I can't get out of my head the question of where the entire Doomer thing came from. Singularity seems to be the the sub home of where doomer's go to doom; although I think their intention was where AI worshipers go to worship. Maybe it's both, lol heaven and hell if you will. Naively, I thought at first it was a simple AI sub about the upcoming advancements in AI and what may or may not be good about them. I knew that it wasn't going to be a crowd of enlightened individuals whom are technologically adept and or in the space of AI. Rather, just discussion about AI. No agenda needed.
However, it's not that and with the firestorm that was OpenAI's firing of Sam Altman ripped open an apparent wound that wasn't really given much thought until now. Effective Altruism and its ties to the notion that the greatest risk of AI is solely "Global Extinction".
OAI, remember this is stuff is probably rooted from the previous board and therefore their governance, has long term safety initiative right in the charter. There are EA "things" all over the OAI charter that need to be addressed quite frankly.
As you see, this isn't about world hunger. It's about sentient AI. This isn't about the charter's AGI definition of "can perform as good or better than a human at most economic tasks". This is about GOD 9000 level AI.
We are committed to doing the research required to make AGI safe, and to driving the broad adoption of such research across the AI community.
We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”
What is it and where did it come from?
I still cannot answer the question of "what is it" but I do know where it's coming from. The elite.
Anything that Elon Musk has his hands in is not that of a person building homeless shelters or trying to solve world hunger. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But EA on its face seemingly is trying to do something good for humanity. That 1 primary thing, and nothing else, is clear. Save humanity from extinction.
As a technical person in the field of AI I am wondering where is this coming from? Why is the very notion that an LLM is something that can destroy humanity? It seems bonkers to me and I don't think I work with anyone who feels this way. Bias is a concern, the data that has been used for training is a concern, job transformation of employment is a concern, but there is absolutely NOTHING sentient or self-aware about this form of AI. It is effectively not really "plugged" into anything important.
Elon Musk X/Tweeted EPIC level trolling of Sam and OpenAI during the fiasco of the board trying to fire Sam last week and the bandaid on the wound of EA was put front right and center. Want to know what Elon thinks about trolling? All trolls go to heaven
Elon also called for a 6 month pause on AI development. For what? I am not in the camp of accelerationism either. I am in the camp of there is nothing being built that is humanity level extinction dangerous so just keep building and make sure you're not building something racist, anti-semitic, culturally insensitive or stupidly useless. Move fast on that as you possibly can and I am A OK.
In fact, I learned that there is apparently a more extreme approach to EA called "Longtermism" which Musk is a proud member of.
I mean, if you ever needed an elite standard bearer which states that "I am optimistic about 'me' still being rich into the future" than this is the ism for you.
What I find more insane is if that's the extreme version of EA then what the hell does that actually say about EA?
The part of the mystery that I can't still understand is how did Helen Toner, Adam, Tasha M and Ilya get caught up into the apparent manifestation of this seemingly elite level terminator manifesto?
2 people that absolutely should not still be at OAI are Adam and sorry this may be unpopular but Ilya too. The entire board should go the way of the long ago dodo bird.
But the story gets more insatiable as you rewind the tape. The headline Effective Altruism is Pushing a Dangerous Brand of 'AI Safety' is a WIRED article NOT from the year 2023 but the year 2022. I had to do a double take because I first saw Nov 30th and I was like, "we're not at the end of November." OMG, it's from 2022. A well regarded (until Google fired her), Tmnit Gebru, wrote an article absolutely evicorating EA. Oh this has to be good.
She writes, amongst many of the revelations in the post, that EA is bound by a band of elites under the premise that AGI will one day destroy humanity. Terminator and Skynet are here; Everybody run for your lives! Tasha and Helen couldn't literally wait until they could pull the fire alarm for humanity and get rid of Sam Altman.
But it goes so much further than that. Apparently, Helen Toner not only wanted to fire Sam but she wanted to quickly, out of nowhere, merge OAI with Anthropic. You know the Anthropic funded by several EA elites such as Talin Muskovitz and Bankman-Fried. The board was willing and ready to just burn it all down in the name of "Safety." In the interim, no pun intended, the board also hired their 2nd CEO in the previous 72 hours by the name of Emmett Shear which is also an EA member.
But why was the board acting this way? Where did the feud stem from? What did Ilya see and all of that nonsense. We come to find out Sam at OAI, he apparently had enough and was in open fued with Helen over her posting an a research paper stating effectively that Anthropic is doing this better in terms of governance and AI(dare I say AGI) safety which she published; Sam, and rightly so, called her out on it.
If there is not an undenying proof that the board is/was an EA cult I don't know what more proof anyone else needs.
