Any pause will have to be a global treaty; the unfortunate reality is that we’re in an arms race now, and despite Sanders’ threats otherwise, I don’t think there is going to be much will to pause in the US while China keeps developing.

And to be clear, I think it would be every wise to pause development and, afterwards, keep the pace slow. We know how to make “AI” more capable, but we don’t know how to make it stay aligned with human goals. The technology is useful and isn’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we have to develop it as quickly as possible without regard to the real dangers it brings with it.

It’s beyond “an arms race.” AI has become a commodity that’s everywhere and it’s being used and developed by zillions of completely different groups all over the world with wildly varying use cases and completely different goals.

At this point, trying to ban it would be like trying to ban dandelions from growing.

The groups doing frontier research with the appropriate funding are few enough that a global pause would be possible, and useful.

I agree that a ban would be impossible, and counterproductive even if it were possible.

Except when you think about if a ban were actually implemented it would absolutely be pro-entrenched companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and open weight models could be banned outright, I’ve already seen well-intentioned but misguided “experts” saying exactly that, BAN open weight models and pause further development, who would that benefit directly?

Any pause will have to be a global treaty

Which is why tech CEOs love to promote it. They know it’ll never happen.

We know how to make “AI” more capable, but we don’t know how to make it stay aligned with human goals.

“Alignment” is almost entirely a myth cooked up by AI companies who want to make their word generators sound scarier than they are. There’s no such thing: the next word generator generates next word. It’s unpredictable because it’s built that way. “Hallucination” and “going rogue”, all poor terms and pathetic attempts to fearmonger and humanize, are identical functions to “working” and “aligning”.

The technology… isn’t going anywhere

The “it’s just inevitable” cliche rears its ugly head again.

Your opinion is borne from lack of knowledge about the topic you’re trying to discuss, similar to an anti-vaxxer attempting to discuss the dangers of mRNA vaccines.

Fix your lack of knowledge or don’t; that’s your call, but if you care about discussing this topic somewhat intelligently, you should probably put in some effort to understand it.

I said several things so how about you actually address them, instead of resorting to an insult and vaguely telling me to “do my research”?

Do you deny this latest wave of companies doing the exact same routine is a PR stunt, or that companies badly want regulatory capture, or what?

I meant no insult, truly. You just don’t have the minimum required knowledge to discuss this intelligently. There’s no shame in that; no one can know everything.

I can’t know the motives of anyone, but I can say it’s at least plausible that the people working on the frontier models want an excuse to slow down that doesn’t give an advantage to other countries and companies, and also doesn’t put them in the crosshairs of investors and board members.

You apparently still internalize LLMs as fancy Markov chains, which tells me that you don’t have a working grasp to discuss the topic, even at the laymen level we’re at.

These hacking events may be “PR Stunts”, but the “stunt” part would be leaving a known vulnerability as a path to the wider Internet instead of making it physically impossible to break out, not the hacking of other websites. No one credible is disputing that these models are capable of hacking.

I meant no insult

Uh-huh. You compared me to an antivaxxer , implying that people who disagree with you don’t believe in science or technology - the same reason you felt the need to throw in the “inevitability” cliche. Which I do not buy, and somebody claiming to understand the technology should never repeat.

Later, you say anyone who disagrees with you just feels “desperate” and “threatened." You’re really pulling everything from the “I am rational and you are neurotic” playbook aren’t you.

I can’t know the motives of anyone, but I can say it’s at least plausible that the people working on the frontier models want an excuse to slow down that doesn’t give an advantage to other countries and companies, and also doesn’t put them in the crosshairs of investors and board members.

It’s all the same song and dance. Dario Amodei screams “hold me back!” because he loves pretending his product is Great and Powerful.

Why do these developers never talk about real harms like the environmental damage they cause? How about the psychosis they are liable to fall into?

It’s pretty obvious they’re just doing marketing, knowingly or not. And these are smart people who should know better.

Computer science is still science. You distrust the experts in the field based on what? Something you saw on social media? Certainly not your own expertise, that much is clear.

Don’t move the goalposts. No one is claiming that “AI” doesn’t have downsides. That’s different than your original claim that they didn’t do what they appear to do.

I don’t suppose you happen to be in a field threatened by AI? In my anecdotal experience, the people that desperately want to pretend AI is all a scam are actually worried about the opposite, and their job. (A real concern I’m in no way trying to minimize.)

I can’t tell if you’re reading what I’m writing. I mention CEOs twice and you assert I’m not listening to “The Experts”.

No one is claiming that “AI” doesn’t have downsides.

You mean climate damage and psychosis?

Zero of the “experts” in your strained theory about looking for excuses to “pause” AI ever talk about them. It’s almost like they don’t want to imply their product is unworthy of all the hype, doomerism and fearmongering.

I do not consider the CEOs as experts, no.

You’re not making coherent arguments; it really is like discussing vaccines with an antivaxxer. Maybe take a step back and explain to me what your stance actually is? Bonus points if you learn just a layman’s level understanding of the technology before you post your response.

Since your first post, I’ve been challenging you to justify your thought-terminating cliches, but instead all you do is string together insults like

it really is like discussing vaccines with an antivaxxer.

and slightly less overt ones. You should retract all the personal attacks or at least retract your insincere “apology.”

And for your vague sourceless claims about “experts” need to actually provide sources. Tell me the cult leader Eliezer Yudkowsky isn’t one of your favored “experts.”

If you don’t like that comparison, I suggest you take a hard look at how you’ve approached this topic.

I will happily continue this discussion once I (and presumably you) understand what you’re actually arguing.

I don’t like your insincerity with the fake apology, and I don’t like the insincerity of refusing to back up your claims.

We can start with the simplest question, which I already asked: Do you consider Eliezer Yudkowsky to be one of your “experts”?

I don’t understand the question. Yudkowsky’s book is on my reading list, but judging by the title, I assumed it to be more on the side of restricting AI research, which best aligns with what I think (but suspiciously you refuse to clarify) your stance is.

When I said “the experts” I meant all the people working on AI at these frontier AI companies. You know, the experts?

I disagree with Yudkowsky in pretty much every way possible, and don’t know how you could conclude I agree with him if you saw anything else I posted in this thread. He’s like you, he believes AI is inevitable and wants it to be good too.

When I said “the experts” I meant all the people working on AI at these frontier AI companies

Interesting how you conflate “expert” with “employee” when determining who you trust. Do you see any conflict of interest here?

And I asked you earlier about why these “experts” never sound the alarm about the environmental or mental harms of AI. I wonder why that is… Do you think it hurts their bottom line?

I answered your non sequitur as a show of good faith. Your turn: what precisely is the stance you’re arguing here?

That AI doomerism is AI marketing.

Now I’m interested in how you conflate “expert” with “employee” when determining who you trust. Do you see any conflict of interest here?

And I asked you earlier about why these “experts” never sound the alarm about the environmental or mental harms of AI. I wonder why that is… Do you think it hurts their bottom line?

Slow down, sir or ma’am. We’ll get to your questions, I promise.

What does “AI Doomerism” mean? I am not familiar with the term.

https://ondiscourse.com/ai-doomerism-is-a-business-tactic/

Now I’m interested in how you conflate “expert” with “employee” when determining who you trust. Do you see any conflict of interest here?

And I asked you earlier about why these “experts” never sound the alarm about the environmental or mental harms of AI. I wonder why that is… Do you think it hurts their bottom line?

