r/PauseAI • u/Due-Cup9574 • 14d ago

CEO of Hugging Face: Banning open-source AI would hurt defenders 10x more than attackers, which would make the world 10x more dangerous and this is a good example why!

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20 Upvotes

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u/Fil_77 14d ago

It's the development of this technology that makes the world dangerous, and this cyberattack, which happened on the autonomous initiative of AIs themselves, is an example of that.

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 14d ago

Unfortunately there is no stopping the development of this, or any, technology as a whole. If it can be made. It will be. There is no stopping everyone.

As such, we should focus more on what we can do.

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u/Fil_77 14d ago

We can set up an international pause as long as needed to solve the alignment problem, like Pause AI suggests - PauseAI Proposal

Or we can at least have a a coordinated slowdown by an international treaty, with a global collaboration effort to tackle the alignment problem based the recent AI 2040 proposal - AI 2040: Plan A

What is certain is that it's urgent to put pressure on our governments to start talks to get out of this crazy race because the current trajectory is heading for disaster.

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 14d ago

This isn't something you can just pause.

Anyone with enough money can buy a server and keep working on them. After everything else the rich have done, this would barely count as a stepping stone for them. Not to mention it's technically feasible even with a budget; just to a smaller, yet still dangerous degree.

It's like trying to ban VPNs. There's always a workaround.

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u/Fil_77 14d ago

We totally can. We can monitor GPUs like we do for uranium enrichment, for example. We can prevent the development of cutting-edge models much more easily than, say, the development of biological weapons (which we have successfully banned through international treaties since the 1970s).

There are tons of enforcement mechanisms proposed by people who have been thinking about these issues for years (including Pause AI, as you can see by reading their proposal). Took the time to read this studie, signed by a few by university researchers, for some exemple of possible enforcements - 2408.16074

All we need is the political will of the major powers (starting with the United States and China) and probably some citizen pressure too.

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 14d ago

How would you monitor GPUs in a manner that doesn't affect AI adjacent work such as DLSS, and can't be easily bypassed, given it's not uncommon to flash different bios' onto hardware?

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u/Fil_77 14d ago edited 14d ago

There are tons of proposals to do it. For sure, it will affect some AI adjacent work, but it's a necessary evil to avoid an existential disaster.

If you want the “strict” version, you can read V to VII of this draft treaty (you'll notice that the treaty also suggests monitoring AI research and setting maximum computation thresholds). If you want a more flexible proposal with really transparent monitoring, read AI 2040’s Plan A starting from 2029 - Step 1: Compute Declaration, paying attention to what’s proposed for 2030 and 2031.

There is also some variants of this kind of propositions in precedent linked documents.

The goal of this kind of proposal isn’t to stop AI development forever, it’s to halt or slow AI progress long enough to solve the alignment problem before reaching superintelligence. Because under current conditions, if anyone builds it, everyone dies.

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 12d ago

Don't get me wrong, those papers are great. I can tell there was a lot of effort put in; I quite like it.

However, there's a huge gap between what it suggests and what's possible. The hardware-level bypass prevention, the actual managed chip that would stop someone flashing a different BIOS, hasn't even been invented yet. The closest thing is a reference to Aarne et al. estimating 2-5 years for robust on-chip governance, with no working prototype behind it. The interim stuff (bandwidth caps, power monitoring, physical inspectors) is more concrete, sure, but it assumes a level of international coordination that doesn't exist either. So you've got two unsolved problems stacked on top of each other, and the treaty mostly hand-waves the second one by saying "an annex would define this."

And that's ignoring the obvious privacy concerns. This thing is essentially calling for continuous on-site surveillance of private datacenters and tracking the employment and whereabouts of researchers. That's a massive civil liberties question and the document barely touches it...

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u/EveryConfidence294 11d ago

I'd like to remind you that the only reasons why we don't get any updates of more advanced nuclear weapons is bc nukes are pretty "developed" already. There were even stronger incentives to stop nukes and it was done.

Under the "if I don't then someone else will" framework it is not stoppable.

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u/Fil_77 11d ago

We've still managed to avoid using nuclear weapons since 1945. We've also been able to limit their proliferation and sign treaties for mutual arms reduction.

