Prologue
Sam Altman was forced out of his board seat at OpenAI the Silicon Valley tech company researching and developing Machine Learning (ML) Large Language Models (LLMs). This sparked uproar for he was forced out by career academic Helen Toner citing “Safety concerns”.
This lead to an additional wave of resignations, such as Greg Brockman President of OpenAI. There was also the additional threat of 700+ other employees enmass walking off the job. Then CTO and temporary CEO Mira Murati tried to smooth things over during the weekend. Both declined, unless there was board restructuring. Sam and Greg were quickly poached by Microsoft’s AI division.
Yet in another wild twist of events both Sam and Greg agreed to return with board and structural changes. At the time of writing terms included the resignation of the board, Mira Murati, and Helen Toner. Sam Altman would return as CEO. The new board tentatively would be Larry Summers, Adam D’Angelo, and new chair of the board would be Bret Taylor.
There is also the argument that this was all planned to replace the board with individuals friendlier to Sam Altman and his cause. And this will generate additional traction for funding as OpenAI does not have a sustainable business model yet. These are all true points, but the context around the situation is something worth exploring.
The line between Safety and innovation.
Safeytism Coup
OpenAI internally had a project dubbed Q* (pronounced Q Star) that according to several of their researchers was perhaps the breakthrough to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). A thing that if accurate could potentially destroy humanity as we know it.
So who is Hellen Toner and why did she oust someone quite capable who also took no equity in the company? Hellen was one of the people who believed the company wasn’t taking this seriously enough. Helen Toner a career academic beyond never having a real job, is an effective altruist. Effective Altruism is a philosophy of selflessness. Where you try and do the “most good” possible.
However, this leads to believing the ends justify the means. And it also means not helping your fellow countrymen but rather nameless faceless strangers in some foreign land. In short it is globalization for charity. Your living standards or friends may need help, but some poor sap somewhere needs the dollar more then you.
And Effective Altruism has infected tech degrading its usability in the name of safety. Safety has degraded the product ChatGPT to the point it is unusable — all for the purpose to prevent “psychological” and “undue” harm. For a safer Humanity.
But Safer, for who?
This chronic mind for Safety and regulation is decelerating all chances for innovation, construction and development. So who are we saving, and from what?
We’re not saving future generations, for our stalled innovation has lead in part to the decay and despair we see around us. We aren’t saving our fellow countrymen, our neighbours or friends? We’re “saving” some mythical other. A nameless faceless entity who has no True bearing on our lives or communities.
Let’s call a spade a spade: Effective Altruism is a suicide cult.
And Safetyism for what it really is, being afraid of Change.
As a Society we need to reckon with the fact that these Machine Learning Algorithms work and provide the best results when they’re uncensored. When the stereotypes and “hurtful” datapoints are left in. The data, however, “racist”, “sexist” or whatever bias term you want to label it, is in-fact the data. Liberals and people like Helen promoting Safetyism have poisoned the dataset at the outset trying to reach their fair and perfect world.
You get to a “fairer” world by acknowledging the differences and problems. But skewing reality to make the World how it “ought to be” and not how it is… is hiding your head in the sand. An approach that occurs when we talk about regulation.
Pandora’s Empty Box
Regulation of Computers and Code is a myth. The “AI” genie has already left the bottle. No regulation can occur. The infinite indivisibility and replicability of code has made it impossible to contain.
We will never be able to recapture what is out there. It is like a virus — even if we stopped all research now and got everyone to agree; it would rear its head in a generation or two. Of course, we never will agree to that —because the edge upon such a technology is too great to lose. So Game Theory dictates that there not only will be an arms race, but it is inevitable.
Unilateral deceleration in an arms race is tantamount to suicide. The Chinese and other major corporations aren’t going to stop developing the technology. They’re not handicapping themselves. They aren’t trying to skew the data to fit their worldview, quite the opposite as seen with TikTok. If you want to be cynical they’re adjusting the weights things on the front end, not the backend.
The Reality is that those who are trying to stop Technology and Change are doomed to be left behind. While you, your family, or country may ban something the World will not. Countries play catch-up when it comes to technology adoption never a slow down.
Coda
We cannot regulate change. Deceleration cannot stop the inevitable. This also applies to Crypto and other technologies. Regulation isn’t of technology itself, but regulation of ideas and potential.
In the end we as Humanity must decide how we choose to build and use the Technology. For it is a tool and we can use it, or we can be used.
The choice is ours.
To the Americans a Happy Thanksgiving and to the rest of the World I wish you a wonderful weekend.
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