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by romanhounds 17 days ago
>Given that you apparently share their goals (a better world,) isn't it worth at least hearing them out on their methods?

Their methods are about convincing others that things that enrich and empower themselves at the expense of others is "improving the world". This isn't the stance of serious people who want to improve the world.

3 comments

Please don't confuse AI researchers and AI safety researchers (although there is some overlap.) That's like confusing the people from the Manhattan project with the people who protested 3 Mile Island, because they're both focused on nuclear technology. One effect of EA is that every AI researcher says they're trying to make the world better. Some of them are full of shit, but not all.

I'm fairly certain the authors would be happy to see AI shut down indefinitely. They just don't believe that the coordination problem is solvable. This is their best attempt to come up with something workable in the real world, or at least get people started thinking about it.

Right, the so-called "AI safety researchers" are worthless clowns and grifters with nothing of value to contribute. We would all be better off if they spent their time on something productive like writing entertaining sci-fi stories. They certainly seem to have the rich imagination necessary for that occupation.
Now this is an unserious comment, just throwing insults without explaining your reasoning at all. Do you believe that AI itself is worthless? Or that it's just incapable of causing harm? Do you resent the safeguards placed on AI because they are personally inconvenient to you? When introducing a new technology at this scale, don't you think it's worth looking before leaping?
So called "AI safety researchers" are themselves unserious so of course I don't take them seriously. LLMs are extremely useful, I use them constantly for a wide variety of tasks. LLMs don't cause harm: humans cause harm. There's no real need to intentionally cripple or restrict the models in the name of "safety"; that's just stupid and done only to prevent corporate embarrassment.
Is that your line with nuclear weapons too; that it's the humans cause harm, so you don't need to regulate them?
Sadly they're very bad writers. Have you actually read the stuff they produced? Horrible. Yudkosky himself wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_o...

It's so bad

I'm confused, the authors of the website are arguing that the development of AI should be slowed down so that society can adapt. What do you think they are trying to convince others of?
Which one of the authors of the website are you referring to?