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Among the A.I. doomsayers

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Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#21

Post by swalsh »

JohnBrookz wrote: post #5

I would love to smoke what the AI optimists are smoking. In a society where only 80% of people are barely literate and at least a quarter are voting for a candidate that spouts conspiracy theories I highly doubt that whatever AI has to offer will benefit society.

Seeing AI do something you do for a living results in all the stages of grief.

Denial (Oh it made a mistake on this, or it's not as good as a person)

Anger (People are going to lose their jobs, this destroys the meaning of what we do, this will destroy society)

Bargaining (Maybe it's good at this simple thing, but I can pivot to some other niche the AI can't currently do)

Depression (It's faster, cheaper, better than me. It has taken over that which I relied on for meaning in my life...)

Acceptance (I need to find something else to do with my life)

AI Optimists often fall in 2 categories of people. They are capital owners who own the AI, and never had to go through the stages of grief... or they are people who learned how to use AI for their benefit, and have reached acceptance.

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#22

Post by kiba »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #3

People have been watching too many movies. War Games, Terminator, it's not like we haven't been forewarned of the dangers. Yet somehow we're going to hand over power to AI such that it destroys us. Or somehow the AI is going to be extremely malign, determined to overcome and destroy and will outsmart us. Somehow we won't notice, even after repeated, melodramatic reminders, and won't neuter the ability of AI to act ou…

The danger is not human like AGI but AGI that is completely apathetic to human goals and want to turn us into paperclips or so that the argument goes.

Antihuman AIs are a classic of the sci-fi genre, but that's just storytelling.

In my opinion, humans are going to be in the driver seat with regard to AI tech, and our abuse rather than AI autonomy is going to cause harm.

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#23

Post by tavavex »

codelord wrote: post #12

We live in a world where proven maniacs (e.g. Putin) have access to an arsenal of nuclear weapons that can essentially make the earth uninhabitable for all humans. That's a very real possibility (with no ifs and buts and maybes) that exists now and we have learned to live with it. Yet somehow the hypothetical scenario of a human exterminator super-intelligent AI is getting all the coverage.

Right? Humans are more than capable of severely harming civilization at any point, but for some reason this AI narrative is so much more compelling than the boring old issues we're used to. I still don't get the reasoning - we have pretty good text and image generators, yes - but the article jumps the ship to a whole different universe, one where "AI" is an actual entity that has needs and that outpaces humans in all possible facets. Yet, despite the wide gap between what we have and what they're talking about, this level of AI is treated as if it's not just feasible, but basically already here.

The article constantly refers to a strange niche sub-community of pro-AI people, and extrapolates it to say that almost anyone who backs new technology is a hyper-capitalist libertarian who just wants to see the world burn for the sake of money. I feel that the opposite ideology is also far from pure - with this immense reaction to generative AI, it almost feels like big companies are capitalizing on fear to promote regulations that shut out anyone who's not a big company that publishes fancy charts about "risks of catastrophe".

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#24

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

jjeaff wrote: post #16
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #3

People have been watching too many movies. War Games, Terminator, it's not like we haven't been forewarned of the dangers. Yet somehow we're going to hand over power to AI such that it destroys us. Or somehow the AI is going to be extremely malign, determined to overcome and destroy and will outsmart us. Somehow we won't notice, even after repeated, melodramatic reminders, and won't neuter the ability of AI to act ou…

I am not super-intelligent, but I myself can imagine lots of ways that a super intelligence might outsmart an off switch. One being to hide what it is doing until it is able to write and distribute a virus to the outside world that distributes itself. Or perhaps it could convince some other humans to physically take over and stop anyone from flipping the off switch. The question you should ask yourself is how much da…

Why haven't "hackers" hacked into nuclear weapons infrastructure? The street cred would be incredible!

I think it's possible to build secure anything if that is the goal. Most software is written by people motivated to write something useful and/or neat, or collect a paycheck, and don't focus on security.

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#25

Post by jodrellblank »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #20
jodrellblank wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the Earth uninhabitable to all humans is bad news for Putin, a human who lives on Earth. He derives his power from hundreds of millions of people in Russia working, and his lifestyle from hundreds of millions of people around the world buying Russian exports so an attack on everyone is also going to harm him. AI wouldn’t be human, it wouldn’t necessarily object to a world uninhabitable to humans, or be hurt by…

OK, so how does AI get its hands on nuclear weapons?