I know it has already been said, but even your tactics resemble anti-intellectualism. You don’t need to keep hammering the same questions; I will get to them. Calm down, there isn’t a prize at the end; there is no winner or loser. We’re just having a discussion. Breathe.

That link didn’t answer my question, so I have to ask more questions. Are you saying that AI will not (can not?) be a threat to humanity, ever? And is the rationale for that conclusion because you don’t think AI actually works?

Do you really think that your insults are less insulting if you follow them up with condescension? If you refuse to answer my questions, just say so, instead of being a douchebag.

I answered you twice, “in good faith” as you like to say, and it’s clear that’s something you’re not here in.

You haven’t answered my questions, hence why I still have questions. I promise you that, even if it’s the last comment I make to you, I will answer your questions. They’re not the gotcha you apparently believe them to be and are essentially a waste of time to answer, but they appear super important so I will get to them.

First I want to understand your stance. All I’ve got now is that a blog said AI isn’t actually dangerous, and you concur. Why do you think this?

Calm down, there isn’t a prize at the end; there is no winner or loser. We’re just having a discussion. Breathe.

You started this off claiming that this person is equivalent to an antivaxxer. You’ve repeatedly dismissed their claims/thoughts based on credentialism without demonstrating why. Now you’re telling them to calm down. I’m not even the person you’re arguing with here and I’m getting mad lol.

They are using the same playbook as antivaxxers. There’s no way around the comparison. It wasn’t meant as an insult, but as an observation. Notice they didn’t correct me, but instead indicated that it hurt their feelings.

I’m not arguing with anyone; they have not yet made a point that required more than a factual correction, or a point that was just a conspiracy theory.

You definitely shouldn’t get mad about it though, haha.

@joe @XLE "I don’t suppose you happen to be in a field threatened by AI?"

Living on Planet Earth is a good start, you arrogant little fart. Your carefully assumed air of superiority is the same as that of all the other scammers trying to sell snake oil that I've encountered over more years than you've been active, #ZeroFollowersFakeAccount

Ignoring the random personal attacks, I’m not on Mastodon like you are, I’m on Lemmy. We don’t have followers, that I am aware of.

Wow. What an awful person.

That cliche is the worst. If applied to anything else you can see how absurd it is. Like NFTs aren’t going anywhere, crime isn’t going anywhere, etc.

Except NFTs were never used to nearly even close to the same amount as AI, it had much less usecases and the one that did “catch on” was idiotic.

Crime is a symptom of a problem, not a technological advancement, apples and oranges.

AI the tool is never going away in the same way the internet is never going away. (Barring our entire civilization collapses and we lose knowledge/connectivity/life lmao)

“AI is never going away” neither did NFTs nor crime, nor anything else really. We should try to stop these awful companies from doing awful things.

I agree?

Then what’s the point of saying that line? It’s a pointless line that means to put down any solution to the problem saying “well, actually, it’ll never go away!” instead of thinking about how one could drastically reduce the harm by trying to make it go away anyways

Because the underlying problem isn’t the tool.

What is “the tool”, GenAI or ML. If you mean GenAI, then, no, GenAI is the problem

The point of the “its not going away” comment is because a shocking number of people think the solution to AI is to, I dunno, delete it.

As a technology, it is out in the world. It isn’t going away any more than electricity or the internet. So any solutions to the real problems with AI that are essentially “make it go away” are essentially nonsense. Might as well propose wishing it away with a genie.

“It’s not going away” is not equivalent to “there’s nothing we can do to solve the problems”; it just means that the solution has to be in a framework where it is implemented alongside AI.

That is a solution, make it very unappealing to use it. If it’s clearly a crime, most people don’t have the hardware to do it, and others don’t have the motivation, it’d help a lot. And again, NFTs

Most people do have the hardware to run them. Maybe not super high end ones but middle of the road ones.

Again, the solution won’t ever be “no more AI”. The solution will be regulation, social safety nets, taxation, etc.

They are crimes, they stole their data, and the ones people can run locally still are a part of those crime rings. Plus the ones that can run locally aren’t very good, not that the larger ones are too great either

What court case are you referring to?

What court case did I bring up?

How do you determine that a crime has been committed without a court case?

Same way we always do? look at what happened, and see that a crime happened

That breathtakingly wrong. Yikes.

Do we need to have a court case to say that all of the criminals in the files are criminals? of course not. We can see their actions, and the laws and say that they committed many many crimes.

Yes, you need a verdict from a court to know whether someone committed a crime. Is this not taught in school anymore??

You can’t just accuse someone of breaking the law and end it there. Holy hell.

you need schooling, this is like people who shout that others are breaking the first amendment not thinking that it only applies to the government. Courts determine if it’s a crime to a certain degree of certainty for the government, we are not the government. We are people who can use our eyes to see that people break the laws and have not been sued yet. it’s not magically not a crime if they aren’t sued over it.

So if someone on the internet calls you a thief and I see it, you’re a thief?

Think this through.

So in order to counter my point, you make a false equivalence. Cool. Try again.

Says the person who set up a strawman about what you imagine might say about the first amendment vs freedom of speech. lol

I’ll make this easy. An accusation is not evidence, let alone proof. That is not up for debate; it’s a fact. You can be accused of literally anything.

I tried to hold your hand and walk you there, but that clearly wasn’t working.

Would you even want it to work the way you did falsely believe it works? Do you want any allegation to be enough to label someone a criminal? Have you spent even 30 seconds considering the implications of this? Seems not.

We are not a court of law. We can see crimes happening and call them crimes. If you think that ignoring evidence is fine, that’s up to you. I personally like to look at the evidence and make conclusions, like these crimes AI companies are doing, are crimes. Did the AI companies think about for 30 seconds about how doing crimes looks like doing crimes?

If you’re not a lawyer I doubt you even know enough about the law to determine what counts as a crime, and you certainly don’t have all the evidence.

Here, I’ll toss you what should be an easy one: what crime?

Violation of copyright/piracy :P Among many many many other crimes. I’ll take the word of the US copyright office who says that it is not fair use over your word.

Make your case.

The US copyright office wrote up a pretty large paper pointing out it’s piracy.

Source?

Alignment is a real thing, though it can be a less than apt description. Mostly the goals you write out and the goals you want to happen not being the same thing. You can also have alignment issues where the dataset doesn’t match the real data in some way and the classifications break down. (I am not an AI defender I am very anti-AI)

I thought alignment was just preventing the llm from making porn or bomb recipes to avoid legal trouble

No, that would be bad, but not misaligned necessarily. That’s a different issue really. Like lets say you use ML to make an AI to play a video game and the goal is always on the right side, but after you’re done training, it’s on the left now, the AI might have not learned go the goal, but go to the right.

Order Nvidia and AMD to stop selling AI GPUs or whatever they’re called.

Which country is doing the ordering?

Arms race

Woah, we’re talking LLMs here, this is not a secret military technology. And China is very open about the developments made there - you can freely study and reverse engineer plenty of Chinese models, and see all the weights out in the open.

This whole race about them is, in my opinion, nothing but trying to pump the bubble even faster, churning the economy in the process and playing on gullible or self-interested politicians.

