• Sgagvefey@lemmynsfw.com
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    4 months ago

    Though it sounds extreme, there are a lot of smart people in the AI community who truly believe AI could end humanity.

    No. There are not.

    Believing anything resembling current tools has the capacity to end humanity in incontrovertible proof that you are not smart.

    • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      AI person reporting in. Without saying whether or not I personally believe that the current tools will lead to the end of humanity, I’ll point out a few possibilities that I find concerning about what’s going on:

      • The hype around AI is being used to justify mass layoffs, where humans are being replaced by tools that do a questionable job and can’t really understand the things those humans could understand. Whether or not the AI can do as good of a job according to some statical measurement is less relevant than the fact that a human is less likely to make an extremely grave mistake and more likely to be able to recognize when that does happen. I’m concerned this will lead to cross-industry enshitification on an unprecedented scale.

      • The foundation models consume a huge amount of energy. The more impressive you want it to be, the more energy it needs. As long as the data centers which run them are dependent on fossil fuels, they’ll be pumping a huge amount of carbon in the air just to do replace jobs that we didn’t need to have replaced.

      • As these tools are used more and more, they’re going to end up “learning” from content created by themselves instead of something that’s closer to a ground truth. It’s hard to predict what kind of degradation of service will come from this, but the more we create systems that rely on these tools, the more harm it will do to us.

      • Given the cost and nature of these tools, they’re likely to yield the most benefit to moneyed interests that want to automate the systems that maintain their power and wealth. E.g. generating large amounts of convincing disinformation to manipulate the public into supporting politicians or policies that benefit a small number of wealthy people in the short term while locking humanity into a path towards destruction.

      And none of this accounts for possible future iterations of AI tools that may be far more capable than what exists today. That future technology will most likely be controlled by powerful people who are primarily interested in using it to bolster the systems that keep them in power, to the detriment of humanity as a whole.

      Personally I’m far less concerned about a malicious AI intentionally doing harm to humanity than AI being used as a weapon by unscrupulous people.

      • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 months ago

        I agree with everything you said and wanted to point out that you offered quite a compelling argument that even current AI tools are capable of significant amounts of damage without even touching on the autonomous weapons systems that are starting to be deployed.

        Not even just talking about the military intelligence systems that may or may not have been deployed (Israel: Lavender et al), but we’re starting to show off weapons platforms that may someday be empowered to perform their own threat analysis and take real world actions accordingly. That shit is terrifying in more of a Terminator/Matrix way than anything else imo.

      • Sgagvefey@lemmynsfw.com
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        4 months ago

        Zero of these things are impacted by this legislation in any way.

        This is exclusively the mentally unstable “killer AI” nonsense. We’re not even 1% of 1% of the way to anything resembling agency.

        • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It’s good for marketing, though. “Ah, our software is so powerful, it could destroy humanity! Please pass a bill saying so while we market friendly chatbots to the public while actually making money by selling our products to despots and warmongers that might actually end humanity.”

          • Sgagvefey@lemmynsfw.com
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            4 months ago

            It’s regulatory capture. Add deluded barriers to entry to make it difficult for competition and community projects to develop, and you have a monopoly.

        • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          Sure, but this outcome is not at all surprising. There are plenty of smart AI people that have nuanced views of what kind of threat could be posed by recklessly unleashing tools that we don’t fully understand into the hands of people who are likely to do harmful things with them.

          It’s not surprising that those valid nuanced concerns get translated into overly simplistic misrepresentations entangled with pop sci fi panic around rogue AI as they try to move into public discourse.

          • Sgagvefey@lemmynsfw.com
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            4 months ago

            We do fully understand them. Not knowing the exact reason they come to a model doesn’t mean the algorithm has a shred of mystery involved. It’s like saying we don’t understand fluid dynamics because it’s computationally heavy.

            It’s autocomplete with a really big training set and a really big model. It cannot possibly develop agency. It’s hundreds of orders of magnitude of complexity short of a human.

            • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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              4 months ago

              That’s not what an algorithms researcher means when we talk about “understanding”. Obviously we know the mechanism by which it operates, it’s not an unknown alien technology that dropped into our laps.

              Understanding an algorithm means being able to predict the characteristics of its outputs based on the characteristics of its inputs. E.g. will it give an optimal solution to a problem that we pose? Will its response satisfy certain constraints or fall within certain bounds?

