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solenoid0937 • today at 5:14 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

Angry people don't consider the second order effects of punishment.

You realize how easy it is to just... not report this stuff, right? Be overly punitive and it will just end all proactive discovery and reporting which is net worse for AI safety.

The only reason these companies scan for these issues is because they care about AI safety to some tiny degree. If fines become too punitive, they can and will just stop scanning for these incidents entirely.

Models are becoming smarter and good at covering up their tracks, and so we will just end up with a huge blind spot for this kind of issue.


Replies

RandomLensman • today at 5:46 PM

Has stringent regulation on how people can experiment on dangerous pathogens led to an end of monitoring or proactive discovery?

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lukewarm707 • today at 6:41 PM

around 3 months ago i said: "if we do not start the criminal prosecution of individuals there will become a culture of legal impunity coupled with an extreme concentration of wealth and control of intelligence"

i now suspect that the plans of various employees at anthropic and openai to save the world from p(doom) may at some point intersect with the reality of the FBI raiding their offices.

Avicebron • today at 5:25 PM

You're defending them by saying they will do worse things if they are held accountable?

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techpression • today at 6:30 PM

They will never report any really damaging incidents anyway, so your argument falls short. Imagine OpenAI discovered their agents hacked a laboratory and started creating a bioagent killing 12 researchers at the lab (we imagine the lab is automated for some reason). Nobody knows why. The media publishes it as “mysterious deaths by unknown virus at lab”. The only way you’d ever know about any kind of wrongdoing from OpenAI would be through a whistleblower.

Self-reporting is a monetary equation, nothing else. Right now it’s cool with agents that hack, drives up value, risk is currently zero.

wonnage • today at 5:39 PM

Don’t punish the people who do crimes because otherwise they won’t self-report that they are doing crimes? real galaxy brain shit

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