Comment by ftxbro
3 years ago
Some of these replies are quibbling about percents of investment, but the elephant in the room is that the government and military and intelligence agencies have almost surely become involved by this point, and they must be providing some amounts of dark investment somehow at minimum. At maximum it's a new Manhattan-scale project.
You can go down the rabbit hole if you want, but if you want only the most superficial glimpse of it then consider that OpenAI board member Will Hurd was a CIA undercover agent and also a representative in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and also he is a trustee of In-Q-Tel which is the private investment arm of the CIA.
It's funny that you think the US military (or any military for that matter) is anywhere as competent as a modern tech company (which ALSO have their own incompetence problems).
Buddy, these guys are so far behind the times, they're constantly playing catch-up from 10-20 years ago.
People with corporate experience can advise governments.
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, led a multi-year project to develop a national AI strategy, https://www.nscai.gov/
> The Final Report presents the NSCAI’s strategy for winning the artificial intelligence era. The 16 chapters explain the steps the United States must take to responsibly use AI for national security and defense, defend against AI threats, and promote AI innovation. The accompanying Blueprints for Action provide detailed plans for the U.S. Government to implement the recommendations.
Obviously defence contractors are having a field day with all the budgets, it's not a surprise that made Palmer Luckey a billionaire. Pretty sure there are a ton of 'investments' in all kinds of defensive AI programs. You can bet the NSA has a lot of stuff that works very, very well. I mean there is a reason they are sitting on a chest full of zero-days or can crack a lot of everyday encryption schemes.
Also, consider the situation in which another state is putting significant resources into a similar project. Would it not follow that it is in the best interest of the U.S. to then fund and support OpenAI? The strategic calculus becomes almost trivial if we presume that "AI" really is going to be as transformative and "possible" as we imagine it being. It's why the Manhattan Project analogy works so well.
What is it about AI that makes people fall for conspiracy theories? If the US wants to reassure that AI will be regulated it wouldn't do it in secret. The ban on AI would be identical to a ban on guided munitions. Building a hobby rocket that uses GPS guidance for landing is illegal as it could be converted into a weapon. This is harder to enforce than AI but the regulation is highly successful.
what is the conspiracy theory?