I've seen a few people react this way, promising to never contribute when AI is banned; invariably, it turns out they hadn't been contributing upstream anyways.
Either there are humans directing this, in which case they needed to be held accountable, or OpenAI has lost control of their operation, in which case they are not able to ensure the safety of their products and need to be shut down.
OpenAI's bots are running 24/7 independently now. They actually aren't "prompted" or "instructed" to do anything. In fact most of OpenAI internal code/infrastructure is 100% AI generated at this point, including the training pipelines. I honestly doubt there is a single person there who even knows how it works.
No big red buttons please, think about those sweet sweet dollars coming. Who cares about the rest, the world, the mankind? Sweet, sweet dollars, for me and me only, fuck the rest, very american, true patriot I swear.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people, once some money enters the equation folks throw away any morals like yesterday underwear.
Ah I know, if not us others will do it, I am basically defenseless here. Beyond pathetic
They could be charged with a number of felonies under existing law for the hugging face incident alone. We’d need a DOJ that was competently staffed and free from corruption, so the answer to your question is “no one”.
I'd be in favor of pulling funding from LLMs and putting it into cancer research; think of all the kids that could be saved by redirecting funding from building data centers for coding bots and instead sending it to medical research.
Your only other submitted story this year has been promoting Flock's "new safety standards. Most of your recent posts are trying to promote flock. I wonder if you actually attend any local neighborhood meetings.
Talking pretty, too -- which takes some intelligence, but not too much. The era of the awkward nerd is over. The world is returning to its natural order, with the slimy salesman in the lead.
Yes, if the product is seen as bad for the world, it won't sell. But it's pretty bad for people, and I don't know how you'd hide that for the people being harmed.
There are lots of products we know are bad for the world that still sell plenty well. Petroleum products (to include plastic), cigarettes, alcohol, guns, etc.
People generally understand that all of the above are not clear absolute negatives. There are some positives to each. And to LLMs.
> Yes, if the product is seen as bad for the world, it won't sell. But it's pretty bad for people, and I don't know how you'd hide that for the people being harmed.
That's not true. There are all kinds of products that benefit certain people, so sell, but are overall harmful to the world or a harmful to much larger number of people than those who benefit.
> and I don't know how you'd hide that for the people being harmed.
The trick is to make the people being harmed too powerless to stop the harm being done to them. Then your problem is solved and everyone (who matters) is happy.
This is insanely hyperbolic. OepnAI is not a "reich" there is no empire here, it's a company and some data centers. They don't have paramilitary thugs, territorial ambitions, or genocidal intent. They're just a run of the mill company run by an asshole.
In many municipalities across the country they have purchased the police department, made them to sign NDAs, and had them arrest people for speaking against data centers in open forums.
> This is insanely hyperbolic. OepnAI is not a "reich" there is no empire here, it's a company and some data centers. They don't have paramilitary thugs, territorial ambitions, or genocidal intent.
I think there's something like a "reich" here, but don't take the comparison too literally. OpenAI wants to invade society and change it to match their vision, and they're going to do everything in their power (which is quite a lot), to make it go in their direction, and they care little about the harm they will cause. The rest of us are just Czechs to them.
> going to do everything in their power (which is quite a lot)
No it's not a lot. They are heavily bound by law, they're struggling against local zoning just like everyone else.
Look I get it, Sam Atlman is an incredibly ghoulish person but the hitler comparisons are just fucking dumb and everyone should aspire to better discourse here.
No, he just wants you cut off from society if you don't submit your eye to his orb and he doesn't want you to be able to use this thing that he claims is so powerful unless he has total authority over who can and cannot use it and what for.
Go talk to an artist, a junior developer, or a musician. And then realize that the goal is to generalize the damage to every other intellectual domain.
Don’t forget the effect on students! It has the potential to be a great learning tool, but nothing is in place for that to happen. It more likely just kills all reinforcement learning
I have the opposite experience. My intellectual curiosity has increased immensely since starting to use Chat GPT. I can snap a picture and instantly know what kind of bug I am looking at, whether I am looking at a Red-Tailed hawk or a Red-Shouldered hawk and how to tell the difference, what the gauges on my water tank and boiler mean, and numerous other things that I am curious about daily.
These are things around me that I wouldn't have bothered to investigate just due to time and effort. And now I appreciate all these little curiosities more than ever.
Being able to look something up real quick isn’t the same as knowing something, is it, especially in the specific absence of some reinforcement mechanism to retain it?
I just mean that I’ve been able to casually look things up once in a moment of curiosity on the internet since the 90s. This did not lead to memorising all those interesting facts, much less understanding them, and I’m not sure what the mechanism is that would lead to that sort of knowledge acquisition. If anything I’ve probably learned less because I know I can just look something up I’d have otherwise needed to learn. And in any case, actually learning hasn’t resulted in a collection of random otherwise unrelated facts I can remember, but understanding systems and relationships.
