Comment by ivraatiems
3 months ago
Whether or not Anthropic is right about what AI can accomplish, whether these performance gains are real or not, their moral stance here is absolutely hideous to me.
"We must blast forwards into making this dangerous thing because if we don't, someone else surely will," is a coward's argument.
If you believe it is dangerous, you should be dedicating yourself to STOPPING others from making it, not making it first! There's a reason disarmament has been so important in nuclear politics! It's not because people think nukes are a great idea!
In fact, that kind of thinking is exactly what keeps nukes dangerous!
If they themselves buy what they're selling, they should shut the whole thing down. Fortunately, I don't think they do, and neither do I, yet.
> If you believe it is dangerous, you should be dedicating yourself to STOPPING others from making it
I don't think anyone has been more successful in promulgating AI safety
There are groups like MIRI who tried what you're sugesting, where they make no AI and just push for AI regs, and they have been relatively much less successful
Disarmament failed though? Global zero initiatives for nuclear weapons stalled out exactly because the risk of someone else cheating is too great. If everyone gets rid of their nuclear weapons and then someone cheats and creates them in secret they can use their nuclear weapons to prevent anyone else from catching up.
Also Ukraine is not a great advert for giving up your nukes.
How do you stop others from making and training a program?
By threatening to nuke their datacenters and chip fabs, for instance.
And, if you don't want to start a war?
You can tell what kind of discussion this is by the fact that this question has to be asked.
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Good thing the USA didn't listen to you. We'd be under Nazi or USSR thumb if they got the bomb first
Good thing the MAUD Committee didn't listen and repeatedly pushed the US who just wanted to make power with atomic piles and didn't even think it was possible to make a weapon.
Mind you, there was no complete working device until after the Nazi's surrendered, so that's a moot point - and the USSR only had their program because of various Europeans on the US project passing their work (and others) back to the USSR ... making that second claim moot.
> there was no complete working device until after the Nazi's surrendered
Isn't an argument. If the Nazi has gotten it first they'd have used it and likely won. Others would have surrendered in the face of the overwhelming power.
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