We should be signal-boosting anti Bing chat content
20Cody Rushing
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15Zack_M_Davis
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8Nate Showell
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6lc
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1Weekend Editor
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New Comment
There is a fuzzy line between "let's slow down AI capabilities" and "lets explicitly, adversarially, sabotage AI research". While I am all for the former, I don't support the latter; it creates worlds in which AI safety and capabilities groups are pitted head to head, and capabilities orgs explicitly become more incentivized to ignore safety proposals. These aren't worlds I personally wish to be in.
While I understand the motivation behind this message, I think the actions described in this post cross that fuzzy boundary, and pushes way too far towards that style of adversarial messaging
I see your point, and I agree. But I'm not advocating for sabotaging research.
I'm talking about admonishing a corporation for cutting corners and rushing a launch that turned out to be net negative.
Did you retweet this tweet like Eliezer did?https://twitter.com/thegautamkamath/status/1626290010113679360
If not, is it because you didn't want to publicly sabotage research?
Do you agree or disagree with this twitter thread? https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1627175580088119296?t=s4eBML752QGbJpiKySlzAQ&s=19
Why aren't we?
- By temperament and training, we don't do strategic propaganda campaigns even when there's a naïvely-appealing consequentialist case for it.
We argue that Microsoft is doing a bad thing—but we also discuss specific flaws in those arguments, even when that would undermine the simplified propaganda message. We do this because we think arguments aren't soldiers; we're trying to have a discourse oriented towards actually figuring out what's going on in the world, instead of shaping public perception.
Is this dumb? I'm not going to take a position on that in this comment. Holden Karnofsky has some thoughts about messages to spread.
Are you saying that you're unsure if the launch of the chatbot was net positive?
I'm not talking about propaganda. I'm literally saying "signal boost the accurate content that's already out there showing that Microsoft rushed the launch of their AI chatbot making it creepy, aggressive, and misaligned. Showing that it's harder to do right than they thought"
Eleizer (and others) retweeted content admonishing Microsoft, I'm just saying we should be doing more of that.
Maybe this is a better way of putting it: I agree that the Bing launch is very bad precedent and it's important to warn people about the problems with that, but the whole way you're talking about this seems really spammy and low-integrity, which would be fine and great if being spammy would save the world, but there are generalizable reasons why that doesn't work. People can tell when the comments section is being flooded by an organized interest group, and that correctly makes them trust the comments less.
Here's an idea (but maybe you can think of something better): if you want to help spread messages about this, maybe instead of telling "us" (the EAs, the rats) to become a signal-boosting PR war army (which is not what we're built for), write up your own explanation of why the Bing launch was bad, in your own voice, that covers an angle of the situation that hasn't already been covered by someone else. Sincerity is more credible than just turning up the volume. I will eagerly retweet it (when I get back from my February Twitter hiatus).
Are you saying that you're unsure if the launch of the chatbot was net positive?
No. (I agree that it was bad, and that pointing out that it was bad is good.) The intent of "I'm not going to take a position on that" was to keep the grandparent narrowly-scoped; you asked, "Why aren't we?" and I explained a reason why Less Wrong readers are disinclined in general to strategically take action to "shape the public's perception", as contrasted to laying out our actual reasoning without trying to control other people's decisions.
not talking about propaganda
In the sense of "A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people".
I felt I was saying "Simulacrum Level 1: Attempt to describe the world accurately."
The AI was rushed, misaligned, and not a good launch for its users. More people need to know that. It's literally already how NYT and others are describing it (accurately) I'm just suggesting signal boosting that content.
Well, I blogged about it at least a little bit. Possibly too elementary a level for most Less Wrong readers, though.
Toby and Elon did today what I was literally suggesting: https://twitter.com/tobyordoxford/status/1627414519784910849
@starship006, @Zack_M_Davis, @lc, @Nate Showell do you all disagree with Toby's tweet?
Should the EA and Rationality movement not signal-boost Toby's tweet?
Elon further signal boosts Toby's post
Ord's Tweet seems good. Individual Twitter users re-Tweeting it because they, personally, want to share the information also seems good; I don't see why it matters whether they're part of "the EA and Rationality movement", whatever that is. (Personally, I'm avoiding Twitter this month.)