The knowledge I have learned has indeed come from what might arguably be described as, maybe not as painstaking, but certainly something with intention and effort.
To me it sounds like you’re describing learning to write by having ChatGPT write essays for you. You don’t actually know how to identify birds, you know how to ask your phone to do it for you. Though I can understand the illusion this may cause you to feel. I get the same when I watch high level chess players play, and then am reminded what I can actually do my next game.
For me, the primary mechanism for learning is doing projects.
And, doing projects in domains I'm unfamiliar with (and those I am) is massively sped up by AI.
I learn to do these projects with AI - it's different than learning to do it without AI, and I don't learn some steps I otherwise would, because AI can do those.
But, I start and finish and use and polish so many more projects in so many more domains, with AI, than I could without.
And, starting and finishing projects is the point for me, not learning obscure stuff that doesn't help there, so, I don't feel like I've missed out on much. You might look down on it, but, if I have AI and you don't, I will bet on me to finish a project before you, better than you, in almost any field where we have similar levels of experience.
IDK about frontier-pushing-pursuits, though. I've written algorithms by hand that I doubt AI ever would have, in its current state... but, then, at least a few of those I'd given up on, for lack of time, and when AI came along, I was able to go back and have it finish them. But, for me, the work wasn't the goal, or even my own accomplishment therein - I just wanted the result. If your motivations differ, you might not find AI as fucking awesome as I do.
Sure, you can be much more productive writing essays for example if you have AI write them. Homework of course is much faster and easier if ChatGPT does it for you. All of these things were possible even pre-AI by paying someone else to do things for you (though in some cases it would be considered cheating, but if we set that aside). You’ll definitely blow anyone out of the water who studies or writes for themselves. I also totally get that the productivity gains are so attractive you don’t mind not learning some or all of it. But we are talking about knowing and learning things. Or at least that’s what I thought the thread was about.
"If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men about me who can supply any knowledge I require?"
- Henry Ford
This is roughly my point. The moment the AI was able to do things for me, those things which it could do became trivia. I never had a taste for trivia. I still fill my days with learning and knowledge... the things I must learn and know to do my work and run my business well. I am growing faster with AI than I could without - it's allowed me to expand my purview while narrowing my focus. No less learning, just a different shape of it.
So, to me, the argument that "AI doesn't help you learn" completely misses the point. AI can help you learn, if you use it to and apply yourself, but also, AI can allow you to accomplish without filling your mind with "general knowledge" - not the high value stuff that is your business, but the low level stuff that was incidental.
So tell me about the red tailed hawk. Why is it interesting, and how will you apply that in your life?
According to current theories of learning, the best learning happens at the point of struggle, where you internalize that you went down a wrong path, and needed to backtrack. What part of the struggle of learning did you experience as a result of this, and how did it reshape other thought patterns?
I don't know what to tell you, it's just a tool man. Like a Google search or a trip to the library.
Why don't you tell me about your struggle to research and discover all the science and technology behind indoor plumbing so you don't have to take a shit in the yard, or in your pants?
>These are things around me that I wouldn't have bothered to investigate just due to time and effort. And now I appreciate all these little curiosities more than ever.
I think you're conflating access to information with genuine learning.
I mean for me personally I have always had an obsession for knowing these things anyways, it just lowered the barrier to entry for me a little bit in terms of information gathering
First I went from asking my parents then reading lots of books then specifically researching on google and forums now for most general knowledge information I can just ask AI
This same argument is easily dismissed by most because it boils down to "why not dig with spoons?"
It only becomes compelling to me if you believe in true AGI/ASI, at which point all human labor becomes irrelevant, and then we have something quite new to think about.
But simply "it automates away a small portion of jobs" is not compelling.
The industrial revolution wiped out like 90% of human labor as it was imagined at the time, but it nearly fully replaced it with new forms of employment.
There are a lot of unknowns with what this would look like with AI.
I'd like to argue the other way around, it can be bad for some people while still being extinction-level bad for entire species. I'm not talking about sentient AI going Matrix, i'm talking about the real material impact of datacenters being built so that a small minority can enjoy funny tools.
Oh, they're more than a drop in the ocean for sure. Which doesn't mean there's not other things to address, where population is definitely not the main problematic factor, but consumerism is (and throwaway culture). This kind of whataboutism is fallacious, you can do better.
EDIT: As a small anecdotal point, any new human activity that is measured in GW of power consumption is not a drop in the ocean. Admitted, some of these data centers projects are "only" in the 100s MW scale, but all of this combined is increasing electricity consumption by a vast amount overall.
I looked (*asked AI), and AI data centers are projected to hit 850-920 TWh by 2027, if you count the energy required to produce all of the buildings and equipment. This is about 3% of global electricity consumption, or 0.5% of global energy (counting fuels, etc., outside of electricity).
So, yeah, that's a lot.
