zlacker

>>staran+(OP)
At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1].

> Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of transparency, openness, and collaboration

Team Helen acted in panic, but they believed they would win since they were upholding the principles the org was founded on. But they never had a chance. I think only a minority of the general public truly cares about AI Safety, the rest are happy seeing ChatGPT helping with their homework. I know it's easy to ridicule the sheer stupidity the board acted with (and justifiably so), but take a moment to think of the other side. If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?

Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do want to understand it more deeply than before. Maybe, it isn't without substance as I thought it to be. Hopefully, there won't be a day when Team Helen gets to say, "This is exactly what we wanted to prevent."

[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai...

>>shubha+B7
I'm convinced there is a certain class of people who gravitate to positions of power, like "moderators", (partisan) journalists, etc. Now, the ultimate moderator role has now been created, more powerful than moderating 1000 subreddits - the AI safety job who will control what AI "thinks"/says for "safety" reasons.

Pretty soon AI will be an expert at subtly steering you toward thinking/voting for whatever the "safety" experts want.

It's probably convenient for them to have everyone focused on the fear of evil Skynet wiping out humanity, while everyone is distracted from the more likely scenario of people with an agenda controlling the advice given to you by your super intelligent assistant.

Because of X, we need to invade this country. Because of Y, we need to pass all these terrible laws limiting freedom. Because of Z, we need to make sure AI is "safe".

For this reason, I view "safe" AIs as more dangerous than "unsafe" ones.

>>pug_mo+Cb
You're correct.

When people say they want safe AGI, what they mean are things like "Skynet should not nuke us" and "don't accelerate so fast that humans are instantly irrelevant."

But what it's being interpreted as is more like "be excessively prudish and politically correct at all times" -- which I doubt was ever really anyone's main concern with AGI.

>>nostro+3d
No, in general AI safety/AI alignment ("we should prevent AI from nuking us") people are different from AI ethics ("we should prevent AI from being racist/sexist/etc.") people. There can of course be some overlap, but in most cases they oppose each other. For example Bender or Gebru are strong advocates of the AI ethics camp and they don't believe in any threat of AI doom at al.

If you Google for AI safety vs. AI ethics, or AI alignment vs. AI ethics, you can see both camps.

>>Al-Khw+tj
The safety aspect of AI ethics is much more pressing so. We see how devicive social media can be, imagine that turbo charged by AI, and we as a society haven't even figured out social media yet...

ChatGPT turning into Skynet and nuking us all is a much more remote problem.