[latexr]

> The public at large will need to

Ah, yes. You see, it’s not them who are wrong for knowingly releasing something they knew to be harmful, it’s everyone else who needs to change. That seems reasonable. Humanity is famous for being able to rapidly adapt to fast changes as one voice. Oh, wait…

They are no different to the tobacco and oil companies. They know the harm they’re causing but care about personal profit about everything else.

[roryirvine]

I'm not an AI booster, but in this case I'd say that pausing the rollout for mitigations (such as public education) to be put in place was the responsible course of action.

With the benefit of hindsight, you can certainly argue that the pause wasn't long enough or that the mitigations weren't sufficient. But that wasn't a view held by many at the time - indeed, it was mocked as a marketing ploy (and still is; see gp's post as evidence).

[latexr]

> pausing the rollout for mitigations

What mitigations? Nothing they’ve done is relevant to the four points in the comment above.

> such as public education

Their “public education” is about as meaningful as alcohol warnings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj4aRhHJOWU

> With the benefit of hindsight

No hindsight needed. These problems were obvious from the start. Not just to me but to many others. Clearly also to them.

> indeed, it was mocked as a marketing ploy (and still is; see gp's post as evidence)

Two things can be true at once. Of course it’s marketing to say “this is too dangerous to release” if they’re going to do it anyway. Either that or they’re so supremely irresponsible and greedy that they don’t care about the consequences as long as they can profit. And again, all of those can be true at once.

Also, worth noting that when they talk about it being “too dangerous”, they’re usually talking about fantasy scenarios of the AI gaining sentience and enslaving humanity. But there are many other dangers (as listed in the comment above) to consider that come from humans directly misusing the technology.

[usef-]

> What mitigations?

They did try to place limits on their API, and tried to develop classifiers for AI-vs-non-AI text (which was abandoned in 2023, in a world of many models). A lot of their efforts in those days seemed to be to work with Universities to figure out what to do about all of this incoming tech. They weren't the first to develop a language model.

> when they talk about it being “too dangerous”, they’re usually talking about fantasy scenarios of the AI gaining sentience

They didn't talk about "it" (that model) in those terms, as mentioned above. Or the following few from what I can see. They seem pretty specific about each model's risks and publish what they can find in the model card. But yes, they have a fear of where things may be in the future if models keep progressing.

I don't personally think talk of it being "too dangerous" is good marketing if the goal is to get rich. It invites restrictions from governments and others. I don't know anyone that picked a model because it was apparently restricted: most of their funding comes from Companies that are generally risk-averse. Online AI hype seems to mostly come from the demos, not the doomerism.

I do think there's an uncomfortable trade-off involved in all of this, and some of it comes down to whether you think the tech will be developed regardless of your participation. I believe the people in labs like Anthropic are worried yet think they are better off steering it the right direction, so they push on.

[basilikum]

Yes, it's not their fault, that people are using the tool they made in a malicious way.

I hate ClosedAI as much as the next guy, but this is an extremely illiberal take. It's not the kitchen knife manufacturer's fault that people are using their product for murder, it's not my fault that people are doing crimes over the Tor relay I run.

The Tobacco industry is evil because it misleads the public about its product being poisonous and bribes politicians through widespread corruption. Tobacco is also different because it is not a neutral tool that can be used for good and bad, but poisonous and will harm you no matter how you use it.

[latexr]

> Yes, it's not their fault, that people are using the tool they made in a malicious way.

Yeah! It’s not like they predicted these malicious uses before releasing the tools. And it’s not like they’re making them available to a dysfunctional government in order for them to militarise the technology and… Oh, wait…

> but this is an extremely illiberal take.

I’d appreciate if we stopped this Americanised version of poisonous discourse where everything is reduced to a box in a vague political ideology. By this I don’t mean politics don’t matter—they do—but not everything is black and white, right and left, or needs to be categorised to be discussed.

> It's not the kitchen knife manufacturer's fault that people are using their product for murder, it's not my fault that people are doing crimes over the Tor relay I run.

Always with the kitchen knife. That’s not an argument, it’s a talking point. Explosives are tools too, as are machine guns. No tool is entirely neutral. LLMs are not comparable to kitchen knives. Death is not the only possible bad outcome.

> Tobacco is also different because it is not a neutral tool that can be used for good and bad, but poisonous and will harm you no matter how you use it.

Tobacco is not just cigarettes.

https://leafngrainsociety.com/featured/10-surprising-uses-of...