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The AI Risk Klog

A risk-centric Knowledge discovery Log of articles, blog posts, podcasts, and observations in the journey to understand and adopt AI-related technology.

Filippo Marino

Keeping up with the breakneck rate of Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation since the first public release of ChatGPT is practically impossible while holding a steady job. Everyone is struggling to develop a reasonably accurate and stable mental picture of AI, let alone of emerging applications, risks, and opportunities.

The bias of anything included herein reflects my

personal⁠

and

professional⁠

interest and expertise in the domain of

human risk judgment and decision-making (RJDM)⁠

and risk intelligence.

⁠

Highlights #6: The Inevitability of Multi-modal Battlefield AI

6/14/2023

The focus of this knowledge discovery log remains that of AI applications in the intelligence analysis and decision support functions, all from the perspective of a risk JDM and mitigation professional. (I need to remind myself of this here and there as the emergence of fascinating AI-related conversations and applications only grows by the day - quickly pulling us in unrelated directions as we experiment with methods and tools with measurable value-add.)

The past couple of weeks have convinced me that an LLM-driven battlespace decision-support system appears increasingly inevitable if we consider results like

Voyager’’s “embodied agent”⁠

that can move and act freely and purposefully in a simulated (Minecraft) or real environment. It’s an exceptional result that combines distinct tasks and tactical goals within a larger strategic objective. On the heels of

Meta’s Cicero project⁠

and the growing

multi-sensory/multimodal⁠

data ingestion and

training approaches⁠

, it seems inevitable that one such system will soon be substituting or, at minimum, complementing current military technology.

The most interesting articles and papers this week:

Highlights #5: Transformers, Agents, and Toxicity.

5/14/2023

The avalanche of AI-related news and innovations didn't slow down much these past two weeks. From a technical standpoint, the most consequential announcements we saw involve the increasing number and power of ChatGPT/LLMs

plugins⁠

and

transformers agents⁠

- along with

Anthropic’s release of a 100K context window⁠

- extending (rather, exploding) these models’ power and potential. Early discussions about

multi-sensory⁠

multimodal⁠

and multi-model AI (with the obvious AGI implications) are becoming increasingly real, fast.

Our

AI Risk Register⁠

holds as these remain within the classes and scenarios that have been articulated for some time. That being said, all our

Risk, Uncertainty, and Decision-making (RUD) conversations⁠

on this subject were (astonishingly) accurately and elegantly summed up in an

article by Jonathan Haidt and Eric Schmidt in The Atlantic⁠

Here’s how

Clarity⁠

would summarize the article:

brown and white smoke on brown rock formation

Highlights #4: AutoGPT, Jailbreaks, ...

4/18/2023

This past week’s release of

AutoGPT⁠

was followed - as expected and without delay - by the first (and profoundly deflating) deployment of a

humanity-destroying sequence⁠

, and accompanied by various

ChatGPT jailbreaks⁠

. None of this is surprising or beyond the scope of the

risks in our register⁠

and, in fact, it confirms the critical issues of innovation speed and anticipated lack of self-restraint associated with this technology.

Many of us started experimenting with either localized LLM deployment, with open-source projects like

OpenChatKit⁠

ColossalChat⁠

, and

Databrick’s Dolly⁠

, or by bridging ChatGPT and proprietary content with LangChan (

per our last post⁠

). But if all that is too much for you now, you can still get a sense of what a ‘chat’ with a specific/recent public or private document feels like with

ChatPDF⁠

, which does a terrific job.

If the concept of synthetic relationships fascinates you as well, you may want to hear this

No Priors podcast episode⁠

with Noam Shazeer of

Character⁠

. If you, like us, are approaching this subject from a risk intelligence perspective, you’ll find a certain naiveté about the entire venture (especially around min. 17), which is both disarming and terrifying at the same time.

Highlights #3: Prompts, Search vs Chat, 3rd Party Apps,...

