Thursday, June 20th 2024
OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Launches a New Venture: Safe Superintelligence Inc.
OpenAI's co-founder and ex-chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, has announced the formation of a new company promising a safe path to artificial superintelligence (ASI). Called Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), the company has a simple mission: achieving ASI with safety at the front. "We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs. We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead," notes the SSI website, adding that "Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures."
Interestingly, safety is a concern only a few frontier AI labs have. In recent history, OpenAI's safety team got the spotlight for being neglected, and the company's safety lead, Jan Leike, publically criticized safety practices before moving to Anthropic. Anthropic is focused on providing safe AI models, with its Claude Opus being one of the leading AI models to date. What is to come out of SSI? We still don't know. However, given the team of Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy, we assume they attracted the best-in-class talent for developing next-generation AI models, focusing on safety. With offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, SSI can tap a vast network of AI researchers and policymakers to establish safe ASI, free from short-term commercial pressure and focused on research and development. "Our team, investors, and business model are all aligned to achieve SSI," says the SSI website.
Source:
SSI
Interestingly, safety is a concern only a few frontier AI labs have. In recent history, OpenAI's safety team got the spotlight for being neglected, and the company's safety lead, Jan Leike, publically criticized safety practices before moving to Anthropic. Anthropic is focused on providing safe AI models, with its Claude Opus being one of the leading AI models to date. What is to come out of SSI? We still don't know. However, given the team of Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy, we assume they attracted the best-in-class talent for developing next-generation AI models, focusing on safety. With offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, SSI can tap a vast network of AI researchers and policymakers to establish safe ASI, free from short-term commercial pressure and focused on research and development. "Our team, investors, and business model are all aligned to achieve SSI," says the SSI website.
38 Comments on OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Launches a New Venture: Safe Superintelligence Inc.
The sun and the earth are both in space, so they're similar. Except you can't live on one, and you can live on the other. Still similar? Or let's trade the sun for Venus, as a thought experiment, because they're now also both planets. More similar. But is it relevant? You still can't live there. The difference really defines what makes Earth, Earth and not Venus.
You say the brain and LLMs are similar. Except you can choose what you train on an LLM, and you haven't got the same degree of control on a brain. They digest information differently, and are influenced by completely different parameters. They're as similar as the Earth and Venus are as planets. And the key difference is the degree of control. That thing humans like a lot, like oxygen and water on habitable planets. Every time you release an AI model and let it do things unchecked, it comes up with the most random nonsense. So while there are similarities, it is the difference that defines the technology, not the similarity. The difference reduces an LLM to essentially a complex algorithm, because its mostly unreliable and useless outside of that use case.
First you're saying: 'We could give up control we have over LLM training and make it more similar to human brain development' Then you're saying 'until we train it otherwise' - which is exercising control. So which is it? Is giving up control more similar to a human brain, or is it when adding control? Or is it a bit of both, however it suits us at each moment in time? And how will you mimic the development of a brain in an LLM that way? How do you know what to filter and what not? With an LLM that is guided by its purpose. But with a human brain?
The point of the comparison really is that with a human brain, you never truly control the training parameters, even though we try hard to gain control of as many as possible. With an LLM you do control everything, and this is even the basic premise of it: input = output. You train it for a purpose, a relatively narrow one compared to a brain, and because it is narrow, it is weak, vulnerable to errors, and incapable of true agency. Its an elaborate search engine on the data you've put inside. The generative part doesn't spawn anything new. A human brain does, because it frames the input with a myriad of other information you can't possibly 'train' into a model. Like emotion. Events will inspire, motivate, etc.
So similar, but not even remotely the same. And here we were in the 2020's, where the internal combustion engine was once more a problem we couldn't ignore. Yay for progress, except we've dug ourselves a massive fossil hole, that's difficult to get out of. AI isn't entirely different in that regard. A lot of the technologies we develop since the industrial age are like this: there is a price we pay, but the economy rules, so fuck that price, we won't pay it now, we'll just postpone it for later generations. In the case of the ICE, that escalated pretty quickly don't you think? 100 years - years in which we continuously strived to reduce pollution. The best we've managed though is transporting it to Asia. Its not semantics, its essential to the discussion. Planes have wheels too, so they're similar to cars...? Biomes are just one aspect of the differences between Earth and Venus. Even just something as silly as their position in space is crucial. And it defines those biomes. Such a little detail defines quite a lot then.
What you've been struggling to say this entire time is that two entities can be similar in one context, but not in another. AI algorithms don't eat, sleep, defecate, fornicate, wear clothes, or frolic on the beach. In that respect they're not similar to humans. They do, however, perform tasks and solve problems. In this aspect, they're very similar to humans. And increasing so, they're performing tasks and solving problems that humans cannot solve. Which makes them valuable indeed. Thanks for playing.
AI has it's place admittedly as long as it is constantly monitored by people for screw-ups because it also lacks another ability of the human brain which is common sense.
Now, let's move on, and make the jump to the topic we're in. A supposed safe superintelligence, and a way to curb the supposed rampant AI we could create. Where is it. We can discuss things without trying to oppose each other just because ;) If you think about this topic, this supposed threat, how could we conceive it?
Secondly, there's absolutely no reason to believe that neurons made of meat are inherently superior to those made of silicon. Most experts believe that, if you put enough together, consciousness naturally results.
Third and most importantly -- who cares? An AI algorithm capable of finding a cure for cancer, predicting the path of a hurricane, or writing a successful movie script is incredibly valuable, whether or not it's "self aware". The problem with that statement is that "common sense" is anything but common in humans.
I don't think you really believe that packing enough transistors on a die could ever create self-awareness or any of the unique features found in the human mind. AI is, as you said, an algorithm. It's a program. Human intelligence is vastly more than an algorithm. A monkey can learn. It can be trained but it can't think on a higher level like humans.
As I said, AI does have it's uses but true human intelligence isn't one of them.
We are all raised and taught that we are "special" because of our intelligence. But honestly that's not different to how an AI is programmed/taught.
Humans are limited on what they can do based on education and environment they grew up in. They won't magically come up with something new if they have no previous experience in the area, everything is just a slight reiteration of something that came before.
If you look at the progress of LLMs, they can already pass the Turing test, they have reasoning and logical thinking skills better than most people.
AI can already come up with "new" stuff (reiteration based on previous knowledge): leap71.com/2024/06/18/leap-71-hot-fires-3d-printed-liquid-fuel-rocket-engine-designed-through-noyron-computational-model/
Based on the previous ~5 years of progress, the next decade is going to be wild. The only limit for what AI will be able to do is what we limit it to do, including thinking it's "self aware" by talking about consciousness and will, etc... There are billions of people working and living like that.