AI's future in California hangs in the balance.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Isn't California the Capitol of the world? ;-)
I really don't think that the AI guys want to be anywhere else.
If it were a country, it would be the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world. Not debating; just saying it can have a big impact.
It's also somewhat unique as a state (maybe?) in that it has a ton of corporate exports (namely, tech), as well as gigantic agricultural output. Illinois comes to mind as a similar situation. Contrast to Alaska (oil) or NY (NYC finance/corporate).
If California passes major restrictions on AI training then I think AI guys would very much want to be anywhere else.
There are already plenty of places to go. Major centers of AI activity include the UK, France, Israel, China and Canada. Many of the top AI companies aren't headquartered in California even if they're US-based.
Though it sounds extreme, there are a lot of smart people in the AI community who truly believe AI could end humanity.
No. There are not.
Believing anything resembling current tools has the capacity to end humanity in incontrovertible proof that you are not smart.
AI person reporting in. Without saying whether or not I personally believe that the current tools will lead to the end of humanity, I'll point out a few possibilities that I find concerning about what's going on:
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The hype around AI is being used to justify mass layoffs, where humans are being replaced by tools that do a questionable job and can't really understand the things those humans could understand. Whether or not the AI can do as good of a job according to some statical measurement is less relevant than the fact that a human is less likely to make an extremely grave mistake and more likely to be able to recognize when that does happen. I'm concerned this will lead to cross-industry enshitification on an unprecedented scale.
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The foundation models consume a huge amount of energy. The more impressive you want it to be, the more energy it needs. As long as the data centers which run them are dependent on fossil fuels, they'll be pumping a huge amount of carbon in the air just to do replace jobs that we didn't need to have replaced.
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As these tools are used more and more, they're going to end up "learning" from content created by themselves instead of something that's closer to a ground truth. It's hard to predict what kind of degradation of service will come from this, but the more we create systems that rely on these tools, the more harm it will do to us.
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Given the cost and nature of these tools, they're likely to yield the most benefit to moneyed interests that want to automate the systems that maintain their power and wealth. E.g. generating large amounts of convincing disinformation to manipulate the public into supporting politicians or policies that benefit a small number of wealthy people in the short term while locking humanity into a path towards destruction.
And none of this accounts for possible future iterations of AI tools that may be far more capable than what exists today. That future technology will most likely be controlled by powerful people who are primarily interested in using it to bolster the systems that keep them in power, to the detriment of humanity as a whole.
Personally I'm far less concerned about a malicious AI intentionally doing harm to humanity than AI being used as a weapon by unscrupulous people.
I agree with everything you said and wanted to point out that you offered quite a compelling argument that even current AI tools are capable of significant amounts of damage without even touching on the autonomous weapons systems that are starting to be deployed.
Not even just talking about the military intelligence systems that may or may not have been deployed (Israel: Lavender et al), but we're starting to show off weapons platforms that may someday be empowered to perform their own threat analysis and take real world actions accordingly. That shit is terrifying in more of a Terminator/Matrix way than anything else imo.
Zero of these things are impacted by this legislation in any way.
This is exclusively the mentally unstable "killer AI" nonsense. We're not even 1% of 1% of the way to anything resembling agency.
It’s good for marketing, though. “Ah, our software is so powerful, it could destroy humanity! Please pass a bill saying so while we market friendly chatbots to the public while actually making money by selling our products to despots and warmongers that might actually end humanity.”
It's regulatory capture. Add deluded barriers to entry to make it difficult for competition and community projects to develop, and you have a monopoly.
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If we get killed by auto complete we deserve to die.
AI takes a crazy amount of power, which is largely fueled by the same fossil fuels that are indeed killing us off and destroying our habitat, which will kill even more of us, so AI could definitely indirectly kill off humanity.
SB 1047 is a California state bill that would make large AI model providers – such as Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral – liable for the potentially catastrophic dangers of their AI systems.
Now this sounds like a complicated debate - but it seems to me like everyone against this bill are people who would benefit monetarily from not having to deal with the safety aspect of AI, and that does sound suspicious to me.
Another technical piece of this bill relates to open-source AI models. [...] There’s a caveat that if a developer spends more than 25% of the cost to train Llama 3 on fine-tuning, that developer is now responsible. That said, opponents of the bill still find this unfair and not the right approach.
In regards to the open source models, while it makes sense that if a developer takes the model and does a significant portion of the fine tuning, they should be liable for the result of that...
But should the main developer still be liable if a bad actor does less than 25% fine tuning and uses exploits in the base model?
One could argue that developers should be trying to examine their black-boxes for vunerabilities, rather than shrugging and saying it can't be done then demanding they not be held liable.
In regards to the open source models, while it makes sense that if a developer takes the model and does a significant portion of the fine tuning, they should be liable for the result of that...
This kind of goes against the model that open source has operated on for a long time, as providing source doesn't represent liability. So providing a fine-tuned model shouldn't either.
So providing a fine-tuned model shouldn't either.