It’s a one participant race. They’re throwing fears about Chinese LLM because of the fact that many of their models end up being open-source, and they know if they don’t get people cemented into their models before some open-sourced Chinese alternative manages to meet(or even exceed ) their performance. No company is going to pay them money because they’re just gonna run it themselves for way less than subscription costs.

right now, they acknowledge that the non-US alternatives for the models are gaining traction and are getting pretty dang good, and that scares them, so they’ve moved over to customer lock-in hoping that the effort it would take to move from a subscription model over to one of the alternative models wouldn’t be worth it for a company. A US only pause would almost certainly leave them dead in the water.

We’re not in an arms race. That’s part of the bullshit Anthropic and like want you to believe. LLMs are not nukes. LLMs are a fad with most benefits having been to coders, presuming they were already good coders.

25 years from now we’re either going to still be in this “arms race,” or we’ll have better clarity on how the billionaire class misled us all.

Stopping development will do us more good than the harm of perusing a perpetual wealth transfer in the name of a fake arms race.

Even if it were an arms race. Slowing down means you eventually speed back up in a better direction. Why would you want to be so gun ho about what’s clearly an argument for progressing with arrogance toward the technology, because someone else might discover something first? What?

What expertise are you drawing from to come to this conclusion?

Here’s a really good podcast on the subject: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/…/id1548604447?i=10…

They discuss a lot of the same points I would, right there. The incentives of AI leaders, Chinas current position, the lies from AI companies to communities, the way their stories change, the fact that they’re the ones calling it an “arms race.”

I would alternatively ask this: what expertise claims we are in an arms race? AI companies don’t count as expertise on global arms races, in what I think is a reasonable opinion.

Do doctors and pharmaceutical companies count as experts when discussing vaccines?

There are several problems here. If you address them, I’m happy to answer your question faithfully. But as it stands, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.

First and foremost, we’re specifically discussing an “arms race,” not just a “race.” I fail to understand what qualifies an AI company to be an expert in national security, weapons, and foreign affairs. To me, an AI company is an expert in what makes them more profit. That just so happens to involve AI here, but not “arms races.”

Second, doctors are probably not necessarily experts on vaccines. They’re likely to be experts on vaccine benefits, recommendation, procurement, administering, storage, … but that’s just administration and some operational knowledge. A vaccine expert (IMO) is a specialist for vaccines. They’re probably not working in a hospital.

A pharmaceutical company might be an expert on vaccines. But what’s the parallel to AI companies? Pharmaceutical companies research and develop actual vaccines. AI companies do not research and develop arms. The only argument I understand for this would be to say that an LLM is a weapon.

I don’t buy that an LLM is a weapon. Real competition exists, and certain military applications could become arms races, but AI as a whole is not one. Building out swaths of data centers to power more AI without a concrete public benefit isn’t something we should put up with.

You don’t benefit from the narrative that this is an arms race, not as an individual or a citizen. The benefactors here are the AI companies.

The technology can certainly be used as a weapon; it can hack systems already, and defend against hacks. This capability will only increase, and logically the better AI affords a strategic benefit. Hence, an arms race.

The rest of your questions aren’t questions or presuppose that AI can’t be used as a weapon.

In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.

Hence, an arms race.

The term “arms race” has a definition and I’m pretty sure this still doesn’t apply. So in my opinion, even at best, this is political propaganda.

An “arms race” is a competition over the quality or quantity of military capabilities between states in the international system.

academic.oup.com/edited-volume/62239/…/550799699

The US and China are in an economic race. We aren’t racing to develop a particular military capability. Nobody can even name what that capability would be… “mass hacking?” Is that it? Sounds scary… I don’t buy it. It gives me the impression of fear mongering.

If it were about AI driven military capabilities, we could have probably worked with the compute we had years ago.

I think what should be obvious is the fact that “can be used as a weapon” doesn’t justify it being an “arm.” The fact that they can “hack” now is largely irrelevant. It’s a nice talking point that was parroted around the AI circle jerk recently, but largely unsubstantiated. I think they all caught on to the hype Mythos was getting, so they took the narrative for another spin. But even Mythos was a load of propaganda.

How do you know it wasn’t conveniently allowed to happen, to further fuel the propaganda machine? How do you know they didn’t exaggerate or leave blank important details, particularly because they’re financially incentivized to maintain the hype?

State actors have always hacked one another. Now with a fancy tool to do automated discovery, they might be a little faster. But that speed is also arguable, because there are reports on how AI led development actually shifts the development time burden rather than resolving it.

In case it isn’t obvious, there are experts in this field that aren’t employed by AI.

Those experts in the field (that aren’t employed by AI) mostly agree with this stance, from what I can tell.

I linked a paper in one of my earlier replies. Here’s another by a different author: tnsr.org/…/debunking-the-ai-arms-race-theory/

… and, I just found a table. Here’s 7 more I guess.

I ran the report through AI (the irony is not lost on me) and while it’s really very clear this is closer to a manifesto than a unbiased report (not that it claims to be unbiased), I don’t strictly disagree with any specific point.

I have several thoughts, however:

If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that, if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race. Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, its still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.

If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.

Like I said in the first comment, Sanders can threaten all he wants, but I just don’t believe Congress is going to take a risk on “its not really that important” and impose restrictions on AI development. (Side note that no restrictions on AI development is not the same as no restrictions on AI use or deployment.)

I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.

If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that,

Let me tighten my tinfoil hat, really quickly. First and foremost, it’s great claims which require equally great evidence. The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated. What we really ought be discussing is the plausibility of such a machine, given what we already know.

That’s a whole discussion in itself, which I’m happy to have. I digress, for now.

if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race.

We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.

The Manhattan Project was an arms race between the USSR and the US, which this AI race looks nothing like. We didn’t have to rely on CEOs to tell us as much, either.

I think the US and China were once in recent time more bought into the idea that the recent LLM (and more deeply, the transformer and attention) innovations might lead to more breakthroughs with military applications. Those breakthroughs have been sparse and rather not up to par, like a theoretical never-sleeping-hacking-machine would be. I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking. So no… just as (if China were) foreign competition during combustion engine development, I wouldn’t consider that an “arms race.” Especially if the largest surface area in the field was disparate competitors in the market of business to consumer goods.

Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority? DARPA for AI would be something that comes to mind, not this… would this really be the best that the US has to offer in its supposed “arms race?”

Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, it’s still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.

I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms race.

If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.

I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”

It’s propaganda, CEOs hemorrhaging cash, people buying into the propaganda, every small win gets exacerbated while loses ignored.

My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations. What’s happening isn’t right.

I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.

I still say we should worry about ourselves first. That narrative only benefits the tech CEOs. Slowing down now means we can preserve livelihood, plan better, not blow trillions more dollars, and eventually speed back up without risk of crashing.

Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion, and that AI companies should get to pick that for us through their pushed narratives.

I also don’t buy that our current trajectory is optimal for arriving at some grander finish line. If you stop and readjust, you might actually “beat China” (for whatever that’s worth).

The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated.

What, hypothetically, would that look like?

We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.

Based on what? They’re certainly behaving in that manner.

I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking.

This should make a global treaty relatively easy, if, as you say, no party actually believes there is a threat.

Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority?

You’d expect to know about them if they existed?

I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms are.

Are the specific semantics important?

I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”

You do if you are claiming that the known hacks from AI companies aren’t real, and that LLMs don’t even have that capability. Consider how many people would have to be in on it to sustain that fabrication.

My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations.

I mean absolutely no disrespect or insult, but an antivaxxer could say that same exact thing. They likewise do not think their stance is unconventional or unreasonable, and, to our sorrow, it is a growing position.