If your thinking is along the lines “if jodrellblank can’t convince me that a superintelligence is plausibly dangerous, off the top of their head, before my attention span wanders, then AI can’t be dangerous” that’s a really weak plan for protecting humanity.

Say, pops up on the US or Kremlin computers and blackmails or bribes or threatens someone to launch the nukes? Say, places orders with a lab to build some robots which then become the AI’s body and it builds nukes itself. Say, placed orders for custom biological things using stolen money which turn out to be extremely virulent and then it doesn’t need nukes. Say it finds out an effect to worsen global climate change and uses it to make earth uninhabitable on a short timescale, and doesn’t need nukes.

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#26

Post by AdieuToLogic »

kiba wrote: post #22
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #3

People have been watching too many movies. War Games, Terminator, it's not like we haven't been forewarned of the dangers. Yet somehow we're going to hand over power to AI such that it destroys us. Or somehow the AI is going to be extremely malign, determined to overcome and destroy and will outsmart us. Somehow we won't notice, even after repeated, melodramatic reminders, and won't neuter the ability of AI to act ou…

The danger is not human like AGI but AGI that is completely apathetic to human goals and want to turn us into paperclips or so that the argument goes. Antihuman AIs are a classic of the sci-fi genre, but that's just storytelling. In my opinion, humans are going to be in the driver seat with regard to AI tech, and our abuse rather than AI autonomy is going to cause harm.

> In my opinion, humans are going to be in the driver seat with regard to AI tech, and our abuse rather than AI autonomy is going to cause harm.

This reminds me of a classic xkcd[0] foreboding.

0 - https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#27

Post by richardw »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #20
jodrellblank wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the Earth uninhabitable to all humans is bad news for Putin, a human who lives on Earth. He derives his power from hundreds of millions of people in Russia working, and his lifestyle from hundreds of millions of people around the world buying Russian exports so an attack on everyone is also going to harm him. AI wouldn’t be human, it wouldn’t necessarily object to a world uninhabitable to humans, or be hurt by…

OK, so how does AI get its hands on nuclear weapons?

Social engineering, for a start. Everyone with a secret will be a target.

Half the world will follow stupid leaders. An AI would run rings around your average voter. I'd be surprised if it can't run rings around basically every voter given time.

We're also creating various kinds of robots, so the thing could just plug itself into the network it wants.

That's 5 minutes. An AI would be smarter than me and have a lot more time every second to think up better ways, and A/B test them on millions of people.

All it needs is one guy thinking "Ah, what's the worst that could happen? It promised me a million dollars."

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#28

Post by throwup238 »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #20
jodrellblank wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the Earth uninhabitable to all humans is bad news for Putin, a human who lives on Earth. He derives his power from hundreds of millions of people in Russia working, and his lifestyle from hundreds of millions of people around the world buying Russian exports so an attack on everyone is also going to harm him. AI wouldn’t be human, it wouldn’t necessarily object to a world uninhabitable to humans, or be hurt by…

OK, so how does AI get its hands on nuclear weapons?

Some contractor creates an internal webhook for testing the silo door that later gets accidentally hooked up to the full launch sequence and - during a billion dollar DoD mainframe upgrade project (to finally get away from COBOL) - gets exposed to the internet. MAD doctrine does the rest.

That is how the Anthropocene ends and the age of the machines begins. So say we all.

Re: Among the A.I. doomsayers

#30

Post by bglazer »

In any doom scenario, like let's say >90% of humans dead, who runs the power plants that supply the AI data centers? Who runs the fabs producing more chips? Who maintains the plumbing?

Presumably all these systems fall over and die within a few weeks of the AI deciding to wipe us out. Then what? The AI then dies too.

It seems absurd to me that any planner capable of effortlessly destroying humanity would not see that it would immediately also die. Does the AI not care about its continued existence? It should, if it wants to keep optimizing its reward function. Until we’ve handed off enough of the world economy that it can function without human physical and cognitive labor, then we’re safe.

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