things that you think sound good, might not sound good to the authority in charge of determining what is good.
For example using your LLM to criticise, ask questions or perform civil work that is deemed undesirable becomes evil.
You can use google to find how the UK government for example has been using "law" and "terrorism" charges against people for simply tweeting or holding a placard they deem critical of Israel.
Anthropic is showing off these capabilities in order to secure defence contracts. "We have the ability to surveil and engage threats, hire us please".
Anthropic is not a tiny start up exploring AI, it's a behemoth bank rolled by the likes of Google and Amazon. It's a big bet. While money is drying up for AI, there is always one last bastion for endless cash, defence contracts.
You are right. If people can see where you are at all times, track your personal info across the web, monitor your DNS, or record your image from every possible angle in every single public space in your city, that would be horrible, and no one would stand for such things. Why, they'd be rioting in the streets, right?
I’m actually surprised whenever someone familiar with technology thinks that adding more “smart” controls to a mechanical device is a good idea, or even that it will work as intended.
The imagined ideal of a smart gun that perfectly identifies the user, works every time, never makes mistakes, always has a fully charged battery ready to go, and never suffers from unpredictably problems sounds great to a lot of people.
But as a person familiar with tech, IoT, and how devices work in the real world, do you actually think it would work like that?
“Sorry, you cannot fire this gun right now because the server is down”.
Or how about when the criminals discover that they can avoid being shot by dressing up in police uniforms, fooling all of the smart guns?
A very similar story is the idea of a drink driving detector in every vehicle. It sounds good when you imagine it being perfect. It doesn’t sound so good when you realize that even a 99.99% false positive avoidance means your own car is almost guaranteed lock you out of driving it some day by mistake during its lifetime, potentially when you need to drive it for work, an appointment, or even an emergency due to a false positive.
> The imagined ideal of a smart gun that perfectly identifies the user, works every time, never makes mistakes, always has a fully charged battery ready to go, and never suffers from unpredictably problems sounds great to a lot of people.
People acccept that regular old dumb guns may jam, run out of ammo, and require regular maintenance. Why are smart ones the only ones expected to be perfect?
> “Sorry, you cannot fire this gun right now because the server is down”.
Has anyone ever proposed a smart gun that requires an internet connection to shoot?
> Or how about when the criminals discover that they can avoid being shot by dressing up in police uniforms, fooling all of the smart guns?
> Or how about when the criminals discover that they can avoid being shot by dressing up in police uniforms, fooling all of the smart guns?
Dressing up in police uniforms is illegal in some jurisdictions (like Germany).
And you might say 'Oh, but criminals won't be deterred by legality or lack thereof.' Remember: the point is to make crime more expensive, so this would be yet another element on which you could get someone behind bars. Either as a separate offense, if you can't make anything else stick or as aggravating circumstances.
> A very similar story is the idea of a drink driving detector in every vehicle. It sounds good when you imagine it being perfect. It doesn’t sound so good when you realize that even a 99.99% false positive avoidance means your own car is almost guaranteed lock you out of driving it some day by mistake during its lifetime, potentially when you need to drive it for work, an appointment, or even an emergency due to a false positive.
So? Might still be a good trade-off overall, especially if that car is cheaper to own than one without the restriction.
Cars fail sometimes, so your life can't depend on 100% uptime of your car anyway.
It depends on who is creating the definition of evil. Once you have a mechanism like this, it isn't long after that it becomes an ideological battleground. Social media moderation is an example of this. It was inevitable for AI usage, but I think folks were hoping the libertarian ideal would hold on a little longer.
It’s notable that the existence of the watchman problem doesn’t invalidate the necessity of regulation; it’s just a question of how you prevent capture of the regulating authority such that regulation is not abused to prevent competitors from emerging. This isn’t a problem unique to statism; you see the same abuse in nominally free markets that exploit the existence of natural monopolies.
Anti-State libertarians posit that preventing this capture at the state level is either impossible (you can never stop worrying about who will watch the watchmen until you abolish the category of watchmen) or so expensive as to not be worth doing (you can regulate it but doing so ends up with systems that are basically totalitarian insofar as the system cannot tolerate insurrection, factionalism, and in many cases, dissent).
The UK and Canada are the best examples of the latter issue; procedures are basically open (you don’t have to worry about disappearing in either country), but you have a governing authority built on wildly unpopular ideas that the systems rely upon for their justification—they cannot tolerate these ideas being criticized.
