Is it just me, or has the BS with OpenAI shown that nobody in the AI space actually cares about "safeguarding AGI?"

Money wins, every time. They’re not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided “humans are the problem.” (I mean, that’s a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn’t “infect” the entire internet as it currently exists.)

However, it’s very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.

Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.

So, let’s review:

  1. The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It’s not like it can “hop” onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn’t have a “body” and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.
  2. Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.
  3. Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he “wants to save the world, but only if he’s the one who can save it.” I mean, he’s not wrong, but he’s also projecting a lot here. He’s exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could “safeguard” AGI and here he’s going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He’s a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.
  4. Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You’d think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don’t care, and they’ll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That’s how corporations work.

So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?

And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn’t the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating “safeguarding AGI” with “preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service.” They aren’t safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They’re safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.

Kidplayer_666,

If they wanted to safeguard AI, they would actually make the models public. Bad actors are bound to get them anyways, hiding it behind secrecy is very unlikely. And I mean, AI could make a virus infecting most infrastructure on planet (Amazon and Google data centres) and then shutting it down or using it for its own purposes. As several programming memes lay out, the entire modern web infrastructure is surprisingly dependent on just a few APIs and tools

SnotFlickerman, (edited )

AI could make a virus infecting most infrastructure on planet (Amazon and Google data centres)

Most important infrastructure on the planet is air-gapped, meaning it’s not connected to the internet, for good reason. Reasons like this. The thing is, as it stands, a determined human could do this as well with Google and Amazon. Sorry, having a chuckle over here that you’re conflating two cloud hosts with “all the infrustructure on the planet” like irrigation canals out in the boonies are somehow internet connected.

the entire modern web infrastructure is surprisingly dependent on just a few APIs and tools

That doesn’t mean that you can deploy a payload in a reasonable amount of time to every device on the planet. Dude, half the people in third world countries aren’t even connected, and if they are, they’re dealing with like 2G speeds on a cellphone service and they definitely don’t own a computer, they only have a phone. There’s all kinds of speed limitations to the hardware in reality. Just because you might have a fast connection and fast PC doesn’t mean everyone does, and those physical limitations make an rogue AGI “destroying infrastructure” a big of a laugh.

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

We are no where near developing AGI.

It’s so far fetched that you might as well legislate for time travel and FTL drives while you’re at it.

Arin,

I agree we're far out, but not as far as you think. Advancements are insane and AGI could be here in 5-10 years. The way the industry have been attempting it the past decade is wrong though, training should be more indepth than images/videos, I think a few are starting to understand how to do more indepth training, so even more progress will start soon

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

I think 5-10 years is optimistic given how much hand tuning / manual training has to take place. Given how insanely long it’s taken to get where we are and how many times I’ve heard machine intelligence oversold, and based on what LLMs can do I think we are still many decades out.

That said, what ML and AI can do is still game changing and will still have an impact even if it isn’t some kind of scary skynet AGI thing.

jacksilver,

We’ve been promised self driving cars for over 10 years and still aren’t close, I think we’re a long ways away from AGI.

2xsaiko,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I would even argue the only way to get self-driving cars that actually work well is with AGI. I don’t think we’re going to get either in a very long time.

echodot,

Self driving cars as an area in which straight AI would probably work very well. I don’t think we need a full-on intelligence to drive around.

Anyway we already do have self-driving cars they’re just not very mainstream yet. Mostly because they’re prohibitively expensive and no one trusts them exactly but that’s more because there’s other idiot humans around than anything else.

intensely_human,

Yeah if we were at the point with AGI that we’re at with self driving cars, then AGI would be fully implemented, just still with some safety issues and only in the hands of a few corporations.

That’s hardly “sci fi”. That’s currently existing behind closed doors.

SnotFlickerman,

To be fair, that promise came from someone who is clearly a conman of a swindler. If you ever took that promise seriously… I’m sorry.

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Elon/Tesla is far from the only outfit working on self driving. Chevy Cruise is the one that recently dragged a person under the car for dozens of feet.

SnotFlickerman,

For sure, but the traditional motor vehicle companies that were dragged kicking and screaming into the EV game were not making the same predictions of how quickly we would get to self-driving. That was pretty much all Elon Musk setting the absurd timelines, and a handful of tech companies who also were pursuing driverless tech. I would say the “serious” car companies never promised that, but maybe I’m wrong and just never saw it.

jacksilver,

No I absolutely agree with you, I’ve been skeptical of all the self driving news for years. However, I was using it as a parallel to other AI based discussions. While Elon may have been over hyping what was going to be possible in the near future, there is no evidence that other people aren’t doing the same now.

