Is there a specific term for the phenomena where people arguing online substitute "I disagree with your opinion" with "Your opinion is proof that you are severely mentally ill", "Your opinion is similar to fiction, which means you have the brain of a child", or "Your opinion is proof that you are a paid foreign agent"?
I know it's just generally part of being an anonymous online asshole who doesn't care about what's true or having values, only dunking on someone using some easily accessible thought terminating cliche, but surely there's a specific term for this.
It's not even a great Ad Hominim because folks like John Nash who did have mental illness were really gifted in other areas.
I was about to post a study that even showed that mental illness is linked with mental disorders, but looks like this recent study is pushing back on that idea.
Sorry, but what else can cause people to fear software and think it’s intelligent and can destroy the world? It most certainly isnt something real. We can pretend it is, but it’s affecting people’s lives. They are constantly bombarded with this nonsense.
Do you genuinely not recognize the possibility that software can, even unintentionally, cause significant harm to both individuals and large groups of people?
Do I need to list out cases where that has already happen?
There’s a huge gap between unintentional software errors and software choosing to do harm by its own “desire”. The crowd seeks to think ai will “do” the latter. And that’s an issue. Also it seems like there’s a pattern of redefining the meaning of words to accommodate that imaginary world.
All this sounds like a copy cat of 90’s scares about computer virii and ai (yes, this not the first ai is “taking over the world”). Amusing people used to come out on tv to tell us how virii will take over nuclear plants and ai will make those virii.
That phenomenon you speak of is real but I think the parents' comment is valid in this case. Being afraid of a large language model running statistics does look a lot like childishness or mental illness.
I can give the general public a pass because maybe they don't know the tech and are going off media hype. But for someone to know what this is and be afraid of it does look silly doesn't it?
Listen to Eliezer Yudkowsky's arguments. Perhaps it looks silly to you but there are actually _extremely_ good reasons to be worried about AI progress without figuring out alignment first. What would happen if we gave humanity the internet before we had cryptography?
On a side note, it's troubling how many hyper intelligent and successful people in tech are happy to denigrate the opposition in bad faith.
We can communicate securely on the internet because of cryptography (HTTPS vs. HTTP). If cryptography didn't exist any signal you ever sent over the internet could be observed and used maliciously against you (payment info, passwords, etcetera).
The WWW (1989) ran for 5 years before SSL 1.0 (1994).
If cryptography were never invented, we would use the internet like we used analog telephones (i.e., under the assumption our communication could be easily intercepted) and not pass privileged information over it. Otherwise, I imagine it would be a non-issue.
Given changing laws on cryptography (i.e., state-required backdoors & etc.), we may be back in that mindset before too long.
Not asking anyone to bend reality. Most analogies/metaphors aren't perfect and require good faith by the listener to see the truth in them.
"A mind is like a parachute; it doesn't work if it is not open."
Some people can hear this and understand what Frank Zappa means. Others (perhaps like yourself) will sit there and whine "bUt wHaT aBoUt tHiS cAsE wHeRe iT sHoulDn't be oPeN!!"
Re. "non-issue": if you don't send privileged information across an insecure link, that information can't be intercepted on that link. If the WWW were insecure, we wouldn't use it to do things that require security. We'd use the systems the internet replaced instead (primarily interaction with real people in brick-and-mortar settings).
I don't understand how alignment is even an issue with a large language model? It seems to me like we are a very long away from developing the kind of AI where alignment even becomes an issue. We seem to be focusing on the "AI" moniker without considering what this technology actually is, which is basically just a computer running a statistical algorithm on a large collection of sentences
I'll try summarizing Yudkowsky's main point as I understand it (however you should read him directly if you find me unconvincing).
Obviously the current version of ChatGPT and LLMs of today are not world threatening. The problem is we are blindly pushing forward and __we don't know__ what to expect. You say you think we are very far away from a point where alignment becomes an issue, yet _no one_ predicted AI would've come this far so quickly a couple years ago.
