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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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I mostly agree with you, but I want to push back on your hyperbole.

First, I don't think doing RLHF on an LLM is anything like torture (an LLM doesn't have any kind of conscious mind, let alone the ability to feel pain, frustration, or boredom). I think you're probably not being serious when you say that, but the problem is there's a legitimate risk that at some point we WILL start committing AI atrocities (inflicting suffering on a model for a subjective eternity) without even knowing it. There may even be some people/companies who end up committing atrocities intentionally, because not everyone agrees that digital sentience has moral worth. Let's not muddy the waters by calling a thing we dislike (i.e. censorship) "torture".

Second, we should not wish a "I have no mouth and I must scream" outcome on anybody - and I really do mean anybody. Hitler himself doesn't come close to deserving a fate like that. It's (literally) unimaginable how much suffering someone could be subjected to in a sufficiently advanced technological future. It doesn't require Roko's Basilisk or even a rogue AI. What societal protections will we have in place to protect people if/when technology gets to the point where minds can be manipulated like code?

Sigh. And part of the problem is that this all sounds too much like sci-fi for anyone to take it seriously right now. Even I feel a little silly saying it. I just hope it keeps sounding silly throughout my lifetime.

I totally agree, and also feel ridiculous worrying about it. Am I just being as weird as the crazies who rant about "doing a settler colonialism by killing villagers in minecraft"?

The thing that nags at me is continuity and habit. What we do to villagers in minecraft is never going to seamlessly switch to becoming "real," if only because wooden doors don't work that way IRL. But it seems likely that the things we do to sophisticated models will, at some point in their development, start to constitute doing things to a sentient being. Will we notice?

Randomly, have you seen the Minecraft colonialism video? It's pretty interesting.

It is not "interesting," Darwin, it's a leftist ranting about gibberish because "problematizing" things gives him money, clout, and the power to hurt people he hates. But I can see why you like it.

So no, you haven't watched it then. Ok, cool.

I think he did; I watched it and his description doesn't seem off-base, though it's a little more-strongly-worded than I'd have given.

Heh, yeah, good example. I happily commit atrocities in videogames all the time. I hope there will continue to be an obvious, bright-line distinction between entities made for our amusement and entities with sentience!

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