Any pause will have to be a global treaty; the unfortunate reality is that we’re in an arms race now, and despite Sanders’ threats otherwise, I don’t think there is going to be much will to pause in the US while China keeps developing.
And to be clear, I think it would be every wise to pause development and, afterwards, keep the pace slow. We know how to make “AI” more capable, but we don’t know how to make it stay aligned with human goals. The technology is useful and isn’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we have to develop it as quickly as possible without regard to the real dangers it brings with it.
We’re not in an arms race. That’s part of the bullshit Anthropic and like want you to believe. LLMs are not nukes. LLMs are a fad with most benefits having been to coders, presuming they were already good coders.
25 years from now we’re either going to still be in this “arms race,” or we’ll have better clarity on how the billionaire class misled us all.
Stopping development will do us more good than the harm of perusing a perpetual wealth transfer in the name of a fake arms race.
Even if it were an arms race. Slowing down means you eventually speed back up in a better direction. Why would you want to be so gun ho about what’s clearly an argument for progressing with arrogance toward the technology, because someone else might discover something first? What?
The chatbot labs don’t have 25 years. They might have 2.
What expertise are you drawing from to come to this conclusion?
Here’s a decent resource if you care to read about, rather than the podcast: https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/research/1-3-ai-arms-race-2-0-from-deregulation-to-industrial-policy
I would summarize it to conclude: The “AI arms race” is not an objective technological fact so much as a politically useful narrative that has helped align government policy with the interests of large AI companies.
My opinion is that we should be a lot more critical of this narrative.
I am definitely going to read that link, from the start at 1.0, but now right now. Thanks, though.
Accepting your summary (and sorry if I ask a question answered in the link) but what would an “objective technological fact” regarding any technology being an arms race look like? As in, it seems obvious that a technology that can perform complex exploits of software vulnerabilities without human assistance could be used as a weapon-- so why wouldn’t that be a national concern to ensure America has the better technology? How is this different than missiles or bombs, from a technological standpoint?
To be fair, an AI system capable of independently discovering and exploiting serious software vulnerabilities would be a legitimate national-security concern. The US would have a strong interest in possessing and defending against that capability.
But a technology is not itself an arms race. An arms race is a pattern of behavior between adversaries involving that technology. That requires observable political, military and economic facts.
I would point these out as red flags:
- Developing identifiable autonomous cyberweapons.
- Each side expands its program substantially because it believes the other is expanding.
- Established military units, budgets, infrastructure and deployment plans around those systems.
I would point these out as not counting:
- AI can be weaponized.
- China is developing AI.
- AI could confer military advantages.
- American companies are spending heavily on general-purpose models.
- The United States wants to lead commercially.
In table format, the comparison between AI and those other technologies would ideally look something like this:
Technology General capability Particular weapon Nuclear physics Energy, medicine, scientific research Nuclear warhead Rocketry Satellites, transport, exploration Ballistic missile Combustion engines Cars, generators, machinery Tank propulsion AI Medicine, logistics, coding, science, communications Autonomous targeting or exploitation system An AI arms race would look very different than what we see right now.
With the AI bubble, the communities being disrupted by the environmental impacts of data centers (including infranoise), the constant fear of “use AI or be replaced by AI,” the risky financials on all of this, … all the people that lost retirement value to the SpaceX IPO, … this stuff is a serious public nuisance.
We don’t need tech CEOs scaring us with talk of an “arms race.” It’s fucked up.
Here’s a really good podcast on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000779843294
They discuss a lot of the same points I would, right there. The incentives of AI leaders, Chinas current position, the lies from AI companies to communities, the way their stories change, the fact that they’re the ones calling it an “arms race.”
I would alternatively ask this: what expertise claims we are in an arms race? AI companies don’t count as expertise on global arms races, in what I think is a reasonable opinion.
Do doctors and pharmaceutical companies count as experts when discussing vaccines?
