Comment by Chance-Device
2 days ago
I like the idea of pacing the frontier, but while we’re talking about restrictions, I like restrictions of another sort more. Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances.
The chance of getting broad agreement on “pacing” is fairly low, meaning that all of this likely won’t happen and the race will continue. However, even in the unlikely event that the frontier does get paced, all this does is slow down the economic displacement and not by very much.
If the socially beneficial goals of AI are to make fundamental advancement in medicine and science, then restrict the use of AI to those purposes.
Don’t use AI to replace every job, from graphic designer to accountant to software developer. Place legal restrictions on (at least) large companies such that they may not use AI to replace human labor in this way.
The pitch for AI is always such that everyone’s living standards are increased, yet the actual actions we see are aimed squarely at reducing them. How about the labs put their money where their mouth is and stop trying to replace all human labor, and actually concentrate on the things they claim to care about? And how about introducing legislation to enforce that?
This probably has less chance of happening than pacing the frontier, but it’s the kind of pacing that most people would actually want to see.
> Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances.
Regulate what, exactly?
Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules.
There’s a theoretical version where all the countries in the world join hands and agree not to compete with each other, but that’s so impractical that I don’t find it interesting to discuss.
> Place legal restrictions on (at least) large companies such that they may not use AI to replace human labor in this way.
So small companies get the advantage, but large companies don’t? And large companies in other countries also get the advantage?
This is a highly precise way for a country to take out all of their large companies. What would actually happen is that every large company would start the process of relocating to another country right away, accelerating job losses rather than slowing them.
You start from incorrect premises by presupposing agreed-upon rules would never work anyway.
"Competition" only makes sense within a pre-mediated set of constrains. Rules all competitors agree to.
Workable rules are a difficult problem, that doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile to come up with them.
> You start from incorrect premises by presupposing agreed-upon rules would never work anyway.
The rules would never work on a global economy.
If you think the entire world is going to shake hands and agree not to let their companies use a competitive advantage, that’s not a conversation I’m interested in having. It’s a fantasy.
If you think it’s that easy to get all competitors in a global economy to agree to a set of rules, maybe start with nuclear disarmament?
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The greater the competitive advantage, the greater the incentive to "cheat" the rules.
I am highly skeptical everyone will play by the rules, even if you could get people to agree on paper.
The difference between something like "unlicensed AI training" and, e.g, Nuclear weapon non-proliferation is that nukes are realistically only a deterrence against invasion. There are no economic benefits to having them in a stockpile. They're hard to make, and the manufacturing and testing steps are pretty obvious to an observer.
This is opposed to AI training in a data center that might host remote-stream video games, hospital infrastructure, protein folding, etc. How will we be able to police that in any realistic fashion? Will China or the US allow unfettered visibility into all data centers data streams to outsiders?
And again, the incentives: Imagine having Astra v3 or Opus 8 while everyone else is stuck with a lobotomized version of GPT 4o.
What about the military applications? The weapon of the future is autonomous drone swarms. If I'm a superpower, I'm pouring hundreds of billions into that.
About the only realistic way this is going to work is if we are able to solve alignment in a way that doesn't significantly hinder AI development. If it imposes even, say, a 20% handicap, people will ignore it.
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On competition between countries: you’re imagining the world economy as working in the same way pre and post AGI, I doubt it will work the same way at all.
There is not a single country nor trading block on Earth who is going to allow some AI dominant superpower to ravage them. The idea that America or China wins an economic game here is absurd, what happens instead is that trade barriers go up hard and the world fragments into blocks that tolerate AI to differing levels. Unevenly distributed AGI kills globalism the next day.
For the rest of your reply you ignore the “at least” part in that sentence, and also seem to expect a detailed policy proposal. The details can be worked out; there is some reasonable compromise between what activities AI can and cannot be used for, and what level of capability can be deployed where.
More broadly, you seem to believe in a just world fallacy of unregulated capitalism being an inherent good. It isn’t, and regulations exist even in the United States, so this unregulated state doesn’t exist now.
Moreover, regulations and redistribution are stronger elsewhere in the developed world, and there is a strong argument to be made that the lack of these in the US, and the gap between rich and poor that it causes, is responsible for more suffering than having more of these things outside of it.
