I think the author is missing the point. A company cannot unilaterally pace the frontier -- they'll just be left behind. It requires coordination across all actors who are at or near the frontier.
Even if the leading US labs could agree amongst themselves to a coordinated slowdown (and this would likely run afoul of antitrust law), you still have Chinese labs who will catch up to the frontier eventually. To solve this, you'd need some sort of international agreement.
That's why Dario and others are saying loudly that we should pace the frontier in hopes that our political leaders will take up the issue and do something about it. We'll see if that happens...
Exactly. "Game Theory" keeps coming up in these threads, yet it doesn't seem like anybody knows how it actually applies to this situation.
Let Anthropic pace themselves without any sort of enforcement or even agreement for others to pace themselves, too. Then Anthropic is gone, overnight, and we're back to square one, except now there's even more centralization of power and authority.
These companies are literally asking for governments to regulate them specifically because they need something stronger than just a couple of Tweets from some CEOs loosely agreeing to ambiguous terms.
1) They genuinely want (and believe it is actually possible to achieve) an international agreement and governing body to “pace” AI development — and believe that governing body will be successful in doing so.
or
2) They see an opportunity for regulatory capture that grants them a stronger incumbent position and control over future AI regulation.
The US has 14 ballistic missile submarines, and just one of those submarines has sufficient firepower to decimate an entire continent.
… and those submarines only represent about half of our deployed nuclear arsenal.
We only agreed to nuclear arms constraints that left us with civilization-destroying capability, preserved our ability to keep improving and modernizing that arsenal, and locked out non-nuclear powers from development (and didn’t fully succeed at that).
Does that seem like a successful analogous example to you?
If anything, it’s a much better analogy for regulatory capture and incumbent entrenchment, not successful “pacing” of dangerous technology.
jonas21 · · focus · HN ↗
Even if the leading US labs could agree amongst themselves to a coordinated slowdown (and this would likely run afoul of antitrust law), you still have Chinese labs who will catch up to the frontier eventually. To solve this, you'd need some sort of international agreement.
That's why Dario and others are saying loudly that we should pace the frontier in hopes that our political leaders will take up the issue and do something about it. We'll see if that happens...
nater5000 · · focus · HN ↗
Let Anthropic pace themselves without any sort of enforcement or even agreement for others to pace themselves, too. Then Anthropic is gone, overnight, and we're back to square one, except now there's even more centralization of power and authority.
These companies are literally asking for governments to regulate them specifically because they need something stronger than just a couple of Tweets from some CEOs loosely agreeing to ambiguous terms.
frumplestlatz · · focus · HN ↗
1) They genuinely want (and believe it is actually possible to achieve) an international agreement and governing body to “pace” AI development — and believe that governing body will be successful in doing so.
or
2) They see an opportunity for regulatory capture that grants them a stronger incumbent position and control over future AI regulation.
ryeights · · focus · HN ↗
frumplestlatz · · focus · HN ↗
… and those submarines only represent about half of our deployed nuclear arsenal.
We only agreed to nuclear arms constraints that left us with civilization-destroying capability, preserved our ability to keep improving and modernizing that arsenal, and locked out non-nuclear powers from development (and didn’t fully succeed at that).
Does that seem like a successful analogous example to you?
If anything, it’s a much better analogy for regulatory capture and incumbent entrenchment, not successful “pacing” of dangerous technology.