Natural selection is an algorithm that produced humans, which do all sorts of weird things that seem contrary and irrelevant to the goal of that algorithm (use birth control, build space ships)
With AI, instead of natural selection, we have gradient descent (a more sophisticated algorithm; it takes into account the derivative) and we are blindly throwing more resources into this algorithm hoping it will turn out ok.
Normally in science we can screw up and try again. But with AI it's different. If you create a super-intelligent AGI not aligned with humanity you are playing Russian roulette with life on Earth with 5/6 chambers loaded.
Yudkowsky's primary concern is literally just "can we build AI with some degree of certainty we won't destroy all of humanity?" which seems laughable, but genuinely, I haven't heard one person go up against him that clearly didn't expose themself as less thoughtful and intelligent about the matter _by far_ than Yudkowsky. I wish I heard an argument against him that was convincing.
Besides that concern, of course we have the more tangible, perhaps more probable concern of "bad actors exist in the world, what happens when we democratize (or simply create) the most powerful tool ever created?"
What happens when governments, corporations, and individuals can use LLMs to turn every communication channel (Hacker News, TV, Twitter, etcetera) into 99% AI noise with superhuman-quality propaganda, misinformation and advertising for their own self-interest? I'm sure there's a million other ways AI could be used by a self-interested minority to the detriment of humanity.
> Normally in science we can screw up and try again. But with AI it's different. If you create a super-intelligent AGI not aligned with humanity you are playing Russian roulette with life on Earth with 5/6 chambers loaded.
Aight. Lets leave it as it is. The disconnect from reality is real and concerning.
I used to think you could be a 9/11 truther and still hold reasonable beliefs otherwise. I thought a lot of these people genuinely looked at the official story and related evidence with an open mind, and came to a different conclusion than I did.
But the more of them I’ve met, the more I’ve found they tend to be everything-else truthers as well: moon landing, vaccines, etc., and I tend to disregard their arguments outright. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it’s borne out of years of similar interactions, and it’s saved me a lot of time and effort.
Lately I’ve started acting similarly with doomers, almost inadvertently. If you think that e.g. climate change will make humanity go extinct in the next few decades, it’s likely you feel similarly about A.I., COVID, etc. I’m starting to shut out such claims immediately, or at least engage with them less.
There seem to be certain personality types who gravitate towards certain types of beliefs. I’m not qualified to speculate as to why they do, but sometimes simply ignoring them can be… sensible.
It saddens me how right you are. Things have become so polarized and tribal that there isn't much room for nuance.
Can't climate change be a big deal without being an extinction risk? Covid was deadly, but mostly to certain demographics. AI is dangerous in the way that the Manhattan Project was dangerous, but maybe that's not sufficient reason to stop pursuing it. Etc.
But I think people are so overwhelmed by this hyperconnected and ubersensationalized world, flooded with ethical conundrums daily, that they only have the bandwidth for snap judgments. Into this bucket or the other you go, thought, no time or energy for a closer examination!
Um, are we just skipping past the whole colonialist era and straight into some sort of enlightened modern age? Even then, Russia's European too.
China's had a rough and tumble history, to be sure, but they didn't try to take over the whole world. Just Tibet and Hong Kong so far, maybe Taiwan someday.
I think their ambitions are different, and so are their ethical frameworks. The CCP isn't a governing body I admire, but their people and culture have a very long history of collectivism and Confucianism. The flip side of Han supremacy and cultural erasure is national unity and civil harmony, their version of manifest destiny I guess, with an emphasis on assimilation.
I envision a Great Chinese AI to be in line with the firewall, ostensibly (and mostly) uses to promote harmony via strict control, rather than conquest. Maybe more Borg than Skynet?
I don't agree or disagree with you; it's too broad a generalization to be useful.