Not really. It's like saying you need a license to write code. I don't think they actually want to be policing this, so I'm not sure why they are, other than a marketing post or absolution for the things that still get through their policing?
It'll become apparent how woefully unprepared we are for AIs impact as these issues proliferate. I don't think for a second that Anthropic (or any of the others) is going to be policing this effectively or maybe at all. A lot of existing processes will attempt to erect gates to fend off AI, but I bet most will be ineffective.
demarq|6 months ago
For example using your LLM to criticise, ask questions or perform civil work that is deemed undesirable becomes evil.
You can use google to find how the UK government for example has been using "law" and "terrorism" charges against people for simply tweeting or holding a placard they deem critical of Israel.
Anthropic is showing off these capabilities in order to secure defence contracts. "We have the ability to surveil and engage threats, hire us please".
Anthropic is not a tiny start up exploring AI, it's a behemoth bank rolled by the likes of Google and Amazon. It's a big bet. While money is drying up for AI, there is always one last bastion for endless cash, defence contracts.
You just need a threat.
skeezyboy|6 months ago
how dare they invoke law
herpdyderp|6 months ago
VonGuard|6 months ago
Right?
Aurornis|6 months ago
The imagined ideal of a smart gun that perfectly identifies the user, works every time, never makes mistakes, always has a fully charged battery ready to go, and never suffers from unpredictably problems sounds great to a lot of people.
But as a person familiar with tech, IoT, and how devices work in the real world, do you actually think it would work like that?
“Sorry, you cannot fire this gun right now because the server is down”.
Or how about when the criminals discover that they can avoid being shot by dressing up in police uniforms, fooling all of the smart guns?
A very similar story is the idea of a drink driving detector in every vehicle. It sounds good when you imagine it being perfect. It doesn’t sound so good when you realize that even a 99.99% false positive avoidance means your own car is almost guaranteed lock you out of driving it some day by mistake during its lifetime, potentially when you need to drive it for work, an appointment, or even an emergency due to a false positive.
mrbombastic|6 months ago
ceejayoz|6 months ago
People acccept that regular old dumb guns may jam, run out of ammo, and require regular maintenance. Why are smart ones the only ones expected to be perfect?
> “Sorry, you cannot fire this gun right now because the server is down”.
Has anyone ever proposed a smart gun that requires an internet connection to shoot?
> Or how about when the criminals discover that they can avoid being shot by dressing up in police uniforms, fooling all of the smart guns?
People already do this.
rattray|6 months ago
jachee|6 months ago
Sadly, we’re already past this point in the US.
eru|6 months ago
Dressing up in police uniforms is illegal in some jurisdictions (like Germany).
And you might say 'Oh, but criminals won't be deterred by legality or lack thereof.' Remember: the point is to make crime more expensive, so this would be yet another element on which you could get someone behind bars. Either as a separate offense, if you can't make anything else stick or as aggravating circumstances.
> A very similar story is the idea of a drink driving detector in every vehicle. It sounds good when you imagine it being perfect. It doesn’t sound so good when you realize that even a 99.99% false positive avoidance means your own car is almost guaranteed lock you out of driving it some day by mistake during its lifetime, potentially when you need to drive it for work, an appointment, or even an emergency due to a false positive.
So? Might still be a good trade-off overall, especially if that car is cheaper to own than one without the restriction.
Cars fail sometimes, so your life can't depend on 100% uptime of your car anyway.
lurk2|6 months ago
Who decides when someone is doing something evil?
hackable_sand|6 months ago
johnQdeveloper|6 months ago
That seems a valid use case that'd get hit.
madrox|6 months ago
lurk2|6 months ago
Anti-State libertarians posit that preventing this capture at the state level is either impossible (you can never stop worrying about who will watch the watchmen until you abolish the category of watchmen) or so expensive as to not be worth doing (you can regulate it but doing so ends up with systems that are basically totalitarian insofar as the system cannot tolerate insurrection, factionalism, and in many cases, dissent).
The UK and Canada are the best examples of the latter issue; procedures are basically open (you don’t have to worry about disappearing in either country), but you have a governing authority built on wildly unpopular ideas that the systems rely upon for their justification—they cannot tolerate these ideas being criticized.
rapind|6 months ago
It'll become apparent how woefully unprepared we are for AIs impact as these issues proliferate. I don't think for a second that Anthropic (or any of the others) is going to be policing this effectively or maybe at all. A lot of existing processes will attempt to erect gates to fend off AI, but I bet most will be ineffective.