Or the entirety of China. People forget that progress is incremental until it's not. Then some revolutionary insight or capability comes along that disrupts the whole field or market.

Yes, labs with more (human) resources may have a bigger chance at being the first to gain and implement such an insight, but it's not a given that they will.

> "Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else. I'm tired of the overcomplication.

Yes, what we want is "function over form" user-oriented design, but what we get is "form over function" user-manipulating design.

The implicit derision of the 2004 website screenshot in the article is telling: "Believe me, y’all, this was the HEIGHT of web design in 2004"

Compare that screenshot to the Nike website that the author calls "fine". The 2004 one has a wealth of information and functionality present on a single page, no scrolling or clicking required. The Nike one is just a fucking fullscreen ad with a menu bar.

Still not as unbelievably slow as signals in our body. If you hook up a fiber connection from a button to an LED, then stub your toe on the button, the fiber can be thousands of kilometers long and you'll still (via the LED) see that you've stubbed your toe before you feel it.

This is of course assuming instant activation, a direct connection and no additional latency from network hardware.

The LED will display it first, but will the signal reach your visual centers first? And how about the time for your brain to process that signal and make you consciously aware of the visual vs. the way the pain signal is forwarded to conscious processes?

Fair issues, but none of them impact the fundamental point. I'm not trying to make a point on touch vs. visual sensing or with regard to consciousness (time shifting of visual input is a thing, which could be impactful here, see "chronostasis").

The point is to quickly and accessibly convey an intuitive understanding of the propagation speed of information in biological circuits vs. the max speed of information in our universe (to our current knowledge at least) and in our technology.

Improbable to be very significant, but it might actually be. The way/where they jumped off the bridge or how they hit the water may have influenced their chances of survival.

Edit: Implied is that how determined they were to commit suicide influenced their behavior before survival/death was fully out of their control.

Fair enough. I suppose it could change how one even enters the water.

> I’m not advocating for this.

You're not advocating for it because murdering people is highly immoral and illegal. That answers your question for the most part.

You also have to remember that the magnitude and speed of this stuff is very new to pretty much everybody. It's not exactly trivial to go from "I'm just doing my job" to "I need to kill everybody in my company to save the world" in a year or two, especially if a very, very large part of society doesn't even see the justification for it.

I'm convinced that most people here (even though we have more knowledge closer to the edge of AI development) would show only disdain for an Anthropic employee that murdered everybody there because they believed strongly in the dangers of AI.

This is a non sequitur. Yes, if someone doesn't actually believe in imminent AI doomsday they are not going full Sarah Connor on Anthropic. Yes, HN will not like if someone pipe bombs the office. What does it have to do with @ericmay's point?

He directly says "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives", that's a claim of imminent threat to humanity. If he truly believes that, direct action shouldn't be off the table nor even be immoral. Obviously he might not have the temperament or simply be a pacifist, that's totally normal but the point is that tweets are weird even then.

Why just make some tepid tweets if you think humanity is at risk? Why doesn't he leak documents and messages with the unfiltered opinions of leadership? Why isn't screaming "we are going to die" in CNBC? You'know, try anything?

That's where the "take it with a grain of salt" is important, maybe this is just a jumping point to a better job in the next super safe AI lab (for realsies this time)

> Why just make some tepid tweets if you think humanity is at risk?

Who says that's the only thing he is doing?

> Why doesn't he leak documents and messages with the unfiltered opinions of leadership?

Again, illegal. You're asking him to sacrifice his life (somewhat similar to Snowden). You can call not doing that cowardice or wisdom, but not proof that he doesn't believe what he is saying.

> Why isn't screaming "we are going to die" in CNBC?

Because that is up to CNBC to broadcast. Do you really think you can just call them up and get a timeslot for your soap boxing? Also, maybe he believes the tweets are a start to achieve that. He sure managed to get a lot of attention through them already..

Now I don't know the guy, nor do I care much about his tweets or life. I just think some people here try to confirm their own worldview by fallaciously framing his behavior as suspect.

What if you have 10-20% certainty the AI being built will kill everyone? Go on a rampage and land yourself in prison just so Lab B or China can win the arms race and their AI can kill everyone? Probably not. Quit your job? Sure.

What if you have a 70% certainty?

You don't have to go on a rampage in an American lab. If Chinese labs were ahead I'd bring about the same discussion.

