Money wins, every time. They’re not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided “humans are the problem.” (I mean, that’s a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn’t “infect” the entire internet as it currently exists.)
However, it’s very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.
Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.
So, let’s review:
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The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It’s not like it can “hop” onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn’t have a “body” and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.
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Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.
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Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he “wants to save the world, but only if he’s the one who can save it.” I mean, he’s not wrong, but he’s also projecting a lot here. He’s exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could “safeguard” AGI and here he’s going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He’s a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.
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Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You’d think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don’t care, and they’ll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That’s how corporations work.
So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?
And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn’t the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating “safeguarding AGI” with “preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service.” They aren’t safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They’re safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.
40+ years on this planet have made me 100% certain that no one with the power to safeguard AGI will make any legitimate effort to do so. Just like we have companies spending millions greenwashing while they pollute more than ever, we’ll have plenty of lip-service about it but never anything useful.
All this noise just to serve up ads
Somewhere between
A bunch of incapable, spoilt, completely insane men-children with too much money think they can save the world.and
A bunch of scam artists build an artificial human who they claim can talk and draw and reason just like a real human would.For the CEOs of this brave new AI world this probably changes depending on their level of hangover and/or midlife crisis.
This is AskLemmy, not go on a rant and spread whatever narrative you feel spreading and add a question mark at the end.
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 1•8 months ago
Lets see what nuggets I can find in the post hist- didn’t even need to scroll past the first page.
It’s common business practice for the first big companies in a new market/industry to create “barriers to entry”. The calls for regulation are exactly that. They don’t care about safety–just money.
The greed never ends. You’d think companies as big as Microsoft would just be like “maybe we don’t actually need to own everything” but nah. Their sheer size and wealth is enough of a “barrier to entry” as it is.
Google: “
Don’tbe evil.”
Homie got rich and famous by making a chat bot that spits out the internet back at you while spewing out buzzwords like only the best Valley hustlers can.
Personally I’m more worried about the robodogs and terminators that the likes of Boston Labs are putting out.
Thankfully, those are still built on known technologies and unless they start beefing them up security-wise, it’s not impossible to get a hold of their battery compartment to rip out the battery, effectively “killing” them, but it also wouldn’t be impossible to hack them via their sensors. Likely they have some form of wireless communication, and that’s a hole to be exploited.
Also, since they need their sensors to “see” you can also do lots of things to confuse/fuck with their sensors. Like just get close and spray paint any cameras on them.
Still not ideal, and I have the same fears about those as you do, but I do think humans are good enough at guerilla warfare that we would still best a machine.
I mean, we can’t even make a laptop battery that lasts all day. Humans currently can run far longer than a robot can before running out of “energy.” It’s the old “humans never get tired” meme about being an animal chased by hairless apes and how scary it must be. These things will have to be hardwired to a power source or have battery packs that are so huge as to make a human-sized one that can run for a full day nigh-impossible.
For your first point sure it couldn’t run itsself on consumer hardware, but it could design new zero day malware faster than any human and come up with new scams to get it onto people’s machines
It could also design a more efficient version of itsself to spread that will run on lower powered hardware
Just so we’re clear, we all get that these models don’t run continuously, right? They run for a solution to a specific prompt.
All of these scenarios are based on a black box where Number 5 gets struck by lightning or Geordi asks for a rival that can best Data. It requires a different thing entirely that operates in a completely different way. You should absolutely prepare for the fact that a self-driving car may accidentally cause a car crash. It’s absurd to prepare for the scenario where Stephen King’s Christine happens.
I’m not talking about language models of today though, this is a hypothetical for if we do ever come up with a true agi
Sure, but at that point that’s as speculative as it was after people first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s not based on current tech, there’s no great indication of when (or if) the tech is going to enable it or through what means.
Half of the risks being highlighted are pure sci-fi, most of the others have been in play since social media and online companies started to monetize big data over a decade ago.
It is absolutely speculative never claimed it’s not. Something like GPT was purely speculative science fiction until a few years ago though
Not saying it’s going to happen, but if it does and it is true agi it could absolutely take over the world, that’s my only point
Those don’t follow from each other, though. Handheld wireless computers were purely speculative until the 2010s, but that doesn’t mean we were on the brink of figuring out teleportation.
People have been assuming computers would yield AGI since we first made an electric calculator. First through sheer processing power, then through improved computation techniques, then neural networks. Figuring out speech and vision are probably part of that process, but AGI does not arise from them without an indeterminate, possibly unknowable amount of major steps.
