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by fwipsy4 hours ago |
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upvoteby romanhounds4 hours ago|
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>Given that you apparently share their goals (a better world,) isn't it worth at least hearing them out on their methods?

Their methods are about convincing others that things that enrich and empower themselves at the expense of others is "improving the world". This isn't the stance of serious people who want to improve the world.

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upvoteby fwipsy4 hours ago|
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Please don't confuse AI researchers and AI safety researchers (although there is some overlap.) That's like confusing the people from the Manhattan project with the people who protested 3 Mile Island, because they're both focused on nuclear technology. One effect of EA is that every AI researcher says they're trying to make the world better. Some of them are full of shit, but not all.

I'm fairly certain the authors would be happy to see AI shut down indefinitely. They just don't believe that the coordination problem is solvable. This is their best attempt to come up with something workable in the real world, or at least get people started thinking about it.

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upvoteby nradov1 hours ago|
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Right, the so-called "AI safety researchers" are worthless clowns and grifters with nothing of value to contribute. We would all be better off if they spent their time on something productive like writing entertaining sci-fi stories. They certainly seem to have the rich imagination necessary for that occupation.
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upvoteby MaybiusStrip1 hours ago|
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Which one of the authors of the website are you referring to?
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upvoteby grey-area3 hours ago|
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Effective altruism is also very attractive to manipulative sociopaths who want to maximise their power over others whilst appearing virtuous and hoarding wealth and power. Poster boy for this movement is the convicted fraudster SBF. I believe Altman is also a fan.

As to a better world or super intelligence, I’ll believe it may be possible when I see some signs of intelligence from what people are calling AI, instead of plausible text and image generation based on a very large corpus.

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upvoteby 0xDEAFBEAD2 hours ago|
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>I believe Altman is also a fan.

Altman says he thinks it is an "incredibly flawed movement"

https://x.com/sama/status/1593046526284410880

The dislike is mutual. Here's a long video takedown of Sam from a major EA org:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eYTkvZqbnQ

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upvoteby HDThoreaun3 hours ago|
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And what movement isn’t attractive to manipulative sociopaths who want to maximize their power? That’s unavoidable when dealing with humans.
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upvoteby notahacker2 hours ago|
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An important adjacent point is the same people that are insisting that only their research can stop intelligent manipulative computers from controlling the human race are also some of the few people who believed that OpenAI was a philanthropic endeavour and that Sam Bankman Fried was trustworthy...
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upvoteby fwipsy1 hours ago|
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I'm not seeing any claims to exclusivity. I'm seeing people actively encouraging more people to enter the field of AI safety/security and openness to robust debate, etc.

I agree that there seems to be a huge problem with value drift--either people who used to research AI safety, pivoting to building AI (looking at Anthropic) or people who only ever paid lip service to safety (I tend to put Musk and Altman in this category.) These people need to be held accountable, but it doesn't mean every AI safety researcher ever was a stooge or a fraud.

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upvoteby notahacker43 minutes ago|
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Ok, fair enough theyre not entirely opposed to outsiders setting up research institutes like theirs and enjoy debate (or the optics of debate) more than most, and I don't think most of them are insincere. But the point wasn't that they were exclusionary, but more that whilst priding themselves on their supposedly superior ability to predict the future and "align" AIs, they somehow missed the value drift and human non-alignment with their values basically any outsider saw coming...
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upvoteby HDThoreaun2 hours ago|
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OpenAI now controls one of if not the largest philanthropic endowments on the planet. They are still a philanthropic endeavor, though I agree the non profit bait and switch as well as the Altman board situation were tragedies.
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upvoteby notahacker55 minutes ago|
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I mean, they're also gearing up for one of the largest IPOs in history to generate unprecedented amounts of wealth for themselves, and the nonprofit foundation's focus is community engagement with OpenAI products. Goldman Sachs has a large philanthropic endowment but I wouldn't confuse that with their priorities being philanthropy.

The point was I think pretty much everyone else saw the bait and switch coming...

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upvoteby danbruc3 hours ago|
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I remember thinking exactly the same thing around 5-7 years ago, in the GPT-2/GPT-3 era.

ChatGPT was announced three and a half years ago, 30-11-2022.

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upvoteby semiquaver3 hours ago|
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Do you think that ChatGPT is when people on hacker news first became aware of the GPT series of models?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1594339200&dateRange=custom&...

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upvoteby IshKebab3 hours ago|
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And GPT-3 was released 6 years ago in 2020... What's your point?
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