619 karma · joined March 22, 2017
The author of the Twitter thread is not some egotistical attention seeker and never said "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone". His logic for quitting his job and not acting like a psychopath is sound. Yours is not.
This is unreasonable because nobody can know 100% certain that the AI built at Anthropic will kill everyone. It is also a big-ass strawman because the author never claimed he was 100% certain that AI will kill all humans. You're arguing from an irrelevant hypothetical (in which, I might add, most people would still not automatically change into murderous psychopaths as you apparently think is normal).
> Horse Shit. Here's what was written
It's a whole thread, my man. And nowhere does it say "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone". Read the entire thread again and then say with a straight face that the gist of it is "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone".
For me personally reading is still interesting and can be very engaging, but due to the logic of the story, characters, and universe; for lengthy descriptions of the appearance of the environment or the characters I quickly glaze over and get bored because they just don't do much for me (unless the appearances have some semantic significance in the story).
This is an unreasonable demand. The quitting employee in this case said this:
"I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities. If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway” - or take this moment to call for different conditions?"
You demand that he should kill multiple people rather than quit his job because he believes the above. This guy doesn't want to be part of the problem and may very well go on to advocate strongly against what's happening from outside Anthropic.
> I agree with you, which is also why I think “omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone” or other sort of sensationalized comment
You didn't read what he wrote, did you? Because that sensationalized comment seems to have originated entirely in your head.
Edit: Implied is that how determined they were to commit suicide influenced their behavior before survival/death was fully out of their control.
You're not advocating for it because murdering people is highly immoral and illegal. That answers your question for the most part.
You also have to remember that the magnitude and speed of this stuff is very new to pretty much everybody. It's not exactly trivial to go from "I'm just doing my job" to "I need to kill everybody in my company to save the world" in a year or two, especially if a very, very large part of society doesn't even see the justification for it.
I'm convinced that most people here (even though we have more knowledge closer to the edge of AI development) would show only disdain for an Anthropic employee that murdered everybody there because they believed strongly in the dangers of AI.
The logic for the first bits of handwaving still applies: "I haven't seen any evidence of thermonuclear war happening, so it is unlikely to ever happen. The only time nukes were ever used outside of research was 80 years ago; the whole world recoiled, decided that they were way too dangerous and never used them again. Clearly they are not a real risk."
Yeah, even if the Aima people were 50% better at being a doctor than the Weku (or whatever) we still would not want Aima to be preferred over Weku just for being Aima.
This is the core flaw of this study, imho. The whole equal treatment thing isn't supposed to be "everybody should be equally likely to be picked for a job", but rather "everybody's chances to be picked for a job should only rely on direct characteristics that influence their competence for the job". This study effectively forces the decision maker to use group membership as a proxy for competence due to the lack of information on direct characteristics.
It is hard to see real world situations where there is no performance penalty for structurally choosing participants less fit for the job by using only group membership as a proxy.
The actions of Russia (and now the USA and Israel) really fucked a lot of countries all across the world; particular policies with regard to energy do have an effect, but are definitely not 100% the cause of the related issues.
I have a friend who only reads fiction for which he's seen the accompanying show first because he otherwise has no visual reference for the characters and environments.
Incredible alternative. Talk about depressing.
What percentage is benign?
Do you have a source?
> I am more than happy to pay the taxes and my share for the society, but only if it’s used for the good used and to make my living standards better.
So what's the solution to improving your experience, pay less in taxes or more? Don't add conditions. Remember that this is the subject: "So we get to work for the state about half the time (including VAT etc)".
Sidenote, as to your experience: most of that is not due to the German government, but to wars started by Russia and the US/Israel, and indeed other global crises. They have influence over how to act on crises, but they can't (for instance) magically make natural gas/oil appear out of thin air. The easy proof for this is that many, many, many countries with very different governments face those same issues.
