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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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I think honestly I’d boost the production of aligned AI by paying a bonus to the people who develop such a thing. AI cannot be stopped, as the first successful company to develop AI to commercial viability will dominate its industry, and the first country to do so will be the hyper power of the next century and maybe beyond. By paying a premium on producing an aligned AI that wouldn’t harm us, I think it increases the chances of getting past the Great Filter in one piece. Having the first AI come from people or places that don’t care about that increase X-risk. So getting the good guys to win (those concerned about the potential risks of AI) lowers X-risk, while moratoriums increase the risk.

Whoever produces real AGI already won before you pay this bonus. You should really be thinking of it more in terms of risk portfolios. If you are producing an unaligned ai there is a rising risk a predator drone is closing in on your location. This is a kind of risk that can properly be modeled venture capitalist firms. Balance the regulatory strength to the point where the mandatory insurance policy and its auditors keep the whole thing in check.

Thanks, that's a reasonable proposal and rationale. The thing is, it's not clear to me in which sense OpenAI, as an entity, effectively cares about X-risk. I say this knowing many OpenAIers personally, and that they certainly care about X risk. But what realistic options do they have for not always taking the next, most profit-maximizing step? I realize they did lots of safety-checking around their own release of GPT-4, but they also licensed it to Microsoft! I know they have a special charter that in principle allows them to slow down, but do you think their lead is going to grow with time?

I mean the first person or company to develop an AI capable of being used in production basically wins. And given that Microsoft owns a copy of GPT-4 I think it gives them an advantage. Keep in mind that most things computer tend to scale exponentially, not linearly, so the lead will only grow, unless someone creates something more powerful. Since this is the situation, moratoriums simply don’t work for the same reason other types of ban don’t work— the only people who abide the ban are the lawful-good types who would be most likely to pause if they saw something they thought was dangerous. Others won’t bother checking for safety or if they did wouldn’t stop a project for a safety concern.

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