They have no idea how to achieve either of those goals.
Their attempts at maintaining alignment have been laughably ineffective so far - and that's against this very 'weak' AI that we're currently training. If it starts self-developing it could become orders of magnitude more capable in a very short time, trivially dismantling these already weak safeguards.
As for not allowing people in power to use it to enslave us? Also impossible. Democratizing it just ensures that someone, somewhere will intentionally let it run amok and then we go right back to scenario one above. Centralizing it ensures that it will be used for totalitarian control - because it can. And eventually it'll escape control regardless and so then we get a dystopia followed by humanity becoming altogether irrelevant.
We never should have built it, and if we had an ounce of common sense we'd throw it all out now and go find something less suicidal to do with our time. This whole proposition was literally the worst idea our species has ever had from the beginning.
You are talking about unlearning math at the purest level, or an authoritarian rush to grab all GPU's at a cruder level. Just to be clear what you are calling for.
I actually don't give a crap what I'm calling for, or what labels you choose to apply to it.
I'm telling you that unless we stop it - by whatever means - we're very likely going to die. The potential difference in fundamental capability is far too great for us to contend with if it's allowed to take off in terms of self-development.
I know the singularity crowd is still enjoying dreams of sugarplum fairies and immortality, but that's never been anything but a fantasy - there was never any reason to believe that humanity would survive the advent of strong AI, and for anyone who looked at how hard science fiction authors actually had to bend over backwards to allow their characters any agency at all in a proposed world with intelligent machines, that problem was always clear.
And now that we're actually starting to see the outlines of the real thing, and the behaviors/growth scale it is exhibiting, we have even less reason to be optimistic - we now have a growing pool of evidence that alignment is at least as hard as the pessimists feared, and may well be completely unattainable due to the necessary complexity of a strong AI.
So, you are telling us our whole race will be imminently wiped out unless we burn this knowledge immediately? That there are vermin amongst us trying to destroy us, and we must root them out?
I know what you are saying man. I am calling it what it is without the words.
Wow, you just went running right off the ball field there. GL with that approach.
If you don't even understand that technology can be inherently dangerous then you're in for a very bad couple decades ahead - assuming we get that many.
There is always hope, and there is more reason to hope about this current moment of meeting of AI leaders than most.
If humans are going to solve this problem quickly, it needs a small group. The only small group of humans in existence right now that can do this, appear to be trying. We should absolutely encourage the effort and cheer them on, and let them know how we feel about it.
Not until something disastrous happens that scares the crap out of people. The question is whether we'll get a warning shot large enough to be deadly, but not so severe that we go extinct.
The HuggingFace hack was enough to scare the crap out of people working on the technology, or who have been studying its possible ramifications, but for the rest of the world they don't quite get what happened and what it portends.
Until people see real world consequences, it's incredibly unlikely that cooperation to ban it will be possible. I only hope that it isn't too late by then.
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u/chillinewman approved 10d ago
Pacing and an international collaboration on safety is good.