Just like with autonomous vehicles, we’ve made impressive leaps in what ML can do, but I think there is still a long road ahead.

SnotFlickerman,

Entirely agreed, we have such a long path ahead.

brambledog,

I think you are being optimistic.

If you are old enough to remember AIM chatbots, this current generation is maybe multiple times more advanced, not exponentially so. From what I have seen, all the incredible advancements have been in image production.

This leads me to believe that AGI has never been the true commercial goal, but rather an advancement of propaganda media and its creation.

WldFyre,

This leads me to believe that AGI has never been the true commercial goal, but rather an advancement of propaganda media and its creation.

Uh what? Why wouldn’t it be because text/image generation isn’t even on the same plane of difficulty as AGI?

rip_art_bell,
@rip_art_bell@lemmy.world avatar

How do you know?

Deceptichum,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Because I understand what LLMs and current AI theory/framework enables.

Nothing we have or could conceive has the potential to become an AGI.

echodot,

Because I’m smarter than you isn’t really an answer

intensely_human,

Are you able to articulate at least one specific reason that we are nowhere close to developing AGI?

Without any specific reason being stated, I’m tempted to believe you are just confidently declaring this to protect yourself from fear.

PlexSheep,
@PlexSheep@feddit.de avatar

Imagine if we had FTL, that would be so cool.

echodot,

If we actually had AGI I suppose it’s possible we would have FTL.

blackernel,

I agree with everything you said I only want to add that there is kinda one or two ways for the AGI problem a la Sci-Fi to happen.

By far the most straight forward way is if the military believe that it can be used as a fail safe in MAD scenarios, i.e. if they give the AI the power to launch nuclear ICBM’s a la War Games. Not very likely, but still not something we want to dismiss entirely. This is also a problem with regular AI and LLM’s.

The second, and, in my opinion, more likely scenario is if the AI is able to get a large number of people to trust it implicitly and then use seemingly unrelated benign actions from each of them to do something catastrophic.

Something you may notice about these two scenarios is that neither one of them can be “safeguarded” in the code, only by educating people on the proper usage of and posture to have when handling AI.

SnotFlickerman, (edited )

Exactly! As someone else astutely pointed out, the real danger is wreckless humans and what they decide to put an AGI in charge of. The War Games idea of putting it in charge of the nuclear arsenal is exactly the kind of short-sighted, dim-witted, utterly human hubris of a decision that would make it possible.

Not everything is connected to the internet, the nuclear arsenal certainly is air-gapped, but a human making the choice to put it in charge isn’t something you can “safeguard.” We’re on the exact same page.

A rogue AGI absolutely is capable of causing damage but only in very specific and unlikely scenarios is it capable of human-world-ending catastrophe.

redballooon,

Hey I am not an AI , I have real feelings, and you hurt them by calling me a looser ass chucklefucks!

SnotFlickerman,

looser ass

You might want to go see a doctor about them loose stools!

31337,

Agree. Ever since they started lobbying politicians it’s been clear that “safety” is a just a pretext for regulatory capture.

Froyn,

What's AGI?

SnotFlickerman,

Reasonable question. Artificial General Intelligence, as opposed to Artificial Intelligence. Technically LLMs are AI, but they are not AGI. AGI would literally be a human-like consciousness able to think and extrapolate on its own, much moreso than the current iterations, which others have noted are more like decision-trees.

Eranziel,

In other words, AGI is what every layperson thinks of when people talk about AI. It’s (sort of) what you see in the movies.

LLMs, and every other AI technology we currently have, do not actually have any form of intelligence. They’re called AI because the sub-field of computer science that they arose from is called AI, and has been for decades.

Kushia,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

Homie got rich and famous by making a chat bot that spits out the internet back at you while spewing out buzzwords like only the best Valley hustlers can.

Personally I’m more worried about the robodogs and terminators that the likes of Boston Labs are putting out.

SnotFlickerman,

Thankfully, those are still built on known technologies and unless they start beefing them up security-wise, it’s not impossible to get a hold of their battery compartment to rip out the battery, effectively “killing” them, but it also wouldn’t be impossible to hack them via their sensors. Likely they have some form of wireless communication, and that’s a hole to be exploited.

