Can we escape Moloch’s trap with a GPU treaty?

In competitive situations, people end up sacrificing common values to get an edge. But this edge only lasts a short time until everyone does the same, so everyone is right back where they started but the common value is gone forever. Moloch is the personification of this “race to the bottom”. When asked why situations that are bad for everyone arise, “Meditations on Moloch” says, Moloch did it.

The only way to avoid such situations is to have regulation imposed on the system as a whole, possibly from the outside. Individual members of the community cannot take effective action on their own. However, coordinated action is a game theory problem that is quite challenging. We discuss the prisoner's dilemma and the more applicable assurance dilemma (or stag hunt).

If countries try to make a treaty to slow AI development, that would require assurance. We discuss using GPU hardware to provide assurance. It is challenging because state level actors will want to bypass any such restrictions. The field of research into hardware enabled governance is trying to define solutions over the next 12 to 18 months.

#ai #gpu #geopolitics

Moloch — a race to the bottom where everyone loses
  / moloch-a-race-to-the-bottom-where-everyone...  

Meditations On Moloch
https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.co...

Computing Power and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.08797

GOVERNING AI FOR HUMANITY
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/f...

Computing Power and the Governance of AI
https://www.governance.ai/post/comput...

Hardware-Enabled Governance Mechanisms
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_pap...

Hardware-Enabled Governance Mechanisms [paper]
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...

Secure, Governable Chips
https://www.cnas.org/publications/rep...

Study suggests China’s crackdown on illegal CFC gases is working
https://www.climatechangenews.com/202...

0:00 Intro
0:32 Contents
0:40 Part 1: Sacrifices to Moloch
1:10 Example of Moloch: rats on tropical island
1:49 Altruistic rat behavior gets outcompeted
2:32 Answer to the question: Who is doing this?
2:55 Modern example: altruistically delaying technology
3:18 Example of Google and LLMs
3:45 Economic but also safety impacts
4:19 Sacrificing common values for profit
5:10 Part 2: Why a geopolitical treaty is needed
5:25 Each country for themselves
5:54 Multiple countries need to coordinate in a treaty
6:26 How would you enforce a treaty?
6:50 Research into hardware governance
7:09 Alternative to banning GPUs entirely
7:33 Why this research is beneficial to all
7:58 Trade between countries is not zero sum
8:38 Game theory: prisoner's dilemma
9:40 Game theory: stag hunt (assurance dilemma)
10:37 Communication and trust in the assurance dilemma
11:00 Stag hunt models international treaties
11:36 People collaborate in iterated games
12:28 Part 3: Hardware enabled governance
12:52 State level threat actors can burn out transistors
13:11 Simplistic licensing approaches
13:58 More sophisticated approaches based on cryptography
14:43 Cryptography allows ratios of compute
15:35 Governments want physical inspections
16:13 Example: assurance in CFC limitation
17:22 Conclusion
18:09 You need a treaty with assurance
18:46 Leveraging cryptography for assurance
19:39 Outro