees in case of violations which make it non profitable use the "break law if complain fire" route.
But seriously it's more then just bad.
Adding hidden cost to "working" is a hidden pay cut not showing up in payment statistic, that alone should make it illegal.
And it is in combination with "cost traps" a common recipe of modern slavery. While this case isn't modern slavery just a economic collapse (e.g. huge economic collapse where no one can afford to lose the job they have, AI stays expensive but inflation makes salaries go away) to ending up very close to it...
Sure there are reasonable edge cases, like causal personal clothes if there is no dress code or similar. As well as some limited expected private payments for high paying jobs (which you often still can write off from taxes, but(!) for this you need to have to pay enough taxes or it won't work and you have to have enough tax write-off potential left for all the common write-offs etc. Hence why this is only true for high paying jobs or very very small mostly one-off expenses.).
> coding agents count as “hand tools”
they are tools you use (in general) "by hand", to mostly do the non engineering/non creative parts of the job. So even if they don't count as it now, they might very well end up counting as something similar. Just because something is digital doesn't mean you can (or at least should be able to) circumvent regulations. That he EU had to pass a "digital products are products, laws for products apply to them" because lobbyist managed to make digital products non products for many laws is already quite absurd. Similar digital "tools" should count as much as "tools" as physical tools...
or else you wouldn't be able to know what you will (excluding overtime etc.) earn, which would be absurd to be legal (but might be, US isn't exactly known for grate labor laws)
There are statutes requiring employers to fully reimburse business expenses incurred by the employee. Example: Cal. Lab. Code § 2802.