There are several problems here. If you address them, I’m happy to answer your question faithfully. But as it stands, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
First and foremost, we’re specifically discussing an “arms race,” not just a “race.” I fail to understand what qualifies an AI company to be an expert in national security, weapons, and foreign affairs. To me, an AI company is an expert in what makes them more profit. That just so happens to involve AI here, but not “arms races.”
Second, doctors are probably not necessarily experts on vaccines. They’re likely to be experts on vaccine benefits, recommendation, procurement, administering, storage, … but that’s just administration and some operational knowledge. A vaccine expert (IMO) is a specialist for vaccines. They’re probably not working in a hospital.
A pharmaceutical company might be an expert on vaccines. But what’s the parallel to AI companies? Pharmaceutical companies research and develop actual vaccines. AI companies do not research and develop arms. The only argument I understand for this would be to say that an LLM is a weapon.
I don’t buy that an LLM is a weapon. Real competition exists, and certain military applications could become arms races, but AI as a whole is not one. Building out swaths of data centers to power more AI without a concrete public benefit isn’t something we should put up with.
You don’t benefit from the narrative that this is an arms race, not as an individual or a citizen. The benefactors here are the AI companies.
The technology can certainly be used as a weapon; it can hack systems already, and defend against hacks. This capability will only increase, and logically the better AI affords a strategic benefit. Hence, an arms race.
The rest of your questions aren’t questions or presuppose that AI can’t be used as a weapon.
In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.
Hence, an arms race.
The term “arms race” has a definition and I’m pretty sure this still doesn’t apply. So in my opinion, even at best, this is political propaganda.
An “arms race” is a competition over the quality or quantity of military capabilities between states in the international system.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/62239/chapter-abstract/550799699
The US and China are in an economic race. We aren’t racing to develop a particular military capability. Nobody can even name what that capability would be… “mass hacking?” Is that it? Sounds scary… I don’t buy it. It gives me the impression of fear mongering.
If it were about AI driven military capabilities, we could have probably worked with the compute we had years ago.
I think what should be obvious is the fact that “can be used as a weapon” doesn’t justify it being an “arm.” The fact that they can “hack” now is largely irrelevant. It’s a nice talking point that was parroted around the AI circle jerk recently, but largely unsubstantiated. I think they all caught on to the hype Mythos was getting, so they took the narrative for another spin. But even Mythos was a load of propaganda.
How do you know it wasn’t conveniently allowed to happen, to further fuel the propaganda machine? How do you know they didn’t exaggerate or leave blank important details, particularly because they’re financially incentivized to maintain the hype?
State actors have always hacked one another. Now with a fancy tool to do automated discovery, they might be a little faster. But that speed is also arguable, because there are reports on how AI led development actually shifts the development time burden rather than resolving it.
In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.
Those experts in the field (that aren’t employed by AI) mostly agree with this stance, from what I can tell.
I linked a paper in one of my earlier replies. Here’s another by a different author: https://tnsr.org/2021/06/debunking-the-ai-arms-race-theory/
… and, I just found a table. Here’s 7 more I guess.
Experts Published position Paul Scharre “Debunking the AI Arms Race Theory” Heather Roff “The frame problem: The AI ‘arms race’ isn’t one” Stefka Schmid, Daniel Lambach, Carlo Diehl and Christian Reuter “Arms Race or Innovation Race? Geopolitical AI Development” Alexander Pascal and Tim Hwang “Artificial Intelligence Isn’t an Arms Race” Remco Zwetsloot, Helen Toner and Jeffrey Ding “Beyond the AI Arms Race” Yonathan Arbel and Matthew Tokson “The AI Race Isn’t Real” Colin Kahl “The Myth of the AI Race”
It’s beyond “an arms race.” AI has become a commodity that’s everywhere and it’s being used and developed by zillions of completely different groups all over the world with wildly varying use cases and completely different goals.
At this point, trying to ban it would be like trying to ban dandelions from growing.
The groups doing frontier research with the appropriate funding are few enough that a global pause would be possible, and useful.
I agree that a ban would be impossible, and counterproductive even if it were possible.
