We have invented a new tool that can cause great harm. Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others? Do you not own any power tools?

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miyoji 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see value in promulgating safety guidelines for power tools, sure.

There's another comment comparing LLMs to shovels, and I think both that and the power tool comparison miss the mark quite a bit. LLMs are a social technology, and the social equivalent of getting your hand cut off doesn't hurt immediately in the way that cutting your actual hand off would. It's more like social media, or cigarettes, or gambling. You can be warned about the dangers, you can see the shells of wrecked human beings who regret using these technologies, but it doesn't work on our stupid monkey brains. Because the pain of the mistake is too loosely connected to the moment of error. We are bad at learning in situations where rewards are immediate and consequences are delayed, and warnings don't do much.

I guess what I'm really saying is that these safety guidelines are not nearly enough to keep us safe from the dangers of AI that they're meant to prevent.

	▲	Terr_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> LLMs are social technology [...] cigarettes, or gambling. I agree with the thrust of your argument, a minor wording-quibble: LLM's are a falsely-social technology, in the sense that casinos are a false-prosperity technology and cocaine is a false-happiness technology. It exploits the desire without really being the thing.

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ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think in order for "AI safety" to be achievable and effective, we need to have a shared agreement on what "safety" means. Recently, the word has been overloaded to mean all sorts of things and used to justify run-of-the-mill censorship (nothing to do with safety).

Safety should go back to being narrowly defined in terms of reducing / preventing physical injury. Safety is not "don't use swear words." Safety is not "don't violate patents." Safety is not "don't talk about suicide." Safety is not "don't mention politics I don't like." As long as we keep broadly defining it, we're never going to agree on it, and it won't be implementable.

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wolttam 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Of course there is value in promulgating safety *guidelines*.

But we cannot guarantee those guidelines to always be followed.

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cobbzilla 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, and we can’t guarantee you’ll read the safety instructions that came with your chainsaw. That’s orthogonal to the questions of whether those instructions should exist, whether “power tool safety” concepts should ever be promoted in society, and who’s ultimately responsible for the use of a tool.

Absolving humans of all responsibility for the negative consequences of their own AI misuse seems to the strike the wrong balance for a healthy culture.

	▲	wolttam 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Of course there is value in promulgating safety guidelines. I don't think we disagree.

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bjt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Guidelines on their own probably won't be taken too seriously.

But other things will:

- Liability rules

- Regulations that you get audited on (esp. for companies already heavily regulated, like banks, credit agencies, defense contractors, etc)

If you get the legal responsibility part right, then the education part flows from that naturally.

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52-6F-62 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Notwithstanding that the guidelines will even be applicable in the quiet versions that get deployed when you aren't looking. It's a constant moving target, and none of the fanboys will even acknowledge the lack of discipline in it all. It's fucking mad. And I say this as one who can see utility in the tools. But not when they are constantly shifting their functionality and behaviour.

One day everything works brilliantly, the models are conservative with changes and actions and somehow nail exactly what you were thinking. The next day it rewrites your entire API, deploys the changes and erases your database.

If only there was intellectual honesty in it all, but money talks.

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marcosdumay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Do you see any value whatsoever in promulgating safety guidelines for humans to use the tool without hurting themselves or others?

Are all the tool users required to train your safety guidelines and use it in a context that reminds them they are responsible for following them?

Because if no, then no the guidelines are useless and are just an excuse to push blame from the toolmakers to the users.