Ethically, I'm worried about Chinese cultural genocide and stagnation, alongside European far-right nationalism and fascist resurgences. I don't think anybody has much of a claim to moral superiority here, much less supremacy.
I'm not worried about AI developments from either. I think AI is the only chance this planet has at actual moral governance. I have more faith in these models than human government.
Well, I just don't think this provokes the moral outrage in me that it does in you. That's okay, we can have different beliefs.
I'm not Chinese or European either, I just don't believe in some singularly great evil (or good, for that matter). Humans are complex, flawed creatures across the world...
The current Chinese dictator does many unethical things, but ascribing the actions of a ruler to an entire race of people is fallacious. Akin to saying that Trump’s philandery applies to all Americans globally. As the other commenter said, China has a long history of studying ethics, morality, and philosophy.
I’m not really a “PC” person but broadly saying that ”Europeans […] are more ethical than Chinese” is a white supremacist statement. I’m not saying you’re a white supremacist, but your comment is.
Not really a concern. The AI phobia here in Europe is pretty bad, to the point where governments are shooting themselves in the foot by legislating progress on advancing tech out.
I really don't think you're right there, many new models come from companies like Tencent and WeChat. Chinese investment in AI is increasing massively.
A huge percentage of AI researchers are Chinese, if PRC can convince them to work there instead of the US they won't have any trouble.
Not only are a rather decent number of AI developers and researchers who are Chinese, perhaps, and likely, some of the best in the world. but not only this but they are also the only manufacturing center for the GPU/CPUs needed to run the things. Tight collaboration between AI researchers and the manufactures of the hardware? No other country (absent their direct neighbors) have any chance at growing manufacturing facilities fast enough to catch up, especially with that combination.
> Not only are a rather decent number of AI developers and researchers who are Chinese, perhaps, and likely, some of the best in the world
I didn't dispute that. In fact, I brought it up.
> only manufacturing center for the GPU/CPUs needed to run the things
they don't have the designs and sanctions by American companies are surprisingly already in place and historically effective.
Finally, you are presupposing that "slowing down" in America means moving slower than China. Not only is that not necessarily the case, I don't think it's even really possible. This research can be done on readily available gaming GPU's if needed. Do you really think the US will intentionally cripple these markets in this fashion? More likely, companies will lobby for the opposite.
Any slowing down done by the US will amount to virtue signaling.
It is infuriating how the West keeps sabotaging itself. Both China and Yandex/Russia are moving ahead while the West is self-sabotaging with all the "responsible AI" bullshit.
Yes. Yi-34b is competitive with Llama2-70b which is often competitive with gpt 3.5. GPT-4 is on its own level atm but the point is that China has already created a good model that effectively beats Meta's current best.
I wonder how deeply the board and the rotating CEOs actually understand the technology and practicality of achieving AGI, or whether they are falling over themselves due to buying into the LLM hype.
If they try to keep the same pace of LLM advancement to preserve a high valuation, they might fail - LLM training costs skyrocket and it will get harder and harder to get the data. The CEO announcing a slow-down could likely be a strategy not to spook investors.
No, AI is not going to kill us anytime soon. Yes, LLMs are not even close to AGI and the research on them does not lead to research on understanding cognition (read Chomsky on this), which is required for AGI. Yes, DO ban all AI research and investment until society as a whole, by consensus, grants the privilege of continuing. OpenAI saga already has shown Sillicon Valley tech culture is in no fit shape to be involved in such manners in any form. The culture that gave us Musk buying Twitter and torpedoing its value by half the next day and the shitcoin scammer SBF does not have a good track record.
>the research on them does not lead to research on understanding cognition (read Chomsky on this), which is required for AGI.
Many phenomena have been discovered unintentionally and/or without understanding them. Deliberately developing an agi would probably be easier with a better understanding of cognition, but it's almost certainly not required.
