I would assume that shortly after, the solar system will be hyper optimized as well, then the milky way, then the local cluster, and so on. Everything will be close to optimal afterwords, and I sure hope we will have specified the target function for that optimization correctly in the single attempt that we will have had.
The regulation that is being argued for here is against pushing the frontier. Entering the market with say a new speech to text model is not subject to such regulation. What's needed is something qualitatively different from entry barriers, and of the frontier model companies at least Anthropic and deepmind seem to have enough self-awareness to speak about it. They are finding themselves in a race with possibly catastrophic outcome for humanity and would like to stop, but it needs internation cooperation on a level that no single company can provide.
the actual race is to keep having revenue, since everyone is still willing to pay more for the best model.
we as consumers of LLM models lose out by the arms race ending by the creation of a cartel
what happens if they get this regulatory capture is that all the frontier labs put effort into making inference cheaper, and become extraordinarily profitable, at the expense of us consumers, who really want better models, at a subsidized price
> If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing
Even Anthropic wants to Pause AI now. There must really be not much time left for "edging". Please write to your lawmakers, no matter whether you are in the US, Europe, China, or elsewhere. Only an international agreement between governments can enforce an AI-Pause and eliminate the necessity to dangerously push the frontier.
Or agree on finding ways to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy. This has been done, there are thousands of people working on it around the globe and 180+ member states of the IAEA. It's not easy, there have been close calls.
And cooperating interntionally to buy ourselves time to find ways to develop this "last invention" is a way that will do good for humanity seems to be on a similar level.
Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic said the following at an Oxford lecture last week ([0], at around 10 and 12 mins):
"It's a technology that we do not fully understand because it's more grown than made. And it is a technology that you can concoct plausible scenarios where it could kill every single person on the planet. So to think building this technology is without risk would be an act of hubris or insanity.
[...]
The technology is in fact so powerful that I should clearly state that if it was possible to elegantly slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time as a species to deal with it, that would likely be a good thing. ... But in the absence of a coordinated global slowdown, we are left with the current situation, which is a powerful technology being developed at breakneck speed by a variety of actors and a variety of countries locked in a competition with one another where commercial and geopolitical rivalries are often drowning out the larger existential-to-the-species aspects of the technology being built. This isn't an ideal situation, but it's the one we find ourselves in."
They know they are in a race that no one will win.
It is already very plausible (and has been since the 1950s) without the advent of LLMs. This is just another layer on top of the preexisting and very plausible existential threats we already face.
Task a squirrel with justifying the risk of a fox, but from the biomolecular level. That is the level of the task you are setting out.
There can be arms-races in domains that are unfathomable to the participants. A small mammal will die a billion times over before it understands the evolutionary mechanisms and the genetic playing field on which it loses. Actors are not necessarily privy to understand the means by which they will lose, and humans have only existed in a small window of time in which we fashioned a manicured garden, in which that full understanding was briefly possible. It is not favoured in the universe for us to fully understand our environment imho
If the risk must be exhaustively detailed before it is given credence, we are already doomed, and deservedly so
>Task a squirrel with justifying the risk of a fox, but from the biomolecular level. That is the level of the task you are setting out.
Thats a really deep thought for a 12 year old.
>There can be arms-races in domains that are unfathomable to the participants.
You cant even justify LLMs as being unfathomable. Oh watch out I am fathoming them. You cant stop me fathoming all over the place.
>A small mammal will die a billion times over before it understands the evolutionary mechanisms and the genetic playing field on which it loses.Actors are not necessarily privy to understand the means by which they will lose, and humans have only existed in a small window of time in which we fashioned a manicured garden, in which that full understanding was briefly possible. It is not favoured in the universe for us to fully understand our environment imho
Non Sequitur. One that sounds like it was made up for that "What the Bleep" garbage.
>If the risk must be exhaustively detailed before it is given credence, we are already doomed, and deservedly so
The risk needs to be justified as something more substantial than weird people writing wannabe edgy messages on the internet. If someone on the internet told you that we need to drastically reverse living standards because there's a risk that modern technology will summon King Kong any reasonable person would ask for the working out instead of running for a cave.
