Seems exactly on the same side to me- Netanyahu was the one that pushed most for the US invasion of Iraq:
"Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel [...] also visited Washington in late 2002 to lobby for the invasion of Iraq.
Apparently referring to testimony on the Middle East that Mr. Netanyahu delivered to Congress on Sept. 12, 2002, when he was a private citizen, Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The prime minister, as you will recall, was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision.”
Video of Mr. Netanyahu’s 2002 remarks — in which he said “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice”
Does that mean that humans could produce mathematical proofs that are entirely logical and verifiable by other humans, but that cannot be formalised in any automatically verifiable language such as lean?
More trivially, map and filter are operations that can be understood by what they do to individual elements, while reduce is a folding operation that is applied recursively on its own output. Much harder to think about.
Well if that consoles you, the US government has just approved gifting mega-bombs to Israel for another $2.8 billion. Several news call it a "sale" but it's actually a gift since most of the money comes from the US government anyway.
Nothing in the post you are referencing came off as antisemitism. Please do not conflate the arming of a militaristic apartheid regime with criticism of blank checkbook legislating.
standard israeli psyop tactic: use jewish people as human shields from criticism directed at the state of Israel by trying as hard as possible to conflate antisemitism with negative sentiment towards israel.
The antisemitic Claude puts the total US grants (= gifts) to Israel in the past 5 years to $33 billion, which my antisemitic calculator puts at $6.6 billion/ year. Of course these gifts allow Israel to fund its own healthcare while it bombs other people for free.
That's not the point. You know exactly how to define being conscious and aware- it's your subjective experiencing of the world and of your inner states. The problem is that being a subjective experiencing, there is no way to communicate it to the outside world.
No, humans output a stream of tokens that sound like what a being with subjective experiences would output. Both you and I make an assumption that this stream of words is at least somewhat representative of what the are experiencing and that the person is not a p-zombie.
But you have zero proof that their words aren't a confabulation, you can only know than when you output a similar set of words you had a subjective mind state they represent.
The very best you can do is define human consciousness as requiring the functions of a human brain, and try to figure out (decide/agree) the chances that something which is working loosely on the same principles is or isn't conscious.
At the end of the day it will always be an agreement, never scientifically proven as fact.
This has nothing to do with the statement above- it's just a consequence of the fact that by resetting the context you reset all memory of the llm. The same would happen if you could reset entirely a human brain to some initial state- and it would mean nothing regarding its consciousness or ability to feel.
If you go this route, the amount of things you just don't know is innumerable. Maybe to be conscious it's necessary to be wet and squishy. To like chocolate. To have a name starting with "c".
> If you go this route, the amount of things you just don't know is innumerable.
Maybe so, but there are things we do know. For example, LLMs are only in a state that looks like consciousness when they are fed input. IOW, their "consciousness" can be switched off and on like a light switch without them being aware of it.
Biological beings have no such off/on switch. At all.
To me the argument is moot; their "consciousness" is a collection of files on a computer, which can be moved, duplicated, erased, edited, paused, sped up, slowed down, examined in detail.
The question is not "Can LLMs be conscious", it's "Are we prepared to call files on a USB stick 'conscious'", because if we are prepared to do that, then the word loses all meaning.
I'll open vim and create a consciousness now, or maybe if I engrave a slab of rock with a bunch of weights, that rock suddenly gains consciousness? How about if I chant all the weights into the wind - is the wind now conscious.
Whether they are conscious or not is a dumb question, because if they are, then everything else is as well.
That's the absurdity of this. We are trying to measure LLMs against something we don't even have an accurate definition of ourselves. If we don't fully know what consciousness is, how can we confidently determine whether or not an AI model has consciousness?
Nobody gives a damn about the freedom of the Iranian people. They are a problem for Israel [1], so the US bombs them. The rest is just post-hoc justification.
[1] Note that every civilised country should be a problem for Israel- but Iran is the only one that actually dares opposing it.
These remarks are antisemitic. The people of Iran aren’t seeking a fight against imperialism. We want to live like ordinary people in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, and be allied with them. The fascist Shiite regime has taken everyone hostage, and it’s leading us toward a collective suicide.
So it would be fine if they were against any other country engaged in genocide, but not against Israel because it's Jewish? Is that your defense of Israel?
> We want to live like ordinary people in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, and be allied with them
You want to be allied with a genocidal state and the country that has forced you into poverty for the last decades?