I still say we should worry about ourselves first.

Yes, but there’s a subtle begging the question in this statement. If it is an arms race, “worrying about ourselves” would be continuing on developing AI at a breakneck speed. Only if we assume your stance is correct does that sentence mean slowing down.

Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion

Without discussion, or without coming to the conclusion you want? I think there’s quite a bit of discussion.

What, hypothetically, would that look like?

Evidence of a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep would look like repeatable, preferably independently verified demonstrations that an AI system can:

• Find previously unknown vulnerabilities in real, unfamiliar software;
• Construct and execute working exploits;
• Chain multiple vulnerabilities across systems;
• Adapt when an attack fails;
• Maintain access and pursue objectives over long periods;
• Do this end-to-end with minimal human direction;
• Perform at approximately the level of skilled human penetration testers. Not merely solve capture-the-flag exercises or reproduce known exploits.

We have evidence meaningfully approaching parts of that. DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge demonstrated autonomous vulnerability discovery and remediation. OpenAI reported that models conducting an evaluation escaped the intended research environment, chained vulnerabilities, and accessed Hugging Face’s production infrastructure. Anthropic and Meta have also reported “agentic” cyberattacks.

Those reports deserve independent scrutiny, particularly because some originate with interested companies. But the unresolved questions concern its reliability, generality, scalability and degree of autonomy. These are the important factors, of which most sources are silence.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that (1) they financially benefit from the hot air around AI, (2) something interesting happens with AI, (3) they speak only on the points that promote hot air, while (4) leaving out the important details. That’s not a conspiracy any more than you going to the bathroom would be, once you need to piss. These CEOs don’t deserve the credit they’re given as benevolent, honest actors. They’re money hungry and will do as their interests suggest.

That is different from alleging that the incidents were fabricated. No conspiracy is required for real demonstrations to be surrounded by exaggerated extrapolation. A model can perform an impressive autonomous exploit while still being far from a dependable, infinitely scalable army of expert hackers. Both things can be true.

Based on what? They’re certainly behaving in that manner.

You’re right that my statement that the US government probably isn’t convinced was a strong one. I can dial it back.

The government’s public behavior clearly demonstrates that it considers AI strategically and militarily important. DARPA says it has invested more than $2 billion in AI for national security. The White House explicitly published a plan titled “Winning the AI Race”. The Defense Department’s current strategy explicitly describes military AI as a race and calls for “Military AI Dominance”.

So, yes: there are military research programs, substantial spending, official doctrine and concrete efforts to integrate AI into warfighting. Asking “where is DARPA for AI?” was a bad rhetorical question. It exists.

Consequently, I’ll revise my position:

It is defensible to describe the narrower US-China competition in military AI autonomous weapons, cyber operations, intelligence, targeting and command systems as an potential emerging arms race. What remains inadequately established is the much broader claim that all frontier-model development constitutes one unified, winner-take-all arms race.

My disbelief is that we’ll ever graduate from “potential emerging” to “actual” arms race. Therefore, I also believe there is better ways to invest our time and resources. Not to mention the humanitarian concerns.

This should make a global treaty relatively easy, if, as you say, no party actually believes there is a threat.

Not necessarily. States resist agreements because they are uncertain about future capabilities and want to preserve their options. Verification would also be extremely difficult; the same model, compute cluster and vulnerability research can support both defensive and offensive purposes.

Still, I think your larger point stands: if governments genuinely believe uncontrolled military AI is dangerous, they should be willing to negotiate reciprocal limits.

I would support targeted agreements covering things such as autonomous nuclear-launch decisions, fully autonomous lethal targeting, attacks on civilian infrastructure and particular forms of autonomous cyber operation. A treaty pausing “AI development” generally would be much harder to define and verify.

I would also support a local measure to slow AI development while we find a better set of training wheels. I don’t buy the concerns of an “arms race” here. In my eyes, we have much better chances of benefiting from the ordeal if we slow down. If we don’t, the benefactors are the AI companies (particularly, at our loss too).

You’d expect to know about [military programs] if they existed?

Not all of them. Classified programs obviously exist, and absence of public evidence is not evidence of absence.

But that principle cuts both ways: secrecy cannot serve as positive evidence for any particular claim either. A public argument that an arms race exists must ultimately rely on observable budgets, doctrine, procurement, deployments, research programs and demonstrated capabilities. As noted above, some of it exists but its details are all too conveniently sparse.

Pair that with the financial incentives, that’s what I call a cultural driver for propaganda. Propaganda can boom organically just like any other movement, which doesn’t require a conspiracy.

Are the specific semantics important?

Yes, the label smuggles in policy conclusions. It also smuggles in a the rhetoric that we can’t slow down, must win, because there’s some kind of existential threat.

Calling something an “arms race” suggests that falling behind creates an intolerable security risk, speed is inherently protective, restraint is dangerous, and ordinary regulation benefits the enemy. That is precisely how the term is being used politically.

Nevertheless, I was treating one narrow academic definition as though it controlled ordinary language. Under the broader Oxford definition, the military-AI competition may arguably qualify. I will argue that it doesn’t.

The semantic distinction still matters when someone moves from:

The US and China are competing in consequential military-AI capabilities

to:

Therefore, every restriction on American commercial AI companies threatens national security.

That conclusion does not follow automatically. General frontier-model development overlaps some with military capability, but the two are not identical.

You do if you are claiming that the known hacks from AI companies aren’t real.

That is not the claim I was trying to make. My claim is that real capabilities and incidents exist, but companies have incentives to present the strongest results as representative, extrapolate from demonstrations to future dominance, and characterize policies benefiting them as national-security necessities. All while none of it is necessarily qualifying as the risk they present it to be. Meanwhile, you take on the responsibility of paying out of your livelihood to support their endeavors — because of the supposed risks. Well, if the risks are overplayed, then what?

That requires no coordinated conspiracy. It requires ordinary institutional incentives, selective emphasis and mutually reinforcing beliefs. Most employees would not need to deceive anyone or even agree about the geopolitical implications.

An antivaxxer could say that same exact thing.

Fair. Saying my position is “growing” does not make it correct.

If it is an arms race, “worrying about ourselves” would be continuing to develop AI at breakneck speed.

Agreed: I begged the disputed question with that wording.

But even accepting that a military-AI arms race exists does not establish that breakneck, minimally regulated commercial development is the optimal response. It could favor:

• Concentrated investment in defensive cybersecurity;
• Hardened critical infrastructure;
• Carefully tested military systems;
• Limits on publishing or exporting dangerous capabilities;
• Mandatory security evaluations;
• Counterintelligence and model-weight protection;
• Arms-control negotiations;
• Slower deployment of unreliable systems.

…all while more so maintaining our homes, sanctity, budgets, and privacy.

An arms race creates an argument for maintaining capability. It does not prove that maximum aggregate speed is safer than targeted development, testing and regulation.

So, why do we entertain the narratives pushed primarily by tech CEOs when it creates exactly the difference which we should seek not to create?

Without discussion, or without coming to the conclusion you want?

There is clearly substantial discussion. My complaint should have been more precise: the existence of public discussion does not mean the public has meaningful influence over the decisions, nor that the costs and benefits are distributed democratically.

I do have a preferred conclusion, and disagreement with it is not evidence that discussion is illegitimate. The question is whether “China” is being used to foreclose ordinary evaluation of labor displacement, energy use, surveillance, market concentration and safety—as though the arms-race premise settles every downstream policy question.