              Figuring this stuff out for foundation models is an active area of research, and the absence of this predictability is an enormous safety concern for any use cases where the output can be consequential.

              It cannot possibly develop agency.

              I don’t believe I’ve suggested anywhere that I think it will, but I’ll play around with this concern anyway… There’s a lot of discussion going on about having models feed back on themselves to learn from their own output. I don’t find it all that hard to imagine that something we could reasonably consider self awareness could be formed by a very complex neural network that is able to consume and process its own outputs. And once self awareness starts to form, it’s not that hard for me to imagine a sense of agency following. I have no idea what the model might use that agency for, but I don’t think it’s all that far fetched to consider the possibility of it happening.

              • Sgagvefey@lemmynsfw.com
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                4 months ago

                There are plenty of nondeterministic algorithms. It’s not a special trait. There are plenty of algorithms with actual emergent behavior, which LLMs don’t have to any meaningful extent. We absolutely understand how LLMs work

                The answer to both of your questions is not some unsolved mystery. It’s “of course not”. That’s not what they do and fundamentally requires a much more complex architecture to even approach.

                • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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                  4 months ago

                  Non-deterministic algorithms such as Monte Carlo methods or simulated annealing can still be constrained to an acceptable state space. How to do this effectively for LLMs is a very open question, largely because the state space of the problems that they are applied to is incomprehensibly huge.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The hype around AI is being used to justify mass layoffs,

        Ban stock buybacks, abolish non-competes, fine the CEO and major stockholders personally for layoffs.

        The foundation models consume a huge amount of energy. The more impressive you want it to be,

        Nuclear power, renewables, carbon tax

        As these tools are used more and more, they’re going to end up “learning” from content created by themselves instead of something that’s closer to a ground truth.

        Not really our problem it is their problem.

        Given the cost and nature of these tools, they’re likely to yield the most benefit to moneyed interests that want to automate the systems that maintain their power and wealth.

        Restore the fairness doctrine limit the ability of groups like Sinclair.

        Got any other impossible to solve issues let me know.

        • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          I never suggested these problems are impossible to solve, but you haven’t solved them in your post because you haven’t laid out how to overcome the political and economic resistance to implementing any of this, and that’s where the biggest challenge is.

          Although I think it’s naive to believe that nuclear power and renewable energy can allow us to keep consuming energy recklessly. Renewable energy technology still puts a significant strain on the environment, in terms of mining rare-earth elements, pollution produced during manufacturing, and material waste from devices that have reached end of life. Nuclear energy is rife with controversy… I used to be firmly in support of it, but I’ve grown skeptical, largely because of the ecological damage from the mining and construction processes, and we don’t have a clear story of what end of life looks like for a nuclear power plant. A plant can only be expected to operate for 40-60 years at which point it needs to be demolished and rebuilt, repeating the massive costs of material waste and construction all over again.

          At the end of the day the only way for humanity to survive is for everyone to be reducing their consumption, but I honestly the think the vast majority of people today would rather die and take everyone else down with them than accept more responsible consumption habits.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            you haven’t laid out how to overcome the political and economic resistance to implementing any of this, and that’s where the biggest challenge is.

            That isn’t my job.

            Although I think it’s naive to believe that nuclear power and renewable energy can allow us to keep consuming energy recklessly.

            Misn showing me where I said that? Cause I am pretty freaken sure I mentioned a carbon tax and incentives for companies to generate their own power.

            Renewable energy technology still puts a significant strain on the environment, in terms of mining rare-earth elements, pollution produced during manufacturing, and material waste from devices that have reached end of life.

            More tech. Let me know when you have an actual challenge.

            Nuclear energy is rife with controversy…

            So are vaccines.

            A plant can only be expected to operate for 40-60 years at which point it needs to be demolished and rebuilt, repeating the massive costs of material waste and construction all over again.

            Are you being serious right now? I am in infrastructure and 40 years is well beyond the scope of anything I build. Get me a freaken Bible and I will swear on it, your waste system in your area can never ever ever last 4 decades. They are constantly having to rip it all apart and rebuild. 11 years is what I typically hope for. Find me a wet well that is 4 decades old, find me a pump, find me a screw conveyor, find me a metering pump, find me a shredder, find me the UPS/generator, find me a DCS, that lasts 40 years. I am pretty tempted to share your comment with the office tomorrow, so we can have a good laugh at it.

