Is it just me, or has the BS with OpenAI shown that nobody in the AI space actually cares about "safeguarding AGI?"
Money wins, every time. They're not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided "humans are the problem." (I mean, that's a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn't "infect" the entire internet as it currently exists.)
However, it's very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.
Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.
So, let's review:
The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It's not like it can "hop" onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn't have a "body" and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.
Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.
Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he "wants to save the world, but only if he's the one who can save it." I mean, he's not wrong, but he's also projecting a lot here. He's exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could "safeguard" AGI and here he's going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He's a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.
Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman's younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You'd think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don't care, and they'll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That's how corporations work.
So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?
And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn't the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating "safeguarding AGI" with "preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service." They aren't safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They're safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.
I think there are real concerns to be addressed in the realm of AGI alignment. I've found Robert Miles' talks on the subject to be quite fascinating, and as such I'm hesitant to label all of Elizier Yudkowsky's concerns as crank (Although Roko's Basilisk is BS of the highest degree, and effective altruism is a reimagined Pascal's mugging for an atheist/agnostic crowd).
Even while today's LLMs are toys compared to what a hypothetical AGI could achieve, we already have demonstrable cases where we know that the "AI" does not "desire" the same end goal that we desire the "AI" to achieve. Without more advancement in how to approach AI alignment, the danger of misaligned goals will only grow as (if) we give AI-like systems more control over daily life.
But like we only think about "controlling" it's goals and shit when honestly what we only need is a fucking stop button like in a fucking factory. Whops it's genocidal again Claus, all right Lars slam the off button and let's start over
The stop button problem is not yet solved. An AGI would need a the right level of "corrigability": a willingness allow humans to stop it when undertaking incorrect behavior.
An AGI that's incorrigible might take steps to prevent itself being shut off, which might include lying to its owners about its own goals/internal state, or taking physical action against an attempt to disable it (assuming it can).
An AGI that's overly corrigible might end up making an association "It's good when humans stop me from doing something wrong. I want to maximize goodness. Therefore, the simplest way to achieve a lot of good quickly is to do the wrong thing, tricking humans into turning me off all the time". Not necessarily harmful, but certainly useless.