I don’t believe this social and economical pain is worthwhile. The narrative is overblown to justify it. That doesn’t require a conspiracy.

Those reports deserve independent scrutiny, particularly because some originate with interested companies.

This is where it all gets a little tinfoil hatty for me. The timeline is that huggingface detected a hack, shut down the hack, and reported it to the FBI. Days later, OpenAI discovered that their AI was the source of the attack. Are you implying that Huggingface and OpenAI were working together, and were willing to make a false FBI report for a PR stunt? That seems like a pretty extraordinary claim.

What remains inadequately established is the much broader claim that all frontier-model development constitutes one unified, winner-take-all arms race.

When it comes go AGI, the distinction between skeptics in the field and believers (because I don’t know a word that is an antonym of skeptic) in the field isn’t that this is race, it’s how long the race is going to be. Believers claim that AGI will be created within a decade, skeptics put it within 25 years. (These numbers are for example only; I haven’t kept up on the specific claims).

People that reject the possibility of AGI at all are, from my experience, using a definition of AGI that includes sentience or consciousness, but the accurate definition of AGI doesn’t mention these concepts at all.

My disbelief is that we’ll ever graduate from “potential emerging” to “actual” arms race.

Based on what?

I would support targeted agreements covering things such as autonomous nuclear-launch decisions, fully autonomous lethal targeting, attacks on civilian infrastructure and particular forms of autonomous cyber operation.

These things do not need a treaty. I would wholeheartedly support any legislation to this effect. I recall that one company, Anthropic I think, lost government contracts because it categorically refused to allow its AI to be used for public surveillance or weapon systems.

Which means the government wonted to do those things. Scary thought.

A treaty pausing “AI development” generally would be much harder to define and verify.

No more than if would be to police a country’s efforts to develop nuclear weapon technology.

An arms race creates an argument for maintaining capability. It does not prove that maximum aggregate speed is safer than targeted development, testing and regulation.

At the risk of being snarky, do you not understand what a race is?

I think I’ve assumed some shared knowledge that we may not have.

I focused on the current capability of AI in regard to hacking to demonstrate that it could be used offensively, but the danger that warrants a global pause in development isn’t strictly the ability to hack, though it is entwined with that concern.

The danger (many consider an existential danger) is creating an LLM that is better at developing LLMs than even the best humans. Once that happens, it becomes a positive feedback loop. If we allow it to help make a better version of itself (and I think we both agree that the incentives, both financial and strategic, would push them to do so) then we lose almost all control over AI.

Note that being better at improving LLMs is not AGI. That is to say that we can reach this point without arriving at anyone’s definition of AGI-- the artificial intelligence does not need to be general for this to happen.

Another assumption I made is that we both understood that no one on this planet really understands why LLMs work as they do. Chatting using natural language and receiving a coherent natural language answer is an emergent property of LLMs that we do not fully understand.

The “arms race” is based on the pretty solid assumption that AGI is possible using current transformer technology and that the first group to get to a place where their LLM is better than any human at improving LLMs will be the first to AGI. A side effect is that the skills that would make an LLM better at improving LLMs, also makes them better at finding and using exploits in software.

I’m not much concerned on whether people might consider the ability to improve itself as an “arm” and therefore comfortable calling this an arms race. The threat is arguably more dangerous to humanity than nuclear bombs could ever be.

That’s why we need a global treaty to halt AI development.

Are you familiar with AI 2027? As far as I know none of the people who worked on that are employed by AI companies. (Though I think some might have been in the past.)

There’s a really excellent third-party YouTube Video that I recommend, that walks through the narratives in the paper.

Those reports deserve independent scrutiny, particularly because some originate with interested companies.

This is where it all gets a little tinfoil hatty for me. The timeline is that huggingface detected a hack, shut down the hack, and reported it to the FBI. Days later, OpenAI discovered that their AI was the source of the attack.

I don’t know how to explain this without risk that I might be getting so pedantic that it comes off as patronizing. I’m not trying to, anyway.

HuggingFace detected an attack, took corrective action, and reported it. Days later, OpenAI released their statement. That’s typical behavior regardless of whether I’m right or not.

My point is that CEOs are financially stable incentivized. Look at what drives investment into AI companies — it’s a lot of hype. Hence the concern that we’re in an “AI bubble.” The “bubble” would be speculative investments based on hype.

My statements come from marrying the ideas that (1) CEOs are financially incentivized and (2) the value of their companies are current being driven by hype rather than demonstrated value. Therefore, what naturally leads is that you have CEOs with a financial incentive to maintain hype around the topic.

Are you implying that Huggingface and OpenAI were working together, and were willing to make a false FBI report for a PR stunt? That seems like a pretty extraordinary claim.

No, not at all. I’m implying (as I thought my prior questions made clear) that this could have been allowed to happen merely to demonstrate that it can happen. That might, for example, include having a “sandbox” (that isn’t properly air gapped) while doing “testing” (on penetration capabilities).

My argument could be inferred to suggest that OpenAI wouldn’t have cared if it were HuggingFace, Google, or some other actor.

This, to me, comes across much to the same tune as Mythos was being given by Anthropic. They touted its ability to find exploits in software, though it didn’t quite live up to scrutiny. The tout had an impact on stock valuation, though. Same with having Mythos pulled from foreign use for “national security” reasons, then only dropping Fable as the consumer facing version.

You can argue that these actions make sense when there’s an actual concern. Sure. My argument is that Anthropic, OpenAI, and others benefit from the concern, financially speaking. They want more concern. They want people to believe the shit they spew, because that maintains the value of their companies. They know that, which is why they frame these events as they do.

This isn’t a tinfoil hat conclusion. It’s a belief in uncoordinated, unethical behavior due to financial incentives. Furthermore, I’m pissed off that it caused so much more harm within communities than would be necessary. This is not an extraordinary claim. As I began in my earlier comment, it’s closer to “cultural stupidity.”

—-

I will have to give time to the rest of what you said. You make remarks insinuating that I dont know certain things, but honestly I in many cases would like to argue the point. It’s not that I “don’t know,” it’s that I believe differently than you do.

I’ll need to figure out how to respond without turning this into a Thomas Hobbes vs. John Bramhall situation.

I will wait for your future response. Branching conversation threads quickly get out of hand. I’ll include the above comment in any reply.

If you don’t think having a legion of skilled hackers that never sleep is a weapon, fine-- hell, even if you tighten your tinfoil hat and reject the claim that they can even do that,

Let me tighten my tinfoil hat, really quickly. First and foremost, it’s great claims which require equally great evidence. The onus of evidencing (or lack thereof) “never sleeping skilled hacking machines” belongs to the AI companies, not me. So far it’s unsubstantiated. What we really ought be discussing is the plausibility of such a machine, given what we already know.

That’s a whole discussion in itself, which I’m happy to have. I digress, for now.

if the American government and the Chinese government both believe it has this capability, and they both believe it’s advantage to have the better technology, then this is an arms race.

We have not met that definition, in my opinion. I don’t believe even the US government is convinced of this. In fact, I’m doubtful anyone is fully convinced.

The Manhattan Project was an arms race between the USSR and the US, which this AI race looks nothing like. We didn’t have to rely on CEOs to tell us as much, either.