I don't think this adds up. The AGI blocks will have AGI kill bots and those that don't won't have a choice about what they will or will not allow.
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> world join hands and agree not to compete with each other
We kinda do for other areas.
Largely the world agrees not to pirate software, tv, other IP.
THe issue of joblessness is well understood in china, they know that jobless people means a drop in living standards, a drop in living standards means the "contract" has failed.
So it makes sense that countries like america and the constituents of the EU understand that loosing 10% of all jobs in a few years is going to be a massive dick punch.
I also I think that finally the historians and economic types havae got through to the dipshit billionaire that they only have money because the plebs are spending money. If the plebs are unemployed and unemployable, they (the billionaires) are going to be lynched.
> If the plebs are unemployed and unemployable, they (the billionaires) are going to be lynched.
Hence the robot dogs
> Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules.
Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs.
What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into?
Just as with H1B visas, you restrict usage. For example, don't allow AI to replace any job that pays under $250K.
If foreign countries make things cheaper, just as China is making EVs that cost a fraction of a Tesla, then slap tariffs on them.
A government should be primarily concerned about the people it represents, not about the profitability of the companies who are lobbying/bribing it.
Jobs are going to evolve because of AI. Some jobs will be automated. New jobs will be created. It's like saying we should have never created car factories and automated much of it because we should think of the horse handlers and maintainers.
There will still be a market for "trust". And its customers will never trust the machines. And within that market a lot of new startups will emerge for those who actually get to work and seize opportunities rather than lament a bygone era.
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> Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs.
I have some bad news for you if you bought into the idea that the tariffs were good for domestic jobs and the economy.
> What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into?
This is the definition of a false dichotomy, and you also ignored (or missed) the point completely.
I did not make an argument out of “free market doctrine”. I explained the second order effects that would provide a net reduction in jobs in this country.
My wife’s company is going through this right now. H1Bs are expensive and unpredictable, so the solution is to relocate more of the operations outside of the country and build up those offices.
Failure to understand second order effects and international economies is pervasive in these arguments for heavy regulations. You can do a lot to hold back your country’s companies to force them to pay for employees they don’t need and those few employees benefit for a while, but it collapses when those companies stop hiring in the regulated countries and resume hiring where they can actually operate a business. If you try to regulate them from doing it anywhere, you’ve given their competitors a wonderful gift to come destroy the company completely. Then they’re not making any jobs for anyone.
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Tariffs need to be credibly perceived as more or less permanent in whatever sector you're targeting for businesses to invest the large amounts of capital needed to reshore manufacturing.
Which is one of the main reasons Trump's arbitrary tariffs are ineffective policy, businesses see his capricious approach to tinkering with tariffs on a daily basis and instead make a rational decision to eat the costs under the assumption they are temporary.
Because he may change his mind in a week, SCOTUS may strike them down, Democrats win budgetary leverage in Congress, the right bribe gets paid for an exemption, etc. He could have enshrined them into legislation with the GOP's majority but politically they don't have enough support even within their own party, making the whole tariff saga pretty much pointless and self-defeating for any kind of long term restructuring of the US economy.
Whenever someone talks about regulation, I always have the same question: How do you enforce it? How do you keep companies from using the replaced talent as a seat warmer? Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work.
Legislating against using AI to replace employees could create an unevenly distributed basic income. The idea of limiting AI to socially beneficial efforts is appealing, but I keep coming back to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Cool stuff was developed when you gave smart people a playground. Maybe the question should be: How do we give AI a playground and see what it comes up with? Although that could set us up with a situation like in the story Dragon's Egg.
> How do you keep companies from using the replaced talent as a seat warmer? Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work.
I don’t think the proponents of these ideas care about who does the work. They see it as protection for specific jobs. Basically a jobs program with the costs forced on to large corporations.
As you said, it becomes a great gift to the few people lucky enough (or more usually, with enough nepotistic connections) to get those easy street jobs. It would not help everyone else in the economy.
