It’s Time to Investigate the AI Labs

是时候调查人工智能实验室了

Over the last several months, the two leading frontier AI labs have shown some brazen behavior. It started with a series of carefully planned announcements and reports from OpenAI that try to establish how unnerving and powerful (not to mention felonious) their LLM-powered agent systems have become. 在过去的几个月里，两家领先的前沿人工智能实验室表现出了一些厚颜无耻的行为。这一切始于 OpenAI 一系列精心策划的公告和报告，试图证明他们由大语言模型（LLM）驱动的智能体系统已经变得多么令人不安和强大（更不用说其违法性了）。

They then handed the baton to Anthropic, whose employees began publicly debating the exact probability that these technologies would lead to human extinction. They delivered this all with an eerie calmness that conveyed a nihilistic inevitability about their work. 随后，他们将接力棒交给了 Anthropic，其员工开始公开辩论这些技术导致人类灭绝的确切概率。他们以一种令人毛骨悚然的冷静传达了这一切，仿佛他们的工作带有某种虚无主义的必然性。

The ground suitably softened, the campaign crescendoed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi releasing a letter, titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” in which he enumerates all the harms his own company’s research might cause, and then, instead of apologizing and promising to stop, concludes that catastrophe can only be avoided if we “build the technology in the right way,” which involves – surprise, surprise – the government slowing down potential competitors and allowing the labs to take the lead in advancing the relevant tech. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly tweeted his support for this brave plan. 在舆论环境被充分铺垫后，这场运动在 Anthropic 首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪（Dario Amodei）发布的一封题为《我们必须掌控前沿步伐》（We Must Pace the Frontier）的信中达到高潮。他在信中列举了他自己公司的研究可能造成的所有危害，但随后并没有道歉或承诺停止，而是断言只有通过“以正确的方式构建技术”才能避免灾难。而这——不出所料——涉及政府放慢潜在竞争对手的发展速度，并允许这些实验室在推进相关技术方面占据主导地位。OpenAI 首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）很快发推文表示支持这一“勇敢”的计划。

Internally, these labs have long embraced this style of messianic thinking, casting themselves as humanity’s only hope against the deified powers of superintelligent AI. This summer, in some sense, was their attempt to induct the rest of us into this long-held ideology. It didn’t work. Instead of inspiring the masses to stand up and applaud these engineers’ heroic rationalism, it made us instead start to ask, “What the hell is going on over in those labs?” 在内部，这些实验室长期以来一直信奉这种救世主式的思维，将自己塑造为人类对抗超人工智能神化力量的唯一希望。从某种意义上说，今年夏天是他们试图将我们其他人引入这种长期持有的意识形态的尝试。但这并没有奏效。它没有激励大众站起来为这些工程师的英雄式理性鼓掌，反而让我们开始质问：“那些实验室里到底在搞什么鬼？”

To that end, last Thursday I published an op-ed in The New York Times calling on Congress to begin a public fact-finding mission to uncover what research projects OpenAI and Anthropic are conducting, how they’re conducting them, and for what purposes. I suggested three key areas to explore with this questioning: 为此，上周四我在《纽约时报》发表了一篇评论文章，呼吁国会启动一项公开的事实调查任务，以揭示 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 正在进行哪些研究项目、他们是如何进行的，以及其目的是什么。我建议通过此次质询探索三个关键领域：

We must move past vague discussions of “AI” and instead isolate the specific types of systems that are creating problems. The frontier labs want us to think of AI as a singular technology on an inevitable, fixed trajectory. In reality, most of the problems in recent months result from a narrow band of incautious experiments, conducted mainly by the frontier labs. They need to justify why they’re running them. 我们必须超越对“人工智能”的模糊讨论，转而锁定那些造成问题的特定系统类型。前沿实验室希望我们将人工智能视为一种处于必然、固定轨迹上的单一技术。实际上，近几个月出现的大多数问题都源于一小部分不谨慎的实验，而这些实验主要由前沿实验室进行。他们需要证明自己为何要进行这些实验。

We must examine the internal safety procedures surrounding these research efforts. OpenAI revealed a long series of unauthorized hacking attacks by their autonomous agents. Why weren’t these efforts stopped after the first such incident was revealed? Why not pursue criminal liability for them running systems they knew would likely commit crimes? 我们必须审查围绕这些研究工作的内部安全程序。OpenAI 披露了其自主智能体进行的一系列未经授权的黑客攻击。为什么在第一起此类事件被披露后，这些行为没有被制止？为什么不对他们运行明知可能犯罪的系统追究刑事责任？

We have to investigate the role of apocalyptic futurist ideologies in the decisions being made by the frontier labs, both about what research to pursue and how fast to pursue it. I’m increasingly concerned that OpenAI and Anthropic, in particular, are becoming increasingly reckless because they believe collateral damage is justified in a race to redeem humanity. (For more on these beliefs and their connections to the labs, see: this and this and this, all published in the Times in just the last several weeks.) 我们必须调查末日未来主义意识形态在这些前沿实验室决策中所扮演的角色，无论是关于追求什么研究，还是追求的速度。我越来越担心，尤其是 OpenAI 和 Anthropic，正变得越来越鲁莽，因为他们认为在拯救人类的竞赛中，附带损害是合理的。（关于这些信念及其与实验室联系的更多信息，请参阅：这篇、这篇和这篇，均在过去几周内发表于《纽约时报》。）

“We need to stop letting a small number of private companies, acting and talking in increasingly erratic ways, dictate how we’re supposed to feel about A.I.,” I concluded. “We’ve heard what they want to say; now it’s Congress’s turn to step in on our behalf to find out what’s really going on.” “我们不能再让少数几家行事和言论日益古怪的私营公司来左右我们对人工智能的看法，”我总结道。“我们已经听到了他们想说的话；现在轮到国会代表我们介入，去查明到底发生了什么。”