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0 pointsalexhans1mo ago0 comments

This is such a powerful piece and moment because it shows an example of what most of us knew could happen at some point and we can start talking about how to really tackle things.

Reminds me a lot of liars and outliars [1] and how society can't function without trust and almost 0 cost automation can fundamentally break that.

It's not all doom and gloom. Crisises can't change paradigms if technologists do tackle them instead of pretending they can be regulated out of existence

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liars_and_Outliers

On another note, I've been working a lot in relation to Evals as way to keep control but this is orthogonal. This is adversarial/rogue automation and it's out of your control from the start.

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esafak1mo ago

And how does the book suggest countering the problem?

alexhansOP1mo ago

To address the issues of an automated entity functioning as a detractor? I don't think I can answer that specifically. I can brainstorm on the some of the dimensions the book talks about:

- societal norm/moral pressure shouldn't apply (adversarial actor)

- reputational pressure has an interesting angle to it if you think of it as trust scoring in descentralized or centralised networks.

- institutional pressure can't work if you can't tie back to the root (it may be unfeasible to do so or the costs may outweight the benefits)

- Security doesn't quite work the way we think about it nowadays because this is not an "undesired access of a computer system" but a subjectively bad use of rapid opinion generation.

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