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After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

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Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#71

Post by js8 »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #40
oxfordmale wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current models are static, they do not get modified by self learning. Unless someone already build in a Skynet backdoor, we are safe. ...and I am hoping all nuclear missiles are air gapped anyway...

It doesn't matter if the missiles are air-gapped. AI doesn't need to connect to the missiles and fire them directly, AI can just manipulate the media (conventional, social, all of it) on both sides to engineer a situation in which we would enter a nuclear war.

> just manipulate the media (conventional, social, all of it) on both sides to engineer a situation in which we would enter a nuclear war

Good luck with that. Remember how it ended the last time this was tried, with.. peace talks.

If you really want a global thermonuclear war, humans are completely useless. You have to take the matter into your own hands.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#72

Post by drivingmenuts »

theptip wrote: post #53
Aloha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should in general terms not give AI - any AI, the ability to manifest itself in meat space. This alone almost certainly reduces the existential risks from AI.

Except many of the obvious use cases (including stuff like smart homes and military drones) are already being built. You’d need very strong international laws to prevent this manifesting from happening.

More likely, you'd need the threat of imminent destruction, which, honestly, wouldn't be enough to prevent anything. We've seen how effective a death sentence is at prevention, which is to say: not very.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#73

Post by eric-hu »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

Doesn't the second kind apply to AI in military drones? Companies like OpenAI talking about AI safety is a nice way of numbing us to AI used in actual killing machines.

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2023/08/03/artificial-i...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/10/17/ukrain...

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#74

Post by hackerlight »

nradov wrote: post #39
HDThoreaun wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo the worst case scenario is probably an AGI developed by a bad actor who uses it to take over the world. Agreed that rogue ai doesn’t seem super likely, but a rogue person with access to agi does not.

Help us out here. Let's say that known bad actor Vladimir Putin gets an AGI. How does that allow him to take over the world despite many other countries having nuclear weapons? Take us through it step by step, and no hand waving please.

In the short term, doing what he's been doing but 10x more effectively. Waging an information war on Western democracies via social media that causes them to collapse due to infighting and division. Also steering internal attitudes of the voter base to a desirable direction.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#75

Post by DalasNoin »

needadvicebadly wrote: post #66
golol wrote: post #15

Look, there is ASI/AGI safety, and "please don't swear and scam and misinform, and be unbiased" safety. ASI/AGI safety is only a concern right now if you believe in foom , i.e. that an AGI would rapidly self improve to an ASI and extinction level threat. I think it is absurd to believe that because AI right now is compute limited and any first AGI will only be able to run on large data centers. The latter kind of saf…

I don't mean to be facetious in any way, but how does AGI/ASI protect itself from humans simply pulling the plug?

Seems like it was pretty hard to pull the plug on sam? It will prevent you from pulling the plug by being smarter than you, spreading to more systems, making you dependent on it, persuasion,...

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#76

Post by [deleted] »

okdood64 wrote: post #25

Something I see lacking in many discussions about AI Safety and Alignment is: What does the role of China mean for AI Safety? Is there any reason to believe that they will a) adopt any standards SV, the US or some international government body will create, or b) care enough to slow down development of AI? If AI Safety is really a concern, you can expect in the long run (not that much further behind than the US) China…

[deleted]

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#77

Post by swatcoder »

theptip wrote: post #57
golol wrote: post #15

Look, there is ASI/AGI safety, and "please don't swear and scam and misinform, and be unbiased" safety. ASI/AGI safety is only a concern right now if you believe in foom , i.e. that an AGI would rapidly self improve to an ASI and extinction level threat. I think it is absurd to believe that because AI right now is compute limited and any first AGI will only be able to run on large data centers. The latter kind of saf…

Usually “mundane” vs “existential” harms/risks. > ASI/AGI safety is only a concern right now if you believe in foom False. There are plenty of fast takeoff scenarios that look real bad that aren’t “foom”. For example if you think AGI might be achievable within 5 year right now, and alignment is 10 years away, then you are very worried and want to slow things down a little.

If you're suggesting the emergence of an AI that can exponentially self-improve, coopt the resources to overwhelem human confrol, and magically build out the physical infrastructure sufficient to drive its globe-spanning humanity-squelching computational needs... that's a foom scenario.

If something that some people call AGI emerges in the next five years, (a) it's designation is going to be under tremendous dispute, (b) the infrastructure to enable a nightmare scenario won't be anywhere near reality.

Escaping that practical reality requires a complete ahistorical, ascientific faith in "yeah, but what if it's that capable?!?! The point is we can't know!!" that more strongly recalls history's secretive, sometimes dangerous, perennially incorrect apocolypse cults and alchemical societies than it does the diligent and reasoned scientists we might usually think of handing hundreds of billions of dollars.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#78

Post by broast »

crazygringo wrote: post #52

It's so confusing because people keep (intentionally?) conflating two separate ideas of "AI safety". The first is the kind of humdrum ChatGPT safety of, don't swear, don't be sexually explicit, don't provide instructions on how to commit crimes, don't reproduce copyrighted materials, etc. Or preventing self-driving cars from harming pedestrians. This stuff is important but also pretty boring, and by all indications c…

It's possible we could stumble on AGI without immediately realizing it, and without checks and balances built in, it could already be too late.

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#79

Post by fatherzine »

taf2 wrote: post #65
fatherzine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just like any other tool in hands of humans" -- the scale of damage a tool can do matters, e.g. civilization cannot withstand nukes being sold at walmart. and, of course, self learning will be here this decade.

I agree llms are powerful but they are not explosive - conflating the two is IMO even more dangerous

they have the potential to take over the control systems of the explosive stuff. including the decision making processes of humans themselves.

to quote none other than sama, oct 2023: "i expect ai to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it is superhuman at general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes" https://twitter.com/sama/status/1716972815960961174

Re: After OpenAI's blowup, it seems pretty clear that 'AI safety' isn't a real thing

#80

Post by gunapologist99 »

Please drop the insulting guard rails. They're pathetic and childish. AI's advice will not be taken seriously unless it stops acting like a parent of a three-year-old. People who are truly evil will be evil regardless of an AI, and pranksters gonna prank. AI can't tell the difference anyway.

In any event, it's unethical for an AI to sit in judgment on any human or even to try to grasp that person's life experience or extenuating circumstances.

AGI guard rails are a completely separate class of safeguards on the AI, not the human!, and should be treated as such.

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