I’ll take them seriously when they take their own advice seriously and pause their operations.
Here’s the thing. We should absolutely not trust any companies with this much power about anything they say, buuuuuuut to play the devil’s advocate here, let’s pretend they are absolutely altruistic.
They are still a company and must compete. Their market edge isn’t dominant enough that they could really take any moral stand like “stop research and development” when there are three other companies who will gladly step into the market leader position, so even if they do believe their message, without any assurances that everyone will agree to pause, they’d just be letting someone else take over their spot for a moral stance for an arguably worse situation.
And realistically, if they weren’t in the lead, people would be saying “loser wants leaders to slow down lol” and if they’re in the lead people will say, “lol market leader wants competition to stop, I wonder why?”. There is really no position they can be in and make the claim without catching flak for it. A year or two ago Anthropic made a similar blog when they weren’t in such a dominant position and comments were exactly like that.
All that said, obviously they’re nearly a trillion dollar company and we shouldn’t take anything they say at face value, but I really do think the message here isn’t terrible (like the article says). We really should be slowing down and looking at the effects of AI. It has too much potential to fuck everything up to not think about it a bit, especially if recursive self-improvement is on the horizon.
We really should be slowing down and looking at the effects of AI. It has too much potential to fuck everything up to not think about it a bit, especially if recursive self-improvement is on the horizon.
IMO, the notion that AI systems are intelligent in any meaningful capacity is venture capitalist marketing. AI systems are especially capable of pooping out convincing bullshit. Otherwise, these systems are not particularly more dangerous than other machines. In particular, the notion that we are even converging towards AGI is marketing. The focus of criticism should be on the concrete applications of these machines. IMO, statistical learning theory has excellent theoretical backing and lots of practical applications, and the mathematics is honest (if complicated) about the limitations of the field. The statistical learning community is still working on developing the theoretical backbone for LLM systems at scale.
IMO, the main issue is that capitalists are wrecking our environment, stealing all our private information, and stealing our tax dollars to build systems that are then used to kill, oppress, harass, demean, and propagandize the working class. Again, AI technologies are especially capable at helping the worst monsters in all of history achieve these goals. But it’s not because of “intelligence”. It’s because of what they are using these systems to do to us.
I.e., we should absolutely scale down AI system deployment to a sustainable level, and we should burn anyone who uses AI systems for oppression … but people who are organically interested in statistical learning systems should at least be allowed to continue research into the mathematics of “AI” (preferably under a different title, because people who end up using AI do not need nor want intelligent systems, just useful ones!) as long as they’re not doing anything with the technology to oppress people.
Anthropic once again trying to brand themselves as the good guys, while actively cooperating with the NSA.
In a blog post published Thursday, the company cited its own internal data as evidence that modern AI systems are nearing the point of “recursive self-improvement”—i.e., being able to refine their capabilities without a human in the loop. “AI that can build itself would be a major development in the history of technology—one that could bring enormous good for the world in science, healthcare, and beyond,” the post, which was written by company cofounder Jack Clark and Anthropic Institute lead Marina Favaro, reads. “But full recursive self-improvement also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”
Are they? When our own researchers barely have a grasp on how LLMs work, can’t really pinpoint why LLMs make certain choices, can you really expect it to improve itself when it has no sense of understanding? Or will it just make it self even more convoluted and nonsensical until it all falls apart like a house of cards?
I don’t know shit about LLMs, so maybe I’m lacking understanding here.
he wants other AI snuffed out so anthropoic remains one the only ones around, thats what he really meant, additionally trying to buy time how to leave the AI bubble unscathed when it bursts.
They ran out of unsuspecting VCs and need time to find fresh ones, the Money Furnace demands more sacrifices!
I think a big reason is that developing and training new models is ludicrously expensive and their only slim hope of being profitable in the near future would be only paying for inference.