There are good reasons to still have a significant amount of personal freedom in spending earned money: we have an economic system that works faster with it. Citizens can vote with their wallets on matters where collective spending is not necessary, thereby steering development of technology (and society) in a certain direction in a crowdsourced way. Personal spending power is also used as a reward for doing things (although technically this does not have to be in terms of money in a hypothetical future society).
The crowdsourced part is important. Technically a government could buy all the stuff for its citizens, but that is very inefficient for certain things as the knowledge of what is needed is local to the citizens. Additionally in the way we currently structure our governments there is too little room for experimentation: A government that would regularly try multiple different approaches to serve the same market simultaneously would be hammered by its citizens in a democracy for "wasting money", even though that is exactly what a healthy free market would do (bankruptcies and failed projects are a feature of free markets).
Coming back to the question what the percentage should be: it is partially a question of which markets should be publicly funded and which shouldn't. Clearly things like defense, the fire department and the justice system should never be privately funded. I believe health care shouldn't either, btw. The point here is that we have reasonable grounds on which to make the decision, namely what amount of free market capitalism can be allowed in a market without detrimental effects to society (what are essential services and whatnot) or rather which way of funding produces the most desirable results for society.
Determining which market needs what amount of resources is much harder (technically you could spend 99% of GDP on defense), but also part of it. How much investment do these publicly funded markets need? Is that even the right question? There is clearly some minimum to facilitate bare functioning, but what is a reasonable amount/service level? I would say this is a matter of experts making decisions based on a democratic mandate.
The other angle would be to think about what amount of personal spending money is beneficial to society: above what amount do people start spending it mostly on things they don't need and that don't make their lives or technology better? This is tricky, because it is highly intertwined with what services are provided publicly and because it's hard to come up with solid reasoning if there is an upper limit to what more spending does for (technological) progress. There is probably some value in stimulating the caviar and yacht markets, but I'd guess not that much.
All in all, it is tricky. Given all the above it may actually be a lot better if the tax rate was 80% for low earners and 95% for high earners. It may also be better if it was 20% and 35%. I don't think the latter is true, but I can't say with certainty that the former is either.
Again, it is a hard question.
Do you see how your initial feeling was far more extreme than the actual data show? That is the point of doing the actual work of looking at what your contribution funds: a scientific, solid basis for reasoning, rather than social media fueled primitive outrage. You should really try it.
> I'd like more control where my money goes.
Would you like everybody to have more control of that? What if people don't want to contribute to roads because they contribute to pollution (even though society would pretty much collapse without roads). Would you be okay with that?
Are you familiar with the Tragedy of the Commons [0]? Or perhaps any real world libertarian experiments?
Turns out individual people are generally selfish, highly incompetent and very fallible in making decisions on complex matters affecting lots of people. It's really, really hard to train individuals to make decisions that lead to collective prosperity, especially if they can choose options that are beneficial for them in the short term. The reason we effectively work towards collective prosperity at all is the evolution of systems and processes that mitigate individual incompetence (most voters really don't know how to run a sewage system), elevate individual specialization (experts), and push for a well-reasoned basis. This evolution took place over a long time and in the process a lot of people and systems died.
We can and must evolve it further, but that evolution should not ignore everything that went before it for the sake of feelings. See also Chesterton's Fence [1].
Of course there is a judicial system.
Of course sewage is properly dealt with.
Of course there is a fire department, etc. etc.
The whole point of the exercise is realizing what your taxes are actually providing. All that shit ain't free: it costs a lot of money and a lot of constant work from a lot of people who don't do it for the fame or fortune, yet publicly mostly just get shit on and called "lazy".
Don't get me wrong: Government isn't perfect and a lot can be and should be improved, but the framing that it is somehow scandalous or immoral to have to spend half of your earnings on the collective (mostly) good, or even to call that theft (as so many do) is entitled, spoiled and ignorant of history.
