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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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The only interesting thing about the accelerationist vs safetyist wars is that for some reason the safetyists actually thought they were still going to matter once big money and the military-industrial complex decided what should be. EA hangers-on writing papers for their pet think tanks are just lucky they're unserious enough people to be sidelined through board wrangling and don't need to be thrown off any bridges.

The ‘safetyist’ guys are in many cases the very same engineers who demanded Altman’s reinstatement so they could get their Microsoft (or other) payout when it comes.

In truth, most people will abandon most principles when presented with a good chance of getting rich. And you can always justify it by telling yourself someone else was going to do it anyway, and at least this way you get paid.

I've definitely believed all along that once the money fountain got within their sights, all the "ha ha ha of course nothing will change/it changes" was the next step.

We solemnly swear we won't ever do anything even the teensiest bit naughty (unless it makes us a LOT of money).

I suppose it was just a bit eye-opening exactly how powerless the people who thought they were in charge really were, but yeah. AI danger is people, and people danger is greed, and "we can make tons of money off government contracts, don't let's be too fussy about which governments even" is always going to beat "AI can be an existential risk and we must be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting wabbits", no matter how idealistic and "but look at all our high-quality technical papers full of the most jargoniest jargon!" you can pull out.

This is why I always thought the safety-first position— the people with power/money care more about increasing their wealth than in preserving humanity. And AI, if it actually works as promised, is a big, flashing “I win” button right in front of them. The only thing that might cause someone to consider blowing up an AI bank is if it belongs to a rival. The government wants it because it’s important to maintaining geopolitical status. The rich want it because the massive efficiency gains will put money in their pockets.

They've long been called useful idiots whose ideas around safety only really serve to establish and maintain control and do nothing to prevent evil uses.

I think this move vindicated that analysis.

'Evil uses'.

At the moment, LLMs couldn't plot their way out of a paper bag and fail at basic logic.

If we're talking 'evil' using LLMs to combat 'extremism' and 'misinformation' is both widely not seen as 'evil' and the most immediate use. They'll also be used to snoop through people's emails and highlight things cops could use.

Was any of that a use case OpenAI mission statement prohibited?

Image recognition seems good enough now though that killer drones that don't need an uplink and guidance to their own targets so they're immune to jamming are going to be fielded fairly soon. (<5 years).

But is OpenAI best at that?

I deliberately remained axiologically agnostic because what you think the machine should be restricted to do or not to isn't relevant to the fact that putting it behind a locked door and giving the key to the State and Corporations is never ever going to work.

They would have had a better chance putting it all in the hands of a single man. Organizations are structurally unable to stay mission focused. And only naive academics could believe otherwise to this day.

But is OpenAI best at that?

AFAIK they're not even in the conversation.

OpenAI bragging about its safety statement and mission statement which were going to make it the most ethicallest ever research company, don't be worried but just trust us guys. And now this.

I hate being proved correct about being cynical, I would have loved to be pleasantly surprised by "Huh, they actually do mean all the bumpf about safety and they won't cave in to the money fountain", but this is a fallen world after all.

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