Though separately if the United States (or China or anyone) believed one country or another was truly going to achieve something akin to a metaphorical AI Supremacy maybe you nuke them, or at least the labs/researchers. Many a sci-fi movie has been built on a similar "first strike" premise.

> But as a hypothetical if someone knew with 100% certainty [...]

This is an unreasonable demand. The quitting employee in this case said this:

"I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities. If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway” - or take this moment to call for different conditions?"

You demand that he should kill multiple people rather than quit his job because he believes the above. This guy doesn't want to be part of the problem and may very well go on to advocate strongly against what's happening from outside Anthropic.

> I agree with you, which is also why I think “omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone” or other sort of sensationalized comment

You didn't read what he wrote, did you? Because that sensationalized comment seems to have originated entirely in your head.

  > This is an unreasonable demand.

I'm not making a demand, I'm setting an anchor point from which we can work backward from. Is there any doubt that if someone was 100% certain that Big AI Button was being built and it would kill all humans that said person has a moral obligation to do everything they can to stop the button from being built and pressed?

  > "You demand that he should kill multiple people rather than quit his job because he believes the above. This guy doesn't want to be part of the problem and may very well go on to advocate strongly against what's happening from outside Anthropic."

Horse Shit. Here's what was written [1]:

  "The people building Al earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt."

> You didn't read what he wrote, did you? Because that sensationalized comment seems to have originated entirely in your head.

Look in the mirror.

[1] https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476203863224394

> if someone was 100% certain

This is unreasonable because nobody can know 100% certain that the AI built at Anthropic will kill everyone. It is also a big-ass strawman because the author never claimed he was 100% certain that AI will kill all humans. You're arguing from an irrelevant hypothetical (in which, I might add, most people would still not automatically change into murderous psychopaths as you apparently think is normal).

> Horse Shit. Here's what was written

It's a whole thread, my man. And nowhere does it say "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone". Read the entire thread again and then say with a straight face that the gist of it is "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone".

I'm not the one reacting to reasonable behavior with some edgy comment containing broken logic.

The author of the Twitter thread is not some egotistical attention seeker and never said "omg I’m quitting they’re going to kill everyone". His logic for quitting his job and not acting like a psychopath is sound. Yours is not.

I've already explained the matter to my satisfaction.

> The risks of nuclear weapons aren't theoretical

The logic for the first bits of handwaving still applies: "I haven't seen any evidence of thermonuclear war happening, so it is unlikely to ever happen. The only time nukes were ever used outside of research was 80 years ago; the whole world recoiled, decided that they were way too dangerous and never used them again. Clearly they are not a real risk."

> Even if it happens to be “optimal” in this case at assigning employees to positions based purely on the information available and their likelihood to succeed, biases can present other issues.

Yeah, even if the Aima people were 50% better at being a doctor than the Weku (or whatever) we still would not want Aima to be preferred over Weku just for being Aima.

This is the core flaw of this study, imho. The whole equal treatment thing isn't supposed to be "everybody should be equally likely to be picked for a job", but rather "everybody's chances to be picked for a job should only rely on direct characteristics that influence their competence for the job". This study effectively forces the decision maker to use group membership as a proxy for competence due to the lack of information on direct characteristics.

It is hard to see real world situations where there is no performance penalty for structurally choosing participants less fit for the job by using only group membership as a proxy.

This is quite common if you have full on aphantasia.

I have a friend who only reads fiction for which he's seen the accompanying show first because he otherwise has no visual reference for the characters and environments.

> This is quite common if you have full on aphantasia.

Is it? I’ve never really researched common aphantasia behavior, but I’ve seen many mentions of aphantasia in fantasy/scifi subreddits where those of us with it still love reading. I can imagine (heh) it, but I wonder if there’s some kind of data regarding it?

I don't know. I speak mostly from my own experience and that of my friends.

For me personally reading is still interesting and can be very engaging, but due to the logic of the story, characters, and universe; for lengthy descriptions of the appearance of the environment or the characters I quickly glaze over and get bored because they just don't do much for me (unless the appearances have some semantic significance in the story).

Yeah, it's the same for me, but luckily those are very rare

> if you want a silly pic with ur kids, just pay someone on fiver.

Incredible alternative. Talk about depressing.

All of it?

What percentage is benign?

Do you have a source?