| You might not be aware of the context (actually the author of the article might not either). There has in fact been a big push by major AI companies to focus on quote safety unquote while marginalizing (not citing, giving attention to, etc) people focusing on what those companies call quote ethics unquote. For example, from Timnit Gebru: > The fact that they call themselves "AI Safety" and call us "AI Ethics" is very interesting to me. > What makes them "safety" and what makes us "ethics"? > I have never taken an ethics course in my life. I am an electrical engineer and a computer scientist however. But the moment I started talking about racism, sexism, colonialism and other things that are threats to the safety of my communities, I became labeled "ethicist." I have never applied that label to myself. > "Ethics" has a "dilemma" feel to it for me. Do you choose this or that? Well it all depends. > Safety however is more definitive. This thing is safe or not. And the people using frameworks directly descended from eugenics decided to call themselves "AI Safety" and us "AI Ethics" when actually what I've been warning about ARE the actual safety issues, not your imaginary "superintelligent" machines. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timnit-gebru-7b3b407_the-fact... |
It's true that some people are confident there's no such novelty, and it's impossible for an AI system to cause a problem which can't be analyzed within the frameworks we've developed for human misbehavior. Some of those people do say that if you don't agree with them it must be because of "eugenics". But both of these positions make so little sense to me that I'm not sure how to engage with them.