The issue is that the standards are meant to help achieve systems that are safe in the informal sense. If they don’t, they’re bad standards. How can you talk about whether a standard is sufficient, if it’s incoherent to discuss whether layperson-unsafe systems can pass it?
True, but the informal safety standard is “what doesn’t harm humans.” For construction, it amounts to “doesn’t collapse,” which you can break down into things like “strength of beam.” But with AI you are talking to the full generality of language and communication and that effectively means: “All types of harm.” Which is exactly the very difficult thing to get right here.
For construction, it amounts to “doesn’t collapse,”
No, the risk and safety models for construction go far, far beyond that, from radon and air quality to size and accessibility of fire exits.
with AI you are talking to the full generality of language and communication and that effectively means: “All types of harm.”
Yes, so it’s a harder problem to claim that it’s safe. But doing nothing, having no risk model at all, and claiming that there’s no reason to think it’s unsafe, so it is safe, is, as I said, “fundamentally confused about what safety means for such systems.”
The issue is that the standards are meant to help achieve systems that are safe in the informal sense. If they don’t, they’re bad standards. How can you talk about whether a standard is sufficient, if it’s incoherent to discuss whether layperson-unsafe systems can pass it?
True, but the informal safety standard is “what doesn’t harm humans.” For construction, it amounts to “doesn’t collapse,” which you can break down into things like “strength of beam.” But with AI you are talking to the full generality of language and communication and that effectively means: “All types of harm.” Which is exactly the very difficult thing to get right here.
No, the risk and safety models for construction go far, far beyond that, from radon and air quality to size and accessibility of fire exits.
Yes, so it’s a harder problem to claim that it’s safe. But doing nothing, having no risk model at all, and claiming that there’s no reason to think it’s unsafe, so it is safe, is, as I said, “fundamentally confused about what safety means for such systems.”
I get that, but I tried to phrase that in terms that connected to benwr’s reques.