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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but members of Congress considering freely available models to be a threat but “well-regulated” models hidden away behind APIs to be acceptable is just what I’d expect from an effective lobbying campaign by OpenAI/Microsoft.

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Honestly, it isn't an unreasonable stance. Given that we, and most understandably them, don't really know the consequences of the tech but know it could completely transform society as we know it it is safer if you have a few entities that can control it.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we are doomed to get an AI monopoly/duopoly and sometimes the feeling that open source will prosper.

And while the enthusiast in me clearly wants it to be open source I don't feel it is a given that society will be better for it.

Really? I can't believe that the right approach is to lock up tech, especially with large corporations and/or government holding the keys. Arguably they're the ones most likely to abuse it. Witness Facebook that has actually transformed society raising the lunatic fringe to be on par with the mainstream using the magic of social networks and their algorithms that promote the most profitable speech, regardless of its corrosive effect on society. You don't need fancy AI to destroy the fabric of society.

The more appropriate path is developing countermeasures or counter-technology. This is only possible via free and open development of technology. God knows what monstrocity OpenAI, or any other corporation is cooking up behind closed doors. And we know their incentives are not aligned with those of a health functioning society.

> You don't need fancy AI to destroy the fabric of society.

You don't, but you can do it a million times worse in just a fraction of the time. Considering how trivial Facebook can worsen our lives just imagine how effective it could be. That is the risk you are taking. Before we have even time to course correct we've lost everything we know.

> The more appropriate path is developing countermeasures or counter-technology.

If we get good AI the countermeasures are not going to be great. They alone could easily be dystopian. Since, captchas etc. won't be good enough. The only way to TRY and prevent abuse is to ID every action and tie it to a physical person. You could try to make that anonymously but yeah, like that is going to happen. And that is the easy part.

Honestly, it is an unreasonable stance.

There's no need to presume lobbying. Freely released models, by definition, don't have a regulation body. It would be like replicators suddenly made it possible for anyone to produce automobiles or firearms with nearly zero variable costs. These things have life-changing consequences, so there are expectations of quality, safety and record keeping.

The simple truth is that our information tools have become so complex that they're capable of significant consequences. Bots already are being used to wage war on information, notably Russia's socio-political war that the U.S. doesn't even realize that it is in. That said, it doesn't mean that models must be proprietary. If anything, this must be treated like crypto protocols: open to many eyes and liberal amounts of sunshine to prevent anyone from encoding a Manchurian candidate.

I’m struggling to understand the qualitative difference between

a) the risks of openly available transformer models vs. API-restricted access in 2023

and

b) the risks of cheaply available home computers vs. centralized, more easily regulated mini- and mainframe computers in 1983

I mean, look at what that kid from WarGames was able to do!

> that kid from WarGames

That would be Kevin Mitnick. Oddly, the Wikipedia page doesn't seem to mention the movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

Just whom I was thinking of IRL. If you run through the letter's concerns about risk, they just about all got a lot worse once a "hacker" could get a general purpose computer and a 2400 baud modem for around the same inflation-adjusted price as a nice AI/ML-optimized setup today.

But I don't think senators at the time were sending ominous letters to the Steves & BillG asking why they were letting the general public have access to these dangerous tools rather than guarding them in machine rooms like IBM.

I suspect if various stakeholders (u.s. senate, various corporate interest groups, etc) understood the implications of the home computers, they would've not hesitated to ban and otherwise regulate them. Up until early 2000s home computers were seen as toys for nerds (people forget!), a perspective that I'm sure many of them now regret.

Sama is on a global lobbying tour right now.

Not to play the exact opposite role of a charitability theorist, but if one assumes OpenAI's founding principles are sincerely held, then that lobbying campaign may be more public good-intentioned than profit-intentioned. Under such a framing, they would would argue "yes, a freely available model indeed is a threat while a carefully protected model accountable to internal and governmental oversight is less of a threat" because they believe that to be the case, not because they want a monopoly.

(I don't necessarily actually believe this. I just feel like any good conspiracy theory warrants an equal and opposite angel-devil's advocate.)

> but “well-regulated” models hidden away behind APIs to be acceptable

This isn’t my takeaway from the letter [1]. Expressing caution towards one element of a thing doesn’t imply acceptance of or even preference for the other aspects.

[1] https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/06062023meta...

In February 2023, Meta released LLaMA, an advanced large language model (LLM) capable of generating compelling text results, similar to products released by Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.

Unlike others, Meta released LLaMA for download by approved researchers, rather than centralizing and restricting access to the underlying data…

I don’t know any way to read this other than “you would have been fine by us if you kept it behind an API wall”.

It’s saying Facebook did something different; the Committee is asking why. There may be nefarious intent in the subtext. We should be wary of that. But the letter per se isn’t evidence of that intent.

I agree that the letter did try to give some nuance, but they clearly prefer that the models be hidden away behind APIs.

> At least at this stage of technology’s development, centralized AI models can be more effectively updated and controlled to prevent and respond to abuse compared to open source AI models.

> While centralized models can adapt to abuse and vulnerabilities, open source AI models like LLaMA, once released to the public, will always be available to bad actors who are always willing to engage in high-risk tasks, including fraud, obscene material involving children, privacy intrusions, and other crime.

> Meta’s choice to distribute LLaMA in such an unrestrained and permissive manner raises important and complicated questions about when and how it is appropriate to openly release sophisticated AI models.

I agree there is an implied bias against open source. I’m just pushing back that anything is implied to be “acceptable” by this letter.

Blumenthal also introduced the EARN IT act. Government influence over how people use computers and the Internet seems to be an interest for them.

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