Wrong Answer

The subheadline contains the wrong answer, for those astute enough to see it, especially those more so than this op-ed‘s opinion writer, Judd Rosenblatt, who is the CEO of AE Studio and president of the AI Alignment Foundation:

The key is “alignment,” which improves capability while cordoning off dangerous knowledge.

Rosenblatt expanded on that not too much later in his piece:

…build the world’s most capable open-weight model in America, with the dangerous capabilities stripped out before release

Because nothing says limiting innovation and truncating freedom like censoring knowledge and capability. Never mind that that will limit and truncate only American innovation and knowledge; it’ll have no effect on our enemies.

He went on:

Using GRAM [Gradient-Routed Auxiliary Modules] to train language models, we found that knowledge about bioweapons, offensive cyber, and nuclear capabilities, and even antisemitism, could be routed into compartments, then removed. The released model behaved as if it never learned that information.

What matters is a safety standard that causes a dangerous capability to stay absent under adversarial testing.

The bioweapons, offensive cyber, and nuclear capabilities bits are seemingly obvious targets for censorship, but that knowledge is too easily compiled via a variety of sources, including other AI models that aren’t restricted. The real kicker, though, is that last: who gets to define what is a dangerous capability? And who sets the threshold between random data to information to knowledge? Will these Know Better definers decide that identifying or not defining hate speech (whatever that is) is a dangerous capability and the thresholds for that? Providing arguments for, or against, human involvement in global warming? Men in girls’ sports and bath- and locker rooms? Defining “woman?” Criticizing government? This list is endless.

The blatant…foolishness…of Rosenblatt’s idea makes me wonder about trolls and moles.

DSA and Government Structure

The Wall Street Journal editors are rightly worried about the ascendancy of the Democratic Socialists of America. The center of their concern rests on DSA intent to restructure our government:

…replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Sure. Parliament, with its largely figurehead House of Lords, and Parliamentary Superiority vis-a-vis the British courts has worked so well for the UK.

Similarly, the Duma and the National People’s Congress have done so much for the people of Russia and the PRC.

The DSA isn’t about “radical change” for the sake of us average Americans; it’s about a naked grab for party political power–which is to say a naked grab for personal power for those persons atop the DSA. That the bulk of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are silent or openly supportive of DSA goals shows how thoroughly Party has chosen to absorb the DSA into its core (or, the other side of that coin: how thoroughly the DSA has coopted Party). The only Party members who are beginning to object to the DSA are on Party’s far right–that fringe group who are Establishment Democrats.

The contest for power within Party is one that legacy Party politicians—those Establishment Democrats—think they can win. They’re likely wrong on that. Keep in mind, in this intraparty power struggle the DSA leadership has made no bones about their candidates running on the Progressive-Democratic Party ticket. It’s a ballot line, and nothing more. DSA plans to supplant the Progressive-Democratic Party, whether by absorption or by replacement.