This person has missed reading classes, is dishonest or just stupid. The law proposal bans research on ASI, and sets penalties for those who transgress the ban. Seems quite obvious to me. The law that bans clandestine efforts to build nuclear weapons is not "proposing to sentence nuclear physicists to 20 years in prison".
(Btw, "up to" doesn't mean "to". Second comprehension mistake in a few lines- I bet all current generation of LLMs have better understanding.)
Which is exactly the same as the submission's post, obvious interpretations of "AI" aside: how can we implement Intelligence without enabling superintelligence at the same time?!
And of course we must implement Intelligence, finally: we have implemented further morons, of which we already had plentiful abundance - already the LLM stage must be corrected!
We might agree or disagree with the statement that AGI and ASI are dangerous (economically, societally, existentially) and research needs to be paused- which means making their development (temporarily) illegal. If you accept that it is the case, though, you need to accept that there are penalties for those who violate the law.
What you wrote makes no sense in the chain: "If you accepted that C were a crime than C should be sanctioned" - this is not the point. Who argues against that non-matter?
You stated that the submission did not represent the facts because the facts are about banning «research on ASI», and you were replied that what we are doing in the LLM direction cannot be other than researching ASI. And you were told: and we must, because we cannot be contented with morons.
> You stated that the submission did not represent the facts because the facts are about banning «research on ASI»,
No. I stated that the submission is idiotic because the point is that the law wants to severely restrict AI research at least for some time. Agreee, disagree, I don't care. It's not proposing to jail people who are AI researchers by trade or specialisation, or who conducted AI research in the past. It's proposing to make further research illegal, therefore imposes penalties on those who would illegally pursue it- be they researchers, managers, financers, movie villains, companies, etc.
How can you interpret «developers and researchers working on advanced AI» as «people who are AI researchers by trade or specialisation, or who conducted AI research in the past» - nobody in their sanity would understand that.
Or are you complaining against the brevity of the title - knowing that we have to fit the title into a short space?
There are really no possible misunderstandings in the submission.
> I see that Gates started a conversation with the execs he believes are responsible for fixing this mess.
I think the point here might be that what created this mess in the first place is the structure of the organisation, not the execs that are temporarily embodying it. It's actually quite clear from the follow-ups, there is nobody who can claim responsibility even for the website, never mind any vision or philosophy spanning multiple media and products.
Maybe Gates simply wasn't in the position of doing anything else at that time, or maybe his rant was a clever way to expose this exact problem. But it's pretty obvious that "will someone fix the website" doesn't sound like someone analysing and addressing the root cause of the issue. (However, it's also perfectly possible that this email is just a small part of a bigger conversation at different levels- inform the responsible and patch the immediate issue while more high level analysis and planning takes place elsewhere, informally).
I think the real point is that this is a random email that Gates sent to some execs sharing a bad experience with the product, and some people on HN are trying to take it as a much deeper thing than it really is.
A leader should be able to send candid communication to other leaders. A culture where execs are unable to communicate candidly to their peers or other high-level leaders is a toxic one. It would be absurd to insist that every communication needs to be candy coated and framed in terms of “I take responsibility, so here’s a path forward, and I’ll handhold everyone through it.”
This is not about candor, it's about framing and respecting what kind of power people have, who is responsible for what.
"Hey gang - I know I'm not Dear Leader anymore - and - I don't want to get in the way of your new Dear Leader, but I want to share with you a bad experience I had with this product.
A, B, C, D. E .. was really bad.
After thinking about it - I think much of this lays at my feet. In the Golden Era of MS we didn't think much about design, or 'Whole Product'. I have to take responsibility for that.
But these kinds of outcomes are really bad, and this has to be nipped in the bud now - and in the future.
I suggest this probably happened because Product and R&D criss-crossed here, the Release Managers and Product Marketing dropped a lot in between.
That there was a ball dropped here must be the responsibility at the VP/Executive level at very least, for not ensuring smooth handoff.
Furthermore - that this experience could be so bad means we have to rethink and extend our integration testing all the way to 'end user experience'.
Finally, I think you'll need to engender a culture of design right from the start - that's going to take 2-4 years and a different kind of thinking, that is not a fire that can be put out, or a process to be fixed. I'll have to lave that on the lap of the new Dear Leader.
It borderline infantilizing and buries the message under a bunch of saccharine. I can practically see the fake smile plastered across the face of the manager saying this. I would be insulted if my manager sent a message like this to the team.
