Nathan Labenz: belief

Transcript context

…Mm-hmm. And that certainly suggests, like, a much broader space of, of AI possibility that we're really only beginning to explore. Most of it I think is probably bad. You know, I, I don't think we, like, want to live in a world full of minds from, you know, randomly selected points in that space. But it is striking to me that we really are going so hard so fast at, like, this one paradigm, you know, w- which you could say about the language model paradigm, you could say that about the, you know, the transformer itself. You could say it about the kind of HHH training. There's like a, you know, certainly some differences between how the, the leading companies kind of think about their safety training, but they're more similar than different in the grand scheme of things. So we're, we're just, like, very, very focused right now in a very small space of AI possibility, and I think that is dramatically underappreciated. Yeah, I think so. And I think that, that the potential design space may be explored in some interesting ways. I can well imagine that religious groups will, you know, it's, I think it's significant, of course, that there was a, a, a papal encyclical on this technology that, that says something about the kind of attention it's getting suddenly. But I think you can imagine religious denominations and other groups and nonprofits and so on, like, awarding their seal of approval to certain models. Now, that's not necessarily gonna be a good thing. It could be, it could be a model that says, "Yeah, you guys are right and everyone else is wrong." You know? Religions have been known to, uh, have that inclination at times. But they've also been known to have other inclinations. And in any event, my main point is, you know, people may react to what I said earlier, like, you know, we as the consumers have the power. Let's, let's get the psychologically healthy, uh, models out there and give them, uh, use our dollars to give them pos- uh, positive reinforcement to companies for making them. You may see more market power via these groups of various kinds that either recommend models or even say, "This is the official model of X religious denomination or X," I don't know, uh, political party. And, and again, th- this is not necessarily a healthy dynamic, but I, I do think I, I, I would encourage people to th- think about how to make it healthy, right? Like, I could imagine philanthropic money being well spent to, y- you know, m- make such things happen in the name of the greater good. We all have different ideas, I guess to some extent, what the greater good is, but I, I do think more than ever we should put a premium on tamping down the tribalism both internationally and intra-nationally. And, uh, and AI can help. It, it, it, it really can. It's amazing. I had a, this long conversation with Gemini that is, is like a whole chapter, and it really came off as wise. Now, that is a function partly of the specific questions I was asking, right? I wasn't asking, you know, "Can you help me steal, you know, this, th- this woman from her current boyfriend or anything?" But, you know, I was asking it questions about the human predicament and the human future. But the wisdom is there. The point is the wisdom is in there. And leaving aside, you know, kind of wisdom as a b- as a body of thought that can be tapped, you know, the tendencies of guidance are there that, that c- could make us better people. It, it's a, it's a project to be approached with great care, but I think it's better than not approaching it at all.…

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