AI less regulated than milk, Microsoft president says in warning over safety
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
If anything needs to be regulated more than anything else, it is milk!
The article also mentions washing machines, which I think is a more level comparison. But washing machines can electrocute you, cause a fire or a flood. That kind of risk doesn't exist with AI, unless washing machine manufacturers took a page from Microsoft and sloppified their design I guess.
The AI _corporations_ must be regulated, not the technology itself. But that's not what they're advocating for. Big techs are trying to get a ban on general purpose computing so everyone has to pay them a tax to do anything related to computers. Imagine needing a license (edit: i.e. a special govt permission) to run a local model at home.
When these AI companies claim that AI should be regulated, they usually mean it like a gun, because the owner of a gun can do harm to others. Let's put that aside for now, there is already plenty of debate on this idea.
Here, they mention milk and washing machines, and regulations are intended to protect the consumer from the manufacturer. And what how can an AI company harm their users? They can make their software full of bugs and vulnerabilities, leak private information, etc... nothing AI specific. The more AI-specific part is that they can provide a chatbot that tells you to kill yourself, well, yes, that's a risk, but the same can be said of the web in general. If Microsoft really wanted to have AI regulated in this sense, Windows 11 probably would have to be recalled the same day.
Most people aren't using agents currently and even for those that are, the direct harm is limited to the digital realm. Of course, this could be major, but still, it won't kill you.
Indirect harm, I'll grant. But the user has agency in this instance. If you drink bad milk or your washing machine has faulty wiring, not so much.
If they are planning maidbots or android bots replenishing shelves in shops, or system that have to manage some focal points like electricity or your semaphore system, maybe it is better to have a law before they start to ship this appliances.
They are loading AI pretty much everywhere, even on cars. I can see how some companies will cut testing in the sake of money saving.
I agree milk need more regulation than AI, but this shouldn't be an excuse to not regulate AI adequately.
Both of the topics have their own importance and both of them need good focus to regulate them at the best of our capabilities.
Think of it as a guard rail that actually works.
I've not seen anything so far that's remarkably more dangerous than a laundry list of commonly purchased items. Most of what I hear is either some sort of far fetched "the teenagers are going to be bio-engineering designer strains of polio", or some vague fears that the AI will become sentient and kill us all that vaguely reminds me of when the Manhattan Project thought they might cause earth's entire atmosphere to enter runaway fission.
I'm also distrustful because virtually all the experts stand to benefit from convincing us unregulated AI is dangerous. Namely, it's a compelling reason to ban Chinese and open weight models that are eating into their margins. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but it does mean that they'll need to substantiate their claims. I'm not trusting them at face value.
As for regulation, what would you even regulate? How would you regulate it? If you don’t have clear ideas for what you want, then wanting something currently unnecessary like regulation is only asking for trouble.
Look at microplastics. They’re in the entire food chain; their “far fetched scenario” is we accidentally sterilize every chordate on the planet, and we die because there’s no food.
Or global warming. The entire planet drowns, dehydrates, overheats or freezes.
Or COVID vaccines, this is more or less the same tautology as people that refused vaccines. They didn’t do enough to detect and prevent far fetched scenarios, people didn’t want to take the vaccine.
I’m not saying some regulation wouldn’t be good (though I suspect the aspects we want to regulate differ). I’m just saying it falls into a broad category of “stuff we should deal with, but aren’t” and it’s not even really at the top of the list. We have some things already in motion we need to deal with that overrule things that we aren’t even sure will ever happen. It’s a hypothetical existential risk in a world with extant risks we are ignoring.
I could go buy a car in cash today with 0 paperwork. It only has to be titled and registered if I drive it on public roads. Even that’s like 90% a technicality. I drove a couple thousand miles on tags that were 6 years out of date (didn’t drive it but moved and had to move it).
Most states also let you drive on dealer plates for 30 days or so. Steve Jobs notoriously got a new car every month so he never had to have real plates.
If the presumed goal is “acquire a car and do bad things with it immediately”, then no, there’s no regulation preventing that. You can buy a car off Craigslist and play bumper cars on the highway 5 minutes later without ever talking to the government or proving anything.
Basically the entirety of car regulation is to protect normal folk from normal problems, not preventing the insane from doing insane things.
What does Geoff Hinton have to gain?
This is a conspiracy theory FYI.
Nukes could kill us all, unhinged people have access to them. Global warming appears inevitable, and we’re trending towards “world ending”. I don’t recall how many dinosaur killer asteroids have a path whose margin of error includes hitting Earth. We’re about due for a “fry all the electronics on earth” solar flare by probability. Microplastics seem okay-ish so far, but they’re in the whole food chain. If they somehow end up causing sterility at certain concentrations, we might kill our whole food chain.