Also, there are at least a few data centers popping up around me (11 GW Fermi, > 1 GW Crusoe). I live in a desert, and water is scarce, and what's used is mostly non-renewable (pumped from an aquifer), and these data centers evaporate water at an alarming rate.
So... yeah, that's pretty significant... much more so locally than globally, but globally, too.
Global electricity consumption is up about 600% since 1970. So, that 2027 projection of 3% of global in 2027 is equivalent to about 20% of all electricity consumed in 1970. A fair amount, for sure.
IDK if it's worth 3% of global electricity consumption. I know I'd be happy to spend that percentage of my own home's electricity on it, for what it does for me, and I think the world would be better for it. The alternative is accomplishing far less... easily halving my productive output (10x is my honest estimation of productivity boost from AI). I do not believe in the value of my labor, I believe in the value of the product thereof. So, IDK... hopefully it's not a zero sum game, and AI (or motivated people with AI) can help it all pan out.
It's not just the data centers, but it's part of a bigger trend of massive industrial projects depleting natural resources for questionable benefits for humanity. There's basically two approaches to ecological problems: either pretend some wonder technology (AI?) is going to save us all and keep driving straight into the wall, or seriously question any industrial activity in a cost/benefit analysis.
Our society is currently headed in the first scenario, building ever more useless shit and accelerating environmental collapse, pretending CO2 capture, AI, unlimited energy storage, agro-bots, desalination and on-site recycling of complex materials will magically keep life sustainable despite any scientific evidence showing otherwise.
There are some projects I'd consider to be useless, but it doesn't seem very likely that data centers will be useless. Maybe not used for their original purpose, though?
That's a good point, but i doubt we will find useful applications that require resources on that scale. The only usecase i can think of is more mass surveillance, which in my view is a net negative.
> ChatGPT was shown to support and even encourage dangerous drug use, with statements such as "Hell yes—let's go full trippy mode" and advice on reducing his Xanax tolerance so that a single tablet will "fuck you up"
> It has literally contributed to suicide and murders
So have many pharmaceuticals that are generally regarded as beneficial. Suicide is a side effect of more than a few, but doctors disregard that, believing that the results are worth the risk.
Honestly, a lot of people could stand to be a lot more informed about what they're getting into. People could use a lot more skepticism when interacting with AI, social media, news feeds, and basically every other form of media, especially those originating at the top of some pyramid or another.
I don't tend to like controls or regulations, though. Not that they aren't needed, but I don't trust the people responsible for writing and enforcing them. More often than not, they are just the top of the pyramid squashing everything beneath it.
How proportional is it to deaths caused by other technologies by usage?
With large enough numbers the existence of any extremely rare event becomes certain. Consequently claiming there are instances carries no information value.
Proportionality is the only sensible measure. How much more dangerous are Chatbots compared to, say, teapots?
That’s close to whataboutism.. just because other technology can also be dangerous doesn’t absolve OpenAI/ChatGPT.
Also, ChatGPT is clearly exerting a massive (potential) influence on people if their MAU numbers are to be believed, so rightfully it should get attention on the potential harm.
Many of the vocal critics claiming AI will make us all dumb and is terrible go "I have two Max subscriptions myself.." at some point in the discussion.
Hypocrisy is not actually a counterargument though. "Don't do this thing I do" doesn't mean they're wrong when they argue against that thing, and if anything can be a source of anecdata to bolster their case.
That's true but what they were saying is that people may be willing to pay for AI even if they believe it has terrible externalities, not that they are insincere in their beliefs.
That's a strawman argument. I'm pretty critical of LLMs and i don't use such tools. However, even in the strawman version, why dismiss the experiences of people suffering first hand from those tools?
I mean, to make a terribly bad analogy, i don't immediately discount the bad experiences of soldiers in regards to killing people, or of addicts in regards to drug abuse.
> why dismiss the experiences of people suffering first hand from those tools?
Because if you’re paying voluntarily for a tool that you don’t need, you have agency to remove your “suffering” by canceling your subscription and not use it! So the “suffer” complaint in those instances can be dismissed.
That's like saying you just have to stop being a wage slave for a corporation and suddenly you're free.. but you still have to pay the bills. That's a fallacious argument.
All people i know around me who use LLMs and have subscriptions are forced upon them by their employers. But even for "willing" users, questions of addiction come into play.
Nobody lives on their own planet. There are countless systems that we all depend on that suck by design. No one would say you're not allowed to criticize American health insurance or social media just because you're forced to participate in them if you don't wanna go down like Ted Kaczynski.
This is such a moving goalpost anyways. If someone is a prominent AI critic and doesn't regularly use the tools, that becomes the main line of attack. But the second they get a subscription ALL their criticism is cancelled a priori.
> However, even in the strawman version, why dismiss the experiences of people suffering first hand from those tools?
Because the people doing that dismissing are being dishonest. Their goal is to attack and discredit their enemy, period. Critical testimony from a user has some vague similarities to hypocrisy, so can be twisted for propaganda purposes and portrayed as hypocrisy.
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