And as for world-ending threats, how about we get past, say, Trump, Putin and all the natural general intelligences that are very real and in the process of doing the same first? Or, you know, we apply that level of concern about tech that we do have, like social media disrupting democracy, private universal surveillance or digital oligopolies driving endless inequality? Or, hey, global warming.
I agree rogue AI is a much cooler problem to speculate about, which is why we keep writing sci-fi about it, but we have more pressing issues.
It’s not like the AI sanctions were ever about actually protecting humanity anyway, as it turns out recently it was just to attempt to stall until musk could get his own language model off the ground
Again though my point was never that we need to be concerned right this instant that AGI is around the corner, it’s purely that if it were to happen it could absolutely propogate itself
What’s almost more scary is if it’s not sentient, and it’s just an incredibly advanced language model that acts in the way it thinks an AI should (based on all the fiction we have of AI manipulating humans and taking over the world that it’s been trained on)
But… how do you know it could?
I mean, why on Earth would you deliberately make an AGI and make it able to do that? It’s not like you HAVE to make an AGI that is able to make other AIs. That’s not a trivial task, it doesn’t just… happen. And you’re presuming that it’d want to do that and that we wouldn’t have control over that. Which you don’t know, because now we’re deep into sci-fi territory, so it’s about as likely as the mapping of genome leading to a genetic class system.
And that last scenario there is not just sci-fi, but the same old sci-fi, where AGI emerges from a LLM because magic and it becomes eEeEvil because dramatic convenience. That scenario is entirely impossible, because a LLM does not run continuously or autonomously and it has the short term memory of… a thing with very small short term memory, so you’d have to ask it to do that first, then wait a considerable amount of time for a response and then watch it pretend to do that because it’s a language model and it can’t actually do any of that. Literally the “make an opponent that can beat Data” scenario, so we’re doing Star Trek now.
First part is feasible but not enough to “destroy humanity.” More like a long-term frustration.
Second point is extremely unlikely and in the realm of sci-fi. You can’t just magic up something that works the same on a hundreth of the hardware.
Last I checked you can just unplug these things and they go away, just like any other computing device.
So even if the first scenario happened, its a pretty easy fix.
You absolutely can magic up something that runs far more efficiently, just look at gpt 3 vs 3.5, or the many open source models that have found better training with a smaller number of parameters makes much more performant models
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LLM /= AGI
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Models made for specific purpose instead of general purpose are of course going to need less CPU cycles because you aren’t creating an AGI, you are creating a specialized tool.
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It still takes far longer to produce a result on smaller hardware. An AGI that takes days to do anything isn’t exactly that dangerous.
- Why are you even talking about AGI needing a certain amount of compute then? You’re using LLM numbers.
Go have a read of some doomsday scenarios. I’m not saying they’re right, but it feels plausible to me.
Go have a read of some doomsday scenarios. I’m not saying they’re right, but it feels plausible to me.
I have, and I have been working with computer hardware and networking my whole life. I have a degree in network administration. I think the fears are absolutely overblown by people who don’t understand hardware.
Most people don’t own fancy new computers. Most people are still running shit from 10 years ago and don’t want to have to upgrade. The idea that the world could be taken over by an AGI seems literally fancifully absurd to me.
Bro, I run AI projects on a consumer fucking laptop. Sure, they aren’t exactly LLM levels of complexity, but anybody with a need for serious hardware for a bit will just rent it off AWS or so.
I understand that LLMs are not agi, but as agis don’t currently exist I think it’s fair to assume the same concept that applies to literally all software of over time people discover more efficient ways to do things will also apply to it
Also we don’t know how slow or fast it will end up being, some deep learning models are incredibly fast, some are slow
Once you get down to individual bits, you can’t make code any smaller. You have a finite number of bits to work with. In networking, especially.
There is literally an upper (lower?) limit on how small you can make code.
Like others in the thread, I think you’re confusing the great pace at which we have increased the hardware speed of computers and the miniaturization of computer components with “code” somehow getting “smaller” which… isn’t really a thing when you’re dealing with something as complex as this. You can’t run an LLM on the same number of lines you can print up “Hello World!”
