Comment by taintegral
Comment by taintegral a day ago
> 'AI safety' is a meaningless term
I disagree with this assertion. As you said, safety is an attribute of action. We have many of examples of artificial intelligence which can take action, usually because they are equipped with robotics or some other route to physical action.
I think whether providing information counts as "taking action" is a worthwhile philosophical question. But regardless of the answer, you can't ignore that LLMs provide information to _humans_ which are perfectly capable of taking action. In that way, 'AI safety' in the context of LLMs is a lot like knife safety. It's about being safe _with knives_. You don't give knives to kids because they are likely to mishandle them and hurt themselves or others.
With regards to censorship - a healthy society self-censors all the time. The debate worth having is _what_ is censored and _why_.
Almost everything about tool, machine, and product design in history has been an increase in the force-multiplication of an individual's labor and decision making vs the environment. Now with Universal Machine ubiquity and a market with rich rewards for its perverse incentives, products and tools are being built which force-multiply the designer's will absolutely, even at the expense of the owner's force of will. This and widespread automated surveillance are dangerous encroachments on our autonomy!