EA - NYT: Google will “recalibrate” the risk of releasing AI due to competition with OpenAI by Michael Huang

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: NYT: Google will “recalibrate” the risk of releasing AI due to competition with OpenAI, published by Michael Huang on January 22, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.The New York Times: Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, is trying to speed up the release of AI technology by taking on more risk.Mr. Pichai has tried to accelerate product approval reviews, according to the presentation reviewed by The Times.The company established a fast-track review process called the “Green Lane” initiative, pushing groups of employees who try to ensure that technology is fair and ethical to more quickly approve its upcoming A.I. technology.The company will also find ways for teams developing A.I. to conduct their own reviews, and it will “recalibrate” the level of risk it is willing to take when releasing the technology, according to the presentation.This change is in response to OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT. It is evidence that the race between Google/DeepMind and Microsoft/OpenAI is eroding ethics and safety.Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, urged caution in his recent interview in Time:He says AI is now “on the cusp” of being able to make tools that could be deeply damaging to human civilization, and urges his competitors to proceed with more caution than before.“When it comes to very powerful technologies—and obviously AI is going to be one of the most powerful ever—we need to be careful,” he says.“Not everybody is thinking about those things. It’s like experimentalists, many of whom don’t realize they’re holding dangerous material.”Worse still, Hassabis points out, we are the guinea pigs.Alphabet/Google is trying to accelerate a technology that its own subsidiary says is powerful and dangerous.Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.