Dr. Damien P. Williams, MagusNov 26, 2023

Dear New Yorker, NYT, CNN, Washington Post, &c: stop interviewing Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton, and start interviewing Timnit Gebru, Meredith Whittaker, Emily Bender, Chris Gilliard, Rua Williams, Ruha Benjamin, Margaret Mitchell, Abeba Birhane, Alex Hanna, Kendra Albert, Jonathan Flowers, Robin Zebrowski, and like a bunch of other, better people to talk to about these things.

…By which i basically mean, "…stop being like you are and start being the kind of news outlets who would even begin to understand why you should stop interviewing [people in group a] and start interviewing [people in group b]."

Show threadUlrike HahnMar 24, 2024
@Wolven I don’t understand why you would put Hinton and Altman in the same sentence. Hinton is an incredibly well respected scientist whose research was fundamental in developing the technology, Altman is an “entrepeneur” with a background in tech startups - a field he moved into after dropping out of his undergraduate computer science degree course
Show threadDr. Damien P. Williams, MagusMar 24, 2024
@UlrikeHahn https://www.ifa-berlin.com/content-hub/researcher-meredith-whittaker-ais-biggest-risk-isnt-consciousness-s-corporations-control
Researcher Meredith Whittaker says AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’—it’s the corporations that control them

IFA Berlin 2024 - English
Show threadUlrike HahnMar 24, 2024
@Wolven sorry, Damien, I don’t understand what you think this article is meant to show? Some people disagree with parts of Hinton’s assessment of the future development of the current framework, in particular what can be solved just by continued scaling. I’d count myself among those but that doesn’t change the fact that Hinton was part of a group that revolutionised cognitive science (my own area if research), has received the highest awards in both cog sci and AI, produced a body of 1/2
Show threadUlrike HahnMar 24, 2024

@Wolven 2/2 published work with almost 800,000 citations and contributed integrally to the development of a technology which, whether we like it or not (and I mostly don’t) represents a leap in performance over what came before that is currently disrupting multiple aspects of human society.

I simply see no way of operationalising scientific achievement that would render him on a par with Altman (or for that matter the other names on your list).

Show threadUlrike Hahn
@Wolven they are all important voices who should be heard (and arguably are heard), on that I totally agree. But I’m struggling with what feels like an attempt to reconstruct Hinton as someone without anything to say.
Mar 24, 2024 at 4:14amWeb
Show threadDr. Damien P. Williams, MagusMar 24, 2024
@UlrikeHahn The point is that what he has to say is late in the game and too focused on the "x-risk" of future "AGI" while actively denigrating the people who are and have been working to try to prevent or undo the real immediate harms of "AI" right now, today. That link highlights the perspective that he's ignoring. *[In the same link, you can find direct reference and further links out to] him downplaying the work and concerns of Gebru, Bender, Mitchell, Whittaker, etc. Have a good night.