nightsky81's Shortform

nightsky81

This is a special post for quick takes by nightsky81. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Ilya Sutskever testified today at the Musk v. Altman trial.

At the end of the OpenAI lawyer's cross-examination, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked Ilya a few questions herself. I found their exchange (lightly edited for clarity^[1]) somewhat amusing:

YGR: When he [Elon] said that there was a 0% chance of success, what was the technology like at that point?
Ilya: It was less developed, it's true. The technology was less developed.
YGR: Is there any way to quantify what the level was at the time you left?
Ilya: Yes, there is. It's like the difference between... I would describe it like the difference between an ant and a cat. If you compare 2018 to now, it's like the difference between an ant and a cat, so it's like a big difference.
YGR: And if you had received no funding?
Ilya: If there is no funding, then there is no big computer. You don't need the biggest computer, but you need a big enough computer, and if you don't have a big enough computer, then it was not going to work.

^{^}
I am aware of the prohibition against recording or retransmitting proceedings but figured that brief quotes, which have also appeared in media coverage, would not be in violation of this rule.

2Eli Tyre6mo

No? If there's a false view that Bob and Carol both hold, and you claim it was knowably false at the time, it seems pretty reasonable to complain about Carol holding the view, regardless of what Bob thought? It would be unfair to let Bob off the hook and only complain about Carol. But if you happen to know Carol better than Bob, then it's pretty reasonable to mostly focus on talking to and about Bob?

This misunderstands my point, which I clarify in this comment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/awcwmAjNwJazdbHrz/nightsky81-s-shortform?commentId=S9Wa5XCYvbHJLFmji. I'm not saying that Eliezer was unjustified in attempting to correct EA timeline beliefs, but that EAs' views were probably good faith.

3Dean Valentine6mo

To clarify the argument for the people react-ing: the linked post accuses the EA movement of wilful institutional stupidity regarding AI timelines. Eliezer has also expressed this belief (that EA timeline beliefs were an example of their motivated reasoning and relative untrustworthiness) in other places, and to a group of people I was with at Manifest. However, I think if even Ilya Sutskever also took biological anchors seriously, this is some evidence that the EAs were making good-faith inferences at the time from the limited capabilities they had, instead of that mistake in particular being indicative of systemic rot in EA institutions. Note this is a separate belief from whether OpenPhilanthropy (in concert with the vast majority of the public, commodities traders, surveyed AI researchers, etc.) had timelines that were too long in 2020, whether it was actually dumb to make AI timelines based on biological anchors, or whether humanity depended on EAs to get this question right despite its apparent difficulty.