Democratic societies have expressed a will for people to have inviolable rights, such that you may not appeal at will to the 'greater good/consequences' to harm others. It is a rejection of consequentialism.
Anthropic is in error for endorsing this logic. Every big trial reaffirms it since Nuremberg, you are responsible for the act you commit and your intent, and not what would or would not have happened otherwise.
Only under authority these ai companies do not have, would someone seriously consider harming the innocent as a lesser evil.
If you work for an AI company and you can't work safely, you must stop working.
I don't think "just make it illegal" is going to save us, that doesn't make me feel safe anyway. They may try that first because it's easy - create a regulatory body, sign some legislation, problem solved! [george-bush-mission-accomplished.jpg] But at this point I feel like some kind of Battlestar Galactica scenario is most likely - hopefully not quite as existential - but it will take a collective reaction to a traumatic event (a la Hiroshima/Nagasaki). Technical rather than (or in addition to) legal measures will be taken, like network partitioning and hardening. This is everyone's problem whether we like it or not.
(I'm not saying this "fatalism" should be used as an excuse by anyone working for any of these companies, it should give them pause that any bloodshed would still be squarely on their hands, but as an observer, people are gonna keep pushing until shit hits the fan. [jeff-goldblum-jurassic-park.gif] It's also not really about whether it's "appealing" or not, it's just trying to predict and anticipate different likelihoods...)
But my response is that we should still try even if we haven’t successfully stopped or slowed the development of technology in the past (which I don’t actually think is possible to know, I am personally aware of biological research to use brain cells as computers that was stopped by government intervention. But by definition we won’t know about most things that don’t exist).
Your narrow point is well stated that there is a categorical difference when technology is on the precipice of being created. And maybe AI is inevitable because it’s on just such a precipice. But I’d point out that AI is currently in a scaling cycle which provides an opportunity to slow the scaling and ensure scaling isn’t monopolistic thereby slowing the risk.
And I don’t think the evidence suggests that open source will continue to progress as rapidly absent distillation. I think if open ai and anthropic stopped releasing models broader progress would slow. But again your inevitable argument is persuasive
I agree that “just make it illegal” won’t work but shouldn’t then justify “so there’s nothing to do”.
There is lots we could do. For example we could make users and executives liable for their agents actions. We could assign a session ID to every agent tool call chain and if there is harm trace it to the user, we wouldn’t even need to read the conversation or contents of the tool calls or prompts it could be a simple rule, your ai agent causes personal liability. Users would be more careful or perhaps not even use AI in many cases that could inadvertently expose them to liability. We could extend liability to executives and employees of the Labs. They will be much more careful and more focused on alignment if they could be personally liable for the actions of their users and agents.
That is how the BigAI leads the society to the idea of necessity to relax the anti-monopoly laws when it comes to the Big AI - the main goal of all that "AI will kill you all" hysteria.
The examples for the dangers of AI is always comparisons with tools designed to destroy (which is understandable). But the problem with AI is it has the potential to create wealth for investors.
Thus those who have the opportunity to change course also have a conflict of interest in making that decision.
So the choice is: negotiate an unverifiable treaty (I.e. there's no way to verify compliance), or keep going as you are and try your best to not cause the destruction of humanity without slowing down.
The China argument is just a convenient scapegoat to convince the public that this isn’t just about greed.
For example, we don’t know if the pace of Chinese development of AI would have equal to what it is now if US companies weren’t racing against each other already.
I do fully believe that Chinese industry is lead by a desire to out pace the west. But I’m not convinced the same is true for the most American private entities. I think the reward model is different between businesses in America and businesses in China. I think the ambitions of CEOs is different. And I’m really not convinced that the CEOs of America are nearly as patriotic as they like to promote themselves to Trump and other political parties.
And that’s assuming the company even gets fined. More often than not, cases don’t even get that far.
Can you please explain what you mean by this because where I’m standing extremely dangerous companies are (and have been) running the economy
Exxon comes primarily to mind
Hofs bunny ranch is a famous brothel in NV
Booz Allen makes and maintains the nuclear fleet including the Sentinel ICBM
Textiles factories are globally known to be industrial slave camps for a non trivial portion of the supply. Even worse for Mica mines.
Etc…you can fill out the rest
Go open a brothel in NYC. It isn’t legal.
Go buy a nuclear bomb. Your ownership is illegal.
Go open textile mill in the abandoned buildings in North Carolina where children used to work and hire children to work the line. That will be illegal.
And no those aren’t exceptions, I could open a legal brothel in quebec, the netherlands, Brazil and be perfectly legal
If you think the US laws = ethics then I got nothing else to say
An exception by definition is a phenomenon with lower frequency than the general trend. Of the 50 us states only one has legal prostitution and only in highly regulated areas. Of the countries of the world it is similarly infrequent and thus an exception to the general rule that it is illegal.
Further the fact that it is illegal anywhere supports my point that it’s possible to regulate businesses based on their harm.
“Society doesn't allow dangerous companies to operate or exist”
That has been falsified thoroughly
Whether certain jurisdictions ban it or not is irrelevant to the original claim
Sure, that's why 99% of clothes are made offshore, but if we had something like tariffs on those (or requirements to prove that the actual factory adheres to labor and environmental standards), maybe more would be made "at home"? Similarly: Chinese cars undercutting US/German ones.
I mean there was just a video a couple of months ago of the giant room of sewing workers with cameras strapped to their faces capturing their hand movement so they could be automated
I saw entire cities emptied out over my lifetime.
I was in their offices at some point when that program was getting built out - Very much a Office Space bobs situation.
Philip Morris International? Monsanto? DuPont?
FTFY: Any self-respecting society with competent politicians.
The US has neither of that, and it shows everywhere you are looking.
> Go try to buy a tank and drive it into Manhattan. If we can prohibit that why can't we prohibit irresponsible AI development and deployment?
Because even if you had the tank, you can't make much money with it (unless you're a hitman, that is, but even for these, the payouts are measly). But if you are the surviving AI company in the usual VC playbook of "outcompete everyone else until society is completely and utterly hooked, then squeeze the customers by the balls"? The return on investment is virtually infinite. And that is what sustains the absurd valuations for all the AI companies.