I think the AI companies want a slowdown because they can't keep increasing the rate of improvements - or the amount of hardware it requires can't be built fast enough.
Of course, while they may be competing against each other, they're also competing with international competitors. China especially has or may have the capacity to scale up compute a lot faster once they get enough chip manufacturing power. They're likely preparing for it, and once they're ready they will take over real fast, like they did with solar and EVs.
I think you're less free than you think you are. Do you have the freedom to lose your job? Because millions don't due to e.g. losing access to health care (to name a popular / populist talking point). Do you have the freedom to vote for a representative that aligns with your points, or are you forced to vote for the lesser evil or abstain?
I don't believe all political parties have a right to exist, because some parties are anti-democratic, yet abuse democratic systems to gain power. The current president of the US and the organization that planned the current administration's steps are anti-democratic and want to, for example run for a third term.
And "censorship" in this context is fine. Many things are censored, as they should be, because true free speech is bad. I can't say everything on this platform because I will be banned.
Thing is though, I think that the argument of "we don't understand how it works or what it does" doesn't hold up - everything an LLM does is observable. And if it's scary, we turn it off. If it starts to act like a bacterium / virus (e.g. it becomes self-replicating), we've dealt with that kind of software before.
But more importantly, we need to keep the organizations building and running these things accountable. If a company like Anthropic or OpenAI builds software that "escapes containment", they should be held accountable for cybercrime, just like people who write viruses (there's probably a few that did that on here, and of those a percentage that got in trouble with the law over it).
Mark my words, the organizations that develop AIs will keep using phrases like "we don't know what it's doing" or "it's too dangerous" to try and avoid responsibility and accountability for their software. Just like Google did, hiding behind "the algorithm" for lawsuits about preferring their own services over that of the competition.
Completely agree. It's a choice not to observe and understand what's going on, at least a very risky one if not actively evil.
There's a tradeoff though... isn't it already super hard to understand what they're doing with these math proofs for example? Clearly there's a tradeoff between deeply understanding the behavior vs. quickly solving the concrete problem, hence the big controversy in math now. From one perspective, letting stuff run ~autonomously in a mad dash to solve your problem is a really bad idea, threatens to destroy the whole field etc. From another perspective, solving lots of problems fast is extremely enticing and worth some risks.
Update for one other thought:
> And if it's scary, we turn it off.
Agreed, that's why I think the bad scenarios are some form of "it does some weird stuff ostensibly while helping us solve some problem" followed by "oops, we miscalculated that threat level."
> What we're going to do when that tech will cease to cool us?
Move. This is already happening, with water shortages forcing people to move. Climate change will (likely) cause famines and many deaths, but the bigger effect will be mass migration.
But warnings (e.g. not apocalyptic but damaging or having any effects) have come true, by and large; people warned about the effects of pollution / co2 emissions / global warming over 150 years ago [0], to name a popular example.
I don't think there are many truly human created apocalyptic events out there besides global thermonuclear war, and I don't think the worst-case AI superintelligent killer robot scenario would be apocalyptic. Unless it somehow triggers global thermonuclear war, but then it becomes a chicken-or-egg question (and it'll probably be humans pushing the proverbial button, as nukes are '60s tech and (hopefully) airgapped etc).
The solution is simple, hold them responsible. It's software, and people running and developing software are responsible for what it does.
If I write a virus I'll get the various cybercrime units on me. The LLM companies don't get a pass if their software does something malicious. They shouldn't get to hide behind "we don't know what it's doing!" (have you tried looking and monitoring?) or "it's too powerful!" (have you tried turning it off when you realised it was doing something bad?)
I wish. The government, regardless of party, wants AI for mass surveillance and perpetual war. It is paid off and lobbied and effectively another arm of the billionaires. Holding big companies responsible for their actions won't happen as long as big companies control the political apparatus. Like, when have we ever seen big companies receive more than a slap on the wrist? They are basically free to do anything, hack, murder, crash the economy, perpetuate genocide.
That's why something is a crime if you or I were to do it but not a crime when these companies do so.
But never fear, they will constantly tell us how what they're doing is for the sake of democracy or safety or ethics or whatever the doublethink of the day is.
That’s the more likely hypothesis, but I also wonder if different land management practices could be influencing a map like this. Agriculture in Poland is much more fragmented than in Germany - smaller fields of different crops, often separated by meadows and forests, creating lots of niches for biodiversity. In Western Europe you’re more likely to see giant, mechanised monoculture fields as far as the eye can see, leaving less space for agrarian-landscape wildlife.
Of course, while they may be competing against each other, they're also competing with international competitors. China especially has or may have the capacity to scale up compute a lot faster once they get enough chip manufacturing power. They're likely preparing for it, and once they're ready they will take over real fast, like they did with solar and EVs.
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