Numerous people came out and said no there is not a safety concern; well, not the safety concern akin to SkyNet and the Terminator. Satya Nadella from Microsoft said it, Marc Andreessen said it (while calling out the doomers specifically), Yann LeCun from Meta said it and debunked the whole Q* nonsense. Everyone in the space of this technology basically came out and said that there is no safety concern.
Oh by the way, in the middle of all this Greg Brockman comes out and releases OAI voice, lol you can't make this stuff up, while he technically wasn't working at the company (go E/ACC).
Going back to Timnit's piece in WIRED magazine there is something that is at the heart of the piece that is still a bit of a mystery to me and some clues that stick out like sore thumbs are:
- She was fired for her safety concern which was in the here and now present reality of AI.
- Google is the one who fired her and in a controversial way.
- She was calling bullshit on EA right from the beginning to the point of calling "Dangerous"
The mystery is why is EA so dangerous? Why do they have a manifesto that is based in governance weirdshit, policy and bureaucracy navigation, communicating ideas and organisation building. On paper it sounds like your garden variety political science career or apparently, your legal manifestor to cult creation in the name of "saving humanity" OR if you look at that genesis you may find it's simple, yet delectable roots, of "Longertermism".
What's clear here is that policy control and governance are at the root of this evil and not in a for all-man-kind way. For all of us elites way.
Apparently this is their moment, or was their moment, of seizing control of the regulatory story that will be an AI future. Be damned an AGI future because any sentient being seeing all of this shenanigans would surely not come to the conclusion that any of these elite policy setting people are actually doing anything helpful for humanity.
Next, you can't make this stuff up, Anthony Levandowski, is planning a reboot of his AI church because scientology apparently didn't have the correct governance structure or at least not as advanced as OAI's. While there are no direct ties to Elon and EA what I found fascinating is the exact opposite. Where in this way one needs there to be a SuperIntelligent being, AGI, so that it can be worshiped. And with any religion you need a god right? And Anthony is rebooting his hold 2017 idea at exactly the right moment, Q* is here and apparently AGI is here (whatever that is nowadays) and so we need the completely fanaticism approach of AI religion.
So this it folks. Elon on one hand AGI is bad, super intelligence is bad, it will lead to the destruction of humanity. And now, if that doesn't serve your pallet you can go in the complete opposite direction and just worship the damn thing and call it your savior. Don't believe me? This is what Elon actually said X/Tweeted.
First regarding Anthony from Elon:
On the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence...
John Brandon's reply (Apparently he is on the doomer side maybe I don't know)
Of course, Musk wasn’t critical of the article itself, even though the tweet could have easily been interpreted that way. Instead, he took issue with the concept of someone creating a powerful super intelligence (e.g., an all-knowing entity capable of making human-like decisions). In the hands of the wrong person, an AI could become so powerful and intelligent that people would start worshiping it.
Another curious thing? I believe the predictions in that article are about to come true — a super-intelligent AI will emerge and it could lead to a new religion.
It’s not time to panic, but it is time to plan. The real issue is that a super intelligent AI could think faster and more broadly than any human. AI bots don’t sleep or eat. They don’t have a conscience. They can make decisions in a fraction of a second before anyone has time to react. History shows that, when anything is that powerful, people tend to worship it. That’s a cause for concern, even more so today.
In summary, these apparently appear to be the 2 choices one has in these camps. Slow down doomerism because SkyNet or speed up and accelerate to an almighty AI god please take my weekly patrion tithings.
But is there a middle ground? And it hit me, there is actual normalcy in Gebru's WIRED piece.
We need to liberate our imagination from the one we have been sold thus far: saving us from a hypothetical AGI apocalypse imagined by the privileged few, or the ever elusive techno-utopia promised to us by Silicon Valley elites.
This statement for whatever you think about her as a person is in the least grounded in the reality of today and funny enough tomorrow too.
There is a different way to think about all of this. Our AI future will be a bumpy road ahead but the few privileged and the elites should not be the only ones directing this AI outcome for all of us.
I'm for acceleration but I am not for hurting people. That balancing act is what needs to be achieved. There isn't a need to slow but there is a need to know what is being put out on the shelves during Christmas time. There is perhaps and FDA/FCC label that needs to come along with this product in certain regards.
From what I see from Sam Altman and what I know is already existing out there I am confident that the right people are leading the ship at OAI x last weeks kooky board. But as per Sam and others there needs to be more government oversight and with what just happened at OAI that is more clear now than ever. Not because oversight will keep the tech in the hands of the elite but because the government is often the adult in the room and apparently AI needs one.
I feel bad that Timnit Gebru had to take it on the chin and sacrifice herself in this interesting AI war of minds happening out loud among us.
I reject worshiping and doomerism equally. There is a radical middle ground here between the 2 and that is where I will situate myself.
We need sane approaches for the reality that is happening right here and now and for the future.
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