I think the US and China were once in recent time more bought into the idea that the recent LLM (and more deeply, the transformer and attention) innovations might lead to more breakthroughs with military applications. Those breakthroughs have been sparse and rather not up to par, like a theoretical never-sleeping-hacking-machine would be. I certainly don’t see any grand scale race between them, militarily speaking. So no… just as (if China were) foreign competition during combustion engine development, I wouldn’t consider that an “arms race.” Especially if the largest surface area in the field was disparate competitors in the market of business to consumer goods.

Where’s the military research programs actually treating this like a priority? DARPA for AI would be something that comes to mind, not this… would this really be the best that the US has to offer in its supposed “arms race?”

Even if they’re both wrong about the capabilities of AI or the plausibility of AGI, it’s still an arms race. If the it turned out that atomic bombs weren’t feasible or possible to create, that wouldn’t have made the race to build one less of an arms race, without hindsight.

I’m arguing that most the reasons it’s a race are political and economical. My issue is with the word “arms.” I would still say it is not an arms race.

If not clear, I don’t believe a conspiracy on this scale is a realistic assumption without more data than “I don’t believe it”. It would have to spread across several competing companies throughout most, if not all, of the employees.

I also don’t believe in a grand conspiracy. My belief is closer to cultural stupidity having gone “off the rails.”

It’s propaganda, CEOs hemorrhaging cash, people buying into the propaganda, every small win gets exacerbated while loses ignored.

My position isn’t unconventional or all that unreasonable, really. It’s a growing position, per my own observations. What’s happening isn’t right.

I think, as I said before, that we will need a global treaty on pausing development before any one country or company pauses development, or even slows it down.

I still say we should worry about ourselves first. That narrative only benefits the tech CEOs. Slowing down now means we can preserve livelihood, plan better, not blow trillions more dollars, and eventually speed back up without risk of crashing.

Right now, the current trajectory causes harm in people’s lives. I don’t buy the argument that this is acceptable without discussion, and that AI companies should get to pick that for us through their pushed narratives.

I also don’t buy that our current trajectory is optimal for arriving at some grander finish line. If you stop and readjust, you might actually “beat China” (for whatever that’s worth).

Here’s a decent resource if you care to read about, rather than the podcast: ainowinstitute.org/…/1-3-ai-arms-race-2-0-from-de…

I would summarize it to conclude: The “AI arms race” is not an objective technological fact so much as a politically useful narrative that has helped align government policy with the interests of large AI companies.

My opinion is that we should be a lot more critical of this narrative.

I am definitely going to read that link, from the start at 1.0, but now right now. Thanks, though.

Accepting your summary (and sorry if I ask a question answered in the link) but what would an “objective technological fact” regarding any technology being an arms race look like? As in, it seems obvious that a technology that can perform complex exploits of software vulnerabilities without human assistance could be used as a weapon-- so why wouldn’t that be a national concern to ensure America has the better technology? How is this different than missiles or bombs, from a technological standpoint?

To be fair, an AI system capable of independently discovering and exploiting serious software vulnerabilities would be a legitimate national-security concern. The US would have a strong interest in possessing and defending against that capability.

But a technology is not itself an arms race. An arms race is a pattern of behavior between adversaries involving that technology. That requires observable political, military and economic facts.

I would point these out as red flags:

• Developing identifiable autonomous cyberweapons.
• Each side expands its program substantially because it believes the other is expanding.
• Established military units, budgets, infrastructure and deployment plans around those systems.

I would point these out as not counting:

• AI can be weaponized.
• China is developing AI.
• AI could confer military advantages.
• American companies are spending heavily on general-purpose models.
• The United States wants to lead commercially.

In table format, the comparison between AI and those other technologies would ideally look something like this:

An AI arms race would look very different than what we see right now.

With the AI bubble, the communities being disrupted by the environmental impacts of data centers (including infranoise), the constant fear of “use AI or be replaced by AI,” the risky financials on all of this, … all the people that lost retirement value to the SpaceX IPO, … this stuff is a serious public nuisance.

We don’t need tech CEOs scaring us with talk of an “arms race.” It’s fucked up.

The chatbot labs don’t have 25 years. They might have 2.

Bernie Sanders is a politician, he should tell the public how he plans to add safety mechanisms and safeguards to AI. Granting the government and corporations full authority and control over it while limiting public access is how you turn AI into a digital nuclear weapon.

I rarely see a criticism of Bernie Sanders that isn’t some form of perfect solution fallacy and this comment is not one of them.

I’m sorry, like “Yes” but also, SIGH.

Cuz like;

1. He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s said it all already.

2. He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s too old to be the guy directing AI.

He’s been doing this 70 years and he’s too old to be the guy directing AI.

So why is he getting involved in AI?

here you go

Not a bad question. If I can tweak it a little:

Why is he getting involved in AI regulation, but only in this specific way?

Because pro-AI lobbyists (including a Silicon Valley cult leader) got to him.

Ban the slop easy as, they’re breaking a tonne of laws, and they’re pushing their costs onto everyone else.

“Data center moratorium”

• addresses concrete problems
• promises concrete solutions
• easy to target the biggest offenders

“gUaRdRaiLs”

• addresses vague problems
• requires undefined solutions
• helps the biggest offenders
• acts as free PR for the industry

Cap LLMs to 1 Trillion parameters, can utilize no more than 384GiB of (V)RAM.

Offenders go to jail (corporations charged as a criminal enterprise), all equipment seized and destroyed.

If these AI glazers really believed that AI is the threat they claim it is, then we should treat it the way we’d treat corporations if they tried developing their own nuclear weapons.

ban what? ban AI?

yes

How do you ban AI?

banning it? Like make a law, and make it a crime, or make a new law that clarifies that it’s already breaking a tonne of laws

What you are saying is to make a bunch of numbers illegal

That is a very stupid argument. everything can be represented as a group of numbers.

This is a fucking stock manipulation ploy, just like every ‘rogue agent’ AI scare. The companies are not making promised advancement and their promised AGI dreams are dead. What better than to cook up an excuse that ‘le ebil goberment’ made us stop research than to face the investors who will ask what happened to all the money. Diffuse the stock bubble more slowly instead of a full on high speed crash.

Yes Bernie Sanders the notorious stock manipulator.

What stocks? Chatbot labs are not public companies and they aren’t remotely profitable.

What stocks?

All of them. Didn’t you read that like 85% of US stockmarket growth in 2025 was about the “AI boom”. They need people to think that this AI meme will actually work. AI is the floor that keeps US economy afloat rn, or at least illusion of normalcy.

What Senate action will he take? Have a hearing when the senators will try to get sound bites in for reelection?

At this point US Senat actions (especially those by Democrats) seem even less effective than European serious concern.

EU actually gets changes done tho.

Sure, but the serious concern is the least efficient tool they have.

Yeah why should he do his job why isn’t he just being useless like the rest! /S

Bernie has been compromised by AI evangelists and PR stunts.

As a reminder, Bernie believes AI should be privately owned but with a large public stake in it (a sovereign wealth fund), which effectively means the US government would have a vested interest in keeping the unprofitable part of Elon Musk’s industries — the CSAM-generating ones — profitable.

The senator says recent rogue-agent incidents show AI firms are losing control of their own systems.

Those were PR stunts.

You’ll notice Bernie isn’t even talking about regulating data centers any more, which is concrete and actionable.

He’s just repeating what AI companies say to promote their product as being better than it really is, and encourage corporate capture that will guarantee a corporate monopoly.

