Thought this might be a fun debate!
---
You've probably noticed that various AI luminaries have been calling for everything from regulation of their industry up to a complete pause for new product releases.
It's easy to see these calls as an attempt to freeze the marketplace while they're in a dominate position. But I'd say there's more than that going on...
---
Mutually Assured Discussion:
As the existing court cases over copyright demonstrate, there's a whole new legal world to be explored. And given the current tools contain capabilities that even their creators don't know about (cutely described as 'capability overhang'), it seems reasonable to assume that this legal world is going to get fairly ample fairly quickly.
As much as businesses love being the new disruptor, they like the predictability of a settled battlefield too. And my suspicion is: These guys know they're sitting on the most disruptive set of innovations in a helluva long time. Ones that may well run out of their control in various ways, and smash a few more norms than they're comfortable with. And they'd quite like to be prepared...
---
Can We Do That Dave?:
To delve into why they might feel that way, we'd have to get more technical.
But thankfully there's a simple overview of the key negatives at play (which are gliding along somewhat unseen, thanks to the many positive advancements that these technologies are also bringing).
It's great, and you should watch it
Source: https://youtu.be/xoVJKj8lcNQ
Unfortunately it's also an hour long, and contains some TED-talk tech-bro framing that may put some people off before they get to the meat. So I'll do my best to summarise the key contentions:
---
A Positive Spin, And Then Back Again:
What I found mind-blowing about the video, at core, was that I've watched a lot of these technologies inch along over the last decade. And seen them start to explode in the last few years. And taken individually, I've always been dazzled by their positive potentials first, and left their negatives very much in the background.
But I think stripping away the dazzle, and just noting how the negatives synthesise alone, is instructive in this case. They are equally potent. And ignoring them won't make them go away.
---
Too Long, Got a Bot to Summarise:
The genie is out of the bottle. We should enjoy the magic it can perform, and have a play. But personally I'm all for a 'pause' in further public deployments. For a detente in the arms race. For some social breathing space to figure this stuff out. Because as societies and individuals we've barely caught up with what last year brought. We are woefully underprepared for the next.
---
You've probably noticed that various AI luminaries have been calling for everything from regulation of their industry up to a complete pause for new product releases.
It's easy to see these calls as an attempt to freeze the marketplace while they're in a dominate position. But I'd say there's more than that going on...
---
Mutually Assured Discussion:
As the existing court cases over copyright demonstrate, there's a whole new legal world to be explored. And given the current tools contain capabilities that even their creators don't know about (cutely described as 'capability overhang'), it seems reasonable to assume that this legal world is going to get fairly ample fairly quickly.
As much as businesses love being the new disruptor, they like the predictability of a settled battlefield too. And my suspicion is: These guys know they're sitting on the most disruptive set of innovations in a helluva long time. Ones that may well run out of their control in various ways, and smash a few more norms than they're comfortable with. And they'd quite like to be prepared...
---
Can We Do That Dave?:
To delve into why they might feel that way, we'd have to get more technical.
But thankfully there's a simple overview of the key negatives at play (which are gliding along somewhat unseen, thanks to the many positive advancements that these technologies are also bringing).
It's great, and you should watch it
Unfortunately it's also an hour long, and contains some TED-talk tech-bro framing that may put some people off before they get to the meat. So I'll do my best to summarise the key contentions:
- Current LLM techs are potent and bring large challenges for social norms and institutions.
- Criminality [voice synthesis scams, layman hacking, spoofed IDs etc], societal trust [political deep fakes, convincing misinformation at scale], etc etc.
- Current techs contain 'emergent' abilities which we could spend years unearthing.
- IE the makers didn't know GPT-4 was capable of research grade chemistry. Nor how/why GPT-4 has seemingly gained 'Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence' since GPT-3 etc.
- The growth of many current capabilities are 'exponential', and can boost other capabilities in turn.
- This synthesis, speed of growth, and potential for novelty means we should expect more extremely disruptive techs and applications to arrive with increasing rapidity.
- Putting these technologies at the heart of an arms race for public adoption & market share will only drive the worst end of the above.
- A pause on new public builds, and a cap on compute for R&D, would give the world time to catch up on what we've already got.
---
A Positive Spin, And Then Back Again:
- There are some very cool technologies being juiced by LLMs as well. It's crazy to see some known ones zoom along suddenly, and crazy to think what will be achievable next. (Crazy in a good way, as much as possibly crazy in a sharply disruptive way. Recreating dreams is insane. Decoding someone's thoughts without their permission, equally so...).
- Some of the trends may cap out. (Just because GPT models have demonstrated the 'Theory of Mind' of a 9 year old in the space a few years doesn't mean they'll keep rocketing along that road). But it's still worth being prepared for a world where they stay on trend.
- None of the above is suggesting 'AI sentience' is imminent, with all the Sci-Fi movie plots that would imply. (But that is still on the long list for later on ).
What I found mind-blowing about the video, at core, was that I've watched a lot of these technologies inch along over the last decade. And seen them start to explode in the last few years. And taken individually, I've always been dazzled by their positive potentials first, and left their negatives very much in the background.
But I think stripping away the dazzle, and just noting how the negatives synthesise alone, is instructive in this case. They are equally potent. And ignoring them won't make them go away.
---
Too Long, Got a Bot to Summarise:
The genie is out of the bottle. We should enjoy the magic it can perform, and have a play. But personally I'm all for a 'pause' in further public deployments. For a detente in the arms race. For some social breathing space to figure this stuff out. Because as societies and individuals we've barely caught up with what last year brought. We are woefully underprepared for the next.