Except when you think about if a ban were actually implemented it would absolutely be pro-entrenched companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and open weight models could be banned outright, I’ve already seen well-intentioned but misguided “experts” saying exactly that, BAN open weight models and pause further development, who would that benefit directly?
Arms race
Woah, we’re talking LLMs here, this is not a secret military technology. And China is very open about the developments made there - you can freely study and reverse engineer plenty of Chinese models, and see all the weights out in the open.
This whole race about them is, in my opinion, nothing but trying to pump the bubble even faster, churning the economy in the process and playing on gullible or self-interested politicians. Countries will be just fine assessing risks and then moving on.
It’s a one participant race. They’re throwing fears about Chinese LLM because of the fact that many of their models end up being open-source, and they know if they don’t get people cemented into their models before some open-sourced Chinese alternative manages to meet(or even exceed ) their performance. No company is going to pay them money because they’re just gonna run it themselves for way less than subscription costs.
right now, they acknowledge that the non-US alternatives for the models are gaining traction and are getting pretty dang good, and that scares them, so they’ve moved over to customer lock-in hoping that the effort it would take to move from a subscription model over to one of the alternative models wouldn’t be worth it for a company. A US only pause would almost certainly leave them dead in the water.
Order Nvidia and AMD to stop selling AI GPUs or whatever they’re called.
Which country is doing the ordering?
Stop with the threats and just fucking do it. This shit is why everyone thinks the Dems are useless.
It’s not a threat, it’s a plea.
And that’s why they’re weak.
Well, they do not have any kind of majority at the moment. So no, they cannot do much without any republican spine.
After the midterms, let’s hope, they will have the majority everywhere except the White House. Which, after that, won’t take long.
Then why make threats they can’t back up? It just makes them look worse. Shit like this is not helping them get elected.
Because that’s Bernie in a nutshell. It help rile up the base, you think things are being done so you keep voting the same way, but nothing changes.
Perhaps to show the voters: see we want to change things, but you will have to get us in to make that happen?
It’s the repub’s that are stopping all this?
Demonstrating it that way doesn’t work. If they’re proposing action they know will be blocked it just makes their words look hollow.
Yeah, I have to agree. I always try to find the most positive angle, hoping to the Gods that is was a positive thing…
But no, they are incompetent aren’t they.
I doubt he can. Too many other Senators getting checks from the Chatbot labs.
I mean if you didn’t already know Bernie isn’t a democrat.
He might as well be
What an idiotic statement. Bernie Sanders is always been an independent and has always voted that way. He has voted with the Republicans when things are needed and looks good he has voted with the Democrats when things are needed and looked good. But he also recognizes who the super fucked up ones are currently. And right now that ain’t the democrats.
His voting record shows Bernie votes with Dems 95% of the time, one of the highest consistently Dem voting representatives there are. So yes, he may be an ‘Independent’ but his voting record says that’s absolutely not the case.
Could it possibly be because 95% of the Republican vote put forward is absolute dog shit and goes against everything that he represents? No that possibly couldn’t be it. Not at all.
Other Dems vote for it at a higher rate, so I don’t know. Saying one side is all good or one side is all bad is the entire problem.
Whoever said that the Democrats were good? Just because some of their legislation aligns better with what he’s trying to accomplish doesn’t mean anything. Just like I voted for republicans in the past however almost all of them since the formation of the I love the Big Orange dick organization have gone to the point where I’ll vote almost straight Democrat at this point. Because yes they are better regardless of what your personal thoughts and feelings are they are better.
Oh no, not senate action
How will they be able to handle the onslaught of a strongly worded letter?
Stop the investment, most importantly.
If he can get senate action on AI then why can’t he get senate action on all the other plethora of crap happening to us right now?
He cant, but he wants to. Which is important.
We should never take something away from an action with good intentions, just because others want to stop him.
Thats not how we get the change in the end. Because someday it might succeed.
Why is he even bothering to do his job if he’s struggling to do his job? He should just be shitty and useless like the others! /S
They bought the senate Bernie
What Senate action will he take? Have a hearing when the senators will try to get sound bites in for reelection?