Your version also took away literally all of the concrete detail, turning into a generic “it’s bad” that isn’t an actionable. It sounds like you sent it through an LLM.
I would also imagine that there are a lot of other emails flying around that are discussing the general pattern of concern while this is more of a drive-by honest review of a specific experience. This is the kind of blunt feedback that execs do not usually get about their products and probably need more of. This kind of blunt feedback from a respected leader can’t be waived away the way anecdotes from individual customers can.
What does this mean? Fire the VPs who failed to do their jobs? Say what you mean.
> ensuring smooth handoff
“doing their jobs”
> rethink and extend
“fix”
> engender a culture of design
This is a meaningless phrase.
> different kind of thinking
What kind of thinking?
> or a process to be fixed
Processes are how things get done! If programmers push garbage into the list of installed applications, that’s a process failure. If a product team makes a download available but it can’t be found on the main web site’s list of downloads, that’s a process failure. When things get done wrong it’s definitionally a process failure. Process also doesn’t flow from culture, they each exert influence on the other. Bad process will lead to bad culture as much as bad culture will lead to bad process.
I will reiterate what a sibling commenter already said: Nothing about this mealy mouthed corporate jargon liberally drizzled in passive voice comes across as candid. Effective communication does not look like this. Effective communication is assertive. It offers direct actionable advice, or asks direct questions which result in actionable answers.
---> First - the notes about language are completely glib.
It's perfectly acceptable for someone to use personal tone.
"> After thinking about it
Just say the thing."
"> nipped in the bud
“stop”"
... would be ridiculous feedback to give anyone.
It's perfectly acceptable for any writer to have some personalized inflection in their prose.
There's no misunderstanding or lost context.
The fact that you would even try to pick apart language at level is just weird.
---> Second - "Nothing about this mealy mouthed corporate jargon"
There is nothing 'mealy mouthed' about that prose, and there is no 'corporate jargon' in the note.
None.
The writer in that scenario mean exactly what they said - with some allowance for personal inflection.
That's it.
---> Third - "> engender a culture of design
This is a meaningless phrase."
No - it's not a 'meaningless phrase' - it means exactly that, in so many words.
Obviously, I'm not going to write full follow up paragraph on that in HN, the implication is direct.
---> Fourth - and most importantly - you entirely missed the point by trying to nitpick on arbitrary language someone wrote crudely on a HN comment.
The 'point' is to illustrate in quick and rough terms how one could be 'candid' with the feedback about a broken feature - and to also to frame it responsibly, to direct some feedback and as to where the responsibility might lie and where the process might have broken down, and then to more broadly indicate strategic concerns over culture, because there clearly is, particularly around 'user centric concners'.
Gates barfed some 'things that were broken' - instead of providing any contextualization at all - it was totally absent anything a leader would nominally provide.
You're getting caught up literally in prose and notions of 'process' which is besides the point. This is not about 'process' - it's about a leader framing feedback.
And FYI it was Satya that finally did 'change the culture' (although on different terms) to generally widespread acclaim.
Consider that three people have given you substantially similar feedback about your “candor”. Your attempt at a “personal voice” here comes off extremely fake. Compare your proposed “candid” message with the actual candor in your message at the top of this thread.
Rather than continue to dismiss the feedback, you should digest it and potentially learn something from it. Or not. It’s your choice.
> Gates barfed some 'things that were broken' - instead of providing any contextualization at all - it was totally absent anything a leader would nominally provide.
And yet you, simply by reading the email Gates sent, were able to confidently ascertain that the culture itself was failing here. You give too little credit to the recipients of this email when you imply that they can’t make the same assessment.
Your point could be made by simply adding the following at the very top of the original email: “Besides fixing the specific issues in this flow, we should consider how it got this bad in the first place and make changes to prevent it from happening again. I’ll support you and provide whatever you need.”
Done. Let the people who are responsible figure it out. They’re smart and capable, no need to baby them. You’ve made clear that you see it and it’s not acceptable, but you also understand that to drive through bigger changes, you’ll need to back them up and chip in when they need you.
"Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel [...] also visited Washington in late 2002 to lobby for the invasion of Iraq.
Apparently referring to testimony on the Middle East that Mr. Netanyahu delivered to Congress on Sept. 12, 2002, when he was a private citizen, Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The prime minister, as you will recall, was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision.”
Video of Mr. Netanyahu’s 2002 remarks — in which he said “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/kerry-re...
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