It’s way more that we have more CPU speed, more RAM, and faster storage with more space for data to live.
print(1) print(2) print(3) print(4) print(5)
for I=1,5: print(I)
There you go I made code smaller
I also never said anything about making code smaller I said making it more efficient. It’s not about compressing it it’s about finding better, less CPU expensive ways to do things, which we absolutely do
Another AI based example, video chats currently work streaming video, but there’s a technology in development that takes one screenshot, sends that, then sends expression data to be reconstructed on the other side
Far more efficient network wise
Hardware speed has increased, sure but that applies to both consumer hardware and servers, all a theoretical AGI would have to do is improve on its own training/code enough that it will run at all on consumer level hardware (which language models currently will do
(For reference, llama 40B runs just fine on my ThinkPad from 2016, pre-trained models are not that difficult to run, training is the expensive part)
You’re misunderstanding what I mean by “making code smaller.” Because… that’s not that much smaller. Each Unicode character is 2 bytes, with some being as many as 4 bytes. This code snippet is 64 bytes. Can you magically make Unicode characters smaller than 2 bytes? You can’t. There’s a literal physical limit on how small you can make code.
Sure, you can come up with clever ways to use less code. But my point is there is a limit on how much less code you can use, and that always is based on physical hardware limitations. Just because modern hardware makes it feel limitless doesn’t mean it is.
EDIT: Got my data sizes mixed up.
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I’m of the opinion that Microsoft was tired of losing money on OpenAI, so made some kind of plan to out the current CEO, tank the stock price, and be in the perfect position to buy the company and monopolize AI technology. It wouldn’t be the first time they pulled shady crap like that.
Embrace Extend Extuinguish
Money wins, every time.
And right there, you answered your own (presumably rhetorical) question.
The money people jumped on AI as soon as they scented the chance of profit, and that’s it. ALL other considerations are now secondary to a handful of psychopaths making as much money as possible.
“A handful of psychopaths making as much money as possible”
Capitalism in a nut shell
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 2•8 months ago
Unrelated but is your name a reference to Amy Likes Spiders? That was my favorite poem in DDLC.
Probably subconsciously. I came up with the name long after playing the game, but I wasn’t thinking of it when I made it. I actually am just a lady who likes spiders
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 2•7 months ago
I love spiders, and lots of bugs really. I have zero respect for people who look down on them when they’re just so damn cute.
Like how can anyone look at this and say anything other than “awww”
awww
Yeah you’re right. Look at that little cutie <3
I use the way people treat other animals, especially ones like bugs and stuff, the ones we barely give a second thought about, as a measure of character. Phobias are one thing, but at least have compassion for this other living thing
- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 2•7 months ago
Very few will get a chance to feel what it’s like to pet a bug and have it go from fearing for its life to trusting you with its life. They genuinely have no framework for a world that treats them as disposable when you show them compassion, and it’s magical how they react.
How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment?
Why would it need to leave its own environment in order to impact the world? How about an AGI taking over the remote fly system for an F-35, B-21, or NGAD in order to go all Skynet? It doesn’t have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system. Penetration of and fuckery with the systems that run major stock exchanges present the same problem. It doesn’t need to execute itself on those platforms, merely exert control over them.
The concern here isn’t about an AGI taking over systems in order to execute itself, it’s about AGI taking control of systems away from humans in much the same way that traditional Black Hat hackers would but at a much faster speed and with potentially far less concern for any human cost.
It doesn’t have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system.
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Planes that are primarily designed to be human-piloted tend to have to be wildly modified to become a drone, or a remote-pilot situation. The F-35, for example, can be heavily modified for this, but is not built for it to begin with. This argument would hold more weight if you were referring to the entire drone fleet.
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(Assuming drones) Generally, the military is pretty secure with these kind of things, and they won’t allow in external internet connections but will instead have their own internal communications network. For this to be successful, the AGI would essentially have to somehow get by air-gapped defenses and get close enough with a physical body to get a signal. How could they do this with drone pilots in a remote area in an non-internet connected building? The only way would be through the wireless signal. At that point, yes, it would be feasible to take over the drone. I find it very hard to believe that an AGI could do that, magically make connection to remote, air-gapped systems.
An AGI doing what you’re talking about doing would mean all secure facilities in the world would have just tossed their security practices out the window to begin with and having internet connections inside secure facilities. That’s just not how its done. Sure the psychotic wing of the Republican party doesn’t give a shit and Donald Trump doesn’t… but like, reasonable people do, and so security still exists.
This argument would hold more weight if you were referring to the entire drone fleet.
Sure, and we’re maybe 5 years away from that.
An AGI doing what you’re talking about doing would mean all secure facilities in the world would have just tossed their security practices out the window to begin with and having internet connections inside secure facilities.
