How I feel about AI • Hacker News Board

Re: How I feel about AI

#21

Post by dgellow » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

appplication wrote: post #11

> I feel fear about an impending doom. Yudkowsky's argument that a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity seems to have no flaw. Yet, nobody seriously tries to sandbox AIs because they are too useful with access. While I emotionally resonate with this, I don’t really understand this sentiment at all logically level. If we’re heading towards truly super intelligent AI, our efforts towards sandboxing it a…

> If we’re heading towards truly super intelligent AI, our efforts towards sandboxing it are futile.

We control the harness. An agent is just a while loop prompting an LLM, but we have full control over the tool call dispatching. An AGI, at least if it would follow the current agentic current form, cannot do anything without the harness doing the execution. And we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to design harness that let agents execute freely the way we are doing. We can decide to not dispatch tool calls that allow something as risky as running bash commands

Re: How I feel about AI

#22

Post by pastel8739 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #10

this reads like a worksheet for eight year olds teaching them how to put their feelings into words

That’s what I like about it. I think we could use a little more of that.

Re: How I feel about AI

#23

Post by hobofan » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

> how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world?

Robotics

Re: How I feel about AI

#24

Post by moffkalast » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

It doesn't really have to go nearly that far, something like replacing most jobs and collapsing the global economy while making people into mindless idiots from constant reliance on it would do it already. The interpretation of 'destroy' is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: How I feel about AI

#25

Post by sph » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #7

This and "Intellectual Fly Is Open" being at the top of the Hacker News front page right now and both having their titles auto-editorialized by HN really makes me wonder what benefit this mechanism is supposed to bring readers other than needless confusion.

While I have ranted already about the automated word removal being silly, too few posters are aware that you can edit the title after submission and auto-editorializing to restore anything that's been unnecessarily cut off.

Re: How I feel about AI

#26

Post by dyauspitr » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

Physical LLMs are almost viable. If you have robot and drone armies a hugging face attack type incident could very easily involve robots with deadly weapons. At some point you’re going to get drones that have local LLMs and don’t rely on external internet connections (would be especially useful in Ukraine war type situations). Can’t pull the plug on those.

Re: How I feel about AI

#27

Post by wseqyrku » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

appplication wrote: post #11

> I feel fear about an impending doom. Yudkowsky's argument that a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity seems to have no flaw. Yet, nobody seriously tries to sandbox AIs because they are too useful with access. While I emotionally resonate with this, I don’t really understand this sentiment at all logically level. If we’re heading towards truly super intelligent AI, our efforts towards sandboxing it a…

This terminator BS is a distraction from the actual malice that AI enables. Misinformation, fake news and human sounding bots all over the web, just to name a few, are the ones that you should be afraid of, and that doesn't need any kind of superintelligence at all.

Re: How I feel about AI

#28

Post by rowanG077 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #24

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

It doesn't really have to go nearly that far, something like replacing most jobs and collapsing the global economy while making people into mindless idiots from constant reliance on it would do it already. The interpretation of 'destroy' is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think "destroy humanity" is in the eye of the beholder. The most clear interpretation is the extinction of the human race.

Re: How I feel about AI

#29

Post by mariusor » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #23

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

> how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Robotics

So if we stop research into robotic hands we'll manage to hold off the AI apocalypse? That seems easy...

Re: How I feel about AI

#30

Post by Davidzheng » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

Crabber wrote: post #18

>a superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity Can someone please explain to me how an LLM is going to "destroy humanity"? Even if the claims of ChatGPT, Claude et al. are true that their super scary agents were able to escape a sandbox and start hacking other servers (which I feel is at least 50% likely to just be marketing bullshit), how is an AI going to affect anything in the real world? Perhaps an agent…

I think it's possible. You envision humanity acting as one in such a crisis. But it may be unclear when it's too late to act and before then many people can have too much to lose to act.