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Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

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391–400 of 873 posts

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core is not to agree with the existential risk scenario in the first place. Once you believe some malevolent god will appear and doom us all, anything can be justified (and people have done so in the past - no malevolent god appeared then, btw.).

> I think the core is not to agree with the existential risk scenario in the first place. I mean, that's motivated reasoning right there, right? "Agreeing that existential risk is there would lead to complex intractable problems we don't want to tackle, so let's agree there's no existential risk". This isn't a novel idea, it's why we started climate change mitigations 20 years too late.

No, I meant it as in: there is no reason to agree with that scenario. Stacking a lot of hypotheses on top of each other as to get to something dangerous isn't necessarily something that is convincing.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#392
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's this costly, it's still possible, and much cheaper than the consequences of an unaligned AGI coming into existence.

Sure, you can insist on monitoring which software can be run on every cloud service, every managed server, on the servers in every colo, or on every computer owned by everyone (of any kind, including basic routers or phones, or even toys, - anything with a CPU that can be bought in sufficient bulk and used for computations), and subject every piece of code allowed to run at any kind of scale to a formal review by gov…

It all sounds very bad, but the truth is, we're going to get there anyway - in fact, we're half-way there, thanks to the influence of media conglomerates pushing DRM, adtech living off surveillance economy, all the other major tech vendors seeking control of end-user devices, and security industry that provides them all with means to achieve their goals.

Somehow, no one is worried about the economy. Perhaps because it's the economy that's pushing this dystopian hellhole on us.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#393
So if there is some fringe element who's willing to use AI as a terrorist implement, they'll have very little competition and they'll be very little knowledge about how to counter them if we try to outlaw open source models. I don't really believe that we can make this tool any worse than any other tool in history that's capable of killing people in some way if it's misused, but simply driving it underground won't make it go away. It'll just put normal people who would be intellectually curious in jail for doing things that criminals are going to keep doing and exploit us with.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have ex-post narratives for what humans do, but that is not the same as an actual explanation. Actual human cognition is a black box as of now. The issue of appeals processes is totally separate. That doesn't mean we handover everything to AI, but the idea that we understand human decisions cannot be the reason for that. For some high risk things like controlling certain complex machinery or processes AI migh…

That's a bit of an exaggeration. We understand high level motivations as being highly correlated to certain outcomes. Hunger, eat. Horny, sex. Wronged, vengeance. Money, directed. You don't necessarily need to know the underlying processes to make reliable predictions or valid causal explanations about human behavior.

There isn't even agreement on the existence of free will. For non-trivial decisions, let's say some judge's deliberation, to claim it is fully explainable is a stretch.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes don't have a mind of their own. They're operated by people, who fortunately turned out sane enough that they can successfully threaten each other into a stable state (MAD doctrine). Still, adding more groups to the mix increases risk, which is why non-proliferation treaties are a thing, and are taken seriously. Powerful enough AI creates whole new classes of risks, but it also magnifies all the current ones. E.…

AI could pose those risks, but it also could not - that is the difference to nuclear weapons.

AI does pose all those risks, unless we solve alignment first. Which is the whole problem.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's not going to have any meaningful impact on the overall gdp because it couldn't happen at scale (requires one party to have 1.000.000$ to spend in the first place).

All money is fiat.

Yes, but the average Joe Bloe can't print money to pay a babysitter, only the government can.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI could pose those risks, but it also could not - that is the difference to nuclear weapons.

AI does pose all those risks, unless we solve alignment first. Which is the whole problem.

I does not, because that kind of AI doesn't exist at the moment and the malevolence etc. are bunch of hypotheses about a hypothetical AI, not facts.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#398
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Our family could easily live off that. Easily worth it if it got rid of income inequality Nobody's stopping you giving all your excess income above 18k to charity. If you try to make other people do it, you'll find a lot of people would rather just stop working than give away the majority of their income, which is why the economy collapsed and tens of millions of people starved in China and Russia after their commun…

Oh, I don't think my post was advocating anybody give anything away. But if we just arrived there, magically, it would be pretty great, from a utilitarian point of view. But thanks for the knee-jerk anti-communist rant, it's really great that we're back to that. Life was great in the 50s.

>Life was great in the 50s.

Americans in the 50s were a lot happier than Americans in the 2020s, very little mental illness or obesity, housing was affordable, people weren't at each others' throats like nowadays.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#399
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles. You just undermined your own assertion. If what people want was defined by society, then everybody would want the same things. But in fact as you stated they don't; some people want a lot…

We don't have a fully globalised culture yet, what an average American wants isn't what an average Japanese wants. Of course even then, there are disparities and outliers, but we can't really overlook that if you "want" an SUV or an Apple Watch, that's quite likely going to be because the people around you find it valuable. I'd go even a bit further as to say that what is important is probably what people "need", not…

>I'd go even a bit further as to say that what is important is probably what people "need", not "want".

Which makes you a self-righteous prick, thinking you have the right to determine what other people should and shouldn't have.

Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario

#400
post #384

I need to resist all this regulatory resistance here, spoken amongst tech people. No, Yann. I am FULLY in support of drastic measures to mitigate and control AI research for the time being. I have no vested stake in any of the companies. I lived for a year in a building that hosted several AI events per week. I'm not ignorant This is the only territory where humanity is mounting a conversation about a REAL response t…

The issue is not that caution is warranted or not, it's that it's cynically used by Sam Altman to increase the value of his company.

I don't trust a silicon valley rich guy with this more than I trust anybody else. Why should he sit and decide what the rest of us can't do, while he's getting richer? That is what the article is about..

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