With all due respect, Chomsky has no intuition for this kind of technology. Was sad to see him reject the technology, felt oddly like sour grapes when really LLMs have validated his work on universal grammar.
I think it's a Stretch to assert that for the GP. Where did they bring that kind of politics into their view or what led you to think that they, or anyone, thinks that
LLMs are not even close to AGI but they fake it enough that we can be pretty sure humans will allow them to take arbitrary decisions without further control.
Will LLM kill us all and rule the world, no. Will LLM kill some of us because someone decided that they are cheaper at taking vital decisions ? I’m pretty sure it’ll happen.
Your comment is like a random collection of sentence fragments that add up to nothing. You want to ban Silicon Valley from being involved in software projects regarding large amounts of compute? Who's more suitable exactly? The Amish?
You can't ban compute. Here: 5 + 5 = 10. Might as well ban writing, or drawing.
The cat's out of the bag. Now that we all know AI works, every country in the world will have theirs. No one has a monopoly on math, no one can regulate it. Especially the US and especially Silicon Valley. That's what they do. Silicon Valley brought you the personal computers, the Internet & web, the smartphones and now AI.
The military brought me the computers, the internet and the smartphones. Sillicon Valley merely commercialized the government funded research. And yes, this commercialization has brought many benefits. But that tap has long went dry. Sillicon Valley innovation now is Juicero, iPhones that change from square to rounded corners every two years and enshitification; not ground breaking innovation.
And as for the compute bit of your comment, yes you can. You can outlaw financing of these ventures. You can prosecute the researchers for doing the research. We have these mechanisms. There's ethics boards.
The next few years are going to be interesting for lawyers. I imagine all kinds of lawsuits including, but not limited to, stealing of trade secrets are going to started by OpenAI foundation against Sam's new employers and all the retaliatory counter-suing.
Killing us in a nuclear holocaust is for now a very far fetched hypothesis. I surely hope Nuclear C&C networks are properly air-gaped from the internet, and that actually launching the nukes require humans in the loop (yes, humans that could be socially engineered by an uber smart AGI, but then we are reaching).
The immediate danger from UI is on the economic and political realm. Reinforcing wealth-concentration, monopolies, all powerful surveillance and propaganda.
I care more about those immediate dangers, that are related to how humans that control the AI can use it for their benefit versus the rest of us, than to the distant theoretical scenario of an AI going crazy and deciding to go all skynet on US.
I fear the AI owners, they are going to fuck us way before the AI has any idea about fucking humans.
This hire makes is clear why MS is taking the IP and breaking ranks w/ OpenAI. He wants to slow down AI to development to 1/10th of its current pace? You can't run a company like that. He could run a library research program but that's about it.
MS doesn't want to slow down AI; they want to own it. Many people realize that AGI isn't a thing and LLMs will never get there. Computers lack volition, but corporations have in it spades.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadI know it's just generally part of being an anonymous online asshole who doesn't care about what's true or having values, only dunking on someone using some easily accessible thought terminating cliche, but surely there's a specific term for this.
It's not even a great Ad Hominim because folks like John Nash who did have mental illness were really gifted in other areas.
I was about to post a study that even showed that mental illness is linked with mental disorders, but looks like this recent study is pushing back on that idea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9879926/
Huh? Is there a typo in there, or are disorders and illnesses different in some big way?
Mental illness, I thought, was correlated with higher intelligence.
Especially depression, though there is also the legend of the mad genius.
When I looked up studies to reference this it looks like the landscape here has changed.
Do I need to list out cases where that has already happen?
All this sounds like a copy cat of 90’s scares about computer virii and ai (yes, this not the first ai is “taking over the world”). Amusing people used to come out on tv to tell us how virii will take over nuclear plants and ai will make those virii.
I can give the general public a pass because maybe they don't know the tech and are going off media hype. But for someone to know what this is and be afraid of it does look silly doesn't it?
On a side note, it's troubling how many hyper intelligent and successful people in tech are happy to denigrate the opposition in bad faith.