More than 1,300 employees from the world’s leading tech companies just signed an open letter…

Yeah, OpenAI and Anthropic executives signed it because it is good for their business.

Bernie definitely disappointed me with his take on AI. I believe it is criminal and everyone responsible for the theft and misappropriation of humanity’s creative workforce should be in prison, forever incapable from profiting from this egregious act of self service.

Then you’re a criminal from learning from Gogh as well. All artists are theives at this point. Nothings original.

You left off all the writers, musicians, programmers, academics,etc. Expand your mind. Better yet, spend many years to become a leading artisan of whatever, watch your work be absorbed and iterated for profit by billionaires, undermining your value, increasing theirs.

If he can get senate action on AI then why can’t he get senate action on all the other plethora of crap happening to us right now?

He cant, but he wants to. Which is important.

We should never take something away from an action with good intentions, just because others want to stop him.

Thats not how we get the change in the end. Because someday it might succeed.

Why is he even bothering to do his job if he’s struggling to do his job? He should just be shitty and useless like the others! /S

I like Bernie and hate AI, but I fear this is a bit pointless.. Does he even have enough power and/or colleagues to do anything, anything at all? Same thing as with most things he shouts about, healthcare and whatnot. He says the right things but with the current insanity and insane system in the US, hes never going to get anything done.

Of course I am not suggesting that he should stop. I think he should keep going, shouting at the things. But his threats are starting to be a bit hollow. Sadly.

I dont know what my point is, I just despair at everything these days. Plargh.

This is playing into their hand. “Oh your tech is so amazing and powerful and must be paused!”

Nah. It’s a bullshit bubble that’s threatening to tear down world order, or what’s left of it.

This isn’t playing into anyone’s hand I don’t understand what the hell you’re saying lol

Ever heard of critihype? These companies are pretending their tech is so amazing it’s dangerous to create hype, and Bernie is perpetuating that marketing ploy by responding this way.

Again, I literally don’t understand what you’re saying. Not because what you’re saying doesn’t make sense but the conclusion you’re drawing and your interpretation is absurd.

You are not only not right, you’re not even wrong.

Yes they work to hype tech for investors. No Bernie is not perpetuating anything by saying this that’s just so silly. AI genuinely will be used and make money and this tech isn’t going to disappear, it does have value not this much value but it’s genuinely cutting edge and will likely be in many industries. Bernie has no political or personal interest in that, he is stating the lawlessness and recklessness of this tech needs to be roped in by the government which is his job.

I literally don’t understand how you got to your conclusion that AI tech is useless and Bernie is supporting it by saying this. It’s just the thinking of someone whose brain has been rotted by the idea that AI=BAD.

AI is just a boring tool to do boring things, things I use it for. I’m not a single minded ideological purist. If Bernie wants to rope in the shitty business practices by hyperscalers, say that. Don’t headline “pause AI development” because that is exactly what critihype is.

edit: by the way, you are putting a lot of words in my mouth. I never said or implied AI is useless, just that there is a bubble fueled by bullshit. You’re jumping to conclusions not warranted by the original comment.

AI is literally a fantastic pattern recognition technology and has the ability to take complex information and visualize it in ways a human mind cannot. Those are pretty useful.

Not sure how you think what he’s doing is critihype. Never put any words in your mouth. Don’t understand why the headline, Bernie didn’t write, has to be changed when everything he said is pretty true.

You did imply AI is useless you literally just reaffirmed that calling it boring. Never jumped to any conclusion, the conclusion I came to was that your perspective is goofy and literally matches the AI is both bad and dangerous. A bubble is dangerous.

Boring is not the same as useless. Again, you’re bending over backwards to miss the point. It’s like talking to a wall. Your personal incredulity towards my opinion in no way invalidates it, saying you don’t understand or think it’s silly is not an argument.

Lol okay buddy.

I too can say the right thing consistently with no meaningful action!

Dumb comment.

I think Congress knows they have the backing of the vast majority of the voters, on this subject.

It could be more than hot air.

Let him cook.

You can’t ignore power. If AI is power, it must be developed or those who don’t do so, disempower themselves relative to those who do. We were born into a race for power that manifests from physics itself and how we distribute that power defines us.

This only gets worse when power is allowed to concentrate, which is the entire foundation of right wing political philosophy. Compete for power and the winner gets to do what they please.

The alternative is unity and empathy, which is the foundation of left wing philosophy, the basis for democracy, the will of founding fathers and was even the message of Christ himself (No, I’m not Christian). Disperse power evenly so that everyone gets some of what they please.

To choose the first is to accept cruelty, psychopathy, relentless conflict, destruction, war, hate and violence, even slavery, to force an order to things that is to the maximum benefit to the most powerful individuals but to the detriment of everyone else. It is brutal, risky, primitive and fragile.

The US doesn’t control what other competing nations do and this current administration is not capable of unity and empathy with other nations. It has no desire for it and no skillset to achieve it. To stop the development of AI now means watching competing nations, many whose interests are equally selfish, empower themselves with it.

If AI is power then it is imperative that it’s power be dispersed and not concentrated, so it serves the interests of each of us and not solely the interest of the few of us. That counts for both citizens of the US and nations of the world. Competing nations will not tolerate a power difference that becomes an existential threat and the ambitions of the corporate class will put the US in conflict with the world, a war it can not win. What hope does it have against China, the EU and United blocks of medium and small nations? The US has shown it cannot even defeat Iran and is now behind in the new age of drone warfare.

The US right wing has brought us into conflict with everyone to allow a small group of people the chance to chase a power fantasy, and it may be America’s downfall and the start of a new age of war.

As much as I dislike “AI” this is akin to stopping development of munitions. If we don’t continue to develop it we’ll be unable to defend against it.

oh good luck with that bernie.. while he’s not wrong, there’s too much money passing hands for this to be a threat

Acctually its the same $20 being passed around they have just really improved the speed and efficiency of passing it on.

“I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.”

Sam Altman has entered the chat

They bought the senate Bernie

Stop the investment, most importantly.

Bernie Sanders sadly didn’t get the message and wants the American government to own 50% of the stock of major AI companies instead, which means the government would have an even bigger reason to invest more in them.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has proposed a remittance tax on certain artificial intelligence companies amounting to 50% of the company’s outstanding equity interests. Sanders says these equity interests could be used to establish a sovereign wealth fund, with annual direct payment distributions to Americans

What the fuck are you talking about no he doesn’t lol? None of what you said is true or makes sense. He wants AI stock wealth to be given back to the people.

There is nothing in there about the government owning the stock or even benefiting from the stock?

I’m not sure what’s up with the hostility and calling everybody here dumb, but you’re not talking about the same thing as I am.

He wants AI stock wealth to be given back to the people.

It won’t be.

The stock will be taken by the government, and run by people chosen by Donald Trump and the majority-Republican Senate.

The Independent Commission would consist of seven members nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate

Considering AI is unprofitable, and considering the rampancy of corruption in the Trump administration, this is an extremely naive position to hold at best, and an actively harmful one at worst.

Because they’re saying dumb things and unfortunately holding hands and being shy about someone’s straight lack of thinking doesn’t really get people to see the point. The comments in this section state:

• Bernie is both not doing his job(he is) and benefitting from this/AI

-AI is both bad and worthless but also dangerous and Bernie is dumb for trying to do anything (complete fallacy of the weak/dangerous threat kind, the enemy is both weak but dangerous. Silly)

-Absolutely fake claims like the one above.