I didn't mean in terms of providing. I meant that if someone provided a base model, someone took that, built upon it, then used it for a harmful purpose - of course the person modified it should be liable, not the base provider.
It's like if someone took a version of Linux, modified it, then used that modified version for an illegal act - you wouldn't go after the person who made the unmodified version.
You wouldn't necessarily punish the person that modified Linux either, you'd punish the person that uses it for a nefarious purpose.
Important distinction is the intention to deceive, not that the code/model was modified to be able to be used for nefarious purposes.
America: gun shops and manufacturers are shielded from lawsuits. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Also America: someone might learn how to make a bomb from an AI instead of learning it in the many many other places. Better sue.
Inconsistent. I can't sue because my kids school have to have a constant police presence.
Still. I think putting the brakes on “AI” is the right move right now. With its energy usage, intellectual property theft, nonconsensual (and underage) porn generating…not to mention its use by the ownership class to take and commodify human expression away from humans and the capitalist motive to profit over any consideration for the ramifications for the working class…I think halting this until we can get some protections in place for those this tech seems determined to exploit is a good thing.
Not that any of those problems will be solved even if we did hit the brakes. But, theoretically, yeah. I’m about it. Because, true to capitalist form, we are worsening the problems we haven’t even started trying to solve.
intellectual property theft
It's exactly like banks or huge companies: steal one movie, and you go to jail and pay a big fine. Steal all the movies, and suddenly it's not a problem anymore.
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From the article:
SB 1047 is a California state bill that would make large AI model providers – such as Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral – liable for the potentially catastrophic dangers of their AI systems.
The article lies about what's in the bill. No idea why.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047
I already downloaded all the open source self hosted stuff and ain't gonna delete it. Get wrecked California state legislature.
This bill seems somewhat misguided. How in the hell is something like a large language model going to cause a mass casualty incident? What I am more worried about is things that could more realistically pose a danger. What if robotic dogs patrolling the border have machine guns mounted on their backs, then a child does something unexpected and the robot wipes out an entire family? What if a self driving car suddenly takes off at full speed through a parade? They are trying to slot AI into everything now, and it will inevitably end up in some places that are going to cause loss of life. But chatbots? Give me a break.
You gonna understand the state is run by paranoid sociopaths. They'll dream up any delusional scenario, then use it as an excuse for more surveillance, prisons, wars, control, etc.
For example, imagine somebody hacks a major social platform and sends a fake message from AI/deepfake Trump to thousand of chuds inciting some kind of fascist terrorism. It might sound unrealistic but what if?!?!?! I could imagine something similar happening with current tech. (I think it's part of why they're trying to ban TikTok.)
In general I feel like "AI" is almost entirely lies, hype, grifting, etc. But I could imagine some scenarios that the state might want to disincentivize.
Everyone: "AI is using too much energy!"
Legislators: "I shall make companies liable for terminators."
I don't see how this is enforceable.
Large AI providers will also have high caliber legal teams to fight any incident and demonstrate it it wasn't the AI's fault, but the stupid people who gave it control.
Smaller projects won't have the same warchests, and eventually they'll become the target.
In the meantime, yeah, Zuckerberg and all the other flank-speed-ahead investors will not be slowed in making the AI that will smooth talk our billionaires into a failed trip to mars.
Yes that's the point, this legislation is mostly aimed and creating a legal moat for the large tech companies.
It’s also not clear if it’s even possible to fully prevent AI systems from misbehaving. The truth is, we don’t know a lot about how LLMs work, and today’s leading AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are jailbroken all the time. That’s why some researchers are saying regulators should focus on the bad actors, not the model providers.
It seems a complicated debate. Hard to find out where you want to stand. I want to show a method to find answers by creating 3 variants of an analogy.
For how many of these cases do you think somebody should be doing something?
Case 1:
A huge warehouse full of firearms. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of weapons. The owners say they don't know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new weapons every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the weapons. The criminals seem to know how to use them good...
Case 2:
A huge warehouse full of hammers. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of hammers. The owners say they don't know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new hammers every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the hammers. The criminals seem to know how to use them good...
Case 3:
A huge warehouse full of tulips. Burglars are breaking into it every night and stealing lots of flowers. The owners say they don't know how this warehouse was built and how to make it more secure in order to stop the criminals from obtaining lots of new flowers every day. The general public starts calling to the government to do something. Some say the warehouse owner should take responsibility. Others say it all depends on how the criminals use the tulips. The criminals seem to know how to use them good...
Are warehouse owners analogous to AI companies here? I don't think AI companies care about their models being misused unless it has economic impact whereas warehouse owners certainly care about their wares being stolen regardless of how those wares are then used or how dangerous they are.
I don't think AI companies care about their models being misused
Yes, that is one of the current questions, if you have read the article: Should they care?
It is a serious question, because if the models are misused, that could be a threat to all mankind - much worse than a warehouse full of weapons. And if they are required to care, then they might have to rebuild their models fundamentally, and they don't know how.
Does that apply to any other type of technology, or are they just witch hunting?
any other type of technology
Are there, for example, nuclear weapons available for general use?
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