[ExI] Zuckerberg is democratizing the singularity

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2024-07-24 13:48, BillK via extropy-chat wrote:

> 
> Well, freedom and democracy into the Singularity and beyond is a nice
> ideal.
> But making powerful AI systems available to everyone means that the
> bad guys can use them also.

The problem with that argument is that the identity of the so-called 
"bad guys" is a very culturally and contextually relative opinion. It 
might have been more accurate to say that making AI available to 
everyone means that one no longer needs to be rich and powerful to pose 
a significant danger to others. That is to say that it would no longer 
just be the ruling class that had the means to be evil.

And that is certainly true. But that has always been true of knowledge 
in general. And this generation of AI is little more than than a 
distillation of human knowledge and a hallucinating imperfect one at 
that. Should we likewise restrict higher education to the "good guys"? 
After all Osama Bin Ladin attended university and allegedly studied 
engineering. I myself have enough knowledge and lab experience from my 
university days doing microbiology research to weaponize all manner of 
pathogens. So do millions of others on this planet. Do you honestly 
think that a chatbot is going to make us microbiologists any more of a 
threat than we already are?

The thing to remember is that the flip side of your argument is also 
true. One will no longer need to be rich, talented, or otherwise special 
to create value for oneself or others. It is a positive step in the 
direction of the abundance economy. It is just that currently it is 
"soft" information commodities that are abundant now. So now ordinary 
people can use the technology to produce portraits of their loved ones 
that look like they were painted by Michelangelo, or help them write a 
lease agreement, but they can't get it to make them a sandwich. . . yet.

In any case, Mark Zuckerberg has already released AI into the wild so 
there is no turning back now. In doing so, he has probably prevented 
humanity from developing into a borg-like collective and preserved 
individuality far into the future. There might be a few tragedies along 
the way, but humanity will likely survive. There is no longer much of a 
chance of a singleton superhuman intelligence controlling humanity's 
destiny; instead now there will likely be many. At this juncture, that 
makes Zuckerberg one of the most important people in history.

Stuart LaForge

> 
> I asked the new meta-llama-3.1-405b-instruct if there were any dangers
> in making Llama 3.1 available to everybody, but it refused to answer
> that question.
> 
> It just referred me to the Meta licensing terms.
> 
> OK, so I then asked the iAsk AI, and it replied "Oh Yes, indeed!".
> So AI, like most tools, can be used for good or evil.
> 
> The iAsk AI answer was quite long and detailed, but here is the
> conclusion:
> 
> Conclusion
> 
> In summary, while there are undeniable benefits associated with making
> advanced AI models like Llama 3.1 available as open source—such as
> fostering innovation and collaboration—there are also significant
> dangers that must be addressed proactively through community
> engagement, education, monitoring practices, and regulatory
> frameworks.
> 
> Bold Answer: There are several dangers associated with having Llama
> 3.1 open source and available to everybody, including misuse for
> malicious purposes, propagation of misinformation, ethical
> considerations regarding bias and discrimination, security
> vulnerabilities due to transparency in code access, intellectual
> property issues related to generated content ownership rights,
> potential impacts on employment due to automation effects in various
> sectors, and a general lack of accountability for harmful outputs
> produced by users.