Comment Re:Safety testing? (Score 3, Informative) 49
"AI safety" generally has two completely different meanings.
The first meaning, which is what is easy to explain and defensible is that models learn a lot of things that would be dangerous to make easily available to those who search. For example, instructions on how to make bombs. Normally you have to go to school to learn this, as most of the online bomb making "tutorials" are intentionally poisoned. If you try them, you'll end up with something that doesn't work because key step/ingredient is intentionally incorrect.
This is the part that is easily defensible in "AI safety" and the veil behind which people who are pushing for the second meaning hide behind when called on it.
Second one being "political correctness". This is the "trans women are biologically women", "there are infinite genders", "biology is racist" etc. It's basically about pushing the politically correct dogma on The Current Thing.
Both will be sold on the false equivalence of "it's dangerous to talk about child mutilation and castration being bad because it causes trans genocide, as trans people are so insane that they will mass kill themselves if you tell them that castrating yourself and putting on some makeup and a dress doesn't make them women". Which is totally the same thing as making easily accessible and practical bomb making instructions.
And will be forgotten and vehemently denied this was ever the case by the same activists after they move on to the next The Current Thing. While bomb making instructions will remain actually dangerous to society. Which is why AI safety needs to be done on the latter, and not the former. But since activists cannot justify the former without the latter to wider populace, they have to resort to motte and bailey tactics like described above. And that's why "AI safety" became something that is hard to understand. Because just as activsts retreat from their indefensible positions to the highly defensible ones, highly defensible ones become associated with indefensible positions and people begin to question if bomb making recipes being made easily available is actually dangerous, since The Current Thing obviously isn't.