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Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by _factor on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @10:16PM (#38388794)
Right, so stop teaching chemistry in schools. Make sure there are only 3 experts allowed to work on the field, and lock their knowledge away from humanity. That will solve it. While you're at it, take away all the guns and any computers that can be used to hack. God forbid dangerous knowledge ever becomes available again. Almost forgot, people really shouldn't learn how to drive cars either. Very very dangerous.

Practical solution. Fingerprint the conversations and images. Do something naughty, go to jail.

Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by TapWaterBandit on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @10:24PM (#38388855)
Let's not forget how many crimes are committed with vehicles. Not just the terror attack style seen in recent years, get away cars for various crimes, scooter drug dealers, boats used to smuggle all sorts of stuff. Far too dangerous got the public to be able to use.
Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by mcphage on Thursday November 23, 2023 @08:39AM (#38392608)
Well, you do need to get licensed to be a driver, and register your vehicle with the government, and you get fined—or worse—if you don’t operate it properly and safely.

So is what you’re asking for? That level of security around AI usage?

Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by ultrarunner on Thursday November 23, 2023 @11:33AM (#38394531)
Let's be honest, though: these are mostly just a grift. People kill other people in vehicles every single day. It's almost always referred to as an "accident", given nearly zero investigation, and there are zero consequences. The licensing & registration is mostly about paying a fee in many areas (and being taxed on the same thing over and over) and the last fee I paid for not "operating it properly" was along with 5 other people with out-of-state plates in a shakedown where the traffic light wouldn't change.

Arguing that these things are primarily in the interest of safety is tenuous at best. A fitting parallel for the levels of risk that chatbots present.

Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by mcphage on Thursday November 23, 2023 @12:56PM (#38395453)
Is there grift involved? Sure. Would we be better off or safer without the regulations? Hell no.
Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by voitvoder on Thursday November 23, 2023 @06:16AM (#38391587)
There is a much easier solution to all of this. Children should stop learning to read.

The safest way to handle large language models is simply to have a more illiterate society.

It is disgusting people would talk about destroying data centers when we have such safer options like this.

Re:Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police? by toyg on Thursday November 23, 2023 @07:13AM (#38391926)
This is why nerds are kept far away from the seats of power.

The world is about shades of gray and (typically) minimising harm. We all know people fully bent on doing antisocial things will likely get there, one way or the other, but we still try to make it hard for them. That's why professional locksmiths typically have to register with the police, you can't buy all medicines over the counter, etc etc.

With this view, reducing access to information that is useful almost exclusively when committing crimes, is absolutely fair. It will not solve all problems but it will make it a bit harder to do bad stuff.