Nearly all of the normal spy activities that can induce someone to action are available to an AGI; Bribery, Compromise, and Relationship. There’s also people who would willingly help because their goals aligned or because they believe things would be better with an AGI in charge.
…but like, reasonable people do, and so security still exists.
Sure, and that security gets penetrated and an AGI can do it in the same way its done now only faster and with no controls on its behavior.
You also need to drop the assumption that the AGI or its targets will be American.
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And why would nobody stop it? We are pretty good at stop button technology for instance, we also have pretty good grasp of the reset button but maybe it shouldn’t be one of those hole you always break pens on
I think there are real concerns to be addressed in the realm of AGI alignment. I’ve found Robert Miles’ talks on the subject to be quite fascinating, and as such I’m hesitant to label all of Elizier Yudkowsky’s concerns as crank (Although Roko’s Basilisk is BS of the highest degree, and effective altruism is a reimagined Pascal’s mugging for an atheist/agnostic crowd).
Even while today’s LLMs are toys compared to what a hypothetical AGI could achieve, we already have demonstrable cases where we know that the “AI” does not “desire” the same end goal that we desire the “AI” to achieve. Without more advancement in how to approach AI alignment, the danger of misaligned goals will only grow as (if) we give AI-like systems more control over daily life.
But like we only think about “controlling” it’s goals and shit when honestly what we only need is a fucking stop button like in a fucking factory. Whops it’s genocidal again Claus, all right Lars slam the off button and let’s start over
The stop button problem is not yet solved. An AGI would need a the right level of “corrigability”: a willingness allow humans to stop it when undertaking incorrect behavior.
An AGI that’s incorrigible might take steps to prevent itself being shut off, which might include lying to its owners about its own goals/internal state, or taking physical action against an attempt to disable it (assuming it can).
An AGI that’s overly corrigible might end up making an association “It’s good when humans stop me from doing something wrong. I want to maximize goodness. Therefore, the simplest way to achieve a lot of good quickly is to do the wrong thing, tricking humans into turning me off all the time”. Not necessarily harmful, but certainly useless.
Exactly
AI isn’t the danger, it’s human application of “AI” that will be horrible as fuck.
What’s AGI?
Reasonable question. Artificial General Intelligence, as opposed to Artificial Intelligence. Technically LLMs are AI, but they are not AGI. AGI would literally be a human-like consciousness able to think and extrapolate on its own, much moreso than the current iterations, which others have noted are more like decision-trees.
AGI is still science fiction right now
insert spacesuit “always has been” meme here.
It doesn’t matter if anyone cares about the safety of AGI.
AGI is a direct source of power, much like any weapon. As soon as AGI exists, we will exist in a state of warfare due to the fact that the “big guns” will be out.
I know I’m having trouble articulating this point, but it’s very important to understand. AGI is like a nuclear weapon: once a person has it, it doesn’t matter how much others may want to regulate them. It’s just not possible to regulate.
The ONLY strategy that gives us hope of surviving AGI’s emergence without being enslaved is to spread AGI far and wide to ensure a multipolar AGI ecosystem, which will force AGI to learn prosocial interaction as a means of ensuring its own survival.
And if you want to come at me with “AGI doesn’t inherently have a self interest”, consider that the same is true of nuclear weapons. And yet nuclear weapons get their interests from their wielders. And the only way to stay safe from nuclear weapons is also to proliferate them far and wide so that there is a multipolar ecosystem of nuclear weapons, ensuring those holding nuclear weapons have to play nice to ensure their own survival.
All of this talk about restricting AGI will only have the effect of concentrating it in a few hands, leading to the very nightmare the regulators are trying to avoid.
If the regulators had succeeded, and the US had been the only nation to possess nuclear weapons in the long run, humanity would have suffered massively from that lack of parity. Let me be less coy: humanity would have suffered under the brutality of repeated nuclear holocausts as the interests of the few led to further and further justification of larger and larger strikes.
Nuclear weapons cannot be regulated by law. They can only be regulated by other nuclear weapons. Same is true of AGI.
Okay. It’s not only a weapon though.
It doesn’t need to be only a weapon for any of this to apply. Same as nuclear fission.
“It doesn’t matter if anyone cares about the safety of agi”
It does matter. And it doesn’t apply because it’s not just a weapon. It matters how it acts towards humans ethically in so many ways other than indiscriminate slaughter
Once they saw the big stack of money, they suddenly forgot that OpenAI’s charter specifically mentioned preventing AI to benefits select fews and instead hands over everything to Microsoft on a silver platter.