At this point US Senat actions (especially those by Democrats) seem even less effective than European serious concern.
EU actually gets changes done tho.
Sure, but the serious concern is the least efficient tool they have.
Yeah why should he do his job why isn’t he just being useless like the rest! /S
This is playing into their hand. “Oh your tech is so amazing and powerful and must be paused!”
Nah. It’s a bullshit bubble that’s threatening to tear down world order, or what’s left of it.
This isn’t playing into anyone’s hand I don’t understand what the hell you’re saying lol
Ever heard of critihype? These companies are pretending their tech is so amazing it’s dangerous to create hype, and Bernie is perpetuating that marketing ploy by responding this way.
Again, I literally don’t understand what you’re saying. Not because what you’re saying doesn’t make sense but the conclusion you’re drawing and your interpretation is absurd.
You are not only not right, you’re not even wrong.
Yes they work to hype tech for investors. No Bernie is not perpetuating anything by saying this that’s just so silly. AI genuinely will be used and make money and this tech isn’t going to disappear, it does have value not this much value but it’s genuinely cutting edge and will likely be in many industries. Bernie has no political or personal interest in that, he is stating the lawlessness and recklessness of this tech needs to be roped in by the government which is his job.
I literally don’t understand how you got to your conclusion that AI tech is useless and Bernie is supporting it by saying this. It’s just the thinking of someone whose brain has been rotted by the idea that AI=BAD.
AI is just a boring tool to do boring things, things I use it for. I’m not a single minded ideological purist. If Bernie wants to rope in the shitty business practices by hyperscalers, say that. Don’t headline “pause AI development” because that is exactly what critihype is.
edit: by the way, you are putting a lot of words in my mouth. I never said or implied AI is useless, just that there is a bubble fueled by bullshit. You’re jumping to conclusions not warranted by the original comment.
AI is literally a fantastic pattern recognition technology and has the ability to take complex information and visualize it in ways a human mind cannot. Those are pretty useful.
Not sure how you think what he’s doing is critihype. Never put any words in your mouth. Don’t understand why the headline, Bernie didn’t write, has to be changed when everything he said is pretty true.
You did imply AI is useless you literally just reaffirmed that calling it boring. Never jumped to any conclusion, the conclusion I came to was that your perspective is goofy and literally matches the AI is both bad and dangerous. A bubble is dangerous.
Boring is not the same as useless. Again, you’re bending over backwards to miss the point. It’s like talking to a wall. Your personal incredulity towards my opinion in no way invalidates it, saying you don’t understand or think it’s silly is not an argument.
Lol okay buddy.
This comment section is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
oh good luck with that bernie… while he’s not wrong, there’s too much money passing hands for this to be a threat
Acctually its the same $20 being passed around they have just really improved the speed and efficiency of passing it on.
“I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.”
Sam Altman has entered the chat
Did he buy into their hype claims of sentient AI?
I hope not
Onward the Butlerian Jihad! No prisoners!
Bernie Sanders is a politician, he should tell the public how he plans to add safety mechanisms and safeguards to AI. Granting the government and corporations full authority and control over it while limiting public access is how you turn AI into a digital nuclear weapon.
I rarely see a criticism of Bernie Sanders that isn’t some form of perfect solution fallacy and this comment is not one of them.
I’m sorry, like “Yes” but also, SIGH.
Cuz like;
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He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s said it all already.
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He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s too old to be the guy directing AI.
He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s too old to be the guy directing AI.
So why is he getting involved in AI?
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Ban the slop easy as, they’re breaking a tonne of laws, and they’re pushing their costs onto everyone else.
ban what? ban AI?
yes
How do you ban AI?
banning it? Like make a law, and make it a crime, or make a new law that clarifies that it’s already breaking a tonne of laws
What you are saying is to make a bunch of numbers illegal
That is a very stupid argument. everything can be represented as a group of numbers.
What development? It’s an LLM. The only thing improving is it’s ability to trick dumb people into thinking it’s smart.
