[mofeien]

Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic said the following at an Oxford lecture last week ([0], at around 10 and 12 mins):

    "It's a technology that we do not fully understand because it's more grown than made. And it is a technology that you can concoct plausible scenarios where it could kill every single person on the planet. So to think building this technology is without risk would be an act of hubris or insanity.

[...]

    The technology is in fact so powerful that I should clearly state that if it was possible to elegantly slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time as a species to deal with it, that would likely be a good thing. ... But in the absence of a coordinated global slowdown, we are left with the current situation, which is a powerful technology being developed at breakneck speed by a variety of actors and a variety of countries locked in a competition with one another where commercial and geopolitical rivalries are often drowning out the larger existential-to-the-species aspects of the technology being built. This isn't an ideal situation, but it's the one we find ourselves in."

They know they are in a race that no one will win.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zIcP5WlShw

[tomjakubowski]

It's worth noting that Clark's career started in PR and journalism.

[protocolture]

>you can concoct plausible scenarios where it could kill every single person on the planet.

Idiots can scary black box their way to that concern. Plausible? Not so much.

[graerg]

It is already very plausible (and has been since the 1950s) without the advent of LLMs. This is just another layer on top of the preexisting and very plausible existential threats we already face.

[protocolture]

Detail it. Justify it.

Your comment about before LLMs is a non sequitur. Demonstrate that an LLM can kill everyone on the planet.

[patcon]

Task a squirrel with justifying the risk of a fox, but from the biomolecular level. That is the level of the task you are setting out.

There can be arms-races in domains that are unfathomable to the participants. A small mammal will die a billion times over before it understands the evolutionary mechanisms and the genetic playing field on which it loses. Actors are not necessarily privy to understand the means by which they will lose, and humans have only existed in a small window of time in which we fashioned a manicured garden, in which that full understanding was briefly possible. It is not favoured in the universe for us to fully understand our environment imho

If the risk must be exhaustively detailed before it is given credence, we are already doomed, and deservedly so

[protocolture]

>Task a squirrel with justifying the risk of a fox, but from the biomolecular level. That is the level of the task you are setting out.

Thats a really deep thought for a 12 year old.

>There can be arms-races in domains that are unfathomable to the participants.

You cant even justify LLMs as being unfathomable. Oh watch out I am fathoming them. You cant stop me fathoming all over the place.

>A small mammal will die a billion times over before it understands the evolutionary mechanisms and the genetic playing field on which it loses.Actors are not necessarily privy to understand the means by which they will lose, and humans have only existed in a small window of time in which we fashioned a manicured garden, in which that full understanding was briefly possible. It is not favoured in the universe for us to fully understand our environment imho

Non Sequitur. One that sounds like it was made up for that "What the Bleep" garbage.

>If the risk must be exhaustively detailed before it is given credence, we are already doomed, and deservedly so

The risk needs to be justified as something more substantial than weird people writing wannabe edgy messages on the internet. If someone on the internet told you that we need to drastically reverse living standards because there's a risk that modern technology will summon King Kong any reasonable person would ask for the working out instead of running for a cave.

[patcon]

You're kind of an asshole. No thanks

[delusional]

"Oh what peril we are in where I must get rich by killing all of you" Is a statement that should make you disregard anyone saying it at any time. Either they are liars, or they are so morally bankrupt that they are willing to sacrifice the species for short term satisfaction. Either option makes them more fit for a mental hospital than a stage.

[airstrike]

It's worth remembering that people do not always say what they believe. Instead, they often say that which benefits them the most.

[clbrmbr]

Was a good watch, tho would have liked to be there in person. Props to Brenden & his Cosmos team for really setting the bar.

[WarmWash]

Thank you Mr. Altman for firing the starting gun when no one else wanted to race.

(The ambiguity of sarcasm is intentional here.)

[sumedh]

Didnt Google start the race with their paper?

[WarmWash]

Google (and other labs) wanted to keep the tech internal because of the obvious safety concerns. Once they were confident that the tech was understood and under control, the public could start being drip fed. Everyone on the ground back then was hyper cautious.

Then Altman made ChatGPT public, and the race began.

[sumedh]

No that is not true, Google didn't release it because they feared it would kill their search business, nothing to do with safety.