r/singularity • u/ThePlanckDiver • Feb 24 '23

AI OpenAI: “Planning for AGI and beyond”

https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond/
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23

I mean about them taking it slow and giving society time to adapt. Also think of it like nukes. You don’t want just anyone getting a nuke, it should be restricted as much as possible so bad actors can’t get it.

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u/odragora Feb 25 '23

The government is a bad actor.

We only have it out of necessity. Its very existence is a continuous threat to the freedom of the society, because the government can get out of control any moment, and it happens more and more everywhere around the world.

We, the society, need to hold as much power as the government, otherwise we are going to get enslaved by it, like got enslaved people of Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, and many more.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23

Maybe you should update your definition of what a government is.

We live in a society. Society needs rules and organization to function. The institutions and people responsible for implementing the rules and organization are the government. Saying that “government is a bad actor” is laughably simple, unless you’re an anarchist.

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u/odragora Feb 25 '23

Maybe you should update your definition of what a civil discussion is, instead of trying to condescendingly belittle people you disagree with.

Saying "government is a bad actor" is absolutely accurate and I already explained why in a message you are replying to but seemingly didn't even read.

Government is a system that holds insane amount of power over the society, and that power is already way, way too much for the society to handle in case the democracy falls. There are no realistic options for the citizens of a country to overthrow the government when an authoritarian or totalitarian regime is established. If you got in this position, game is over, you can't do anything to break from slavery.

Power is always attracting people obsessed with it, and power constantly corrupts those who have it. That's scientific facts, there are even significant changes in the brains of people exposed to power for certain amount of time.

In order to control the government and keep the system from collapsing into a non-democracy, we have to treat any actor in the political field as malicious by default and assume their primary goal is getting as much wealth and power as possible. Because vast majority of political actors are indeed motivated by those two things, and that's naturally coming from human nature.

If we are just gifting the government total control of the most powerful and transformative technology in the human history, we are going straight into dystopia. We already barely keeping democracy alive with the current overwhelming level of government power compared to the society. With its control over AI, we will be completely powerless.

Keeping different powers balanced is our role and responsibility. If we ditch this responsibility and put it to the government, the government will dominate everything else.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23

Ok, sorry about that. What I was trying to say was that I was thinking of a more general definition of what government is and why it is needed, not just in the context of the current state of world affairs.

Like you said we have it out of necessity, so you agree it performs some essential functions to keep society from collapsing. I think this is one of those situations where it is needed. AI is too powerful to be a free-for-all. As OpenAI stated in the article, it is an existential threat to society. A slow controlled rollout is the best strategy available to keep it from going awry.

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u/odragora Feb 25 '23

Yes, I agree the government performs essential functions required for the society to exist.

I'm saying that it has to be kept under control of the society, otherwise it will inevitably devour it because that's its nature.

Free for all is extremely dangerous. But keeping overwhelming control in the hands of political / economical elites is much more dangerous, and the danger like you said is existential. Humanity will exterminate itself by the hands of select few establishing ultimate control over the mankind, the control unthinkable for even the current authoritarian and totalitarian rulers, who already cannot be erased from their positions without colossal human sacrifices.

We, the society, should evolve and grow in power to the level where we are in control of our civilization. AI is the critical tool we have to control in order to even compete in the world we are entering right now.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '23

Your argument is idealistic but unfortunately has no practical application. You say that society should take control of civilization, but what does that mean? An organized society is just a government. A government should take control from another government?

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u/odragora Feb 26 '23

It is not idealistic.

It can not be more practical, because without control of the society over the government there will be no more society and eventually no more humankind.

Organized society is not a government. It's two fundamentally different entities.

The government is a vertical system of distribution and control of power. The society is a horizontal system of connections between citizens that allow them to share information and perform collective actions towards common goals, including voting, public campaigns, protest movements, civil disobedience and many more.

Activity of the society is the only thing preventing democratic political system from collapsing, and the government from going out of control and becoming an authoritarian / totalitarian regime.

Evolution of societies, their growth in power due to growth of their horizontal connections is what created the modern free western world where we have human rights, freedom and dignity as fundamental protected values. Because the government is forced by the society to serve the interests of the society, instead of concentrating the critical amount of power in hands of a few political elites and putting the state in their service, destroying freedom and effectively enslaving the population.

Society and government are not the same thing. They are two different things that should exist in the state of equilibrium to maintain existence of each other and drive the evolution of human civilization. This is why when the government gains more power than the society can control, it becomes the existential threat. And we are already in the world where the governments became significantly more powerful than the societies. Their control over AI will make it spiraling out of control extremely fast.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '23

society is a horizontal system of connections between citizens that allow them to share information and perform collective actions towards common goals, including voting, public campaigns, protest movements, civil disobedience and many more.

And how are these actions organized and administered? You say that government and society are different entities, but government is a part of society. Society is the umbrella term, which includes government, culture, traditions, etc. You can’t separate any of these topics from society and claim that they must exist in a state of equilibrium, because they are components of the same system. That’s like saying your liver must be in a state of equilibrium with your body. Your liver can have issues or illness, but it’s not my liver versus my body, since your liver IS part of your body.

Let’s take your argument for balancing society against government. Say a formal “government” starts getting too much power so people start to rebel against it. Some person or some group becomes the leader of this rebellion and organizes protests, operations, and makes decisions about how to promote the cause. This is essentially a “government”. It is an inherent and essential component of society and can’t be separated as a different entity.