Of course. "tried to" being key words in the comment. If he had the help of Claude at the time, how much more dangerous would his bumbling have been?
A real nuclear engineer with the knowledge he needed would also have said "no, don't do that and I won't help you." We are programming the knowledge into the ai agent. Giving ai a little discretion makes sense too.
>Of course. "tried to" being key words in the comment.
Fair enough, I misread your original comment.
The broader point stands that the limitation on creating nuclear weapons and reactors is not knowledge but materials. Even if he himself had a PhD in nuclear physics he still couldn't have built one in his backyard because he wouldn't be able to get the materials. A nuclear physicist can't build a reactor without materials anymore than a pilot can fly without an airplane.
I think the point is intent. Sure, no chance of success to build a reactor. But he created a radiation hazard situation all the same.
If a nuclear engineer enabled and instructed him, would there not be liability for the hazard? If ml is going to be an expert instructor for nuclear, hacking, bio hacking, virus research, do the peddlers of the ai product escape ethical or legal responsibility just because "its an app?"
> If a nuclear engineer enabled and instructed him, would there not be liability for the hazard?
Should the library where he read books about physics also be liable?
A difference of degree is a difference of kind here. If something previously required years to full-time study to learn, but now you can kind of somewhat stumble your way through it and get somewhat close to the result, you should not disregard that with a snarky one-liner IMO.
E.g. look at programming - people who don't know how what a compiler is, are making things that I could only make after a few years into my programming journey.
You obviously get the same results in chemistry or nuclear physics or whatever, the models are heavily trained on code in particular, but if there's a chance that we've reduced the ease of committing certain kinds of crime that were previously gate-kept by knowledge, we should know about it.
I read a high-school chemistry book describing the synthesis of nitroglycerine, it's not complicated. I would not recommend to try the synthesis in any significant amount.
> If a nuclear engineer enabled and instructed him, would there not be liability for the hazard?
I bet the professional would be able to sate the kid's curiosity safely without creating excessive risks.
I've come across detailed instructions on how to synthesize sarin gas on the internet. Anyone who follows those instructions will probably die horribly. I still thought it was pretty interesting.
I agree LLMs can be harmful and that the companies behind them should be held liable to some extent, for example the recent news with Google being held responsible for their AI's defamation.[1]
This is a pretty different argument though. The comment that started this thread was talking about LLMs making potentially dangerous knowledge more available to bad actors, now we're talking about LLMs giving personally harmful advice.
You asked:
>If he had the help of Claude at the time, how much more dangerous would his bumbling have been?
Probably less? Even if you removed all the guardrails from Claude it would've likely told him his reactor plan wouldn't work and that he would have a high chance of poisoning himself and the environment.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48470248
I think you're picking the wrong example. If I had some sticks, a bit of mud and a few leaves, whether or not I had Claude wouldn't make a difference to my ability to make a nuclear weapon. There are probably better examples of ways where unmediated AI might facilitate something horrible, although probably on a smaller scale.
> A real nuclear engineer with the knowledge he needed would also have said "no, don't do that and I won't help you."
That sounds like what Claude would say unless he was really good at jailbreaking it, which would IMO imply he knew he was chasing after a bad idea.
Right, which is exactly what elashri is objecting to. elashri said "Why do LLMs have restrictions on nuclear science", and IncandescentGas was explaining why they think those guardrails are a good idea. You're just agreeing with them.
Oh, I missed the word "also". Thanks for pointing it out!
I just love this whole "forbidden knowledge" schtick the AI safety dweebs have stuck up their butt. Is this really going to stop anybody determined enough to make that kind of outcome?
There is an extremely narrow band of things that the AI shouldn't be answering, and that is generally immediately-actionable advice that allows someone to build something of harm to others. But even then, in an age where Tor, bittrent, i2p, abliterated local models, etc are freely available, let alone numerous books and online resources, is there even a point? Is it worth fully compromising the principles of free agency to an increasingly oppressed populace?
But instead of that we are handing the keys to regressive and repressive governments to order the suppression of any knowledge they deem inconvenient. I really doubt anyone is going to take a principled stance when the company's party minders threaten local staff with a rubber hose or incarceration.
I'm sure China et al are already doing this.
For the past 30-40 years humanity has received an incredible gift in these sand-powered thinking brainboxes. A gift that allows the common man to empower himself with a force multiplier towards his own success, and now access to superintelligence the likes of which few have ever seen. These can be tools to destroy the oppression that governs our lives from foolhardy, greedy, bootlicking control freaks. And here we are squandering it.
> These can be tools to destroy the oppression that governs our lives
So far it seems that the clearest use for these tools is to enhance, rather than destroy, oppression.
1. Suppression / elimination of white collar jobs
2. Negative cognitive effects, especially for young people
3. Accelerated decline in social media / information ecosystems. Increasing polarization, hard to tell fact from fiction.
4. Environmental impacts: increased energy usage means more carbon in the atmosphere, climate change accelerates.
5. Software security incidents increasing. Hard for individuals and small organizations to defend themselves.
6. “Power to think” vested in a very small group of organizations/labs. Doing work which should only require a computer and freely-available software will now be gated by expensive subscriptions. Once you “vibe code” a significant portion of your software you’re locked in and cannot go back to maintaining it without frontier-model level assistance.
> I just love this whole "forbidden knowledge" schtick the AI safety dweebs have stuck up their butt.
It's just the latest incarnation of a timeless debate. In the 1970s and 1980s it was about the Anarchists's Cookbook, which was revived again in the 1990s when it started circulating on the Internet. There are many timeless debates, but the debate over weapon-making knowledge is much more concrete and predictable.
Agreeing with the first part of your post, but not the second.
> A gift that allows the common man to empower himself with a force multiplier towards his own success, and now access to superintelligence the likes of which few have ever seen.
As long as that "gift" requires me to call up Sam Altman's datacenter every time I want to do anything with that "superintelligence", it's not empowering, it's deepening the control.
Security theather is easy and gets lots of eyeballs. Actual security is hard and no one cares. Which one do you think soon-to-ipo companies are going to pick?
Anybody remember the Temple Of The Screaming Electron? Was a 2000s website dedicated to collecting those types of forbidden knowledge
He would not have succeeded in making a real reactor even with AI, because AI can't magically give you a large quantity of uranium metal! JFC the AI hysteria is unreal.
I don't think the concern should really be "would he make a reactor successfully?", but "would he make an even larger mess than his pile of radioactive materials amounted to?".
This just seems like a not great example to make that point though. Since whatever Claude tells the kid looking to build a reactor or even bomb is almost certainly going to be more grounded and professional than:
Instead it would send them on a wild goose chase for unobtainable isotopes, centrifuges, heavy water, etc where the biggest risk is probably getting reported to the police by some chemical or industrial equipment supplier. Which is a better outcome compared to contaminating their home with radiation and exposing anyone they interact with.You'd maybe get a sketchy but near-viable plan that could be dangerous if asked for a dirty bomb, but there the danger would more be the conventional explosives and not where to source radioisotopes, as it was already common knowledge that most residential smoke detectors contained americium until recently.
> succeeded in making a real reactor
The concern here is not if an amateur attempt to make a reactor, hack a bank, bioengineer a medicine/poison is successful or not. Interactive and instructive access to some forms of knowledge used to come with discretion along side instruction.
Yes, perhaps your swearing at me in this context is a little hysterical
prompt -> LLM -> flying car should be just around the corner guys!