Apple has a mature system or “regime” for ensuring that only apps it has
explicitly approved will run on iOS. Google and Microsoft have similar systems
for Android and Windows, respectively. In most of my daydreaming over the years
about how trusted computing might help us survive the AI juggernaut, there
will come a time not too far into the future after which every new cutting-edge GPU
incorporates a similar regime.
(Technical detail: rather than a GPU, the thing being controlled by this regime
might need to be a GPU-CPU pair or a system composed a CPU attached to
zero-or-more GPUs.)
Such a regime would make it unnecessary to ensure that all computational
resources are accounted for, which you spend a lot of ink on in this post. I
take it that you consider such a regime to be either morally abhorrent or politically infeasible.
Every day providers of AI-based services become more efficient at delivering
their services, in the process of which the software and the hardware behind
those services grows more complex, increasing the already-quite-large cost of
modifying that software and hardware to meet AI-safety goals (as you mention
more than once in this post). It would’ve been so convenient for the cause of
AI safety and humanity’s survival if at the start (i.e., in 2022 or so) of this
process of becoming more efficient, it were already routine for some
centralized authority to dictate what software can run on all servers (e.g., to
combat exploitation of children, to discourage content offensive to Allah or to
prevent criticism of the government). (Of course, merely pointing this out tends to paint me as
some sort of political extremist at least in the US.)
Apple has a mature system or “regime” for ensuring that only apps it has explicitly approved will run on iOS. Google and Microsoft have similar systems for Android and Windows, respectively. In most of my daydreaming over the years about how trusted computing might help us survive the AI juggernaut, there will come a time not too far into the future after which every new cutting-edge GPU incorporates a similar regime.
(Technical detail: rather than a GPU, the thing being controlled by this regime might need to be a GPU-CPU pair or a system composed a CPU attached to zero-or-more GPUs.)
Such a regime would make it unnecessary to ensure that all computational resources are accounted for, which you spend a lot of ink on in this post. I take it that you consider such a regime to be either morally abhorrent or politically infeasible.
Every day providers of AI-based services become more efficient at delivering their services, in the process of which the software and the hardware behind those services grows more complex, increasing the already-quite-large cost of modifying that software and hardware to meet AI-safety goals (as you mention more than once in this post). It would’ve been so convenient for the cause of AI safety and humanity’s survival if at the start (i.e., in 2022 or so) of this process of becoming more efficient, it were already routine for some centralized authority to dictate what software can run on all servers (e.g., to combat exploitation of children, to discourage content offensive to Allah or to prevent criticism of the government). (Of course, merely pointing this out tends to paint me as some sort of political extremist at least in the US.)