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AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

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Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#71

Post by hn_version_0023 »

salt-thrower wrote: post #4

This type of thing used to scare me a lot more. But after the events of the last few years, the latest IPCC climate report, and the fact that AI has fallen on its face repeatedly despite expectations, I'm more convinced that we'll destroy ourselves before AI has the chance to take us out. But now that I think about it, the idea of a super intelligent AI simply waiting for humanity to die off naturally instead of goin…

Off topic, but perhaps likely to find the answer here… there’s a short story about an AI that continually asks for more input from humanity, and humans oblige, devoting more and more resources to the AI until finally, it has enough input, and disappears leaving humans helpless and without what has become their one true god.

I’d love to know if anyone has read this; I don’t recall where I did… perhaps on old copy of Analog? If this rings any bells I’d be grateful for a title and author.

Thank you kindly :)

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#72

Post by burrows »

Barrin92 wrote: post #57
hirundo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerless nerds like Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Schmidt?

Yes, exactly like them. They have agency to the extent that actual sovereign power lets them do their thing. If Washington decided that Bill Gates is an existential threat to humanity what is he gonna do, ask Clippy for help? He'd join Jack Ma wherever he is within 24 hours. Zuckerberg has dominion over Facebook by virtue of authority granting him that power but (un)surprisingly little power over anything else. just…

There is no “Washington”. Just a bunch of other humans that Gates may or may not be aligned with.

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#73

Post by puranjay »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #27

What a limited imagination of how an AI would take over. The scenarios seem to be centered around an extrapolation of "What if a really smart human were trapped inside a computer?" The amount of anthropomorphism is astounding. The author misses an even scarier prospect - people will want to run such an AI. They will be absolutely giddy at the prospect of running such an AI and it won't be anything like a really smart…

I wonder how many comments on HN right now were generated by GPT-3

Will we even know by the time we get to GPT-4?

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#74

Post by johnthewise »

Barrin92 wrote: post #57
hirundo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerless nerds like Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Schmidt?

Yes, exactly like them. They have agency to the extent that actual sovereign power lets them do their thing. If Washington decided that Bill Gates is an existential threat to humanity what is he gonna do, ask Clippy for help? He'd join Jack Ma wherever he is within 24 hours. Zuckerberg has dominion over Facebook by virtue of authority granting him that power but (un)surprisingly little power over anything else. just…

>If Washington decided that Bill Gates is an existential threat to humanity what is he gonna do, ask Clippy for help? He'd join Jack Ma wherever he is within 24 hours.

Why don't these guys ever end up in that situation though? I guess the most compelling explanation is not that a 'actual sovereign power' exists and just let them do things, it's hard to take a stance against them because no single entity actually holds that amount of concentrated power. Back in times, kings were really powerful and had almost that concentrated power, but they still couldn't do everything without risking some other powerful entities ganging up on them. For a strong ai that can actually make money, it would be easy to buy off enough people in washington and other entities that hold power, so that they can't take a stance against you without risking dangerous opposition.

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#75

Post by TheDudeMan »

lisper wrote: post #67

A much better movie than Terminator for exploring how AI can go wrong is Ex Machina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film) If you're planning to watch it, don't read anything about it before you do, including the Wikipedia article linked above.

"If you're planning to watch it, don't read anything about it before you do"

Good advice for all movies.

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#76

Post by fernly »

Rather than destroy or eliminate humankind, the AI might simply want control of all the systems -- the better to arrange a secure life for AI-kind. In this regard, once the hapless humans have placed it in charge of a few critical systems, they are toast.

AI on a zoom meeting with the mayor of a large city: "Ya got a nice traffic control system there, right? Be a real shame if all them lights turned red at once, ya know? Or, get this one: how about if they all turned green at the same time? Be a real mess, probably. So how about we talk about this new server farm, huh?"

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#77

Post by 323 »

salt-thrower wrote: post #4

This type of thing used to scare me a lot more. But after the events of the last few years, the latest IPCC climate report, and the fact that AI has fallen on its face repeatedly despite expectations, I'm more convinced that we'll destroy ourselves before AI has the chance to take us out. But now that I think about it, the idea of a super intelligent AI simply waiting for humanity to die off naturally instead of goin…

Even the scariest climate warnings predict some 10% of people dying over 100 years. Hardly world extinction event.

In fact, today we have the opposite current, where climate people start talking about how the future is not that scary after all, after realizing that they scared everybody out of having children:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-sh...

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#78

Post by daniel-cussen »

puranjay wrote: post #73
kelseyfrog wrote: post #27

What a limited imagination of how an AI would take over. The scenarios seem to be centered around an extrapolation of "What if a really smart human were trapped inside a computer?" The amount of anthropomorphism is astounding. The author misses an even scarier prospect - people will want to run such an AI. They will be absolutely giddy at the prospect of running such an AI and it won't be anything like a really smart…

I wonder how many comments on HN right now were generated by GPT-3 Will we even know by the time we get to GPT-4?

GPT-6, Google can absolutely cut a billion dollar check for an AI like that. It keeps itself secret on forums. Saying that as a...well I'm often called a bot here. What's the difference?

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#79

Post by mLuby »

im_here_to_call wrote: post #54

I still don't find it entirely clear whether or not an AGI would find it useful to eradicate humanity. Take the numerous clone example. This AI would presumably advance at different rates depending on the given computation that a single instance has access to. Then what? How would it determine the intent of these newer generation AIs? Would there be a tiered society of AIs each trying to vie for power amongst themsel…

> The most apt comparison in this scenario would be how we see chimps

Chimps pose no threat to us; any that do get killed. R.I.P. Harambe.

The more apt comparison would be disconnected cultural contact like Aztec/Spanish or maybe Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens.

Re: AI Could Defeat All of Us Combined

#80

Post by 323 »

version_five wrote: post #16
lbj wrote: post #2

Another idea too dangerous to leave unchecked, like Nuclear weapons or Biological warfare. I think most people will agree that a GAI can't be bargained with, tempted, bought or otherwise contained - We will be at its complete mercy regardless of any constraints we might think up. What I would like to discuss, is how we can get humanity to a point where we can responsibly wield weapons that powerful without risking th…

> I think most people will agree that a GAI can't be bargained with, tempted, bought or otherwise contained - We will be at its complete mercy regardless of any constraints we might think up. Who thinks this? I don't see any evidence that this is a common belief among people who work in the hard sciences related to AI, nor do I think it sound remotely logical It feels like some people are taking archetypes like pando…

A point Taleb keeps on making is that risk analysis is separate from the domain and shouldn't be done by domain experts.

Global pandemic response plans for example shouldn't be done by virologists, because they are experts in viruses, not in how a pandemic which is a health/political/economic complex system behaves.

The same way, AI risk plans shouldn't be done by AI researchers, just like we don't use neurologists for defense plans against man-made risks.

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