[dzink]

The historic analog most befitting AI are weapons. It provides an advantage to companies and governments in creating weapons, in surveilling people and thus gaining leverage over individuals, in controlling what individuals can do or cannot stop doing. It thus follows the laws of weapons control - the more restrictions are threatened to be imposed, the more even the smallest actors will fight to get more of it. They may not understand or know what they are getting, but they will want more of it because their potential rivals have it. Governments are the ultimate customer here - they have the money, the energy, and the appetite to consume AI infinitely in battlement against opponents - foreign and domestic. The only approximate solution is to prevent any restrictions on the use of it - a-la-2nd amendment (the upside of that is it advances the AI for future use and is thus in the interest of governments as well). Modern large models seem to be compressible and thus we may see more and more tiny sub-specialized varieties. But the push to slow the frontier in weaponry always leads to the reverse.

[throwaway13337]

I think we see things similarly about the negative potential but please be careful with the framing.

AI is a printing press or a steam engine. It's not a weapon.

The framing is important. Much like 'distillation attack'. These framings are an attack on the narrative.

Printing presses at the time were seen as extremely dangerous too. For many of the same reasons cited about AI.

In both cases, the technologies were used to destablize existing power structures. And, after some hardship, make a better world for most people.

Even calling these things 'dual use' is a weird framing. Books are not 'dual use technologies' unless you want to sell fear.

[dzink]

A piece of wood can be used to build a house, to carve a statute, to make a bow and arrow, or to make a baseball bat. Honesty is the only way to see the problem in a way that can be tackled effectively. Framing will not help if you are dealing with large animals fighting in a cage when you are trapped in it, and it this case we all are.

[chrisjj]

> AI is a printing press or a steam engine. It's not a weapon.

I've not heard of a printing press going rogue and attacking things.

[paytonjjones]

> only approximate solution is to prevent any restrictions on the use of it - a-la-2nd amendment

Not even in 'Murica do we have anything close to no restrictions.

You can't buy your own EMP or nuke, and even warring governments have been surprisingly reserved in building (at least to public knowledge) biological weapons.

[dzink]

Completely agree, BUT you’re not dealing with -self-preserving humans anymore. In this case what are the odds of some less competent large state actor getting a model that goes rogue and has to be mitigated against? How do you mitigate against novel weapons it creates if your models are lobotomized in that category? No single government will neuter their own models and very few if any are competent and interested enough to mitigate against them.