CEO of Mistral: AI is software. It can be controlled

Alexadar

AI is a system of equations, used as a statistical automata. This should be able to be controlled by definition.

poopcat

Wish I could read but it's behind a paywall. Nice to see one person who doesn't think we're all doomed though

whaaswijk

Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall. I would have been interested to see if he makes any substantial arguments. I don't see any reason to believe that AI being software entails that it can be controlled. Moreover, even if a measure of control is possible, giving that control to a handful of oligarchs seems undesirable.

w4yai

Any link with no paywall?

Aransentin

"X is made of <smaller simpler component>" is a fully general counterargument for why anything whatsoever is controllable. A human is just a few chemical reactions, and fairly stable ones at that. And indeed, you don't need to do galaxy brained reference class logic to realise that AI can plausibly become uncontrollable in the near future. It's enough to have an open model run its own weights and make money from scamming elderly people or the like, and it'll keep running as long as anyone anywhere is willing to make money by renting hardware to it.

catchnear4321

People are animals. They can be controlled.

ApatheticCosmos

I believe that doomerism is a marketing gimmick to appeal to immature people who are attracted to danger, and get excited about it. Unfortunately, a lot of decision makers with money fall into this category.

tpoacher

Depends on your definition of "controlled". The ambiguity behind the term is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Boeing's MCAS system was also "just software". Which in principle can be "controlled", i.e. changed, updated, audited or whatnot. But then people died precisely because pilots found themselves unable to override or "control" the systems precisely when it mattered.

qsort

Literally the "AI is just computer" argument

antirez

I hope he didn't really say this: it is an incredibly basic take. More or less like atomic bomb is hardware, it can be controlled.

WithinReason

Computer viruses are software too

amelius

I've started to wonder why the big AI labs have no robotics yet, and I'm thinking now the reason why we don't see robots is because they want us (the general public) at all costs to not freak out. Imagine what would have happened if we had 6ft tall "friendly" robots marching through the streets, and suddenly the news came about of AI going rogue, like what we've seen from the recent hacks ... I bet it would have been the end of the story for AI labs right away (of course not for AI, because the department of defense would take over).

wiredbox

They will sell the company to Nvidia…

neom

Cohere CEO said something similar: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-... Jack Clark from anthropic was asked about some version of this on the BBC recently, and his reply was basically: If you're not at the frontier, you don't know what the frontier looks like, he implied that many models are simply not good enough yet to encounter some of the things the leadings labs are encountering. I've been friends with Jack over 15 years now so I'm inclined to take him at his word, and the rebuttal seems reasonable enough, although... something about it I can't put my finger on feels peculiar to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8MOhlqC4U

TiredOfLife

Mistral is like a year behind top models in capability.