[ianbutler]

OpenAI has 900 million weekly active users. So around 0.01% are having problems. That's actually way less than population level measures for the same symptoms on a bigger percentage of people relative to the US on just suicidal ideation alone.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7412a4.htm

[Yokohiii]

The numbers are inflated considering the topic. There is a lot of anon, api and enterprise traffic that doesn't play any role in this. If you also account for "better search experience" users, then the numbers will probably drop massively.

So the question is how many users engage in intimate conversations at all.

[ianbutler]

https://openai.com/index/scaling-ai-for-everyone/

Nope that number is strictly about ChatGPT

"ChatGPT is where people start with AI, with more than 900M weekly active users, and we now have more than 50 million consumer subscribers."

People who go there and chat with gpt for search are definitely normal users. Just because you don't like the numbers doesn't mean you get to torture them.

[Yokohiii]

I did not say they are not about GPT.

[ianbutler]

ChatGPT is the name of their in web chat product. So no enterprise, no api.

[Yokohiii]

okay remove api, rest still stands.

[vkou]

I'm pretty sure that ~100% of those 700 million people will have a bad, utterly dehumanizing experience when they will next be looking for a job, because OpenAI is heavily used by HR.

That's the problem with AI safety. Not in voluntary usage, but in involuntary usage, where someone with power over you will use it against you, it does something incredibly stupid and you have no recourse, no appeal, no awareness of what you did wrong - or if you even did anything wrong.

And it's not just employment. Governments, vendors, retailers, landlords, utilities are, or will all be using it in situations that will dramatically impact your life.

[AndrewKemendo]

You described a society problem that preexisted LLMs

What else can you blame on “scary AI?”

>>Not in voluntary usage, but in involuntary usage, where someone with power over you will use it against you, it does something incredibly stupid and you have no recourse, no appeal, no awareness of what you did wrong - or if you even did anything wrong.

Yeah….that’s every society ever

[vkou]

In every society that was worth living in, accountability was a key factor. Decision-makers need to be able to be held to account for why they made a decision. Maybe not in every case, but in many, many cases.

If your society doesn't have that, it's on a fast track slide down into a dystopian shithole. Stop it. Do something about it. Don't just shrug your shoulders and act like this is inevitable, or like the shareholders making 1% more money this year justifies this slide.

[thaumasiotes]

Is that a problem we didn't already have? How well was HR doing on hiring before?

[vkou]

They had a paper trail and processes that were documented and could be cross-examined on during discovery and lawsuits and trials.

Now it's just 'the computer says so, shrug'.

Over in the DoD, the computer says you must die, so I guess you die. Sometimes it says that about a building full of schoolchildren, but hey, nobody's at fault, the computer said so.

And it's going to get it's tentacles into every space in between. Landlord turns your application down, the computer says you are a social credit risk. Your grocery bans and trespasses you, the computer thinks you're a ne'er-do-well.

If you think none of that will happen, why not prevent it by law before it happens? Where are the hard limits of what this monster is and isn't allowed to do? How are we better off when we don't set them?

[ryandrake]

"Computer says so" has been a problem for decades too, though, just with a powerless human customer support agent in the middle. They've just automated away the computer's human voicebox.

[vkou]

Quantity has a quality all of its own. This is a paradigm shift. If it weren't, everyone wouldn't be head over heels to adopt it. It makes so many new awful uses, or turning up existing awful uses economical.

We supercharge the worst thing about computers, and you shrug and go 'eh, whatever.'

Why? Is human dignity worthless to you? Do you have no expectation of accountability from anyone with power over you or me?

[ianbutler]

I mean that was pretty much the case in hiring before AI too frankly. It's not like it's been any better on power dynamics and right now applicants are using AI at an alarming rate as well.

I'm not really moved by your type of argument, because hiring is just a broken process in general and I'm responding to the article so.