Well, in this case, I think since people are killing themselves after talking to the AI, people are actually killing people. The AI company and the AI kills no one, so surely they must not be responsible at all for this.
“responsibility” isn’t a boolean, at least in this human’s experience.
there are different degrees of responsibility (and accountability) for everyone involved. some are smaller, some are larger. but everyone shares some responsibility, even if it is infinitesimally small.
Would you say an AI researcher involved in LLMs today are as responsible for how AI is being deployed, as the developers/engineers who initially worked on TCP and HTTP are for the state of the internet and web is today?
I don't have any good answer myself, but eager to hear what others think.
A quick search shows me (Disclosure: I think it is the duck.ai search thing rather than any article)
> TCP and HTTP protocols were primarily developed with funding and support from government agencies, particularly the U.S. Department of Defense and organizations like ARPA, rather than by non-profit entities. These protocols were created to facilitate communication across different computer networks
That's to say they are or aren't responsible for what their technology is being used for?
So say the people who specified, implemented and deployed TCP and HTTP, should they be held responsible for aiding transmission of child pornography across international borders, for example?
No sorry, if you meant that should they be liable. I presume not.
I was just pointing out that information because I had thought that http was created by non profits/similar but It was HTML which was created in CERN
that being said, coming to the point, I think that no this shouldn't be the case for the people who specified TCP/HTTP
But also I feel like an AI researcher / the people who specified TCP are in a different categories because AI researcher companies directly work for AI companies which are then used so in a way, their direct company is facilitating that partially due to their help
On the other hand, People who have Specified Open source have no whatsoever relation similar to the AI company model perhaps.
I am not sure, there definitely is nuance but I would definitely consider AI researchers to be more than the people who created the specification of TCP/http as an example.
And more in general, people kill people. And people help people.
Tools are tools. It is what we make of them what matters. AI on its own has no intentions, but questions like these feed into that believe that there is already AGI with a own agenda waiting to build terminators.
Yeah, that's probably true. Is that what happens whenever you use an LLM, it tries to kill you or asks you to kill yourself? I've been using LLMs on/off for about 2-3 years now, not a single time has it told me to kill myself, or anyone else for that matter.
I'm running forgejo on my NAS, including CI runners etc. Harder to share with folks but great for my personal projects (except building an iOS app, which someday I'll set a Mac Mini up for probably)
I am working on a site that allows kids to chat and play online with other kids. To connect, kids must have their parents sign up and connect with the parents of their friends. Kids can chat with their parents and family as well as other kids in their network. Messages can be monitored by parents. There are also other activities like a bot workshop where simple llm bots can be "programmed" by creating system prompts (kids create video game helper bots, ice cream shop bots, adventure/dungeons and dragons style bots, etc). There is a sticker book (cartoon image search), and a quiz creator. Many other things are planned!
The guiding principles are to create a fun, positive, safe space for kids and families to socialize and interact as well as empower kids to explore and understand technology as a creative tool and not just as something to consume content.
Interesting goals, and quite different from the norm. I assume you must have somewhat strong feelings about privacy and/or children having access to technology/internet/etc that has driven you to build this platform? As a happily childless late 30s married man, this is quite foreign to me; but I definitely recognise that there is passion driving this project… Could you talk some more about your inspiration and long term goals? I find both the concept and the end goal quite fascinating!
When my daughter was around 2 years old she would sit on my lap and type letters on my laptop into Emacs. I would change the color of the text and she would type more. I figured there was a simple webapp here, so built various things for her to play with over the next couple years. One let her type words and then fire off a ddg safe image search and return cartoon images in response. She would copy words out of her books to get pictures of dogs and trees and silly things.
We live far away from family, and the idea of having a way for her to communicate with cousins and grandparents became the focus. As well as other kids in town. So I thought about a social version of the experiments I'd been playing with.
I'm inspired by Seymour Papert's thinking, about kids using technology to learn math and logic... living in "mathland" so to speak. But I'm also thinking about positive alternatives to the default social network interactions that are available for kids and families now.
Long term I would love to build a platform that lets kids explore technology and build collaborative spaces.
Keeping parents in the loop of what is going on is important, but balancing that correctly can be challenging, I don't want a "big mother is watching" kind of app, but I think its appropriate for parents to know what their kids are doing and looking at and talking to, especially at primary school age (my daughter is currently 8). What is needed and appropriate always changes.
I’d say some of the downsides on the modern internet become much starker when your kids come up against them. As adults growing up through the birth of the internet we are kinda inoculated to it.
I suspect the lack of privacy is because the target audience is “kids” not “teens”. When my kids first discovered group chat in iMessage with their cousins it was fun for literally 30 minutes before it was tears and abuse - which was a really instructive lesson for me.
At that (primary school) age parents would almost universally know the parents of your kid’s out-of-school playmates - if only because someone tends to have duty of care at any time and who is where with whom needs to be figured out.
The feature set seems sound and frankly welcome and overdue to me!
Yeah it is true. I am more or less modelling the interactions my kid has with other kids and the social relationships I have with her friends parents. She doesn't go to anyone's house who's parents I don't know. Obviously that will change as she gets older.
So for now, the social dynamic in the app is for parents to connect first. Once connected, their kids can choose to connect (facebook messenger kids uses this same process I think).
When I talk to less tech-savvy parents in my community, I think many feel quite helpless and unsure how to navigate a lot of this. Consuming youtube kids videos on an iPad is one option, or outlawing screentime entirely is another. Kids want real stuff that they are in control of. I want to build age appropriate versions of this kind of stuff... with the appropriate guards and oversight in place, keeping parents in the drivers seat.
Sounds cool, would love a link! I’ve started buying walkie talkies for neighbourhood kids and set up a Minecraft server which has turned in to a sorta social hub for my daughters- we’re trying to delay phones as long as possible - but a purpose built solution would be great
Thanks for your interest. I will send you a link if you want to have a look and try out something that is still rough around the edges. I'm working out some login/connection flow issues and am not ready to publicly share quite yet.
100% agree with this. I grew up on a TRS-80 and so much wanted to share my nostalgia, or a some modern form of it with my daughter. Turns out using Scratch gives her the same core excitement, empowerment and wonder I experienced typing out games in BASIC but in an environment that allows so much more with so much less toil. That feeling of being able to create things, to get a machine to do what you want to do is captured so well. To top it of there is a community of creators and people sharing tutorials. The source code to every project made and shared by others is just a click away... the learning opportunities are endless. I am so grateful for this platform!
I recall in an interview Peterson saying their hiring process to look for "insecure overachievers", maybe they have a way of screening for that? I never really understood what that looked like in practice.
Original article is much better. The "Not To-Do" List was inspired by Charlie Munger's idea of inversion.
“Problems frequently get easier if you turn them around in reverse. In other words, if you want to help India, the question you should ask is not ‘how can I help India,’ it’s ‘what is doing the worst damage in India and how do I avoid it?”
“A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.”
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
How actionable is this advice? There seem to be so many more ways to be stupid than to be wise. Is there a specific type of stupid that you need to look out for?
Poor Charlie's Almanack is a good one; it is quite a mix of stories, advice and wisdom that you can read in parts here and there when you have a moment.