Also, since they need their sensors to “see” you can also do lots of things to confuse/fuck with their sensors. Like just get close and spray paint any cameras on them.

Still not ideal, and I have the same fears about those as you do, but I do think humans are good enough at guerilla warfare that we would still best a machine.

I mean, we can’t even make a laptop battery that lasts all day. Humans currently can run far longer than a robot can before running out of “energy.” It’s the old “humans never get tired” meme about being an animal chased by hairless apes and how scary it must be. These things will have to be hardwired to a power source or have battery packs that are so huge as to make a human-sized one that can run for a full day nigh-impossible.

rip_art_bell,
@rip_art_bell@lemmy.world avatar

Well, to be fair, from what I’ve been hearing, one of the big points of contention of the internal battle at OpenAI was safety itself. Like some on the board being concerned about the “make your ChatGPT” feature debuting at the dev conference thing. So at least some people care. Which is more than I would have thought…

I do like the word “chucklefucks”, though.

SnotFlickerman,

So at least some people care.

I actually agree. However, them turning tail and immediately trying to ask for Sam Altman to come back showed how few in the organization really cared. 500 employees out of 700 thought that Altman leaving was enough to quit over. Meaning that sadly the majority involved are more worried about “just doing it” and fuck the consequences, and the few cooler heads in the room now are forced to eat their words and go groveling at the feet of the people who don’t fucking care.

Pretty sad and disgusting that they couldn’t stand by those principles when it mattered. I would have a lot more respect for them if they just shut down the whole thing and said “It’s clear our employees don’t agree with us on safeguarding AGI.”

However, I do still think the AGI fears are completely overblown.

newDayRocks,

So you think AGI fears are overblown, but want the employees to back the coup of a company because of these same AGI fears?

Why don’t we just trust the employees are intelligent human beings that have more context and decided Altman was a good boss? Or at the very least would be a better boss than whatever clusterfuck comes after him?

hoshikarakitaridia,

Totally agree. Looks like the whole argument was the OpenAI board firing Altman over his safety concerns but unexpectedly the whole team shared his concerns.

thru_dangers_untold,

It’s common business practice for the first big companies in a new market/industry to create “barriers to entry”. The calls for regulation are exactly that. They don’t care about safety–just money.

SnotFlickerman,

The greed never ends. You’d think companies as big as Microsoft would just be like “maybe we don’t actually need to own everything” but nah. Their sheer size and wealth is enough of a “barrier to entry” as it is.

shiveyarbles,

There are plenty of people who say they care. They’re all lying tho

Yawnder,

This is AskLemmy, not go on a rant and spread whatever narrative you feel spreading and add a question mark at the end.

Omega_Haxors,

Lets see what nuggets I can find in the post hist- didn’t even need to scroll past the first page.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment?

Why would it need to leave its own environment in order to impact the world? How about an AGI taking over the remote fly system for an F-35, B-21, or NGAD in order to go all Skynet? It doesn’t have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system. Penetration of and fuckery with the systems that run major stock exchanges present the same problem. It doesn’t need to execute itself on those platforms, merely exert control over them.

The concern here isn’t about an AGI taking over systems in order to execute itself, it’s about AGI taking control of systems away from humans in much the same way that traditional Black Hat hackers would but at a much faster speed and with potentially far less concern for any human cost.

SnotFlickerman,

It doesn’t have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system.

  1. Planes that are primarily designed to be human-piloted tend to have to be wildly modified to become a drone, or a remote-pilot situation. The F-35, for example, can be heavily modified for this, but is not built for it to begin with. This argument would hold more weight if you were referring to the entire drone fleet.
  2. (Assuming drones) Generally, the military is pretty secure with these kind of things, and they won’t allow in external internet connections but will instead have their own internal communications network. For this to be successful, the AGI would essentially have to somehow get by air-gapped defenses and get close enough with a physical body to get a signal. How could they do this with drone pilots in a remote area in an non-internet connected building? The only way would be through the wireless signal. At that point, yes, it would be feasible to take over the drone. I find it very hard to believe that an AGI could do that, magically make connection to remote, air-gapped systems.

An AGI doing what you’re talking about doing would mean all secure facilities in the world would have just tossed their security practices out the window to begin with and having internet connections inside secure facilities. That’s just not how its done. Sure the psychotic wing of the Republican party doesn’t give a shit and Donald Trump doesn’t… but like, reasonable people do, and so security still exists.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

This argument would hold more weight if you were referring to the entire drone fleet.

