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Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

aisnakeoil.substack.com

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Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#121

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

I feel that the clear and present danger from AI at this point is where we set up AI to all be the gatekeepers for our access to the normal things in life: food, shelter, clothing, banking, communications services, etc.

And then the power and complexity of the AI gatekeepers becomes intractable such that none of us can really understand or troubleshoot when it goes wrong.

And then it does go wrong somehow: perhaps there are just innocent malfunctions, or perhaps threat actors install malicious AIs to replace the benign gatekeepers that had been in place.

And then the gates slam shut, and we're standing there like "open the pod bay doors please" and entire swaths of society are disenfranchised by AI gatekeepers that nobody can understand or troubleshoot or even temporarily disable or bypass.

And it seems utterly plausible since this is already the reality of people who are denied access to Google or Facebook accounts and such. All it needs is to get a little more widespread and come to something truly essential, like your bank or your grocery store.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#122

Post by pixl97 »

ls612 wrote: post #45
arisAlexis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In addition, even for current AI we don’t even fully understand what we are doing" That is the problem, don't you get it?

“In addition, even with the current state of the internet, we don’t have understanding everything we are doing with it” -some guy in the ‘90s probably

Many people would look at engagement algorithms braching out of social media and causing riots and uprisings as one of those issues that would be difficult to predict in the 90s

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#123

Post by stanislavb »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #121

I feel that the clear and present danger from AI at this point is where we set up AI to all be the gatekeepers for our access to the normal things in life: food, shelter, clothing, banking, communications services, etc. And then the power and complexity of the AI gatekeepers becomes intractable such that none of us can really understand or troubleshoot when it goes wrong. And then it does go wrong somehow: perhaps th…

...and that's when it gets scary :/

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#124

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

stanislavb wrote: post #123
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #121

I feel that the clear and present danger from AI at this point is where we set up AI to all be the gatekeepers for our access to the normal things in life: food, shelter, clothing, banking, communications services, etc. And then the power and complexity of the AI gatekeepers becomes intractable such that none of us can really understand or troubleshoot when it goes wrong. And then it does go wrong somehow: perhaps th…

...and that's when it gets scary :/

I predict that there will be a new class of homeless/street people growing in our midst: people who became utterly dependent on computers and Internet in every way, and then simply glitched out, and a house of cards collapsed beneath them, leaving them no way to access their bank funds, their employment, or housing, and denied access to any and all personal devices, they have no way to live the life they had been accustomed to.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#125

Post by Zuiii »

killjoywashere wrote: post #80
m4rtink wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like something that could be very easily missused for censorship, catching whistleblowers and similar.

That's actually why it's urgent to set this up outside of government, like the browser CA system, and develop methods to issue verification of "human" while preserving other aspects of anonymity.

There is no universe where governments will make the mistake of allowing something like the browser CA to come with into existence without "oversight" twice. That the browser CA still exists independently is nothing short of a miracle.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#126

Post by pixl97 »

z3c0 wrote: post #97
circuit10 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t even fully explain how our own brains work, never mind a system that’s completely alien to us and that would have to be more complex. We can’t even explain how current LLMs work internally. Maybe we’ll make some breakthrough if we put enough resources into it but if people keep denying the problem there will never be enough resources out into it

While I agree with the other comment, I'd like to add one thing to help you see the false equivalency being made here: we didn't make the human brain . Now, with that being understood, why wouldn't we understand a brain that we made? Don't say "emergent properties", because we understand the ermegent properties of ant colonies without having made them.

You seem to misunderstand the size of the complexity space we are dealing with here. We take simple algorithms feed massive amounts of data to the algorithms, and the algorithm makes a network connecting it together. Humans did not choose anything about how that network is connected... the data and feedback loop did.

>because we understand the ermegent properties of ant colonies without having made them.

I would disagree. We observe ants and can relatively classify their behavior well, but still have many issues predicting their behavior even though they are relatively simple agent types with a far lower complexity choice space than an LLM+plugin could/does provide.

This is the key, we could not predict ant behavior before observing it, the same will be true for AI agents of large complexity. At least at this point of understanding we could still ask it some unexpected question and get unexpectedly dangerous responses from it.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#127

Post by pixl97 »

throwaway9274 wrote: post #100
circuit10 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no evidence that a runaway artificial intelligence is even plausible Really? There is a lot of theory behind why this is likely to happen and if you want a real example there is a similar existing scenario we can look at, which is how humans have gone through an exponential runaway explosion in capabilities in the last few hundred years because of being more intelligent than other species and being able to…

Is there really “a lot of theory” that says runaway AI is possible? In the sense of empirical fact-based peer reviewed machine learning literature? Because if so I must have missed it. It seems more accurate to say there is quite a bit of writing done by vocal influencers who frequent a couple online forums.

In evolutionary biological systems 'capabilities break out' common enough in viral and bacterial systems with their fast evolution times. The same thing can occur when new predators are introduced to ecosystems that are not prepared for them.

The question that I assume you have is 'can AI systems experience large evolutionary jumps in capabilities'. I would say yes myself, but you apper to disagree.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#128

Post by pixl97 »

Al0neStar wrote: post #101
yeck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which claim does the burden of proof land on? That an artificial super intelligence can easily be controlled or that it cannot? And what is your rational for deciding?

The claim that there's a possibility of a sudden intelligence explosion. Like i said above you can argue that an AGI can be realized because there's plenty of us running around on earth but claims about a hypothetical super AGI are unfounded and akin to Russell's Teapot.

Ok, in a converse question, why would evolution create the human mind as the most intelligent possible system?

So I ask, are systems capable of better than human intelligence possible? And if so to what factor?

I would answer yes and unknown. If there are states of intelligent far greater than human then that gets really risky very fast.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#129

Post by pixl97 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #68
circuit10 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theory can be used to predict things with reasonable confidence. It could be wrong, but assuming it’s wrong is a big risk to take. Also I gave a real-world analogy that has actually happened

An accurate theory can be used to predict things with reasonable confidence, within the limits of the theory. We don't have an accurate theory of intelligence. What we have now is at the "not even wrong" stage. Assuming it's wrong is about like assuming that alchemy is wrong.

Then let's go with an observation. Humans got smarter than most large mammals, then most large mammals went extinct.

Re: Licensing is neither feasible nor effective for addressing AI risks

#130

Post by JonChesterfield »

mmaunder wrote: post #31
circuit10 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no evidence that a runaway artificial intelligence is even plausible Really? There is a lot of theory behind why this is likely to happen and if you want a real example there is a similar existing scenario we can look at, which is how humans have gone through an exponential runaway explosion in capabilities in the last few hundred years because of being more intelligent than other species and being able to…

Humans evolved unsupervised. AI is highly supervised. The idea that an AI will enslave us all is as absurd as suggesting “computers” will enslave us all merely because they exist. Models are designed and operated by people for specific use cases. The real risks are people using this new tool for evil, not the tool itself. AI sentience is a seductive concept being used by self professed experts to draw attention to th…

Your line of reasoning would be more comforting if the military wasn't enthusiastically arming such machine intelligence as we've managed to construct so far. Enslave us all feels unlikely as the benefit to said machine is unclear, kill us all is totally plausible.
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