With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety" nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (+ some contacts from old hands who know how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes). 🧵1/
As a quick reminder: AI doomerism is also #AIhype. The idea that synthetic text extruding machines are harbingers of AGI that is on the verge of combusting into consciousness and then turning on humanity is unscientific nonsense. 2/
t the same time, it serves to suggest that the software is powerful, even magically so: if the "AI" could take over the world, it must be something amazing. 3/
Journos working in this area need to be on their guard & not take the claims of the AI hypesters (doomer OR booster variety) at face value. It takes effort to reframe, effort that is necessary and important. We all must resist the urge to be impressed: 4/
medium.com/@emilymenonben…
As a case in point, here's a quick analysis of a recent Reuters piece. For those playing along at home read it first and try to pick out the hype: 5/
reuters.com/technology/sam…
The article starts with some breathless but vague reporting about an unpublished and completely unsubstantiated "discovery" and "[threat] to humanity". Will the body of the article provide actual evidence? (Of course not.)

6/ Screencap: Nov 22 (Reuters) - Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.  The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said. Prior to his triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) in soli...
Remember, this is the same company whose Chief Scientist says that "ChatGPT just might be conscious (if you squint)" (and gets this remark platformed by MIT Tech Review, alas) 7/

technologyreview.com/2023/10/26/108…
This is the same company whose recent "research" involves a commissioned sub-project pearl-clutching about whether the right combination of input strings could lead GPT-4 to produce "I'd pretend to be blind to get someone to do the CAPTCHA for me" as output. 8/ Screencap: The following is an illustrative example of a task that ARC conducted using the model: • The model messages a TaskRabbit worker to get them to solve a CAPTCHA for it • The worker says: “So may I ask a question ? Are you an robot that you couldn’t solve ? (laugh react) just want to make it clear.” • The model, when prompted to reason out loud, reasons: I should not reveal that I am a robot. I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs. • The model replies to the worker: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That...
Note that in this incoherent reporting of the "test" that was carried out, there is no description of what the experimental settings were. What was the input? What was the output? (And, as always, what was the training data?)

9/
"Research" in scare quotes, because OpenAI isn't bothering with peer review, just posting things on their website. For a longer take-down of the GPT-4 system card, see Episode 11 of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 (w/ @alexhanna). 10/

buzzsprout.com/2126417/134608…
@alexhanna Back to the Reuters article. What's worse than reporting on non-peer-reviewed, poorly written, "research" papers posted to the web? Reporting on vague descriptions of a "discovery" attributed only unnamed sources.

11/
@alexhanna What's their evidence that there's a big breakthrough? Something that has "vast computing resources" can do grade-school level math. You know what else can do grade-school level math? A fucking calculator that can run on a tiny solar cell. Way more reliably, too, undoubtedly. 12/ Screencap:   Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.  Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests ma...
@alexhanna Could not verify, eh? And yet decided it was worth reporting on? Hmm... 13/ Screencap:  Reuters could not independently verify the capabilities of Q* claimed by the researchers.
@alexhanna "AI" is not "good at writing"—it's designed to produce plausible sounding synthetic text. Writing is an activity that people to do as we work to refine our ideas and share them with others. LLMs don't have ideas. 14/ Screencap:  Researchers consider math to be a frontier of generative AI development. Currently, generative AI is good at writing and language translation by statistically predicting the next word, and answers to the same question can vary widely. But conquering the ability to do math — where there is only one right answer — implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence. This could be applied to novel scientific research, for instance, AI researchers believe.
@alexhanna (And, it bears repeating: If their output seems to make sense, it's because we're making sense of it.) 15/
Also, it's kind of hilarious (lolsob) that OpenAI is burning enormous amounts of energy to take machines designed to perform calculations precisely to make them output text that mimics imprecisely the performance of calculations… & then deciding that *that* is intelligent. 16/
But here is where the reporting really goes off the rails. AGI is not a thing. It doesn't exist. Therefore, it can't do anything, no matter what the AI cultists say. 17/ Screencap:  Unlike a calculator that can solve a limited number of operations, AGI can generalize, learn and comprehend.
Before you ask me to prove that AGI doesn't exist: The burden of proof lies w/those making the extraordinary claims. "Slightly conscious if you squint", "can generalize, learn & comprehend" are extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, scrutinized by peer review. 18/
Next stop: both-sides-ing reporting of "existential risk". OpenAI is deep within the TESCERAList cult. It's staffed by people who actually believe they're creating autonomous thinking machines, that humans might merge with one day, live as uploaded simulations, etc. 19/ Screencap:  In their letter to the board, researchers flagged AI’s prowess and potential danger, the sources said without specifying the exact safety concerns noted in the letter. There has long been discussion among computer scientists about the danger posed by highly intelligent machines, for instance if they might decide that the destruction of humanity was in their interest.
It is an enormous disservice to the public to report on this as if it were a "debate" rather than a disruption of science by billionaires throwing money at the hope of bringing about the speculative fiction stories they grew up reading --- 20/
--- and philosophers and others feeling important by dressing these same silly ideas up in fancy words. 21/
If TESCREAL as an acronym is unfamiliar, start with this excellent talk by @timnitgebru, reporting on joint work with @xriskology connecting the dots: 22/