So the whole comment section is just rife with stupidity. Stupid isn’t even a bad word.

Back to what you said. I literally don’t understand why you act like it says stock changes anything or anything about what I said? Literally useless points you keep highlighting. Nothing is made more clear by whatever you’re trying to say.

Donald Trump already had the upper hand he doesn’t care about the rule of law. Dunno why you’re viewing this like game of thrones.

Bernie Sanders wants the wealth amassed by these AI companies which have stolen data and work of billions of people across generations to be handed back to the people. His strategy is to tax the STOCK (not sure why we’re bolding it but sure I’ll play along). He is following the regular ruling that stands for creating panels, legislative bodies, committee establishment process. The president nominates THE SENATE CONFIRMS(because you glossed over that part) this is literally the standard practice.

So I don’t understand what you think you’re making clear or how what he’s doing is wrong here. He’s following the rules and wants to tax the stock of companies that have taken advantage of Americans. It literally makes complete sense and is nothing like what the comment above claims.

The comment above suggests the government will own the stock? Or something ridiculous and Bernie wants to give that power to the president. Which is what I imagine an insane person’s interpretation of that article might be if they didn’t know anything about government functions or something. So in conclusion, it’s a very stupid interpretation.

The “tax” just transfers shares of the for-profit companies into a State organization.

So CEOs like Elon Musk will keep using them as CSAM generators, while the State is incentivized to keep them profitable… Even though we have no reason to assume they’ll ever turn a profit.

AI should not be treated as “too big inevitable to fail” and yet here Bernie is.

The president nominates THE SENATE CONFIRMS(because you glossed over that part) this is literally the standard practice.

Re-read my previous comment. I mentioned the Republican-controlled Senate explicitly. Did you need it to be in bold too or what?

This comment section is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.

Onward the Butlerian Jihad! No prisoners!

Great idea to give China a huge leap forward on the west.

This assumes LLMs to be a strategically vital technology, which it’s often treated as with little apparent reason, highlighted again and again.

Moreover, Chinese models are commonly open and you can freely run or study them.

Those are just the models that we know about

Is that conspiracy kicking in? Besides, it is still LLMs. Like, these are text-generating things, not weapon-grade AI. The absolute worst they can do is be used to assist hacking, and modern models coming from the US are already very good at vulnerability detection and pentesting. Not to mention the best defense against that is not AI, but standardized and strictly enforced network security.

Security? In this vibeconomy?

Precisely. If we want to keep our systems safe, we need not an extra AI, but strict adherence to well-established practices. Vulnerability in networks comes from lackluster execution of well-known, well-documented security measures.

Leave AI as an extra level of pentesting, it already does such things brilliantly.

They already have a leap forward on the west, you’re just blind to not see it

A huge leap forward into being inundated with slop? Oh, no…

If the only thing you think AI is good for is slop pictures, then you need to get off social media.

Not just pictures. All sorts of slop, slop search results, slop articles, slop code, slop reddit posts, there’s a whole world of ai slop out there.

Have you not seen our heard the slop people come up with online? I really think it’s about the same slop rate at this point.

It’s not. Ai can do it instantly, and doesn’t have to sleep. The Internet has already been filled with so much shit that huge portions of it are useless. This was happening before ai and is a big part of why ai sucks but not at the rate it is now. People are setting up bots and turning them loose to feed off each other which only magnifies the problem.

Just like they told people not to clone. Mostly the rich are cloning to harvest organs for themselves. Hopefully their “AI” will fuck that up for them somehow.

Seeing this type of comment is why Lemmy is fucking idiotic.

We’re all mad down here. I never thought my bullshit had such a huge sway. Thanks!

What will the senate do? Lol Americans and their pathetic signal politics

Did he buy into their hype claims of sentient AI?

I hope not

Stop with the threats and just fucking do it. This shit is why everyone thinks the Dems are useless.

It’s not a threat, it’s a plea.

And that’s why they’re weak.

Well, they do not have any kind of majority at the moment. So no, they cannot do much without any republican spine.

After the midterms, let’s hope, they will have the majority everywhere except the White House. Which, after that, won’t take long.

Then why make threats they can’t back up? It just makes them look worse. Shit like this is not helping them get elected.

Perhaps to show the voters: see we want to change things, but you will have to get us in to make that happen?

It’s the repub’s that are stopping all this?

Demonstrating it that way doesn’t work. If they’re proposing action they know will be blocked it just makes their words look hollow.

Yeah, I have to agree. I always try to find the most positive angle, hoping to the Gods that is was a positive thing…

But no, they are incompetent aren’t they.

Because that’s Bernie in a nutshell. It help rile up the base, you think things are being done so you keep voting the same way, but nothing changes.

The corpos like it more that way. After a little lobbying, a popular politician tells the world that their product is actually Great and Mighty, the media repeats it uncritically, and the public believes it.

Doesn’t matter if the product isn’t Great and Mighty, the stock goes up.

I mean if you didn’t already know Bernie isn’t a democrat.

He might as well be

What an idiotic statement. Bernie Sanders is always been an independent and has always voted that way. He has voted with the Republicans when things are needed and looks good he has voted with the Democrats when things are needed and looked good. But he also recognizes who the super fucked up ones are currently. And right now that ain’t the democrats.

His voting record shows Bernie votes with Dems 95% of the time, one of the highest consistently Dem voting representatives there are. So yes, he may be an ‘Independent’ but his voting record says that’s absolutely not the case.

Could it possibly be because 95% of the Republican vote put forward is absolute dog shit and goes against everything that he represents? No that possibly couldn’t be it. Not at all.

Other Dems vote for it at a higher rate, so I don’t know. Saying one side is all good or one side is all bad is the entire problem.

Whoever said that the Democrats were good? Just because some of their legislation aligns better with what he’s trying to accomplish doesn’t mean anything. Just like I voted for republicans in the past however almost all of them since the formation of the I love the Big Orange dick organization have gone to the point where I’ll vote almost straight Democrat at this point. Because yes they are better regardless of what your personal thoughts and feelings are they are better.

I doubt he can. Too many other Senators getting checks from the Chatbot labs.

Oh no, not senate action

How will they be able to handle the onslaught of a strongly worded letter?

I think we need to start talking global treaties where we just not produce for a minute. Like strategic factory shut downs that let us breath some fresh air.

Ai isn’t the only one polluting for no reason. No layoff. Just really nice time off to move about the world. Fuck ai for sure. Data centers are not needed when it’s only other AI bots talking to eachother. Build some housing and crisis help centers for fucks sake.

Build some housing and crisis help centers for fucks sake.

Cities, counties, states and the federal government could all do that right now, but seems taxpayers aren’t willing to vote for it.

When Mamdani sat down at his desk, and moved the giant pile of paperwork that every other mayor ignored, he found a button that said “Something Good.” He pushed it, and something good happened. So he pushed it again. And again. And he kept pushing it.

That button was always there, and any mayor before him could have pushed it, but they didn’t. That’s all they had to do, and they just didn’t do it.

Furthermore, that button is on the desk of every politician, and most of them never push it either.

We need to make them ALL start pushing that button.

He did business as usual with a better social media presence

By which he means funding and dc planning approval

What development? It’s an LLM. The only thing improving is it’s ability to trick dumb people into thinking it’s smart.