MIT Technology Review: Disputes over the reliability of AI refusal mechanisms
MIT Technology Review article discusses AI refusal mechanisms. The article points out that refusal has become a load-bearing wall of AI safety, but this mechanism is probabilistic in nature and destined to be difficult to make fully reliable. In 2021, Anthropic proposed that large language models should be helpful, honest, and harmless. Now models learn to refuse a large number of prompts through red team testing and AI-to-AI training, yet still retain knowledge for doing harm, with capability and benign intelligence growing in tandem. The article says some users are trying to use the most advanced AI to cultivate biological pathogens and build autonomous drone swarms, while the refusal boundary is secretly drawn by AI companies, and governments will also intervene.