The Pentagon has its eye on the leading AI company, which this week softened its ban on military use.

  • funkforager@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    276
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    Remember when open ai was a nonprofit first and foremost, and we were supposed to trust they would make AI for good and not evil? Feels like it was only Thanksgiving…

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      126
      ·
      11 months ago

      I mean, there was all that drama where the board formed to prevent this from happening kicked out the CEO trying to do this stuff, then the board got booted out and replaced with a new board and brought back that CEO guy. So this was pretty much going to happen.

      • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        66
        ·
        11 months ago

        And some people pointed it out even back then. There were signs that the employees were very loyal to Altmann, but Altmann didn’t meet the security concerns of the board. So stuff like this was just a matter of time.

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          34
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          11 months ago

          People pointed this out as a point in Altmann’s favor, too. “All the employees support him and want him back, he can’t be a bad guy!”

          Well, ya know what, I’m usually the last person to ever talk shit about the workers, but in this case, I feel like this isn’t a good thing. I sincerely doubt the employees of that company that backed Altmann had taken any of the ethics of the tool they’re creating into account. They’re all career minded, they helped develop a tool that is going to make them a lot of money, and I guarantee the culture around that place is futurist as fuck. Altmann’s removal put their future at risk. Of course they wanted him back.

          And frankly I don’t think you can spend years of your life building something like ChatGBT without having drunk the Koolaid yourself.

          The truth is OpenAI, as a body, set out to make a deeply destructive tool, and the incentives are far, far too strong and numerous. Capitalism is corrosive to ethics; it has to be in enforced by a neutral regulatory body.

          • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            11 months ago

            The engineers are likely seeing this from an arms race point of view. Possibly something like the development of an a-bomb where it’s a race against nations and these people at the leading edge can see things we cannot. While money and capitalistic factors are at play, foreseeing your own possible destruction or demise by not being ahead of the game compared to china may be a motivating factor too.

      • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        39
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Effective altruism is just capitalism camoflauge, it’s also just really bad at being camoflauge

    • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      11 months ago

      I remember when they pretended to be that. The fact that the board got replaced when it tried to exert its own power proves it was a facade from the beginning. All the PR benefits of “taking safety seriously” with none of those pesky “safety vs profitability” concerns.

    • guacupado@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      I stopped having faith in nonprofits after seeing how much the successful ones pay their CEOs. They’re just businesses riding the low-tax train until they’re rich enough to not care anymore.

      • camelCaseGuy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        21
        ·
        11 months ago

        I don’t understand that point of view? Why would they pay their CEOs less than any other company? If they did, then they would either not be able to hire CEOs, have the shittiest CEOs or have CEOs that wouldn’t give a crap. People don’t live on welfare, especially highly connected, highly educated people like CEOs.

        • grepe@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Why do you think lower paid CEO must be shitty? There turns out to be very little link between the CEO and CEO pay and the company performance… they are only paid a lot cause they are in the position of power to directly influence their salary.

          • uranibaba@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            11 months ago

            they are only paid a lot cause they are in the position of power to directly influence their salary.

            And not because they have a much higher responsibility? As a CEO, it is your job to make sure a company makes a profit (unless you are a nonprofit, I guess you have some other goal you need to achieve). That is what you a pay a CEO to do. I assume you would pay more for someone who is able to turn a higher profit.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      11 months ago

      Which was always a big fat lie. I mean just look at who was involved in getting OpenAI started. Mostly super rich tech people meeting privately to divide the market among themselves like colonial powers divided their territories.

    • Moira_Mayhem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      11 months ago

      It seems to be a trend that any service that claims not to be evil is just waiting for the right moment to drop that pretense.

      • Hamartiogonic
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        “In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: ‘Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others’ throats with greater facility.'”

        Hiram Maxim

        I wonder if something similar happened with openAI.

        Forgot about NFTs and marketing. Invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others’ throats more efficiently.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    109
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    I can’t wait until we find out AI trained on military secrets is leaking military secrets.

    • Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      I can’t wait until people find out that you don’t even need to train it on secrets, for it to “leak” secrets.

        • Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          11 months ago

          Language learning models are all about identifying patterns in how humans use words and copying them. Thing is that’s also how people tend to do things a lot of the time. If you give the LLM enough tertiary data it may be capable of ‘accidentally’ (read: randomly) outputting things you don’t want people to see.

    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      11 months ago

      In order for this to happen, someone will have to utilize that AI to make a cheatbot for War Thunder.

    • Bezerker03@lemmy.bezzie.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      I mean even with chatgpt enterprise you prevent that.

      It’s only the consumer versions that train on your data and submissions.

      Otherwise no legal team in the world would consider chatgpt or copilot.

      • Scribbd@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 months ago

        I will say that they still store and use your data some way. They just haven’t been caught yet.

        Anything you have to send over the internet to a server you do not control, will probably not work for a infosec minded legal team.

  • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    84
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    11 months ago

    Capitalism gotta capital. AI has the potential to be revolutionary for humanity, but because of the way the world works it’s going to end up being a nightmare. There is no future under capitalism.

  • SGG@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    75
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    11 months ago

    War, huh, yeah

    What is it good for?

    Massive quarterly profits, uhh

    War, huh, yeah

    What is it good for?

    Massive quarterly profits

    Say it again, y’all

    War, huh (good God)

    What is it good for?

    Massive quarterly profits, listen to me, oh

  • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    51
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    11 months ago

    Anonymous user: I have an army on the Smolensk Upland and I need to get it to the low counties. Create the best route to march them.

    Chat GPT:… Putin is that you again?

    Anonymous user: эн

  • kromem@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Literally no one is reading the article.

    The terms still prohibit use to cause harm.

    The change is that a general ban on military use has been removed in favor of a generalized ban on harm.

    So for example, the Army could use it to do their accounting, but not to generate a disinformation campaign against a hostile nation.

    If anyone actually really read the article, we could have a productive conversation around whether any military usage is truly harmless, the nuances of the usefulness of a military ban in a world where so much military labor is outsourced to private corporations which could ‘launder’ terms compliance, or the general inability of terms to preemptively prevent harmful use at all.

    Instead, we have people taking the headline only and discussing AI being put in charge of nukes.

    Lemmy seems to care a lot more about debating straw men arguments about how terrible AI is than engaging with reality.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      The point is that it’s a purposeful slow walk, the entire “non-profit” framing and these “limitations” are a very calculated marketing play to soften the justified fears of unregulated, for-profit ( I.e. Endless growth) AI development. It will find its way to full evil with 1000 small cuts, and with folks like you arguing for them at every step along the way, “IT’S JUST A SMALL CUT!!!”

      • kromem@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        It will find its way to full evil with 1000 small cuts, and with folks like you arguing for them at every step along the way, “IT’S JUST A SMALL CUT!!!”

        While I do think AI development isn’t going to be going in the direction you think it is, if you read it carefully you’ll notice that I’m actually not saying anything about whether it’s “a small cut” or not, I’m simply laying out the key nuance of the article that no one is reading.

        My point isn’t “OpenAI changing the scope of their military ban is a good thing” it’s “people should read the fucking article before commenting if we want to have productive discussion.”

    • diffusive@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      Sure, it’s less bad. It’s not good though.

      If I did accounting (or even just cooking, really) for the Mafia would be less bad than actually going with a gun to tether or kill people but it would still be bad.

      Why? Because it still helps an organisation which core mission is hurting people.

      And it’s purely out of greed because ChatGPT doesn’t desperately need this application otherwise they will go bankrupt

        • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          11 months ago

          I guess, but I never got hooked on any of the big social media sites, and the few I did (reddit mostly) I limited myself to rather non-political subjects like jokes and specific kinds of content. I’m new to Lemmy and this is most of what I’ve been seeing, which is why I said that.

          Obviously I know that this is what all social media looks like these days. I hoped Lemmy would have at least some noticeable vocal minority of balanced people, but nah.

  • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    Finally, I can have it generate a picture of a flamethrower without it lecturing me like I’m a child making finger guns at school.

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    If you guys think that AI hasn’t already been in use in various militarys including America y’all are living in lala land.

  • Alto@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    So while this is obviously bad, did any of you actually think for a moment that this was stopping anything? If the military wants to use ChatGPT, they’re going to find a way whether or not OpenAI likes it. In their minds they may as well get paid for it.

    • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      You mean the military with access to a massive trove of illegal surveillance (aka training data), and billions of dollars in dark money to spend, that is always on the bleeding edge of technological advancement?

      That military? Yeah, they’ve definitely been in on this one for a while.

    • yamanii@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      Arms salesman are just as guilty, fuck off with this “Others would do it too!”, they are the ones doing it now, they deserve to at least getting shit for it. Sam Altman was always a snake.

    • bean@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      11 months ago

      I can see them having their own GPT, using the model and their own data. Not using the tool to send secret info ‘out’ and back in to their own system.

  • LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    11 months ago

    You would be stupid to believe this hasn’t been going on 10 years now.

    Fuck, just read govwin and you know it has.

    Nothing burger.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      The military has had Ai and Microsoft contracts but the military guys themselves suck massive balls at making good stuff. They only make expensive stuff.

      Remember the “best defense in the world with super Ai camera tracking” being wrecked by a thousand dudes with AK’s three months ago

    • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      11 months ago

      It’s not a nothing burger in the sense that this signals a distinct change at OpenAI’s new direction following the realignment of the board. Of course AI has been in military applications for a good while, that’s not news at all. I think the bigger message is that the supposed altruistic direction of OpenAI was either never a thing or never will be again.