AI Alignment: The Problem with AI Hype
AI safety and AI ethics are two sides of the same coin, but the AI safety angle, which focuses on raising AI to be aligned with people, can be seen as a problem when it comes to ethical development of the technology. This blog explores the issue of AI hype and how it exacerbates other problems.
@emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon
Professor, Linguistics, UW // Faculty Director, Professional MS Program in Computational Linguistics (CLMS) // she/her // @emilymbender@dair-community.social
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To all those folks asking why the "AI safety" and "AI ethics" crowd can't find common ground --- it's simple: The "AI safety" angle, which takes "AI" as something that is to be "raised" to be "aligned" with actual people is anathema to ethical development of the technology.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023
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#AIhype isn't the only problem, for sure, but it is definitely a problem and one that exacerbates others. If LLMs are maybe showing the "first sparks of AGI" (they are NOT) then it's easier to sell them as reasonable information access systems (they are NOT).
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023
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If (even) the people arguing for a moratorium on AI development do so bc they ostensibly fear the "AIs" becoming too powerful, they are lending credibility to every politician who wants to gut social services by having them allocated by "AIs" that are surely "smart" and "fair".>>
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023 -
If the call for "AI safety" is couched in terms of protecting humanity from rogue AIs, it very conveniently displaces accountability away from the corporations scaling harm in the name of profits.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023
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It's frankly infuriating to read a signatory to the "AI pause" letter complaining that the statement we released from the listed authors of the Stochastic Parrots paper somehow squandered the "opportunity" created by they "AI pause" letter in the first place.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023
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Yes, we need regulation. But as we said: "We should focus on the very real and very present exploitative practices of the companies claiming to build them, who are rapidly centralizing power and increasing social inequities."https://t.co/YsuDm8AHUs
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023 -
A bunch of AI researchers high on their own supply wrote a ridiculous letter and got famous people including a certain billionaire man-child to sign, and in the process misappropriated our work. So we speak up and somehow we're at fault? I think NOT.
— @emilymbender@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@emilymbender) April 3, 2023