This is a special post for quick takes by Sodium. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Comment Permalink
Dario says he'd "go out there saying that everyone should stop building [AI]" if safety techniques do not progress alongside capabilities.
Quote:
If we got to much more powerful models with only the alignment techniques we have now, then I'd be very concerned. Then I'd be going out there saying that everyone should stop building these things. Even China should stop building these. I don't think they'd listen to me ... but if we got a few years ahead in models and had only the alignment and steering techniques we had today, then I would definitely be advocating for us to slow down a lot. The reason I'm warning about the risk is so that we don't have to slow down; so that we can invest in safety techniques and continue the progress of the field.
He also says:
On one hand, we have a cadre of people who are just doomers. People call me a doomer but I'm not. But there are doomers out there. People who say they know there’s no way to build this safely. You know, I’ve looked at their arguments. They're a bunch of gobbledegook. The idea that these models have dangers associated with them, including dangers to humanity as a whole, that makes sense to me. The idea that we can kind of logically prove that there’s no way to make them safe, that seems like nonsense to me. So I think that is an intellectually and morally unserious way to respond to the situation. I also think it is intellectually and morally unserious for people who are sitting on $20 trillion of capital, who all work together because their incentives are all in the same way, there are dollar signs in all of their eyes, to sit there and say we shouldn’t regulate this technology for 10 years.
Link to the podcast here (starts at 59:06)
Edit: Also from the front page of the official website
While no one can foresee every outcome AI will have on society, we do know that designing powerful technologies requires both bold steps forward and intentional pauses to consider the effects.
2Showing 3 of 17 replies (Click to show all)
1
10
I definitely don’t recognize Eliezer in Dario’s characterization. My best guess is he’s referring to Roman Yampolskiy, who was recently on Rogan, and who has published results he claims prove alignment is impossible here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.00484
It would be both more timely and more accurate for Dario to be referring to Yampolskiy.
Some of the protest groups make similar claims that superintelligence can never be safe and so should never be developed. This is actually very distant from Eliezer’s position.
17
That would be my interpretation if I were to steelman him. My actual expectation is that he's lumping Eliezer-style positions with Yampolskiy-style positions, barely differentiating between them. Eliezer has certainly said things along the general lines of "AGI can never be made aligned using the tools of the current paradigm", backing it up by what could be called "logical arguments" from evolution or first principles.
Like, Dario clearly disagrees with Eliezer's position as well, given who he is and what he is doing, so there must be some way he is dismissing it. And he is talking about "doomers" there, in general, yet Yampolskiy and Yampolskiy-style views are not the central AGI-doomsayer position. So why would he be talking about his anti-Yampolskiy views in the place where he should be talking about his anti-Eliezer views?
My guess is that it's because those views are one and the same. Alternatively, he deliberately chose to associate general AGI-doom arguments with a weak-man position he could dunk on, in a way that leaves him the opportunity to retreat to the motte of "I actually meant Yampolskiy's views, oops, sorry for causing a misunderstanding". Not sure which is worse.
Yes, his statement is clearly nonsensical if we read it as a dismissal of Eliezer's position, but it sure sounded, in-context, like he would've been referring to Eliezer's position there. So I expect the nonsense is because he's mischaracterizing (deliberately or not) that position; I'm not particularly inclined to search for complicated charitable interpretations.
7-2
I agree that Dario disagrees with Eliezer somewhere. I don't know for sure that you've isolated the part that Dario disagrees with, and it seems plausible to me that Dario thinks we need some more MIRI-esque, principled thing, or an alternative architecture altogether, or for the LLMs to have solved the problem for us, once we cross some capabilities threshold. If he's said something public about this either way, I'd love to know.
I also think that some interpretations of Dario's statement are compatible with some interpretations of the section of the...
1