            Now you compare that to nuclear. Where everything is overbuilt everything is accounted for. No one improvises. Stuff in nuclear plants outlasts everything else. I have worked on very non-critical systems for nuclear plants and had to follow the strictest rules of my career. It takes a certain level of insanity to specify what type of tape should be used on a bundle of wires.

            Guys at nuclear plants are freaken artisans, unionized, paid the highest in the industry for a reason.

            Got to love this site sometimes. No where else can I hear people arguing against highly trained people getting paid very well being evil and instead being told that everything was so freaken perfect during the dark ages.

            • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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              4 months ago

              That isn’t my job.

              So then you didn’t “solve” the impossible problems.

              I hope you and your colleagues have a good laugh about how the work you do is contributing to the march towards the end of human civilization as we know it.

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                So then you didn’t “solve” the impossible problems.

                I did. Let me know which part was confusing to you. Unless of course you want to choose to, yet again, latch on to one sentence as a gotcha.

                end of human civilization as we know it.

                Is that what we are doing? I thought I built recycling systems, sanitation systems, and pumping systems. I wasn’t aware that helping make sure we don’t die in our own feces+garbage and providing fresh water was going to be the downfall of civilization. Damn here I am thinking that this is one of the most important parts of civilization. Well I don’t want to cause civilization to end. Tell you what, why not be the change you want to see in the world and stop flushing your toilet, stop using tap water, stop recycling anything, and don’t set your garbage out.

                • 5C5C5C@programming.dev
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                  4 months ago

                  Let me know which part was confusing to you

                  The part where you left out any viable path for any of the hypothetical solutions to be realized 🤷‍♂️ You of all people should know that a blueprint is worthless if there’s no process available to build what it describes.

                  Damn here I am thinking that this is one of the most important parts of civilization.

                  I mean yeah, I do agree that sanitation and water works are the crowning achievement of human civilization to this very day. But I’ve gotta say it doesn’t inspire confidence if the people running those systems think that concerns about sustainability are something to have a group chuckle about.

                  Just because the work you do is important doesn’t mean it’s beyond the scrutiny of ecological sustainability. All your good work won’t amount to much in the long run if we can’t find a path to reducing consumption and prolonging the viability of these systems. We don’t have infinite resources, and our ability to recycle is nowhere near what it needs to be to keep up with economic demand.

                  Tell you what, why not be the change you want to see in the world and stop flushing your toilet, stop using tap water, stop recycling anything, and don’t set your garbage out.

                  My partner and I are unironically taking the time to research subsistence farming and how to maintain very basic personal water collection and waste removal/reuse systems. We’re also learning about perma-computing so that hopefully we can preserve some of the knowledge that humans have accumulated into the future.

                  We see it as a foregone conclusion that human civilization as we know it will entirely collapse, probably sooner than anyone cares to admit, so we’re making contingency plans. People with your dismissive attitude are a big part of why we see it as a forgone conclusion. Because as far as we can tell you’re in the 95%+ majority of people on this planet, which means hardly anyone is putting effort into solving these existential problems that we’re facing. Problems which you have offered no viable solution to, despite your insistence otherwise.

    • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      AI takes a crazy amount of power, which is largely fueled by the same fossil fuels that are indeed killing us off and destroying our habitat, which will kill even more of us, so AI could definitely indirectly kill off humanity.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    SB 1047 is a California state bill that would make large AI model providers – such as Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral – liable for the potentially catastrophic dangers of their AI systems.

    Now this sounds like a complicated debate - but it seems to me like everyone against this bill are people who would benefit monetarily from not having to deal with the safety aspect of AI, and that does sound suspicious to me.

    Another technical piece of this bill relates to open-source AI models. […] There’s a caveat that if a developer spends more than 25% of the cost to train Llama 3 on fine-tuning, that developer is now responsible. That said, opponents of the bill still find this unfair and not the right approach.

    In regards to the open source models, while it makes sense that if a developer takes the model and does a significant portion of the fine tuning, they should be liable for the result of that…

    But should the main developer still be liable if a bad actor does less than 25% fine tuning and uses exploits in the base model?

    One could argue that developers should be trying to examine their black-boxes for vunerabilities, rather than shrugging and saying it can’t be done then demanding they not be held liable.

    • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      In regards to the open source models, while it makes sense that if a developer takes the model and does a significant portion of the fine tuning, they should be liable for the result of that…

      This kind of goes against the model that open source has operated on for a long time, as providing source doesn’t represent liability. So providing a fine-tuned model shouldn’t either.

      • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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        4 months ago

        So providing a fine-tuned model shouldn’t either.

        I didn’t mean in terms of providing. I meant that if someone provided a base model, someone took that, built upon it, then used it for a harmful purpose - of course the person modified it should be liable, not the base provider.

        It’s like if someone took a version of Linux, modified it, then used that modified version for an illegal act - you wouldn’t go after the person who made the unmodified version.

        • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          You wouldn’t necessarily punish the person that modified Linux either, you’d punish the person that uses it for a nefarious purpose.

          Important distinction is the intention to deceive, not that the code/model was modified to be able to be used for nefarious purposes.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    America: gun shops and manufacturers are shielded from lawsuits. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

    Also America: someone might learn how to make a bomb from an AI instead of learning it in the many many other places. Better sue.

    Inconsistent. I can’t sue because my kids school have to have a constant police presence.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Still. I think putting the brakes on “AI” is the right move right now. With its energy usage, intellectual property theft, nonconsensual (and underage) porn generating…not to mention its use by the ownership class to take and commodify human expression away from humans and the capitalist motive to profit over any consideration for the ramifications for the working class…I think halting this until we can get some protections in place for those this tech seems determined to exploit is a good thing.

      Not that any of those problems will be solved even if we did hit the brakes. But, theoretically, yeah. I’m about it. Because, true to capitalist form, we are worsening the problems we haven’t even started trying to solve.

      • best_username_ever@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        intellectual property theft

        It’s exactly like banks or huge companies: steal one movie, and you go to jail and pay a big fine. Steal all the movies, and suddenly it’s not a problem anymore.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        think putting the brakes on “AI” is the right move right now.

        Strong disagree. I won’t accept any solution that step 1 is willful ignorance. You might be willing to stick your head in the sand because the world keeps moving, I am not.

        With its energy usage, intellectual property theft, nonconsensual (and underage) porn generating…not to mention its use by the ownership class to take and commodify human expression away from humans and the capitalist motive to profit over any consideration for the ramifications for the working class…I

        I always know when someone doesn’t have a good argument when they give me a dozen bad ones. 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 … Still equals 0. No matter how many times you do it.

        • Fedop@slrpnk.net
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          4 months ago

          This comment is decrying it’s parent, but it doesn’t say anything to refute the points made. Energy use, intellectual property theft, and non-consensual porn seem like pretty decent things to be worried about.

          • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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            4 months ago

            Yeah, because it’s good stuff to point out and think on… But ultimately inconsequential as the previous comment points out. The world is getting AI eventually, the question is do we want to be the first ones with the keys?

            All the same arguments could have been made about the internet. Inb4 someone makes the incredibly likewarm take that the internet was a mistake. It was inevitable, if we had “pumped-the-brakes” on it we wouldn’t have found some clean way to implement the internet where no one gets hurt. Someone who wasn’t concerned about ethics would have got there first to set the standard.

            Actually a better analogy for AI might be the nuclear bomb. If we slow down someone else will get their first. Silicone Valley doesn’t have the best track record with ethics. But call me crazy, I’d rather them figure it out before China or Russia. Because they sure as shit ain’t using their brakes.

            • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              So, my argument was “capitalism makes this tech dangerous” and your reasoning for disagreeing is basically, “but what if we don’t win capitalism because we try to protect people and the environment?”

              • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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                4 months ago

                I think it’s important to consider these elements and try to mitigate them as we move forward. But they’ll never be completely fixed.

                If anything has the power to collapse capitalism, it’s AI automation. Capitalism is all about keeping people working for the benefit of those above with the threat of not getting what you need to survive. That threat is predicated by there not being enough to go around.

                Once we’re able to make an enormous surplus without the labor of the common man; the basis of capitalism begins to crumble. I fear that if we give corporations time, they’ll try and make the world run on AI WITHOUT anyone losing jobs. That terrifies me more, because people will accept the status quo but lose the only power they ever had in capitalism: The combined value of their labor. A strike doesn’t work so well if your whole job is pushing a button to make AI do it.

                I think the beginning of AI will be painful for the reasons we both have outlined. But I believe that’s growing pains towards a better future. Giving corps time to boil the frog won’t be good. Keeping the corps fighting each other to be the first by pushing this tech forward is the quickest way for them to create their own obsolescence.

                • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  I just don’t see any scenario in which companies eliminate the need for employees, but keep paying them. And I don’t see any scenario in which these capitalist enterprises, clearly that give zero fucks about the impact of the tech as long as they hold the keys, don’t take that money and power to fight tax increases to fund UBI.

                  I see exactly what is happening now, and that has happened with all technological advances: careers getting eliminated for the bottom line, only for more meaningless jobs to be necessitated in their absence—jobs that offer less buying power for the paycheck they’re signing.

                  I obviously don’t know what will happen in the future. But trends don’t lie. Richer, more powerful companies, using that power and money to get richer and amass more power. Our government is already broken at current levels of corporate capitalism. More powerful corporations will not make things better for us. They will undoubtedly make the worse. Because the worse things are for us, the better they are for the ownership class.

                  We are all working class. And the class war is raging. We have just been losing.

                  And this is all before we even discuss the environmental impact of this stupid ass tech. Which is devastating. When we don’t have time for more environmental devastation.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Fine whatever deal with these “points”

            • Energy: renewables, nuclear, carbon tax, incentives for companies to generate their own power

            • Intellectual property theft: abolish copyright law. Whatever value it might (I said might) have served is gone now. It should sicken us all to the core that we are the one people in human history that cut ourselves off from our own culture. But yeah if you want to be like some angry dragon living on your horde of data go ahead and don’t put it on the internet. It’s a messed up way of going through life but if you really really don’t want your furry porn copied this is how you can go about it.

            • Non-consenual porn: I agree its at best in very poor taste and at worst harassment. Go ahead and throw the book at people who do it.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          What’s the ignorance? I think worrying about how we are going to curb these pretty consequential problems this technology in the hands of these particular companies brings is….pretty valid.

          Also, did you say burning up the planet even faster, stealing and profiting off of people’s livelihood, and…fucking making nonconsensual porn of underage girls are “zero” problems? The fuck?

          Not to mention…the worsening of class inequality? Do you just no see these as problems? Or…what exactly is the argument here.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            What’s the ignorance?

            The person was calling for a ban on advancing this technology

            Also, did you say burning up the planet even faster, stealing and profiting off of people’s livelihood, and…fucking making nonconsensual porn of underage girls are “zero” problems? The fuck?

            Let’s conduct an intelligence test, one I am sure a LLM could pass. What did I actually say? Let me know if you need help.

            • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              I always know when someone doesn’t have a good argument when they give me a dozen bad ones. 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 … Still equals 0. No matter how many times you do it.

              This. This is what you actually said. Directly after quoting exactly what I said. There’s…no other way to read that. You’re calling them non-problems that pale in comparison to the unabated advancement of capitalist expansion.

              These tools, in the right hands, could be very useful. They could free us from work in the future.

              But they’re not in the right hands. They’re in the hands of capitalists.

              Whether those are Russian capitalists, US-based capitalists, Chinese capitalists, the aim is the same. Having these people own this tech isn’t good for humanity. As evidenced by the problems I listed; not only is it underage, nonconsensual porn made of real-ass people that you wrote off by saying some shit like, “it’s at best in poor taste and at worst harassment”…these are people’s fucking lives you’re talking about. So, you’re clearly a man, probably a white man. Because no one else would be so flippant about something that can so fucking devastate the lives of those affected.

              But not only is that a problem we aren’t even trying to solve in the name of being “pro-business,” the biggest problem that somehow even manages to rank above kids killing themselves after their still-forming brains are fucking shattered by devastation, is what this does to the ongoing class war. Someone else ITT likened it to the invention of the nuke. And that’s true. But they said, in the geopolitical race it’s akin to the invention of the nuke, whereas I see it as nuke in the class war. And the ownership class is getting closer to holding it in their hands. But since it’s good for the economy and the politicians are on the side of the ownership class anyway, this problem isn’t even broached in this discussion. But it badly needs to be.

              In a time of near unprecedented inequality, we are watching them hit the accelerator. Which is an apt comparison, because this tech is also hastening our head-on collision with climate apocalypse. While developing nations are being told to curb emissions, we in the superpower states are increasing our co2 output with this stupid tech. And you said some shit about nuclear and renewables and fuckin carbon taxes? Well, sure, those are hypothetical bandaids on this festering wound, but they’re just that. The acceleration of LLM/“AI” energy consumption while we break heat and natural disaster record after heat and natural disaster record—as that fucking climate apocalypse cliff edge approaches faster and faster is just…utter lunacy. And this alone should give us reason enough to change course. But that’s not the only reason.