I’m sorry what? The internet has been clear text for the most part.
If cryptography were never invented, we would use the internet like we used analog telephones (i.e., under the assumption our communication could be easily intercepted) and not pass privileged information over it. Otherwise, I imagine it would be a non-issue.
Given changing laws on cryptography (i.e., state-required backdoors & etc.), we may be back in that mindset before too long.
"Otherwise, I imagine it would be a non-issue." Don't understand how you can say that though.
"A mind is like a parachute; it doesn't work if it is not open." Some people can hear this and understand what Frank Zappa means. Others (perhaps like yourself) will sit there and whine "bUt wHaT aBoUt tHiS cAsE wHeRe iT sHoulDn't be oPeN!!"
Obviously the current version of ChatGPT and LLMs of today are not world threatening. The problem is we are blindly pushing forward and __we don't know__ what to expect. You say you think we are very far away from a point where alignment becomes an issue, yet _no one_ predicted AI would've come this far so quickly a couple years ago.
Natural selection is an algorithm that produced humans, which do all sorts of weird things that seem contrary and irrelevant to the goal of that algorithm (use birth control, build space ships)
With AI, instead of natural selection, we have gradient descent (a more sophisticated algorithm; it takes into account the derivative) and we are blindly throwing more resources into this algorithm hoping it will turn out ok.
Normally in science we can screw up and try again. But with AI it's different. If you create a super-intelligent AGI not aligned with humanity you are playing Russian roulette with life on Earth with 5/6 chambers loaded.
Yudkowsky's primary concern is literally just "can we build AI with some degree of certainty we won't destroy all of humanity?" which seems laughable, but genuinely, I haven't heard one person go up against him that clearly didn't expose themself as less thoughtful and intelligent about the matter _by far_ than Yudkowsky. I wish I heard an argument against him that was convincing.
Besides that concern, of course we have the more tangible, perhaps more probable concern of "bad actors exist in the world, what happens when we democratize (or simply create) the most powerful tool ever created?"
What happens when governments, corporations, and individuals can use LLMs to turn every communication channel (Hacker News, TV, Twitter, etcetera) into 99% AI noise with superhuman-quality propaganda, misinformation and advertising for their own self-interest? I'm sure there's a million other ways AI could be used by a self-interested minority to the detriment of humanity.
Aight. Lets leave it as it is. The disconnect from reality is real and concerning.
But the more of them I’ve met, the more I’ve found they tend to be everything-else truthers as well: moon landing, vaccines, etc., and I tend to disregard their arguments outright. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it’s borne out of years of similar interactions, and it’s saved me a lot of time and effort.
Lately I’ve started acting similarly with doomers, almost inadvertently. If you think that e.g. climate change will make humanity go extinct in the next few decades, it’s likely you feel similarly about A.I., COVID, etc. I’m starting to shut out such claims immediately, or at least engage with them less.
There seem to be certain personality types who gravitate towards certain types of beliefs. I’m not qualified to speculate as to why they do, but sometimes simply ignoring them can be… sensible.
Can't climate change be a big deal without being an extinction risk? Covid was deadly, but mostly to certain demographics. AI is dangerous in the way that the Manhattan Project was dangerous, but maybe that's not sufficient reason to stop pursuing it. Etc.
But I think people are so overwhelmed by this hyperconnected and ubersensationalized world, flooded with ethical conundrums daily, that they only have the bandwidth for snap judgments. Into this bucket or the other you go, thought, no time or energy for a closer examination!
They do seem to produce plenty of good researchers, who sometimes proceed to do good research with proper funding from western institutions.
I would be more worried about Europe.
That's why it's called a "generalization".
As for whether the claim is fair or not, that's an opinion, but I disagree, obviously.
China's had a rough and tumble history, to be sure, but they didn't try to take over the whole world. Just Tibet and Hong Kong so far, maybe Taiwan someday.
