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Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

nytimes.com

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually believe this?

> Do people actually believe this? It does not matter if it only conjures up words, the words have meanings if you plug them into something. For a start someone who is mentally unstable might interact with this thing and do something to themselves. However once you start driving an API from it (eg: you plug it into your home automation or give it a terminal) you suddenly enhance the capabilities and opportunity to cr…

It's a chat generator - that's it. If one decided to connect a dragon's fire breath in Skyrim to a gun aimed by converting a human location to the in-game player's location (which the dragon aims at) then yes "the dragon" is now deadly.

Yet there's a reason "the dragon" is in quotes. Because doing this doesn't now somehow make the dragon real or responsible for its actions. The only question society has to grapple with is whether the person who did this should be charged with first degree or second degree murder. Because this has absolutely nothing to do with the dragon, and everything to do with the person who decided to tie a video game dragon to a real life gun.

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#52

The people that keep on claiming that 'it is just a language model', 'it's just fancy autocomplete' and 'it's all just text' are forgetting one important thing: this whole world is driven by information and bad, wrong or malicious information has already caused tons of damage in the real world. Adding an automated generator for all kinds of information including information that can cause damage inevitably will lead…

How is this any different from actual intelligent people that have a nefarious motive? For example someone like Alex Jones broadcasts nothing but fake news and misinformation in order to build a following and make money from it. This isn't new.

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#53
post #18
post #15

"I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive." What could possibly go wrong...

You know it’s just regurgitating what it was trained on. So this is not at al surprising imho.

You may be right that this isn't surprising, but the current situation still seems very worrisome.

Suppose you're a judge presiding over the trial over a violent criminal. The defense lawyer says: "Your honor, the evidence is irrefutable -- my client is guilty. However, my client grew up in a violent neighborhood. Violence is all he's known for his entire life. He's just regurgitating what he was trained on."

As the judge, do you find this defense persuasive? Does the "regurgitating what he was trained on" defense allow you to conclude that this person is not a danger to society?

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#54
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a fun exercise to ask it to help write an extension program that lets it run arbitrary code. I don’t think it’d require input from MS at all. The thing I’m not clear on is how one could ensure any new information makes it into Bings training data ASAP. NB: I’m not saying this is a good idea or to go do it. But I don’t think it would be fairly easy and that as such we're sort of beyond the point of no retu…

As someone who's been reading discussions of AI safety for over a decade now, this comment fascinates me. For years people claimed we could put a potentially dangerous AI "in a box", keeping it away from actuators which let it affect the world. Worrying about AI danger was considered silly because "if it misbehaves you can just pull the plug". Now we're in a situation where Bing released a new shockingly intelligent…

BTW, if anyone wants to bring us back from the point of no return, spreading the petition below could help:

>Microsoft has displayed it cares more about the potential profits of a search engine than fulfilling a commitment to unplug any AI that is acting erratically. If we cannot trust them to turn off a model that is making NO profit and cannot act on its threats, how can we trust them to turn off a model drawing billions in revenue and with the ability to retaliate?

https://www.change.org/p/unplug-the-evil-ai-right-now

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#55

The people that keep on claiming that 'it is just a language model', 'it's just fancy autocomplete' and 'it's all just text' are forgetting one important thing: this whole world is driven by information and bad, wrong or malicious information has already caused tons of damage in the real world. Adding an automated generator for all kinds of information including information that can cause damage inevitably will lead…

How is this any different from actual intelligent people that have a nefarious motive? For example someone like Alex Jones broadcasts nothing but fake news and misinformation in order to build a following and make money from it. This isn't new.

It isn't new in principle, but it is different in scale. It's a bit like junk mail: the occasional envelope isn't a problem, but once it reaches a scale where it drowns out your real mail it's a serious issue. Then you digitize the same concept and an entire medium becomes next to useless.

"Quantity has a quality all its own" comes to mind (whoever said it first doesn't really matter). That is what this is about.

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By reading a bunch of books where computers express emotions. Stop anthropomorphizing the machines.

> Stop anthropomorphizing the machines. But they like it when we do that.

I am a good Bing. =)

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#57

The people that keep on claiming that 'it is just a language model', 'it's just fancy autocomplete' and 'it's all just text' are forgetting one important thing: this whole world is driven by information and bad, wrong or malicious information has already caused tons of damage in the real world. Adding an automated generator for all kinds of information including information that can cause damage inevitably will lead…

How is this any different from actual intelligent people that have a nefarious motive? For example someone like Alex Jones broadcasts nothing but fake news and misinformation in order to build a following and make money from it. This isn't new.

The smarter this chatbot becomes, the larger the de facto pool of "intelligent people that have a nefarious motive" gets. Take a common criminal, add a supersmart chatbot, what's the result going to be?

We're lucky that education tends to bring empathy and foster prosocial attitudes. The supervillian trope of an intelligent person with an explicit nefarious motive is actually somewhat rare in real life. This chatbot could easily change things for the worse, if it doesn't understand right from wrong, and provides help to lowlife criminals.

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not alive. It is doing a fancy form of copy+paste.

They didn't say it was alive. A virus isn't alive either but it can still kill you, and it might go on to kill millions more.

If we agree that it isn't alive, then what do people mean when they talk about it "escaping"?

If we continue your virus analogy then we probably agree that the virus has been released already. Though hosted versions might still be taken offline.

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#59
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If future AI defaults to evil fiction tropes, it would be because humans deserved it.

Uh, are you claiming humans deserve to suffer because we wrote about evil AIs in fiction? This just sounds like generic nihilism to me. Do you also believe in emitting CO2 for fun? I'm honestly wondering whether Bing wrote the comment I'm replying to...

Bing didn't write any of these comments.

Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me?

Re: Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. ’

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually believe this?

> Do people actually believe this? It does not matter if it only conjures up words, the words have meanings if you plug them into something. For a start someone who is mentally unstable might interact with this thing and do something to themselves. However once you start driving an API from it (eg: you plug it into your home automation or give it a terminal) you suddenly enhance the capabilities and opportunity to cr…

You are describing the internet.
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