Honestly we should have learned this claim from AI companies was purely fear-mongering back when GPT-2 was "too dangerous to release".
It seems like they were correct, to me.
Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
21–30 of 230 posts
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#22Honestly we should have learned this claim from AI companies was purely fear-mongering back when GPT-2 was "too dangerous to release".
That's true but in reality I think people are far more afraid of AI in terms of how it is being used in warfare and policing. Automatic target detection and deployment of drones, or even how it might simply make their role at work redundant etc
AI has been used in defense for a while now, a modern tomahawk cruise missile and its associated targeting systems is a good example. I think most people fear AI taking their job and only source of income.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#23"you will all lose your jobs and it will wipe out half of humanity."
If you lead with this, people will stop questioning why their sprint velocity hasn't increased 10 fold. Managers start asking leads, instead of hiring more devs can we add Agent.md to our repos?
The Apocalypse sells. They are afraid that you'll find out that AI is just another useful tool. That's the real threat, not to humanity, but to their hype.
Edit: i made a video about this recently: https://youtu.be/nB0Vz-fh8EI
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it's the BBC and the article doesn't have any typical AI tells, where is this idea that it's AI written coming from???
I'm assuming it's possible that an AI can deduct the potential 3rd degree result from an article like this on the BBC. Not talking about the wording
>sees any random article headline, automatically assumes it's AI.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#25> Why do AI companies want us to be afraid of them? ... According to critics, it benefits AI companies to keep you fixated on apocalypse because it distracts from the very real damage they're already doing to the world.
People seem unable to make up their mind if AI is very dangerous or is it not. I think what the AI companies and this author agree on, is that this technology is potentially extremely dangerous. AI impacts labor markets, the environment, warfare, mental health, etc... It's harder now to find things which it will not impact.
So if we agree that AI is potentially dangerous, it makes the title question moot: Both AI companies and this author want people to be aware of the dangers that AI poses to society. The real question is what do we do about it?
The nuance here is that AI can be incredible positive as well. It's like the invention of fire, you can use it for good or bad, and there will be many unintended consequences along the way.
We could legislate and ban AI tech. People have proposed this seriously, yet this feels completely unrealistic. If the US bans AI research, then this research will move elsewhere. I think it is like trying to ban fire because it's dangerous: some groups will learn to work with fire and they will get an extreme advantage over those groups that don't. (or they will destroy themselves in the process).
So maybe instead of demonizing the AI companies, we have a nuanced debate about this tech and propose solutions that our best for our society?
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#26I have never heard of "Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute", but the sentiment in this article is diametrically opposite that of the vulnerability research scene.
There is contention among vulnerability researchers about the impact of Mythos! But it's not "are frontier models going to shake up vulnerability research and let loose a deluge of critical vulnerabilities" --- software security people overwhelmingly believe that to be true. Rather, it's whether Mythos is truly a step change from 4.7 and 5.5.
For vulnerability researchers, the big "news" wasn't Mythos, but rather Carlini's talk from Unprompted, where he got on stage and showed his dumb-seeming "find me zero days" prompt, which actually worked.
The big question for vulnerability people now isn't "AI or no AI"; it's "running directly off the model, or building fun and interesting harnesses".
Later
I spoke with someone who has been professionally acquainted with Khlaaf. Khlaaf is a serious researcher, but not a software security researcher; it's not their field. I think what's happening here is that the BBC doesn't know the difference between AI safety prognosis and software security prognosis, or who to talk to for each topic.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#27You can gauge the quality of the article by seeing Emily Bender quoted, who will insist on stochastic parrots when AI does billions of dollars of economically useful work.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#28Honestly we should have learned this claim from AI companies was purely fear-mongering back when GPT-2 was "too dangerous to release".
It seems like they were correct, to me.
I was going to say.. I think people in general have this weird understanding of the word dangerous. Just because something is not movie level dramatic and/or does not generate over the top violence does not automatically make it less dangerous. In a sense, just the fact that is benign on the surface and allowed to embed in our day to day life is what makes the upcoming rug pull so painful.
And I am saying this as a person who actually likes this tech.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#29Honestly we should have learned this claim from AI companies was purely fear-mongering back when GPT-2 was "too dangerous to release".
It seems like they were correct, to me.
Yes, I love how everyone uses this argument, when what they were saying was among the lines of "GPT-2 would make it too easy to generate spam, deepfakes, content to manipulate opinion..." (not the actual quote but something like that). Turns out it was completely correct if you look at the state of the internet right now.
Obviously, they still overhype and oversell this end of humanity stuff, but this argument regurgitated ad-nauseam is not THAT great of an example when you think about it.
Re: Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
#30That's exactly how religion works.