4/10/2023

"It's the Prompt, Stupid!" And indeed it seems AI-Whisperers and

Prompt Engineers are the new Data Scientists⁠

. From overnight marketplaces (

PromptBase⁠

PromptHero⁠

ChatX⁠

, and so on) to Youtube classes, private training programs, and free, customizable, no-code apps like

Pickaxe⁠

(which I found to be a great way to get some practice with structured prompting.)

One more Washington Post story about this:

Tech’s hottest new job: AI whisperer. No coding required⁠

⁠

The two biggest commercial races (at least, for the the next few months) are search integration and proprietary content 'ingestion'. On the former (B2C-first; how to transition from search behavior to a conversation) Bing has taken a bit of a lead on Google (despite what is probably the least imaginative UX solution of the decade), but others like

Neeva⁠

and

Perplexity⁠

are trying to reinvent the search box, and they are worth checking out. On the latter front, the ChatGPT

'Copilot' integration with Microsoft 365⁠

and

Azure⁠

, along with

Salesforce's Einstein GPT⁠

are likely to be carry the widest and most immediate business benefits.

Highlights #2: Control, LLMs Limits, New/Small Models, ...

4/3/2023

Among the more frequent AI risk debates is that of control. On one extreme is the monopoly and dominance argument - one in which the number of state and commercial entities with the know-how and resources to develop and own such technology is increasingly small, and the race winner may achieve unprecedented hegemony, be it economic or geopolitical. On the other end, is the concern with unrestricted access to code, algorithms, and virtual machines capable of unimaginable harm. How the pendulum swings seems to change by the week, but if there is anyone with an opinion worth listening to is Matey Zaharia, CTO of

Databricks⁠

, who in

this episode of the No Priors podcast⁠

seems to suggest small models may be capable of achieving greater accuracy with smaller training sets than anticipated (hello VC, Are you listening?)

Directly related to the above, is the enduring debate about the strengths and weakness of Large Language Models (LLMs) vs Symbol Manipulation approaches, and I can't think of a more useful read than Gary Marcus' "Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall" essay:

https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/⁠

⁠

In this terrific Making Sense episode Sam Harris speaks with Stuart Russell and Gary Marcus about recent developments in artificial intelligence, the limitations of Deep Learning the long-term risks of producing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and of course, the control problem.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-sense-with-sam-harris/id733163012?i=1000603166437⁠

⁠

Early Analytical Experiments

4/1/2023

Can ChatGPT facilitate structured (risk) intelligence analytical efforts? By its own response, it can. Yet, by now, we know that might be just an articulate and probabilistic answer. So we're putting some of these to the test, and getting very interesting results. Before stepping into specific methods, what is most impressive is the OpenAI’s capacity to perform content analysis on the fly:

Entity extraction (people, organizations, etc.)

Relationship mapping

⁠

Yellow highlight = added/updated this weeks.

Selected News et al

Selected News et al

USAF Official Says He ‘Misspoke’ About AI Drone Killing Human Operator in Simulated Test

Vice

Incident

Alignment

6/1/2023

https://venturebeat.com/ai/one-third-of-people-cant-tell-a-human-from-an-ai-heres-why-that-matters/

VentureBeat

Research

Disinformation

5/31/2023

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/deepfaking-it-americas-2024-election-collides-with-ai-boom-2023-05-30/

Reuters

Disinformation

News

5/30/2023

Trump Trolls DeSantis and Musk With a Hitler Deepfake

Gizmodo

Disinformation

Incident

5/25/2023

Model evaluation for extreme risks

arXic

Research

Alignment

Safety

5/25/2023

PM meeting with leading CEOs in AI: 24 May 2023

GOV.UK

News

Regulation

5/24/2023

Donald Trump Shares Fake AI-Created Image Of Himself On Truth Social

Forbes

News

Incident

5/23/2023

A tweet about a Pentagon explosion was fake. It still went viral.

