Is frontier AI scary or successful? Technologists and politicians alike are weighing in on the issue, as this post documents.
In our last episode
As I noted in mid September, there have been two efforts by the generative AI industry itself to self-regulate frontier AI. (We’ll get to self regulation later.)
The earlier effort occurred in March 2023, when Elon Musk and others championed an effort to pause giant AI experiments.
“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”
More recently, a single company, Anthropic, and its head, Dario Amodei, issued a statement of its own.
“Dario Amodei wrote in an online essay that developing AI was not in question, but that the risks associated with it were “serious” and that companies and governments must be given time to address them.”
Musk agreed with this statement, as did OpenAI head Sam Altman.
But that didn’t stop Florida from taking legal action against Altman.
Florida is scared
If OpenAI doesn’t halt development of its frontier AI models, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier will do it himself. In his motion (PDF) for a temporary injunction against OpenAI and Sam Altman, Uthmeier uses strongly worded language:
“Defendants admit that they provide a service without fully knowing how it works. This is not just any service. It is one that Defendants themselves concede poses an existential risk to the continued survival of humankind.”
Sounds apocalyptically dangerous.
But one Florida resident is not particularly impressed. Especially since PYMNT’s coverage of this motion includes a picture of a map showing the Gulf of Mexico.
Let’s move on.
Hey doomer
The aforementioned cautions by Anthropic’s Dario Amodei are not sitting well with allies of President Donald Trump (R-Mar a Lago).
“President Trump’s allies are targeting Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as the face of AI doomerism’ and a founding father of the effective altruism movement that’s come under increasing political fire.”
It helps to define effective altruism, and luckily a website with that name does just that. The goal of effective altruism is to find ways to help others, and then to help them…efficiently. Because technologists know how best to do things.
But what does this have to do with modern technologies that let us generate nude deepfakes…I mean perform tasks much faster than a human could ever perform them?
Because the founders of generative AI companies are in essence effective altruists. They assert that generative AI will better the human condition. However, generative AI requires human values to ensure that the technology does not go rogue and bring Attorney General Uthmeier’s greatest fears to fruition.
Trump’s allies and Trump himself reject this assertion, as we shall see.
The smartest person in the world, and other people
President Trump hosted a meeting in Washington with leading technologists, whom he characterized as “the smartest people in the world.” Leo Hohmann wasn’t so sure.
“Among the nearly 40 tech titans invited to meet with Trump Wednesday were Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Elon Musk of X, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.”
Hmm…Amodei? I’m sure that was interesting behind closed doors. Sam Altman did not attend.
And in a rather vague statement, Trump alluded to a document the attendees reportedly signed.
“Trump said a ‘who’s who’ of ‘the biggest people in the world’ signed a voluntary safety pact. Trump said, ‘They almost viewed it as a separate kind of Constitution…And the biggest people in the world signed that, and I signed it as president. And it really is a form of protection.'”
Not sure how this “safety pact” jibes with other comments. Sounds like “doomerism” to me.
But returning to the issue:
“AI will be controlled by ‘self regulation.’ That means the very same corporate hierarchy that stands to gain from unleashing AI will be tasked with policing AI. As AI advances, people want to know who will watch the watchers? They stood there with straight faces and told us the answer: It will be the watchers themselves who will watch and guide and protect everything…”
Unless people like Attorney General Uthmeier stop them.
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