I wanted this for awhile, but actually now I kind of like having vanilla Chrome for browser automation only, and a different browser that I actually use.
A better interpretation is that there is a window within which you can make money on an unconventional view. You can't be too close to the market's conventional wisdom, but you can't be too far away from it either.
I think it's like any other craft. Buildings and most furniture are built using mass produced lumber and machinery, but many people still enjoy doing woodworking by hand.
There is an angle to it that is not that obvious. The kids have been part of social media and they consult each other and then they go couch surfing upon a disagreement. So saying no is like saying no to a group of people with the same agenda and viewpoint and they would retaliate. Like Lord Of the Flies.
I tend to find all sorts of generalizations like this so useless. Like, this thing you said seems totally random to me. I know lots of "elder millennial" parents and lots of parents of other ages, and I see lots of variation between parents in "not saying no", but I don't see any correlation by age... Regional and political cultural differences are way more correlated with things like this IMO.
Millenials spend time with their kids, way more than previous generations. Especially fathers.
I don't know if you've met people, but most people are terrible! And now these poor role models are spending extra time with young impressionable minds! /s
Did you intend to point out that "generation" is a singular noun while "their" is a plural pronoun? If so, I'd say that "their" is actually correct and the best way to write this. I think you could also say "its" and that would also be technically correct, but it would be significantly less clear. The current construction is the clearest way to say that the individuals that make up the group, in aggregate, are dumber than their parents, in aggregate.
Is it not? It seems like a problem of incentives to me. There are lots of things that people want to do because they would be useful to them, but which they don't do because society disincentives them in one way or another.
Yes, this is my point: Incentive problems are real problems.
You can't just say "well if the incentives were different this would be easy to solve, ergo it's easy to solve."
No! The incentives are the way they are, and so the incentives are the problem. Broken incentives make problems effectively impossible to solve literally all the time.
"This would be easy to solve if the incentives worked a different way" is equivalent to an budding aerospace engineer saying that flight would be easy if gravity worked a different way. It's completely meaningless. Gravity works the way that it does, that's why it's hard. You don't get to just endlessly modify the parameters of the universe until you get to an easily solvable version of your problem.
I agree that incentive problems are real problems. But incentives can be changed. That's how society solves problems. It isn't like gravity. The incentive structure of society is socially constructed.
My understanding is that, at least in the Hugging Face incident, these were models explicitly configured to not respond that way, in order to evaluate what they would do.
You have to take responsibility for what you do, yes.
It would certainly be really useful to me if I could send a robot to get my groceries and not have to worry about anything. But if, even a small percentage of the time, it leaves with the groceries without paying, or smashes through a window to get in because the store is closed that day, then that's my fault. If the only way to keep those things from happening is that I can't send my robot to get groceries for me, then so be it.
This is a bit black and white. We do things all the time that have some level of risk, and draw vague lines about where this crosses into negligence. My cars brakes might fail, right? But it wouldn’t be typically called my fault - unless the chance was heightened because I’d not maintained it, or had been warned the brake fluid seemed to be leaking.
You cannot guarantee a robot could get items without paying. You can’t really guarantee anything in basically any scenario.
You can’t guarantee your card will work at the end of a meal or that your wallet won’t have been stolen, or while you were out someone stole all your money at the bank. There’s a chance those things happen, so do you never go for a meal?
Again there’s clearly levels where it is your fault, because you were negligent. If the robot goes mad and smashes up the place one in 3 times, obviously you can’t do it.
This is where we do things like trials, have approvals, etc so that we can make reasonable adjustments to lower downsides, plan things like insurance and then move on with our lives rather than never doing anything because it’s possible there’s a problem.
Yes, this is why we have a legal system with a lot of human judgment, because it isn't black and white.
I think we need (and that there is likely to be) some test cases, and probably some new legislative text, that shift the incentive structure that people are evaluating risks against.
From reading your comment, I don't think you and I disagree at all, for what it's worth. I don't see anything here that I disagree with.
My comment wasn't out of left field. People are responsible for what their agents do. If enforcing that responsibility destroys "99%" of the economic value of these things, then that's what will have to happen. Personally I highly doubt that 99% is the right number, but yes, if enforcing laws about what people are allowed to do with very powerful software eats 99% of the value of that software, then it is what it is. We aren't going to end up in a situation where people are allowed to have their software do whatever it wants because of this loophole that "it wasn't me, it was a rogue agent!". It's silly and naive to think this would be the equilibrium that is reached here.
If you, like me, want to keep most or all of that 99% of economic value, then you should be interested in the ongoing development of security for agents. But just "this is how it's going to be, so oh well!" is not a serious stance, IMO.
Maybe my comment wasn't clear as to who has to make this decision.
You're imagining that both the AI labs and the hospital victims are on the same team or somehow coordinating. They're not.
Hospitals can (and should) put up defenses, sure. But hospitals are not AI labs. AI labs are AI labs, and accordingly they are much more capable attackers than hospitals are defenders.
Hospitals cannot spend arbitrary amounts of money defending themselves from proliferating nation-state level attackers. AI labs need to prevent their tools from being used in this way. However, the only way to do that is for AI labs to neuter their tools and destroy the vast majority of the economic value. Achieving this will certainly not be easy.
I'm not proposing that we just give up or don't try to solve this. I'm saying it will not be easy.
> You're imagining that both the AI labs and the hospital victims are on the same team or somehow coordinating.
What makes you think I'm imagining that? I'm not imagining that.
> However, the only way to do that is for AI labs to neuter their tools and destroy the vast majority of the economic value.
This seems to be our most fundamental difference in worldview. I just don't think this is true.
> I'm saying it will not be easy.
I guess I agree that it won't be easy. But I think the path seems more straightforward to me than it does to you. To me, it seems like we have the tools for this already. The risk of liability (both civil and criminal) provides a strong incentive for people and companies to be careful about what they do. This is a general mechanism, not one that is specific to AI agents. The thing that seems bad to me, with respect to this general mechanism, is that some people seem to be trying to detach the responsibility of people and companies over the agents they are running. At the moment this seems like just a rhetorical thing. I'm skeptical that any court will find that agents have their own agency for legal purposes. But to me, it seems worthwhile to continue making the point that people should be responsible for what their software is doing, which is all that I'm doing in this thread.
To me, this seems like a straightforward solution, but that doesn't mean I think it won't be messy, slow, and imperfect, so I suppose I'll allow that this probably meets your criteria of "not easy".
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