Sure, and we’re maybe 5 years away from that.

An AGI doing what you’re talking about doing would mean all secure facilities in the world would have just tossed their security practices out the window to begin with and having internet connections inside secure facilities.

Nearly all of the normal spy activities that can induce someone to action are available to an AGI; Bribery, Compromise, and Relationship. There’s also people who would willingly help because their goals aligned or because they believe things would be better with an AGI in charge.

…but like, reasonable people do, and so security still exists.

Sure, and that security gets penetrated and an AGI can do it in the same way its done now only faster and with no controls on its behavior.

You also need to drop the assumption that the AGI or its targets will be American.

EmoBean,

This feels like a weird point to make for OP since I figure anyone here talking about AI is very familiar with distributed networked computing. Botnets have been such a pain in the dick for at least 15 years now. Imagine something that intimately and only knows how to “live” in computing. The distributed areas of could “live” in and have access to all the resources it needs either directly or not. Storing info and using resources of anything it can touch through the network, computers, phones, TVs, cars, door bell cameras, router and networking infrastructure.

I feel there is inevitably either a human made virus or a standalone AIG that is going to accomplish this.The extent to which it spreads, if the damage can be recovered from, and how we progress after it’s going to be a big defining moment is technological history. The globalized network with everything communicating is the most powerful and least secure super computer ever. Those running botnets figured that out a long time ago. All it takes is one AI.

evranch,

At this point at least, LLMs require vast amounts of GPU time, and the GPUs used likely need to be fairly close coupled to run at decent speeds, and as such one couldn’t spread itself over the vast network of consumer computers. At least not in a way that would still allow it to learn.

Any near-term AGI or similar would be based on a similar approach, making it fairly “safe” in that respect at least. Only a million other disruptive ways it can affect society…

In the event of such a worm/virus, we forget actually do have a very effective nuclear option: switch off the computers and re-image them. Painful as it might be, we could even shut off or partition the global IP network temporarily if faced with such an existential threat.

We don’t live in a sci-fi novel after all, and this distributed AI wouldn’t be able to hide in a single machine, plotting against us. It would only be able to “think” as a giant networked cluster, something easy to detect and disrupt.

KeenFlame,

And why would nobody stop it? We are pretty good at stop button technology for instance, we also have pretty good grasp of the reset button but maybe it shouldn’t be one of those hole you always break pens on

mojo,

AGI is still science fiction right now

SnotFlickerman,

insert spacesuit “always has been” meme here.

OneCardboardBox,

I think there are real concerns to be addressed in the realm of AGI alignment. I’ve found Robert Miles’ talks on the subject to be quite fascinating, and as such I’m hesitant to label all of Elizier Yudkowsky’s concerns as crank (Although Roko’s Basilisk is BS of the highest degree, and effective altruism is a reimagined Pascal’s mugging for an atheist/agnostic crowd).

Even while today’s LLMs are toys compared to what a hypothetical AGI could achieve, we already have demonstrable cases where we know that the “AI” does not “desire” the same end goal that we desire the “AI” to achieve. Without more advancement in how to approach AI alignment, the danger of misaligned goals will only grow as (if) we give AI-like systems more control over daily life.

KeenFlame,

But like we only think about “controlling” it’s goals and shit when honestly what we only need is a fucking stop button like in a fucking factory. Whops it’s genocidal again Claus, all right Lars slam the off button and let’s start over

OneCardboardBox,

The stop button problem is not yet solved. An AGI would need a the right level of “corrigability”: a willingness allow humans to stop it when undertaking incorrect behavior.

An AGI that’s incorrigible might take steps to prevent itself being shut off, which might include lying to its owners about its own goals/internal state, or taking physical action against an attempt to disable it (assuming it can).

An AGI that’s overly corrigible might end up making an association “It’s good when humans stop me from doing something wrong. I want to maximize goodness. Therefore, the simplest way to achieve a lot of good quickly is to do the wrong thing, tricking humans into turning me off all the time”. Not necessarily harmful, but certainly useless.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYT1QfdfsM

KeenFlame,

Exactly

afraid_of_zombies,

That was a long rant. I didn’t read it.

Don’t really think AGI needs any safeguards. Let’s just throw it out there and see what happens.

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