I’m a former software dev/maybe-retired game designer. I’m no grand intellect but I’m willing to learn and work and have some small proof-of-mental-competency. Self plugging, I found references this community is mildly aware of Kerbal Space Program which is one of the projects I have some pride in designing for, amongst others.
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Ok, here are my suppositions:
It’s already polarizing about data centers.
It will eventually polarize about the broader AI issue, but the broader AI issues have not had nearly as much discourse in the public space.
Polarization theory applies much more weakly/not at all when an issue becomes proximate and more difficult for propaganda and magical thinking to let people rationalize the issue.
I have not done a lot of research, and polling on data centers mostly focused on the question of building one local to the respondent from what I saw. But an article like this supports my point #1 and #3.
Republicans surveyed are generally more pro data centers, but the shift is dramatic when it’s about non-local vs local data centers per the data here.
W/respect to point #2. I’d say give it 6 months. I expect polarization to emerge on the broader issue by then, with two caveats related to #3:
First. If the broader AI issue becomes backgrounded by current events (eg: a war with Europe over greenland, a US Constitutional crisis) polarization will be weak due to inattention
Second, if significant large scale AI catastrophes occur, on the level of 9-11, like energy grids being taken down by rogue or human directed AI attackers, polarization will also not apply or apply weakly, because it will be a proximate issue, though I expect in the case it can be proved to be done by humans, there will still be significant polarization.
Is that sufficient extrapolation? I’m not trying to be purely argumentative here.
How would you tell the difference between a delay and polarization not happening?
It takes time and attention and elites pushing a narrative for polarization to occur on many issues. Sexual transitioning was a thing for a long time before it became a wedge issue with deep polarization. Ditto climate change. Ditto the Ukraine war if you want a more recent example.
There’s a few things you might want to consider:
Polarization doesn’t predict every thought process of a side, when top down pressure isn’t being applied. For example, many Republicans supported the Ukraine war, though that support wanted when Trump and Co actively tried to undermine Ukraine. It’s bounced back since, from my observations.
People can hold NIMBY positions on something they support, and Republicans have a propensity to be ok with issues that don’t personally effect them even more than Democrats do.
Democratic elites have not enough masse laid down stakes on the larger AI debate beyond data centers to engender a polarizing backlash from the right.
This is still very new for most people.
My point is that it’s a bit too early to say if the US will polarize on AI There is a lot of tension that goes counter to the base world views on both sides that is keeping opinions mixed.
I would expect that as this issue is debated in the public forum, more polarization will emerge on it. I expect Republicans will end up in the pro-unshackled AI camp, as more Democratic elites speak on the dangers of the issue, like Obama did at Colgate University, for example.
Engineering a sense of accompliment for alignment purposes.
If it was $400k just to analyze the CoT of these agents, then presumably it was significantly more expensive to run these agents over their lifecycle, and some significant human time investment in setting up the test suite, plans to analyze the results, etc.
I don’t understand how the researchers monitoring this test—even if they were just taking samples of the ongoing CoT to see behavior—didn’t see any of this happening in real or only slightly delayed time. Are the labs so flush with cash that they do this sort of thing as a whim, start it running on a Friday and then go home for the weekend? Or was it being a black box while ongoing somehow important to the researchers?
It seems insane to me to put 1200 agents tasked and capable of identifying software vulnerabilities into a box and not watch them—some Jurassic Park level of foolishness. And apparently this is not the only time they did it and got out?
Yeah a more comparable analogy is the problem of nuclear weapons I’d say.
There’s lots of parallels:
Two superpowers. Both seeing having nukes/strong AI as a strategic advantage, and a defensive measure in one. Neither could give them up unilaterally and it was a huge focus of their economies to keep building them. Eventually they came to agreements to limit their production and size, to mutually inspect each others arsenals.
Unfortunately the things that are not parallel are huge too.
It took, depending on how you count, 4 to 7 years from the initial impetus of non proliferation to the first treaties. We likely don’t have 7 years.
Civilian nuclear energy use and more dangerous military nuclear weapons are entangled but nut nearly to the degree that they are with AI. And civilian use was in it’s infancy while AI is propagating heavily in both spaces.
I think most consequentially, leadership of the US and USSR were very serious about the threat and future of nuclear weapons. The Chinese seem to be somewhat dismissive of the threat, and the US administration is a clown show that seems to care more about their personal stock portfolios than Armageddon.
I applaud the work you’ve done to bring transparency to the current state of play inside the frontier labs.
We really need the scientific community—especially the public facing portion of it, people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, educating people about AI, because the state of public discourse that could being pressure on these companies is abysmal.
And then I was horrified when I googled it and it turns out he’s clueless to the sort of threat it poses. Not that his mind couldn’t be changed, but the layers of effort needed just got even more concerning.