Edit: as to the prosperity of Germany, on a global scale and compared to other points in history it is actually doing fucking fantastic. It's citizens lead lives that are easily top 1% of any lives that have ever been and easily top 5% of lives currently on this planet.
Dreadful framing. You work for the benefit of the entirety of Germany including yourself half the time.
Instead of viewing it as money you've lost, do this: look at the fractions of what the German (federal, municipal, etc) government spends its budget on, then apply these to what you pay yearly in taxes. Then compare that to the other things you spend money on privately and what value you directly or indirectly get out of what you 'worked for for the state'.
We should care because "John's aunt" might rely on her paycheck as a professional painter to pay her bills. Many average humans have average jobs, some of which require intelligence (or creative production) only. Ignoring this reality is folly.
Social media addiction is definitely much more detrimental to society than drug addiction, imho. Drugs aren't used by foreign adversaries to sow discord and chaos. We should not treat drugs and social media the same.
I agree on your stance of 'tax and regulate' for drugs, but it should also be accompanied by heavy prevention efforts: people need to learn very early on how to have a healthy relationship with addictive things, whether it be gambling, alcohol, drugs, gaming, TV, or social media. This way they can protect themselves, in freedom.
The problem with social media is that it is very new, very broad, and in part quite innocent (just communication with friendly people). Even if we could magically update the education system to teach people how to not be manipulated by social media, we are way too late to prevent the terrible effects they are having in adults and seniors. We need a way to educate or protect those in a non-authoritarian way. Otherwise the slide developed societies find themselves in today will hit rock bottom again very soon.
I can go along with us having the tendency to determine the value of things in terms of money, but not with determining how virtuous somebody in terms of wealth. The former is morally neutral (even though it does pull society away from thinking in terms of what actually matters to wellbeing etc.), the latter isn't.
None of the examples you mentioned equate wealth with virtue/ethical behavior. "Nobility" does to an extent.
With regard to modern day connotations of wealth: I'd say that most people associate it with either luck or being savvy in some way; definitely not with ethical behavior.
Look at the political pressure the USA puts on ASML in the Netherlands to prevent them from selling certain products to China because those machines contain some American parts.
The question is explicitly when the reverse has happened, not some general info about European weapon exports or legislation.
That's why I suggested AEI.
> Very bad definition. AGI has to implement Intelligence. And to be Intelligent it has to contain the missing pieces.
Are you saying that the average human is missing pieces and thus can't be considered intelligent?
"With little or no human involvement, come up with paradigm-shifting, Nobel-caliber scientific discoveries."
Indeed far above the capabilities of almost all humans. I agree we should have a separate category for this. "ASGI" is still a bit unintuitive, imho. Maybe Artificial Excellent Intelligence.
With AGI explicitly meaning matching average humans, I would say that we really have already reached AGI. I can't think of any intelligence-only task where I'd think an average human would do significantly better than frontier AI provided with correct context.
It is one of a vast array of things the hypothetical kidnapper could come up with, some of which humans I agree will do better at (currently) and some of which AI will do better at. We clearly agree that in that array there is at least one task that a frontier AI would be better at than any human you could pick.
It is a thought experiment, so there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it being extreme or unrealistic (thought experiments very often are), but for the sake of goodwill let's 'weaken' it a bit: the AI or human always has an hour to come up with the answer, the question and answer are in their preferred language, and the answer fits on four pages. You can't help them, though; The criminal 'prompts' them. They can use the internet as an informational resource, but they can't communicate/ask for help/post anything (with the spirit of this being: no loophole in letting somebody else do the task or parts of it for them). And of course all subject matter of all complexity is fair game (including but not limited to quantum chromodynamics experiments).
Given that situation, do you think the programmer you mentioned would be more successful than a frontier AI in more than 50% of the possible intelligence tasks?
Edit, addendum: Please, if you can, also let said programmer read this thread and give his opinion on it. It sounds like he would have interesting things to say on this.
They may have used the word "noble", but very probably did not link that to wealth.