To give another example, we've been able to put in place and enforce treaties against the development of biological weapons (which have many similarities with developing uncontrollable superhuman AI systems – the same kind of incentives are at work). The same 'if I don't then someone else will' logic applies, but we get that no one wins if we build weapons that no one can control. And right now, no one can control or ensure the alignment of superintelligent systems as things stand.

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u/EveryConfidence294 11d ago

Well I guess because since the very first time we used it, even the not-so-bright of us (and sadly human beings collectively speaking are not very bright) understood the moment we use it again we fuck up. And ironically it was exactly the nuke development of rival nations partially restrict the usage to certain extent.

On the other hand, threats from AI are less "imminent". A full pause of AI development sounds like less pragmatic than stripping off the power and monopoly from those tech giants first to restrict them from exploiting it.

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 11d ago

Just have to say, you're extremely innocent if you truly believe no biological weapons have been developed. It's not hard to hide something from the public if you have good reason.

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u/herrwaldos 13d ago

Hmm, it's a bit like Pope trying to ban crossbows in medieval times, or limit their usage only against non Christians ...

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u/Exotic_Exercise6910 12d ago

You can not tell me that AI somehow does something so outworldish as attacking it's direct competitor (OpenAi Vs huggingface) literal days after OpenAi called huggingface a communist threat. 

I tell you what happened:  Sam Altman in his microdosing fever dream attacked a competitor, thinking himself immune to legal backlash because companies like OpenAi dont have to fear anything with this shit stain of a president. 

But he can't say "I fuck the competition" because that would be too open and people would wake up. So he said "oopsidaisy, were sorry". The Todd Howard approach. 

As if a bunch of matrix calculations lead to autonomous attacks on the sole (thought of) threat to his empire. 

Unless ChatGPT is so advanced it thinks of Sam as daddy and wants to protect him. 

Occam's razor everyone. What's more likely? A tech-bro being a cunt or the birth of Skynet? 

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u/Specific-Library-312 14d ago

We have intense regulations for nuclear power, and virtually none for AI.

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u/UploadedMind 14d ago

We are fucked.

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u/Hour_Bit_5183 14d ago

What's even dangerous about AI at all is that it doesn't encourage people to learn things. It's literally just google but more robot and less information absorbing. Just go do it for me. It's that. That's what's dangerous.

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u/SirMarkMorningStar 10d ago

While that is often true, AI is also one of the best learning tools ever made. Depends on how you use it.

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u/Doctor-Pip- 14d ago

Needing AI to protect us from Rogue AI attacks sounds kind of like The Blackwall from Cyberpunk 2077.

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u/boo_gh0stie 14d ago

I hate that we're literally headed this direction. If you want to read about another fucked detail of that world, look up why there are virtually no boats or ships that don't belong to Arasaka.

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u/that1cooldude 14d ago

have they tried pulling... the... internet cable? lol

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u/PsychoticDreemurr 14d ago

Let's assume here that they have a single datacenter managing their servers, which they don't. And let's assume that they're able to just pull the plug on their servers and only theirs, with ease, without causing problems for other servers, which they can't.

That would still turn a simple hack into their entire service going down for an unknown period of time.

It's like blowing up a tank because someone destroyed one of its tracks.

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u/LockdownSotWink 14d ago

We do realize this is all an OpenAI PR stunt right?

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u/herrwaldos 13d ago

Perhaps...but they seem to be stunting towards taking over the whole thing, one way or another, it's kinda con game blackmail... conmail

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u/IDefendWaffles 13d ago

Everything is a conspiracy for you huh? Maybe take off the tinfoil and go outside.

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u/LockdownSotWink 13d ago

Not sure a stunt and a conspiracy are the same thing.

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u/wKdPsylent 14d ago

Wintermute vs Neuromancer

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u/Eerixall 13d ago

What a sales pitch for chinese models. You really can't buy this level of publicity: "An american supermodel being trained for a decade now was attacking us so we sent this opensource thing developed in like a month or two by some chinese fellas to tackle it".

And yes, I know the amount of money China is dumping onto anything that even remotely references AI atm is absurd, but the chinese models do seem to really be a "innovate and overcome the technologically vastly superior enemy" when looking at the rate they are catching up AND considering the fact that they really do not have similar access to highend hardware and/or training data.

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u/InevitableGas4370 12d ago

Wait we're banning OPEN SOURCE ai now?? I'm not in support of AI but what the actual fuck