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by subradios
1253 days ago
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Taking Gebru's word seriously here is reason to discount the entire argument. Gebru is a part of a clique that is devoted to an entirely different set of ideas around AI Safety. The two basic movements here are:
1. Be very scared of AI development, then do capabilities research but feel bad about it.
2. Demand AI research comes with locks in them that make sure the AI can't write a tweet that would make a San Franciscan Activist uncomfortable. Achieve very little in terms of manipulating AI, but get lots of book deals. Neither of these groups should really be trusted for hard data about the other, and more importantly - missing that piece indicates that the author is not even attempting to convince the unconvinced. |
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A pattern that I see a lot with the debate around this topic is people leaning a lot on their reputations rather than hard arguments. I was listening to a few podcasts on this topic and they all featured a dr of this or that with a lot of books pontificating about their version of the truth and how others were clearly wrong. A lot of these 'experts' are parroting each other as well (chat gpt would do a great job of making their arguments for them). You get a lot of "he said that she said" type argumentation and name dropping. Not going to name names here but I just don't find this line of argumentation very convincing or productive. There's a lot of extrapolation and interpreting that is done by these people that is based on a basis that just isn't that great.
ChatGpt obviously happened and that seems to excite, worry, or upset lots of people. However, that cat is out of the bag now. OpenAI's results are being replicated by countless third parties. No amount of legislation, self censuring, pleading, magical thinking, etc. is going to change that. So, I don't buy into the whole Luddite attitude. I just don't think it is productive to think like that or insist that others think like that. The only debate worth having is how to improve the technology further and how to deal with the inevitable abuse that will happen.
Also, this is obviously not an AGI yet. Whatever that is. And obviously some people are trying to inch closer to that goal. And there's a lot of debate about what is the right approach for getting there with many competing points of view. That's a much more interesting debate. Interesting time to be alive. So much progress in so little time. And I'm not even 50 yet. The debate that this cannot be allowed to happen or is impossible is a lot less interesting to me.