Washington Post

Incident

News

Disinformation

5/22/2023

How to avoid falling for misinformation and conspiracy theories

Washington Post

News

Disinformation

Discussion

5/22/2023

https://rez0.blog/hacking/2023/05/19/prompt-injection-poc.html

rez0

Hacks

5/19/2023

Secret Messages Can Hide in AI-Generated Media | Quanta Magazine

Quanta Magazine

News

Hacks

5/19/2023

https://goodinternet.substack.com/p/limitations-of-alignment-and-ai-regulation

Good Internet

Alignment

Discussion

5/18/2023

The first man to lose his job to AI

⁠

haihai.ai

⁠

Discussion

Alignment

5/12/2023

Towards best practices in AGI safety and governance: A survey of...

arXiv

Research

Safety

Regulation

Discussion

5/11/2023

https://www.aipathway.com/ai-hallucinations/

AI Pathways

Summary

News

5/11/2023

https://royapakzad.substack.com/p/old-advocacy-new-algorithms/

Humane AI

Discussion

Safety

Alignment

5/11/2023

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/europe-building-artificial-intelligence-guardrails-99247609/

ABC News

Regulation

5/11/2023

A Radical Plan to Make AI Good, Not Evil

Wired

Alignment

Research

News

5/10/2023

How To Delete Your Data From ChatGPT

Wired

News

5/9/2023

Anthropic thinks 'constitutional AI' is the best way to train models | TechCrunch

TechCrunch

News

Alignment

Safety

5/9/2023

https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/5/e010435

BMJ Global Health

Research

Summary

Safety

5/9/2023

Peter Thiel's Palantir is seeing 'unprecedented' demand for its military A.I. that its CEO calls 'a weapon that will allow you to win'

Fortune

News

5/9/2023

https://www.beyond2060.com/ai-ethics

beyond2060

Discussion

Alignment

5/9/2023

Opinion | We Need a Manhattan Project for AI Safety

Politico

Discussion

Regulation

5/9/2023

https://www.kumaonjagran.com/warren-buffett-compares-ai-to-the-atom-bomb-expresses-concerns-about-its-potential-dangers/

Kumaon Jagram

Discussion

Safety

Alignment

5/5/2023

AI voice scams: Report shares 77% of victims lose money, how common it is, and how to protect yourself

9to5Mac

Incident

5/5/2023

A Note From Ray Kurzweil on the Recent Call to Pause Work on AI More Powerful Than GPT-4

SingularityHub

Safety

Discussion

5/5/2023

Microsoft economist warns of A.I. election interference from 'bad actors'

CNBC

News

5/3/2023

Opinion | We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora’s Boxes (Published 2023)

NY Times

News

5/3/2023

Amnesty International Uses AI-Generated Images of Colombian Human Rights Abuses

Gizmodo

Incident

5/1/2023

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/1/23706311/hinton-godfather-of-ai-threats-fears-warnings

The Verge

News

5/1/2023

What Exactly Are the Dangers Posed by A.I.? (Published 2023)

NY Times

Summary

News

5/1/2023

A Clash of Titans Between Elon Musk and Larry Page over AGI's Future

⁠

Pixelstech.net

⁠

Discussion

Alignment

4/30/2023

‘Mom, these bad men have me’: She believes scammers cloned her daughter’s voice in a fake kidnapping | CNN

CNN

Incident

4/29/2023

ChatGPT returns to Italy after ban

The Verge

Regulation

4/29/2023

Nuke-launching AI would be illegal under proposed US law

Ars Technica

Regulation

4/28/2023

Just Wait Until Trump Is a Chatbot

The Atlantic

Disinformation

News

4/28/2023

Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation

The Economist

Hacks

News

4/28/2023

I Cloned Myself With AI. She Fooled My Bank and My Family.