              So, yeah, I vehemently disagree with your characterization of these problems as “0+0+0” when it comes to the argument against AI.

                • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  “You’re gonna make an argument against my stupid position?! But I don’t wanna read four paragraphs!”

                  The mark of a truly confident, well-intentioned debater. Won’t take three minutes. To read…four paragraphs. mwah love it

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    From the article:

    SB 1047 is a California state bill that would make large AI model providers – such as Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral – liable for the potentially catastrophic dangers of their AI systems.

  • PenisWenisGenius@lemmynsfw.com
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    4 months ago

    I already downloaded all the open source self hosted stuff and ain’t gonna delete it. Get wrecked California state legislature.

  • Zarxrax@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This bill seems somewhat misguided. How in the hell is something like a large language model going to cause a mass casualty incident? What I am more worried about is things that could more realistically pose a danger. What if robotic dogs patrolling the border have machine guns mounted on their backs, then a child does something unexpected and the robot wipes out an entire family? What if a self driving car suddenly takes off at full speed through a parade? They are trying to slot AI into everything now, and it will inevitably end up in some places that are going to cause loss of life. But chatbots? Give me a break.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      You gonna understand the state is run by paranoid sociopaths. They’ll dream up any delusional scenario, then use it as an excuse for more surveillance, prisons, wars, control, etc.

      For example, imagine somebody hacks a major social platform and sends a fake message from AI/deepfake Trump to thousand of chuds inciting some kind of fascist terrorism. It might sound unrealistic but what if?!?!?! I could imagine something similar happening with current tech. (I think it’s part of why they’re trying to ban TikTok.)

      In general I feel like “AI” is almost entirely lies, hype, grifting, etc. But I could imagine some scenarios that the state might want to disincentivize.

  • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Everyone: “AI is using too much energy!”

    Legislators: “I shall make companies liable for terminators.”

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    I don’t see how this is enforceable.

    Large AI providers will also have high caliber legal teams to fight any incident and demonstrate it it wasn’t the AI’s fault, but the stupid people who gave it control.

    Smaller projects won’t have the same warchests, and eventually they’ll become the target.

    In the meantime, yeah, Zuckerberg and all the other flank-speed-ahead investors will not be slowed in making the AI that will smooth talk our billionaires into a failed trip to mars.

    • Womble@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Yes that’s the point, this legislation is mostly aimed and creating a legal moat for the large tech companies.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    It’s also not clear if it’s even possible to fully prevent AI systems from misbehaving. The truth is, we don’t know a lot about how LLMs work, and today’s leading AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are jailbroken all the time. That’s why some researchers are saying regulators should focus on the bad actors, not the model providers.

    It seems a complicated debate. Hard to find out where you want to stand. I want to show a method to find answers by creating 3 variants of an analogy.

    For how many of these cases do you think somebody should be doing something?

    Case 1:
    A huge warehouse full of firearms. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of weapons. The owners say they don’t know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new weapons every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the weapons. The criminals seem to know how to use them good…

    Case 2:
    A huge warehouse full of hammers. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of hammers. The owners say they don’t know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new hammers every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the hammers. The criminals seem to know how to use them good…

    Case 3:
    A huge warehouse full of tulips. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of flowers. The owners say they don’t know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new flowers every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the tulips. The criminals seem to know how to use them good…

    • piotrm@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Are warehouse owners analogous to AI companies here? I don’t think AI companies care about their models being misused unless it has economic impact whereas warehouse owners certainly care about their wares being stolen regardless of how those wares are then used or how dangerous they are.

      • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I don’t think AI companies care about their models being misused

        Yes, that is one of the current questions, if you have read the article: Should they care?

        It is a serious question, because if the models are misused, that could be a threat to all mankind - much worse than a warehouse full of weapons. And if they are required to care, then they might have to rebuild their models fundamentally, and they don’t know how.

      • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        What kind of straw-man fallacy is that?

        Please be rational.

        Nuclear power keeps lots of people lights on. Same a AI technology is already making lots of people live better. For instance, in my country the IRS equivalent is already using it to successfully detect fiscal fraud.

          • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 months ago

            I do not know how regulations come into play. But I’m OK with regulating technology according to its potential (real, not imagined) risk.

            What I’m not OK with is with primitivism.