The paper explains absolutely everything as if it was a tutorial "how to made your own modern agentic LLM". They even tell how they made their dataset. <a href="https://aleph-alpha.com/downloads/tech-report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://aleph-alpha.com/downloads/tech-report.pdf ; It's the first time I see this level of openness.
Be cautious what you wish for. Tools don't tell you what to do with them.
Open source LLMs "democratize" access to the "intelligence booster" that is AI. But while that has several benefits, it also has several downsides.
Humanity has the serious problem of being underdeveloped in the "spiritual" department. Ethics is often considered some sort of lifestyle choice, but it's actually the difference between order and chaos in a society.
Everybody being able to do anything means somebody will be able to do something you don't like. At an arbitrary scale.
The main thing that bugs me about the risks discussion around AI is the lack of specificity. Commenters here have a good grasp of the risks around finding vulnerabilities faster than they can be patched. That's good and it matches the applicability of LLMs to coding.
But the applicability and the ROI of LLMs for other use cases than coding is a lot squishier. Also correspondingly the risks are unspecific.
As for what to do, ethical disclosure of vulnerabilities provided a good framework for disclosing software vulnerabilities discovered with the assistance of LLMs. What is going to be novel and calls for our spiritual development in other domains?
You're right, people weirdly lack imagination on what "higher intelligence" (minus ethics) actually affords you, let's have a look:
What do average people currently want? They're taught, the most important thing was being rich. So they will ask their AI to make them rich. Most real life ways to get there are "sketchy" to say the least, usually downright unethical and anti-social, but US society turns a blind eye when the "Wolf of Wall Street" comes out on top and the schemes don't easily fit into average people's abilities of moral judgement.
-> Large parts of US society suddenly engaging in all kinds of "semi-legal/hyper-illegal" fraud schemes, at the expense of already saturated environmental and societal resilience. Guaranteed collapse.
Or, let's get rid of those pesky neighbors/wrong-colored people/annoying opinions? Again, "legal" is a pretty squishy concept and only really applies when you don't have the legal expertise to get around it. Now you can.
Or, look at the basics: what is "real"? You only "know" because you trust certain people and institutions. Generative AI can help with that /s.
It's not only about "building weapons of mass destruction". It's about doing the same shit as usual, but a thousand times faster/amplified. Look up poly-/metacrisis for starters. Going faster with AI when there's a wall in front of you isn't the best idea.
Whenever classic p(doom) sentiments are explained through a text with obvious LLM markers, I wonder whether I am looking at a superhuman persuasion attempt.
..or maybe the commenter did look at superhuman persuasion long enough to believe it would be best to channel those ever the same fear fantasies from the LLM through their account to the reader.
On a more serious note, just look at the doom premises here: "Large parts of US society suddenly going criminal" is from the movie "The Purge", I think. It is fiction.
The idea that generative AI takes away our ability to find out reality. ... I don't know. People write about that a lot, but it still seems very far fetched.
Maybe through some terminally online overconsumption, like with social media? I wouldn't know.
With new AI capabilities we will have to adjust, I am sure. Media, science, education and law are changing very visibly right now. Those p(doom) narrations just seem to be pre-IPO hype though.
It is just so so dangerous. That is why they want to go public and only want to care about optimizing for the next quarter ...right before breaking into AGI. /s
miellaby · · focus · HN ↗
ofjcihen · · focus · HN ↗
It’s seemed crazy to me that anyone thought these could stay closed or even SHOULD be closed source.
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
Open source LLMs "democratize" access to the "intelligence booster" that is AI. But while that has several benefits, it also has several downsides.
Humanity has the serious problem of being underdeveloped in the "spiritual" department. Ethics is often considered some sort of lifestyle choice, but it's actually the difference between order and chaos in a society.
Everybody being able to do anything means somebody will be able to do something you don't like. At an arbitrary scale.
Zigurd · · focus · HN ↗
But the applicability and the ROI of LLMs for other use cases than coding is a lot squishier. Also correspondingly the risks are unspecific.
As for what to do, ethical disclosure of vulnerabilities provided a good framework for disclosing software vulnerabilities discovered with the assistance of LLMs. What is going to be novel and calls for our spiritual development in other domains?
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
What do average people currently want? They're taught, the most important thing was being rich. So they will ask their AI to make them rich. Most real life ways to get there are "sketchy" to say the least, usually downright unethical and anti-social, but US society turns a blind eye when the "Wolf of Wall Street" comes out on top and the schemes don't easily fit into average people's abilities of moral judgement.
-> Large parts of US society suddenly engaging in all kinds of "semi-legal/hyper-illegal" fraud schemes, at the expense of already saturated environmental and societal resilience. Guaranteed collapse.
Or, let's get rid of those pesky neighbors/wrong-colored people/annoying opinions? Again, "legal" is a pretty squishy concept and only really applies when you don't have the legal expertise to get around it. Now you can.
Or, look at the basics: what is "real"? You only "know" because you trust certain people and institutions. Generative AI can help with that /s.
It's not only about "building weapons of mass destruction". It's about doing the same shit as usual, but a thousand times faster/amplified. Look up poly-/metacrisis for starters. Going faster with AI when there's a wall in front of you isn't the best idea.
fwn · · focus · HN ↗
..or maybe the commenter did look at superhuman persuasion long enough to believe it would be best to channel those ever the same fear fantasies from the LLM through their account to the reader.
On a more serious note, just look at the doom premises here: "Large parts of US society suddenly going criminal" is from the movie "The Purge", I think. It is fiction.
The idea that generative AI takes away our ability to find out reality. ... I don't know. People write about that a lot, but it still seems very far fetched.
Maybe through some terminally online overconsumption, like with social media? I wouldn't know.
With new AI capabilities we will have to adjust, I am sure. Media, science, education and law are changing very visibly right now. Those p(doom) narrations just seem to be pre-IPO hype though.
It is just so so dangerous. That is why they want to go public and only want to care about optimizing for the next quarter ...right before breaking into AGI. /s