It would also accelerate moving jobs overseas. Any company that regulates productivity that far downward would be crazy to continue doing automatable work in that country. It just gets moved to foreign offices where they can use AI. There are regulatory maximalists who say we’ll just regulate that, too, but then the whole company relocates to another country. Then some want to try to regulate that, and so on ad infinitum but it’s all layers of holding back your domestic companies so their international competitors can eat their lunch.
Earth isn't infinite.
You can and should engage in international regulation, as that is the only way to solve international problems.
The idea, capitalism would somehow lead to an ideal world all by itself is demonstrably wrong.
I feel like the contra answer to “how do you enforce it” is like- imperfectly but we can do stuff.
Like we can just do stuff. We can fine companies, take away licenses. We are capable!
But I also think - I’m not trying to be too negative here because certainly we should be investing in scientists and other discoveries, but early tech - xerox park, googles 20 percent time. They were playing in an extremely immature space.
You could throw 20 ideas at a wall and create a billion dollar business.
We should do what you’re saying but we should also build institutions and maybe also limit the extent to which we’re building Elysium. If we can build AI models that rival human intelligence we can create laws to protect its dignity.
> Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work.
You're so close to describing a Universal Basic Income...
It's all about wanting to preserve the status quo, complete with all the suffering and strife, because change is scary and uncomfortable.
Add in the sincere American belief that everyone else is beneath them, and you get the version where they believe even developing countries must accept kneecaping their development so American corporatism doesn't collapse.
Just a reality check. They can absolutely do it.
Altman or Dario will donate some money to Trump, get cozy with the Department of War and make up a bullshit excuse why Open Source needs to be eliminated.
All access to this technology will be gatekept by a bunch of nasty people who want to eliminate your job as a knowledge worker and put everything behind a subscription.
> Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances.
Indeed, and the same logic applies as to why allowing companies to replace too many worker's by H1B holders is a bad idea (which equally applies to allowing companies to replace domestic jobs by offshoring).
If you don't hire people, who pay taxes, and take what's left to buy stuff and keep the economy going, then how DOES the economy keep going?
I guess Amodei sees us all on UBI, aka food stamps, so at least the farmers will be selling something, but is OpenAI going to be accepting food stamps to pay for ChatGPT subscriptions? Tesla better be selling it's robots real cheap if it is planning on selling them to people that only have UBI as an income.
You just invented the job equivalent of rent control, and all the problems that ensue from it.
> I like restrictions of another sort more. Namely, restricting the use of AI in corporate environments so that it does not destroy the economy as it advances.
Careful, you’re making too much sense. The big model providers would much rather the ball be in their court. “Deceleration” meaning Anthropic and OpenAI offer less capabilities for more money in service of “protecting humanity from extinction” rather than penny pinching. A lot of “AI research” coming out of these “labs” (increasingly enterprise) seems to be more driven by a cost benefit analysis from suits rather than genuine contributions to the field. I think the last true innovation was the idea of using doom and ending the human race as a marketing gimmick, which strangely seems to have worked in setting the narrative and captivating the sci-fi imaginations of journalists and techies alike.
I think Dario is writing with much of these things in mind, but using this as a specific framed opportunity to enable a better interim and long-term outcome for this planet with us still on it. When the internal motives for Dario are fully shared on the other side of the hill, I think we will find his writing to be more about influencing and shaping policy to steer the world in the best way possible within his ability, control, and knowledge. It’s a commonly held believe with the effective altruism community, which Anthropic team was formed under, to use the policy levers to positively influence the world. If I read this latest writing from Dario through that lens, there are deeper concerns with the AI tooling that go well beyond what’s noted in this singular post and are likely the motivations for re-attempting a slowdown or pacing. I too generally agree with for many reasons like allowing the young OpenAI engineers to make mistakes like the Hugging Face incident in July and put better processes in place (ie where is your decent multi-level fencing controls and harness best practices when disabling security features and where is your energy/spend limits for achieving the mission objective in scope and not warming the world for no reason!) and more time to engineer and deploy better hardware to not warm the world instead of burning through fossil fuels since now data centers in the US can isolate pollution from the grid to exempt themselves from federal regulation.