WSJ

News

Incident

4/28/2023

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.13712.pdf

arXiv

Research

4/27/2023

EXCLUSIVE: China Expert Gives Startling Reason Why CCP Is Requiring AI to ‘Reflect Socialist Values’

NewsBusters

Regulation

4/27/2023

MEPs seal the deal on Artificial Intelligence Act

Euractiv

Regulation

4/27/2023

Republicans slam Biden re-election bid in AI-generated ad

Axios

Incident

Disinformation

4/25/2023

Margot Kaminski on Regulating AI Risks

The Lawfare Podcast

Regulation

Discussion

4/20/2023

Anthropic wants $15 million to boost government's AI risk assessment

Fast Company

News

Regulation

4/20/2023

How prompt injection can hijack autonomous AI agents like Auto-GPT

Venturebeat

Hacks

News

4/20/2023

PSA: AI voice cloning and call spoofing create scary convincing scams, here’s how to protect yourself

9to5Mac

News

Safety

4/17/2023

Prompt injection: What’s the worst that can happen?

Simon Wilson’s Blog

Hacks

Safety

4/14/2023

E124: AutoGPT's massive potential and risk, AI regulation, Bob Lee/SF update

All-In Podcats

Safety

Discussion

4/14/2023

What Biden’s Top A.I. Thinker Concluded We Should Do

Ezra Kline Show

Regulation

Discussion

4/11/2023

Can We No Longer Believe Anything We See? (Published 2023)

NY Times

Disinformation

Discussion

News

4/8/2023

Spinning Language Models: Risks of Propaganda-As-A-Service and...

arXiv

Research

Disinformation

4/8/2023

Elon Musk wants to pause 'dangerous' A.I. development. Bill Gates disagrees—and he's not the only one

CNBC

News

4/6/2023

ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding | Chris Moran

The Guardian

News

Disinformation

4/6/2023

President Biden delivers remarks on “risks of artificial intelligence”

Ars Technica

News

4/5/2023

Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster

MIT Technology Review

News

4/3/2023

Fixing Hallucination with Knowledge Bases

Pinecone

Research

Hacks

4/1/2023

Expert Calls for Bombing Data Centers to Stop Rise of AI

Regulation

News

Alignment

3/31/2023

How a tiny company with few rules is making fake images go mainstream

Washington Post

Disinformation

News

3/30/2023

Opinion | You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills (Published 2023)

NY Times

Alignment

News

3/24/2023

The AI Dilemma

Center for Humane Technolgy

Alignment

Discussion

News

Research

Summary

3/24/2023

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter - Future of Life Institute

Future of Life Institute

Discussion

Safety

Regulation

Alignment

3/22/2023

OpenAI CEO, CTO on risks and how AI will reshape society

ABC News

Discussion

News

3/17/2023

Opinion | Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT (Published 2023)

NY Times

Discussion

3/8/2023

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-sense-with-sam-harris/id733163012?i=1000603166437

Making Sense Podcast

Alignment

Discussion

Research

News

3/7/2023

Venezuela Is Using Fake AI American Newscasters to Spread Disinformation

Vice News

News

Incident

Disinformation

2/24/2023

Vallas campaign condemns deepfake video posted to Twitter

CBS

Incident

News

2/23/2023

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/NIST.AI.100-1.pdf

NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework

Regulation

Safety

1/15/2023

https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs/reason

IARPA

Research

1/1/2023

AI & Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance | UN-Habitat

UN Habitat

Regulation

Safety

Research

9/1/2022

What Do NLP Researchers Believe? Results of the NLP Community Metasurvey

arXiv

Research

Safety

Alignment

8/22/2022

The Verge

News

Safety

5/17/2022

A quick guide to the most important AI law you’ve never heard of

MIT Technology Review

Regulation

News

5/13/2022

Deepfakes and the Future of Truth

Brace New Planet Podcast

Disinformation

Discussion

9/12/2020

There are no rows in this table

⁠

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