Its not like you handed me anything but woo to work with. There's really nothing less respectful than making up absolute nonsense and expecting a kind and thoughtful reply.
No they're right. Regardless if one agrees with you or not, doesn't change the fact that your behavior was that of an asshole. I would know since I'm one too.
This was completely unnecessary. I understand why you say it, you like to make people feel bad. But it was being an asshole, regardless of how you try to justify it.
I'll invite to you our ethical sociopaths group if you want to join.
"Oh what peril we are in where I must get rich by killing all of you" Is a statement that should make you disregard anyone saying it at any time. Either they are liars, or they are so morally bankrupt that they are willing to sacrifice the species for short term satisfaction. Either option makes them more fit for a mental hospital than a stage.
Google (and other labs) wanted to keep the tech internal because of the obvious safety concerns. Once they were confident that the tech was understood and under control, the public could start being drip fed. Everyone on the ground back then was hyper cautious.
Then Altman made ChatGPT public, and the race began.
Not all training data is human generated, and it's also not clear that being ridiculously good at interpolating between data points (whatever that means) will not lead to superhuman capabilities.
I could make a robotic picture coloring machine with truly superhuman capabilities - picking only the most beautiful color combinations and staying 100% in the lines while finishing entire murals in < 1 second. However, if you need a completely new and original image rendered, the machine is of only partial utility for you. It is very well possible that your cure for cancer (if that's even feasible) or whatever else you desire is a completely new picture.
We have these breathless conversations about the new AI frontier at the peril of losing sight of reality and our own human potential.
To prevent accusations of "masculinism" or sexism and to have a stronger case on having the goal to improve readability the add-on could include an option (or even make it default) to replace by generic feminine instead.
The times where you have to try to appease small but vocal perpetually outraged groups are over. The German language has no generic feminine so adding it to the extension would contradict its goal.
> The times where you have to try to appease small but vocal perpetually outraged groups are over.
Zwei Punkte: erstens, nein, such times are never over. Only thing that changes is who is outraged and by what.
Zweitens, you're a demonstration of this right now by caring. To be clear, I'm not criticising you for this, you're allowed to care about stuff, but you're literally promoting an extension that rewrites someone else's word choice because you don't like it. Es ist dasselbe, und ist gründlich no different to how English Sprachbewahrer complain about the split infinitive in Star Trek's "to boldly go" or common use of the phrase "very unique" (unique means one-of-a-kind, how can you be "very" that?)
> The German language has no generic feminine so adding it to the extension would contradict its goal.
Die deutsche Sprache ist keine constructed language like Esperanto, whose rules come from a book, it's a natural language whose rules are discovered by observing those using it. As people change what they say and how they say it, so too does language change over time.
The German language is what those using it, do. On the basis of the political adverts I see around here, this includes the conservative CDU borrowing die englische Phrase „Made in Germany“: https://www.cdu.de/aktuelles/cdu-deutschlands/mainzer-erklae...
The goal as stated on the extension page is to improve the readability of texts by replacing :, *, _ forms. So some customizability to the user's wishes would be quite nice.
My calculus textbook (Königsberger, 2004) in university used alternating generic masculine and feminine in its exercises, which I found a delightful use of language.
There was no nuclear weapon used in warfare anymore since WW II. I think the regulation and oversight worked incredibly well over the past 70-80 years, despite the game-theoretic challenge you mention.
I'm referring specifically to preventing additional countries from becoming nuclear powers. There was massive effort and coordination expended to this end. It failed repeatedly. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968. 5 more countries armed themselves thereafter.
Given that his reason for saying GPT-2 was too dangerous to release was that the world needed more time to prepare for the effects of this technology, and given that the following models were basically scaled-up versions of it and killed social media, news reporting and other kinds of communication, I'd say he was right about the dangers of it.
"The race to build smarter-than-human AI is a race with no winners."
And specifically about the point on China, several people in power in China have also expressed the need to regulate AI and put international structures of governance in place to make sure it will benefit mankind:
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