Only token cost can slow down the pace of replacement. If Anthropic were to stop all training and allocate 100% of capacity to inference, will this increase or decrease usage cost? If (for example) Fable came down to the cost of Sonnet, corporations will absolutely jam in the gas pedal.
Doesn't it just incentive the business to be outcompeted by one that uses ai more--unless the consumer is choosing based on morals
There are serious people trying to figure out what that looks like. Check out the recent Freakonomics episode with Gina Raimondo.
> stop trying to replace all human labor
A lot of companies trying to replace human labor with AI are either lying (theyre laying off because they over hired and need to correct) or will regret it.
That being said, what's the difference between a company that replaces 5 people with AI and a company who would have otherwise had 5 job openings, but decided to delegate to AI?
Personally, I-d rather be able to reap the economic benefits of AI by having a 4 day workweek. Instead of using AI to replace 1 FTE, use AI to offload 8h of work a day for 5 FTEs.
Of course, this is probably more outlandish than your idea.
(Or, we could just make basic income a thing and no one has to worry about their basic needs, but if they want the new iPhone Duo or a Rivian or other luxuries, they can work for it, but that idea is probably most outlandish of all)
The whole point of technology is to replace work that we don't want to do. You are attacking the chief reason why people use technology in the first place.
Additionally, unemployment levels are perfectly fine. Clearly this mass unemployment prediction isn't happening yet.
You should probably look closer at unemployment numbers in IT vs other spaces. Gains elsewhere are making up for IT losses, but it's a safe bet the people losing their tech jobs aren't career shifting into healthcare and hospitality roles in large numbers.
> but it's a safe bet the people losing their tech jobs aren't career shifting into healthcare and hospitality roles
That is because they can allow themselves to do nothing (for some time). Tech was a very high‑paying type of jobs, so workers could afford not to move into lower‑paid sectors, living on the savings they had accumulated beforehand.
In a couple of years market will correct tech-salaries and people will have spent their savings and then there will be your career shifting into healthcare and hospitality roles in large numbers.
Work like writing blogs and drawing pictures?
Yes, there are many parts of those things that some people want to be automated. I and many others are able to execute on our creative vision much fasters and more effectively thanks to automation of that work.
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That's not really the point of technology at all. It was at one point perhaps with simple tools, but now it's more like "find a more efficient way to replace work in the short-term to get an advantage over others". The goal of our development has ceased to be improving life. Now it's just surviving in the market.
People don't use technology to free up their time any more. They use it because technology keeps making life more complicated and tiresome and new tech is a short-term amelioration to that until that too increases the complexity of life some more.
This is a call to end capitalism. Its completely impossible to do what you suggest with the incentives of capitalism.
Actually capitalism kind of has to end further down this road if we don't want to cede control completely to super intelligent ais and their direct "owners".
Market equilibrium probably tends to give 100% resource to ai building bc it leads to most returns and all human labor goes to zero.
Caveat I know nothing about economics lol--but this is my uninformed opinion.
Forget capitalism. This is a call to end the basic right of people to multiply matrices
You can "pace" yourself like that if you want. Don't shove your idiotic self-destructive ideas on to others. If you were president during invention of cars, we'd still be horse riding everywhere.
>Don’t use AI to replace every job, from graphic designer to accountant to software developer. Place legal restrictions on (at least) large companies such that they may not use AI to replace human labor in this way.
It's not just "companies". Even if the company does nothing, enterprising employees are going to use LLMs to magnify their productivity, which will may reduce the company's need to hire more employees. And except in extremely locked down environments, there's absolutely no way to stop an employee using some open source LLMs to multiply their productivity.
Yes, but that employee might use that increased productivity to do the stuff that's always advertised as the benefits of automation: Allocate more time to tasks that usually don't get it - or: go home earlier and spend more time with friends and family.
> Don’t use AI to replace every job, from graphic designer to accountant to software developer. Place legal restrictions on (at least) large companies such that they may not use AI to replace human labor in this way.
AI is taking all of our jobs. We need to control the means, nay, the pace of production. We should build some kind of barrier, not of concrete and cement but also of the regulatory variety, to stop these agents from coming into our special white color cubicles. It's the only way.