I mean isn't that most of it? If you put a snippet of code in front of me and said "there's probably a vulnerability here" I could probably spend a few hours (a much lower METR time!) and find it. It's a whole other ballgame to ask me with no context to come up with an exploit.
Sure. But it’s a computer. You can run “there’s probably a vulnerability here” as many times as you like. And it’s easier and cheaper to run it many times with a small open model than a big frontier model.
It also sounds like that is how mythos works too. Which makes sense - the linux kernel is too big to fit in context
AI systems far weaker than GPT-2 have had terrible effects. The result of how information and power is distributed mostly flows along the lines of reward hacking recommendation engines, powered by even weaker models.
And yet, somehow, it is beyond disagreeable but unbelievable that other people may have and may still reasonably believe that these things are too dangerous for widespread release?
Okay, since you asked (unpopular, but I have karma to burn, c'est la vie):
This myopic focus on Trump ignores the real issue: Environmentalism is a secular religion, a theocracy, a dogma. Like any religion it employs circular reasoning to justify its existence, namely stemming from this assumption that nature is sacred, vulnerable and deserving of our protection. This faulty assumption is treated as a self-evident tautology and questioning it is shunned, the hallmark of any run-of-the-mill religion.
Environmentalism says it's not worth discovering fire because we would have to burn trees to use it. Think about this carefully: That's not a rational position but an emotional appeal. The thought process is "I would rather go hungry than hurt this poor tree," whereas that poor tree may have ruthlessly strangled the roots of nearby plants in its quest to thrive and grow. If you understand why this argument is irrational, you understand the basic flaw with environmental thought.
Extending that principle to the planet, we come to a foundational truth: Nature is a relentless competition between all organisms on the planet. This is a testable, provable hypothesis. Every modern day human can trace their ancestry to a person who out-competed other organisms. We are here today because successive descendants of our ancestors continued to pass a fitness test, surviving and procreating sufficiently to make us possible. Our continued existence depends on continuing that trend.
Aiming for sustainability hamstrings our ability to make progress and leaves us uncompetitive relative to our peers. Those who used fire out-competed those who didn't. Those who cut down trees to build farms, cities, countries out-lasted those who didn't. Those banded together to combine their ingenuity to get better, faster, stronger, heavily exploited their environment in the name of progress, are the ones ahead of everyone else. We did not start this trend, nature did. The rules of the game were established billions of years ago. It is sheer hubris to think we are somehow above or outside this meta-loop, a grand delusion that we are somehow masters of nature.
There is only one truth: Either we out-compete or we lose ground. Should we do the other things? Take care of the weak? The poor? The infirm? Sure, but if it comes at the expense of losing our competitive edge, then it won't matter what we do for them, because we won't continue to exist to keep doing it for them.
.... so you made up a definition of environmentalism so you could be against it?
environmentalism isnt circular. humans evolved to live and survive in a certain environment, and so we will be healthiest and happiest the better we ensure that that environment exists for us to live in.
some sample environmental works:
- making the river stop catching on fire so you can sail on it and fish in it
- removing smog so you can go back to breathing
- taking the acid out of the rain so it stops eating your car
environmentalism is a competitive edge in and of itself, but also is the foundation that the competition is built on.
fun fact kropotkin's entire thesis was "yeah so this is wrong social darwinism is always motivated reasoning"
and you can see it in your thing! Environmentalism is good because it turns out burning millions of years of information as well as our only source of medicine and life sciences is not worth you feeling persecuted because you wanted to have a dirt bike that smells awful.
It's sure not cost anymore! LCOE of solar is the lowest!
Even if you think environmentalism is stupid, that doesn't mean being anti-renewable or pro-coal makes any sense at all.
Renewables are also good economically, because they're... Wait for it... Renewable. That's a big deal.
Trump pushing clean coal and knee-capping renewables is bad for our economy. He is literally hurting the American people just to show the finger to liberals. If that sounds stupid, that's because it is.
Well yeah social trust is worse in autocracies, you'd imagine that corruption would be lower on the list of problems you perceive having when
1) you don't have a good press to report on them
2) you can be sent to jail basically wherever
like people in democracies do not know how good they have it!
The answer to this is just changing the law as enforcement becomes different, instead of leaning on the rule of a few people to determine what the appropriate level of enforcement is.
To do this, though, you're going to have to get rid of veto points! A bit hard in our disastrously constitutional system.
I'm sorry I read this a lot and this is kind of an insane thing to say? Classified OLC memos giving legal cover to any military action has been a fixture for the last over twenty years! Congress never abdicated power, it just, by the nature of the constitution, practically has SO much less power than the president! The president is a single person that people elect, they expect the person to be a leader, and congress will always, always play a following role so long as the president has unilateral power over the military, is directly elected, and just in general has expansive interpreting authority over laws.
You know who doesn't have as much power? The swiss head of state, so weak you can't even reliably name them! THATS what it looks like to defeat personalization, not some hand wringing hoping a system does something that it wasn't designed to do.
Then you would get zero H1B and, frankly, green card signatures. There is real risk and real dependents at stake, I understand people who can't in good conscience put that at risk.
This administration has consistently signaled that they will do all they legally can to punish those dissenters. Look at the White House labeling recent victims of ICE shootings as "terrorists", despite there being no sign of terroristic activity from these US citizens. Or, look at how the WH is cutting Medicaid benefits to Minnesota.
Going after the visa-holding employees of these companies is within reach of the WH, and it's consistent with their MO.
In the OP, the CEO of Anthropomorphic says "I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries."
Are you saying that the United States government itself is one of those autocratic adversaries?
> They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War.
This is about spreading information among the companies about each others' position, not a petition to the DoD.
because citizenship is not a prerequisite for defending human rights and differentiating right from wrong. this isn't general election and they are not voting, non citizens still enjoy the rights under the constitution like 1A.
This administration has shown no qualms about enacting retribution against people who speak out against them, no matter how powerless or seemingly irrelevant the person is.
Because noncitizens can be motivated or not and / or resign and, frankly, there isn't that deep of a well of top tier AI talent. The threat of mass resignations led to OAI re-hiring sam altman, after all.
Also why would the department of war care about what citizens think specifically?
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