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While Scott is a blogger that writes thoughtful and occasionally entertaining blog posts, I certainly couldn't care less about where he stands in relationship to donkeys, NASCAR or juvenile justice, unless he chooses do discuss one of these topics on the blog. HOWEVER, if he comes forward as a part of a movement that claims them - or people selected by them, or people selected by the process influenced by them - need to receive extraordinary powers which will possibly control the destiny of humanity for millennia forward - and while I don't know if it's true or not, they certainly claim it is true - I think I am entitled to apply strict scrutiny here. Weird deviant blogger is not a threat to me, and I am fine with having dozens of them around without feeling the least bit unsafe. Weird deviant cult vying for absolute control over one of the most important technologies in the history of humanity - hey, that's maybe not what I am fine with. And if they proclaim they can align the AI, maybe it's time for me to ask - align AI with what exactly, and do I really want the AI to be aligned with that?
Is anyone arguing for "give Eliezer and Scott full exclusive access to prompting the first ASI instead of Sam or Dario"?
Last time I was checking, they were mostly pushing for pausing the training of bigger models. Their take is not "we have solved alignment, here is the perfect list of preferences to give AI", but "alignment seems really hard, we should not build ASI until we have solved it".
Perhaps Eliezer believes in his heart of hearts that the best outcome is a society which uses the tools of totalitarianism to crack down on any AI development, but he is not in the position to do that and will never be.
If we manage to coordinate and build aligned ASI, then we will not simply put Eliezer's value system into it, because quite frankly Eliezer is not a critical stakeholder with whom one needs to coordinate. Likely the USG would get 30%, Anthropic and OpenAI would get 10% each, the Chinese would get another 30%, the rest of the world would get another 10% and LW would end up with less sway than the Catholic Church.
It's not personally Scott and Eliezer. It's the Oversight Committee (there's always a committee). But who do you think will influence forming the committee and who do you think the members of the committee would look for guidance when faced with tough decisions? Wouldn't it be the folks that convinced the government that the committee is needed in the first place? Or at least folks aligned with them?
He personally may be not. But some more savvy, slick and energetic politician taking cues from him might be. Marx or Gramsci did not personally take power.
If Eliezer does not matter, then it doesn't matter who says what about him. I am fine with this outcome, where whatever he says and does is immaterial and he has no influence on the outcome of things. I am afraid however it's not entirely the case, as a lot of people who are very knowledgeable in the industry and are at least adjacent to its control levers are significantly influenced by him (either personally or by the ideology he embodies). Maybe I am worrying for nothing, I'd be happy with that outcome too.
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"We should not build AI to..." involves putting pressure on companies and legislators, and can easily lead to a situation where users don't get to control their own computers. "Ai should refuse to do X" is ultimately an attempt to DRM AI in the same way that media and video games are already DRMed.
If the experience with gun control or drug control teaches us something, it's how hard is to prevent people from doing something they want to do. And how much control does it require to have even a limited degree of success in it. Imagine a world where only ISIS and the Sinaloa cartel has the true AI... And the CIA/NSA of course but we don't talk about it. OTOH the regular citizens ae required to have government monitoring software on any device smarter than a thermostat.
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