As BroJames says, it appears that you need to supply credentials to read the full article. It's possible your browser might be configured to do this by default.
Writing in The Atlantic (more restricted access, I'm afraid, but in the bit that should be accessible), David Robinson, the guy responsible for writing safety reports at OpenAI:
What I’m about to tell you has, I realize, become something of a cliché: I resigned this week from OpenAI. I led the writing of the safety reports we published with each major launch. Now I’m joining a parade of former colleagues—at OpenAI and the industry’s other leaders—who have decided that the current path is unacceptable.
I agree with other recently departed staff that the companies building this technology aren’t being nearly careful enough. But I believe that we need to look deeper than specific rules or new laws. We need to talk about culture.
The future depends on wisdom that Silicon Valley lacks. Wisdom about how to handle dangerous technology and, more fundamentally, wisdom about what it means to care for people.
As it's a Sunday, today's take-away is that these people (the ones who don't resign) are subconsciously trying to create new gods, ones made in "our" (actually their) own image. Their hope is that these new gods will look on them, as their creators, more favourably than the rest of us. It's increasingly hard to see how this will end well.
If we're lucky, Vulcan's Hammer may turn out to be prescient.
Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, has been out and about, doing interviews with anyone who will listen. Excerpts from his interview with Politico (Decoded), which received a fair amount of attention:
One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.
I do think the lighter touch regulatory stance we advocate for comes with an accepting of the fact that some bad things are going to happen as society figures out the resilience.
… I think that people will do tremendously – orders of magnitude – more good stuff than bad stuff.
If we do too much to restrict this technology in the name of safety, and we end up with a small number of companies or people — or perhaps one country — that have too much power over this, that also is a way that this can go horribly wrong, because people are shut out of the kind of power and benefits and control and agency over the future they should have.
Of the varied consequential issues, he doesn't seem to have considered the circumstances that are likely to distinguish the people in the world to whom good things will happen from those to whom bad things will happen.
In late capitalism, the word for people to whom good things happen is "investors".
A photographer is warning parents who use artificial intelligence to take the watermark off school pictures about the dangers of how companies can use images of their children.
AI is being used to steal school pictures, photographers warn - BBC News
[Link removed - Boogie has provided a better link, below. North East Quine, Purgatory host]
In late capitalism, the word for people to whom good things happen is "investors".
I understand that investors are the intended beneficiaries of capitalism, but if by “late capitalism” you mean what is sometimes called “debtism”, then those who invest in lenders will do better still.
If one can identify the corporations backing AI enterprises, one should be quids/dollars/euros in.
I asked a nice colleague work his (Chatbot?) AI magic on the only, and very faded, photo of my beloved young cousin who died of leukaemia in 1964. The result is stunning - the detail and colours wonderfully restored - a result far, far beyond I could do for all my expertise in Paintshop pro.
Not sure what to do next. Do I let him loose on the only photo of my father (who died in 1947) with his young bride, my mother?
LHM
Take a photo of the photo, then see what he can do.
Good advice. This is what I did. With equally stunning results. I don't think I can do this to any more deeply personal phototos. Much, much too emotional.
LHM
Take a photo of the photo, then see what he can do.
Good advice. This is what I did. With equally stunning results. I don't think I can do this to any more deeply personal phototos. Much, much too emotional.
LHM
Take a photo of the photo, then see what he can do.
Good advice. This is what I did. With equally stunning results. I don't think I can do this to any more deeply personal phototos. Much, much too emotional.
LHM
I'm rather wary about the medium and long-term consequences for human beings of handing over the responsibility for our cherished memories to AI and its magic. (ie a bunch of techbros with cognitive empathy deficiency.)
(There's a related discussion concerning the long-term effects on the organic, fading, human experience of memory by the digitalisation of the artifacts of memory.)
There's currently an issue in some genealogy sites. Someone, apparently under the impression that this was a good thing to do, has been lifting photos off sites, putting them through some colourising programme and them reposting them back onto the site. The snag is that the "improved" photos often look subtly different to the originals, it seems to be straightening teeth, making people look younger and other tweaks. End result - there's a photo of your ancestor online, that doesn't actually look like your ancestor. And the colours are largely guesswork of course. British military uniforms have gone from black-and-white to be colourised as American uniforms.
Fortunately for me I have never posted family photos online, but there are some very unhappy people out there!
There's currently an issue in some genealogy sites. Someone, apparently under the impression that this was a good thing to do, has been lifting photos off sites, putting them through some colourising programme and them reposting them back onto the site. The snag is that the "improved" photos often look subtly different to the originals, it seems to be straightening teeth, making people look younger and other tweaks. End result - there's a photo of your ancestor online, that doesn't actually look like your ancestor. And the colours are largely guesswork of course. British military uniforms have gone from black-and-white to be colourised as American uniforms.
Fortunately for me I have never posted family photos online, but there are some very unhappy people out there!
In addition, there's the issue that any photo you upload to genAI will be used as training data to fulfill other people's queries and requests. Your ancestor's face or a version of it might be put into a faked photo of something horrible happening - someone could request genAI to make a scene of British soldiers committing war crimes, or something.
I would be especially wary of uploading any photos of children.
I understand there is a program called Glaze that you can put over the top of any image you own copyright to, and it will prevent AI from scraping your image for so-called "training"--and may also poison the AI dataset if they make the attempt. This was developed by artists who wished to be able to post their own work online without having it stolen ("scraped"). There are probably more than one of these defensive programs available. It would probably be decent to have a warning up if you use such a program ("images are copyrighted, so not scrape").
Comments
Ok I guess I thought she or it was more well known than she is. You live and learn
As it's a Sunday, today's take-away is that these people (the ones who don't resign) are subconsciously trying to create new gods, ones made in "our" (actually their) own image. Their hope is that these new gods will look on them, as their creators, more favourably than the rest of us. It's increasingly hard to see how this will end well.
If we're lucky, Vulcan's Hammer may turn out to be prescient.
Of the varied consequential issues, he doesn't seem to have considered the circumstances that are likely to distinguish the people in the world to whom good things will happen from those to whom bad things will happen.
In late capitalism, the word for people to whom good things happen is "investors".
A photographer is warning parents who use artificial intelligence to take the watermark off school pictures about the dangers of how companies can use images of their children.
AI is being used to steal school pictures, photographers warn - BBC News
[Link removed - Boogie has provided a better link, below. North East Quine, Purgatory host]
The BBC news story is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5ye4p86d21o
Is that better?
I understand that investors are the intended beneficiaries of capitalism, but if by “late capitalism” you mean what is sometimes called “debtism”, then those who invest in lenders will do better still.
If one can identify the corporations backing AI enterprises, one should be quids/dollars/euros in.
But this does remind me about the debt-equity distinction, about which more on the Belief, capitalism and hell thread.
Not sure what to do next. Do I let him loose on the only photo of my father (who died in 1947) with his young bride, my mother?
LHM
Good advice. This is what I did. With equally stunning results. I don't think I can do this to any more deeply personal phototos. Much, much too emotional.
LHM
Sending hugs and prayers. 🕯❤️
Received with much thanks!
(There's a related discussion concerning the long-term effects on the organic, fading, human experience of memory by the digitalisation of the artifacts of memory.)
Fortunately for me I have never posted family photos online, but there are some very unhappy people out there!
In addition, there's the issue that any photo you upload to genAI will be used as training data to fulfill other people's queries and requests. Your ancestor's face or a version of it might be put into a faked photo of something horrible happening - someone could request genAI to make a scene of British soldiers committing war crimes, or something.
I would be especially wary of uploading any photos of children.