Comment by FusionX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FusionX | Hacker News Reader

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We're already seeing anti-AI sentiments, but the movement is still fringe with a vocal minority. However, that'll change soon without alignment. Without self-intervention, there will invariably be future incidents that can cause major economic impact, leaked private data, loss of life (directly/indirectly) etc. Once that happens, their social capital is wiped. It'll be an avalanche of lawsuits and overzealous regulations. Most importantly, the anti-AI sentiment will become universal, rather than a minority-held opinion.

What they're proposing now, is voluntarily staggering the pace of development.

IMO, we don't need to trust Dario or his bedfellows, to do this out of their goodness of their heart. Even assuming (for good reasons) that they are selfish and care only about short-term profits for their investors, this is still purely a business decision. The exponential pace of AI and its impacts ARE short-term. And so, the negative consequences that they might face is also short-term.

I don’t think the anti-AI sentiment is as fringe as you think. At least not outside the tech world it isn’t..

Ya, I wish I saved a link to it but an HN'r wrote a good beefy comment about this. TL;DR, AI has been exponentially more useful, and exponentially more accepted, in tech circles than anywhere else. Certainly there are lots of people outside of tech who are obsessed with it. I don't have any data here, but it seems the majority of these are the wannabe artists who are generating music and images, and people who use it for companionship (both of these scenarios I'm personally very uncomfortable with, but that's just me). And of course, there are people who use it to make their jobs way easier who say they are getting a days' work done in an hour (I see you), and to that I'd say to enjoy it while it lasts. Eventually your bosses will catch up and it's very likely their expectations of you will skyrocket. Remember that computers in general were supposed to "make us work less."

It's pretty fringe among just about everyone I know in meatspace (the vast majority of whom are not in tech). At worst, people are indifferent to it.

Most people don't really have clear or strong opinions about AI other than that they don't like it :-p.

> but the movement is still fringe with a vocal minority

It’s easy to say “fringe” but the average person seems to have a generally negative sentiment around AI. But I wouldn’t say they have a firm opinion yet

The general sentiment I’ve seen is certainly negative, and seems to be driven by the anti-AI-art echo chamber and by LLM slop flooding the internet wasting everyone’s energy.

A few more informed people are also a little concerned about the end of the world, but that’s approaching from so many directions that an AI uprising might not be the worst option…

Downplaying something you don’t like as an “echo chamber”, says more about you as a person than anything you can say about the people who disagree with you

Anything related to AI is extremely unpopular right now with the general public.

Bs.

Musicians are almost all using AI, even if they still prefer to not fully generate tracks [1]. You listen to AI assisted music already even if you don’t realize it.

Most people are using AI and mostly they respond positively to it [2].

What people don’t like is the slop that has been flooding YouTube and similar content creators platforms. That was inevitable since the AI tools became so accessible any average joe could spam the internet with their sloppy content. But that doesn’t mean the pros are not using it to make great content, just like the best programmers are using it to create great software.

1: https://www.landr.com/ai

2: https://www.rev.com/blog/chatbot-statistics

Loss of life and other calamities were not enough to discourage humanity from things like cars, alcohol, nicotine, chainsaws, fast food, etc. etc. I am not sure if there is an example of in-some-ways-useful technology where humanity took a measured approach, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to go back. And AI is useful in so, so, so many ways. People I know already seem to have defaulted to letting AI do most of their thinking, on matters big or small. Nope, loss of life won't change a thing.

>> I don’t understand all the comments assuming that RSI is the real threat here

> leaked private data, loss of life

This smells like more of a money move than a safety move.

Amodei is proposing to form a cartel of American frontier labs.

They all agree to shift compute away from cash-burning research and training toward cash-generating inference.

Then tacitly agree not to compete on price.

They'll install independent auditors inside each company to ensure nobody cheats.

And back it up with government regulation or diktat to punish defectors from the cartel.

Then they'll lock out non-American labs with export controls and regulations on open-weights models to funnel global inference tokens through their cartel.

It wouldn't be the first time a tech oligopoly used "safety" as the pretext to establish a government-sanctioned cartel.

Railroads and airlines ran this same playbook.

Yup it’s tacit collusion.

I would’ve thought If they had AGI they could come up with a 10d chess move.

Nope.

Imagine how stupid you gotta be to believe their nonsense.

The reality is it doesn’t matter what they do. China is always one step behind and will continue its open product strategy approach.

Why do you think China is release free and open models?

To undercut the cartel before it has a grasp on anything. This is a well known strategy of undercut until you are the majority that China has used multiple times (steel and aluminum for one).

I am seeing a clear divide where people see their livelihood being adversely affected by AI.

Exactly right. A slow down to enable deeper work on alignment is welcome, not matter what the motivations.

Not true. Anti AI is not a minority or fringe.

Outside of my tech people I know no one who thinks highly of AI.

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