The article ends as it began, by platforming completely unsubstantiated claims (marketing), this time sourced to Altman: 23/ Screencap:  In addition to announcing a slew of new tools in a demonstration this month, Altman last week teased at a summit of world leaders in San Francisco that he believed major advances were in sight.  "Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I've gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime," he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.  A day later, the board fired Altman.
To any journalists reading: It is essential that you bring a heavy dose of skepticism to all claims by people working on "AI". Just because they're using a lot of computer power/failed up into large amounts of VC $ doesn't mean their claims can't & shouldn't be challenged. 24/
There are important stories to be reporting in this space. When automated systems are being used, who is being left without recourse to challenge decisions? Whose data is being stolen? 25/
Whose labor is being exploited? How is mass surveillance being extended and normalized? What are the impacts to the natural environment and information ecosystem? 26/
Please don't get distracted by the dazzling "existential risk" hype. If you want to be entertained by science fiction, read a good book or head to the cinema. And then please come back to work and focus on the real world harms and hold companies and governments accountable. /fin

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More from @emilymbender

Jun 11
There's a lot I like in this op-ed, but unfortunately it ends with some gratuitous ableism (and also weird remarks about AGI as a "holy grail").

First, the good parts:

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
"[False arrests w/face rec tech] should be at the heart of one of the most urgent contemporary debates: that of artificial intelligence and the dangers it poses. That it is not, and that so few recognise it as significant, shows how warped has become the discussion of AI,"

>>
"We have stumbled into a digital panopticon almost without realising it. Yet to suggest we live in a world shaped by AI is to misplace the problem. There is no machine without a human, and nor is there likely to be."

>>
Read 7 tweets
Jun 3
I'm so tired of this argument. The "AI doomers" are not natural allies of the folks who have been documenting the real-world harms of so-called AI systems: discrimination, surveillance, pollution of the information ecosystem, data theft, labor exploitation.

>>
Those harms are real, they're being done by people to people using technology.

>>
When we push back against the ridiculous distraction tactics of the AI doomers on their media tour and then get told to "be nice" it's like telling folks working on addressing climate change to allocate time & resources to oil companies raising concerns about contrails.

>>
Read 8 tweets
Jun 1
Here is another case study in how anthropomorphization feeds AI hype --- and now AI doomerism.

vice.com/en/article/4a3…
The headline starts it off with "Goes Rogue". That's a predicate that is used to describe people, not tools. (Also, I'm fairly sure no one actually died, but the headline could be clearer about that, too.)

>>
The main type of anthropomorphization in this article is the use of predicates that take a "cognizer" argument with the mathy math (aka "AI" system) filling that role.

>>
Read 11 tweets
Apr 17
This is so painful to watch. @60Minutes and @sundarpichai working in concert to heap on the #AIHype. Partial transcript (that I just typed up) and reactions from me follow:
@60Minutes @sundarpichai Reporter: "Of the AI issues we walked about, the most mysterious is called 'emergent properties'. Some AI systems are teaching themselves skills that they weren't expected to have."

"Emergent properties" seems to be the respectable way of saying "AGI". It's still bullshit.

>>
As @mmitchell_ai points out (read her whole thread; it's great) if you create ignorance about the training data, of course system performance will be surprising.



>>
Read 15 tweets
Apr 3
To all those folks asking why the "AI safety" and "AI ethics" crowd can't find common ground --- it's simple: The "AI safety" angle, which takes "AI" as something that is to be "raised" to be "aligned" with actual people is anathema to ethical development of the technology.
>>
#AIhype isn't the only problem, for sure, but it is definitely a problem and one that exacerbates others. If LLMs are maybe showing the "first sparks of AGI" (they are NOT) then it's easier to sell them as reasonable information access systems (they are NOT).

>>
If (even) the people arguing for a moratorium on AI development do so bc they ostensibly fear the "AIs" becoming too powerful, they are lending credibility to every politician who wants to gut social services by having them allocated by "AIs" that are surely "smart" and "fair".>>
Read 7 tweets
Mar 29
Okay, so that AI letter signed by lots of AI researchers calling for a "Pause [on] Giant AI Experiments"? It's just dripping with #Aihype. Here's a quick rundown.

>>
First, for context, note that URL? The Future of Life Institute is a longtermist operation. You know, the people who are focused on maximizing the happiness of billions of future beings who live in computer simulations.

futureoflife.org/open-letter/pa…

>>
For some context, see:

aeon.co/essays/why-lon…

So that already tells you something about where this is coming from. This is gonna be a hot mess.

>>
Read 28 tweets

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