I think their ambitions are different, and so are their ethical frameworks. The CCP isn't a governing body I admire, but their people and culture have a very long history of collectivism and Confucianism. The flip side of Han supremacy and cultural erasure is national unity and civil harmony, their version of manifest destiny I guess, with an emphasis on assimilation.
I envision a Great Chinese AI to be in line with the firewall, ostensibly (and mostly) uses to promote harmony via strict control, rather than conquest. Maybe more Borg than Skynet?
yes because we are not in the colonialist era
Ironically, Russians don't really see themselves as "European".
Ethically, I'm worried about Chinese cultural genocide and stagnation, alongside European far-right nationalism and fascist resurgences. I don't think anybody has much of a claim to moral superiority here, much less supremacy.
I'm not worried about AI developments from either. I think AI is the only chance this planet has at actual moral governance. I have more faith in these models than human government.
It's just an absurd, intellectually offensive statement that I generally think you should feel bad about making.
Note, I am neither Chinese nor European, an explicitly neutral observer.
I'm not Chinese or European either, I just don't believe in some singularly great evil (or good, for that matter). Humans are complex, flawed creatures across the world...
Source?
The current Chinese dictator does many unethical things, but ascribing the actions of a ruler to an entire race of people is fallacious. Akin to saying that Trump’s philandery applies to all Americans globally. As the other commenter said, China has a long history of studying ethics, morality, and philosophy.
I’m not really a “PC” person but broadly saying that ”Europeans […] are more ethical than Chinese” is a white supremacist statement. I’m not saying you’re a white supremacist, but your comment is.
Not really a concern. The AI phobia here in Europe is pretty bad, to the point where governments are shooting themselves in the foot by legislating progress on advancing tech out.
A huge percentage of AI researchers are Chinese, if PRC can convince them to work there instead of the US they won't have any trouble.
I didn't dispute that. In fact, I brought it up.
> only manufacturing center for the GPU/CPUs needed to run the things
they don't have the designs and sanctions by American companies are surprisingly already in place and historically effective.
Finally, you are presupposing that "slowing down" in America means moving slower than China. Not only is that not necessarily the case, I don't think it's even really possible. This research can be done on readily available gaming GPU's if needed. Do you really think the US will intentionally cripple these markets in this fashion? More likely, companies will lobby for the opposite.
Any slowing down done by the US will amount to virtue signaling.
Many phenomena have been discovered unintentionally and/or without understanding them. Deliberately developing an agi would probably be easier with a better understanding of cognition, but it's almost certainly not required.
> Yes, DO ban all AI research and investment
So do you think it's a threat or not?
Will LLM kill us all and rule the world, no. Will LLM kill some of us because someone decided that they are cheaper at taking vital decisions ? I’m pretty sure it’ll happen.
You can't ban compute. Here: 5 + 5 = 10. Might as well ban writing, or drawing.
The cat's out of the bag. Now that we all know AI works, every country in the world will have theirs. No one has a monopoly on math, no one can regulate it. Especially the US and especially Silicon Valley. That's what they do. Silicon Valley brought you the personal computers, the Internet & web, the smartphones and now AI.
And as for the compute bit of your comment, yes you can. You can outlaw financing of these ventures. You can prosecute the researchers for doing the research. We have these mechanisms. There's ethics boards.
The immediate danger from UI is on the economic and political realm. Reinforcing wealth-concentration, monopolies, all powerful surveillance and propaganda.
I care more about those immediate dangers, that are related to how humans that control the AI can use it for their benefit versus the rest of us, than to the distant theoretical scenario of an AI going crazy and deciding to go all skynet on US.
I fear the AI owners, they are going to fuck us way before the AI has any idea about fucking humans.
MS doesn't want to slow down AI; they want to own it. Many people realize that AGI isn't a thing and LLMs will never get there. Computers lack volition, but corporations have in it spades.