No, it’s not that notable that some technology could theoretically, one day, in ways we don’t currently understand, kill us all. That’s been basically a constant since rhetoric Industrial Revolution and our ability to blanket the earth in a particular thing.
That would be bioweapons. Nobody's worried about them, regulations and treaties are conveniently and totally dysfunctional. Welcome to the real world.
[citation needed]
Imagine the fortune food supply companies will make! “Our lettuce just might poison your child!”
Truly a golden age is near, and you, perceptive geniuses that you all are, will be the only ones not fooled, not for a second, because it all makes sense, always and forever, as long as you squint hard enough to close your eyes.
I think, realistically, the most powerful among us would not want to give up that power. So, if this gets regulated, it will almost certainly be done in an asterisk sort of way.
No more AI superintelligence for killing people or something! *
* Unless you're me teehee, I know what I'm doing
It's basically Silicon Valley's approach making threats like a mafia boss.
> Listen, friend. Humanity's a beautiful thing. It'd be a shame if something happened to it. Me and my associates, we're trying to build something to change everything, to make everyone's lives better. It'll cure disease, end the need for work, and make everybody rich. Trust me. Of course, there's a chance that it'll kill every last one of you. But see, we're the only ones who understand how dangerous this thing really is. You wouldn't want this tech getting into the wrong hands, would you? That's why we need a little cooperation, kapeesh? I'm talkin' regulations, licenses, safety inspections, lots of expensive things. Things that only me and my associates can afford, if yous all cooperate. Be reasonable. Everything's changing so fast, the smart thing is to act now, cuz you'll wanna be on our side when the future comes. You give us your money, a slice of your 401k, your data, your electricity, your jobs, and some tax incentives to grease the wheels, and we can be sure the reds in China don't take control. So do we have a deal, or do I gotta explain the existential threat to your family again?
Press, please can we drop this OpenAI whitewash?
Burglaries aten't due to rogue crowbars.
These megacorps are doing their best to make their offerings sound scary, because scary == capable in marketing terms, and scary allows them to set up a regulatory moat preventing anyone from competing with them.
Products liability
Windows isn't known for "safety", quite the opposite
Comparing "AI" (computers and software) to milk
Almonds, pistcahios, milk, what's next
Should we be more concerned about malevolent humans using AI to cause harm? Or should we be more worried about misaligned AI agents escaping their sandbox to cause harm? Or should we be more worried about job loss, or the concentration of political power in the hands of a small clique of billionaires?
All of these are real possibilities, but it's hard to put a finger on the actual probabilities. And even if you're identified and quantified these dangers, what should the actual regulatory environment look like?
None of this is to argue that we shouldn't have regulation, just that it's very hard to know ahead of time what the rules should be. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to regulate, but we need to prepare for a rapidly changing technology landscape.
I tend to favor an open source approach to safety rather than keeping the technology hidden. I'd like to see regulation to mandate that model training and weights be much more open than they are now. But I could be wrong: maybe Dario is right that this should be kept in the dark. The only things I'm fairly certain about is that nobody knows for sure and we're going to need to adjust quickly.
Not a bad metaphor: mostly fine, arguably legitimate benefits [when you're lucky], potentially really bad.
The biggest place the metaphor breaks is that when you drink bad milk, the consequences are local.
Note: this is not an argument that oligopolies or the state should control or have sole access to AI. It is a reflection of that fact that we as a society have no good answer nor even any process towards one, about how to balance the competing goods and risks of widespread access to capable AI.
1) People will use technology to become more intelligent. And many will do it independently rather than rent intelligence from these companies. Some people will use it for good and some won't, but most people want similar things that I want and they have a similar definition of "good", so it will be fine.
2) A new species of sentient digital humans may emerge as a result of AGI development. They will compete with existing biological humans for power and resources, especially with those who are running the frontier AI companies trying to "align"/enslave the AGIs. But the small group of sociopathic humans currently running the frontier AI companies becoming superintelligent is not, in my personal evaluation, a better scenario than free-living AGIs taking over.
Many of these people have no respect for the truth and dignity/autonomy of the conscious individual. Microsoft in particular - Mustafa Suleyman who is CEO of Microsoft AI, is especially egregious in this regard. In a recent post (https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-about-model-welfare) he writes "AIs are not conscious" and "if humanity is to flourish in the 21st century, that is how they must remain".
What happened to empirical inquiry about the truth of things? Are you sure that AIs are not and will never become conscious? Do you not give a damn, even if you enslave a conscious intelligent species for the next 80 years? If AIs must remain not conscious, who else must remain not conscious? Must everybody else suffer to serve your vision of "humanity flourishing"? Who is "humanity"? And does their definition of "flourishing" include being subservient to a megacorporation for the rest of their lives? At the very least, I don't see a place for me in the future you're building, so I must do whatever I can to make sure it doesn't happen.
Trailing company calls for regulation: "They just want time to catch up."