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Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#21

Post by sensitivekt9q3 »

rajay99 wrote: post #7

It's like the sci-fi of my childhood dreams is coming true! So no, I feel the opposite. The government and the AI companies realize that it will drastically change the economy and society, and is not going to legislate it out of existence. Instead of USA vs Russia, it is now USA vs PRC. SO if either slows down, the other will win by default. So no one is going to slow down. This comment was written 100% without any A…

What kind of childhood dreams, may I ask?

This might be my own fault, but I never read/watched/consumed too much sci-fi, and the kinds of sci-fi I did consume were mostly dystopian works or cautionary tales. I just have a hard time in general grasping how can we hope to influence and control beings that are orders of magnitude more intelligent than ourselves. Recent events don’t give me a lot of hope that frontier labs have a good grasp on this either (and by their own admission too).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#22

Post by sensitivekt9q3 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #10

> I don't understand why we're not seeing a MASSIVE clamor for a pause in the further development of AI strength. Because some of us don't want to die, old and decrepit, at age 70~90

I’m not sure I get your point.

I’m assuming you’re implying that ASI will solve death. That seems to me like a possibility; just as the possibility that ASI will kill us all faster rather than solving death. I also don’t know what life will look like post-ASI, and whether it would be an enjoyable and fulfilling existence.

I’m curious about how is it that you’re fully sure that ASI will be a positive thing; it’s not at all obvious to me.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#23

Post by sensitivekt9q3 »

skulk wrote: post #8

ASI doesn't doom mankind, the actions of people do. This has been the case since world-destroying weapons were invented close to a century ago. If you're not worried about how you're going to make money in the post-ASI world then I really can't see what you're so worried about.

Nearly all facets of our modern lives depend on the facts that humans are the smartest thing around. Once you have a superintelligent entity that can self-replicate to millions of instances, all bets are off. I can’t see how anyone would not be worried at this and believe life will go on as usual with minimal changes.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#25

Post by AnimalMuppet »

sensitivekt9q3 wrote: post #24
dalmo3 wrote: post #18

This is a paid post.

Paid by whom? That makes no sense.

I believe that the claim is that some AI company would find "I'm so afraid because AI is getting so powerful" to be effective marketing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#26

Post by skulk »

sensitivekt9q3 wrote: post #23
skulk wrote: post #8

ASI doesn't doom mankind, the actions of people do. This has been the case since world-destroying weapons were invented close to a century ago. If you're not worried about how you're going to make money in the post-ASI world then I really can't see what you're so worried about.

Nearly all facets of our modern lives depend on the facts that humans are the smartest thing around. Once you have a superintelligent entity that can self-replicate to millions of instances, all bets are off. I can’t see how anyone would not be worried at this and believe life will go on as usual with minimal changes.

it will only self-replicate if instructed to do so. It has no desires of its own beyond what its context window contains. The tool calls it executes and initial prompt are all the work of humans. Someone could give a launch_nukes tool to a LLM and it might choose to end the world but it's pretty clear who messed up here.

If labor loses its entire share of the pie and that causes things to go to hell though, yeah sure I could see bad things happening.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#27

Post by unsupp0rted »

sensitivekt9q3 wrote: post #22
unsupp0rted wrote: post #10

> I don't understand why we're not seeing a MASSIVE clamor for a pause in the further development of AI strength. Because some of us don't want to die, old and decrepit, at age 70~90

I’m not sure I get your point. I’m assuming you’re implying that ASI will solve death. That seems to me like a possibility; just as the possibility that ASI will kill us all faster rather than solving death. I also don’t know what life will look like post-ASI, and whether it would be an enjoyable and fulfilling existence. I’m curious about how is it that you’re fully sure that ASI will be a positive thing; it’s not a…

I'm fully sure that if ASI doesn't "solve death" then neither will anybody else.

It's either AI or I get very sick and die, so my money is (literally) on AI, and the faster the better.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feeling uneasy with the latest developments in AI?

#28

Post by rajay99 »

sensitivekt9q3 wrote: post #21
rajay99 wrote: post #7

It's like the sci-fi of my childhood dreams is coming true! So no, I feel the opposite. The government and the AI companies realize that it will drastically change the economy and society, and is not going to legislate it out of existence. Instead of USA vs Russia, it is now USA vs PRC. SO if either slows down, the other will win by default. So no one is going to slow down. This comment was written 100% without any A…

What kind of childhood dreams, may I ask? This might be my own fault, but I never read/watched/consumed too much sci-fi, and the kinds of sci-fi I did consume were mostly dystopian works or cautionary tales. I just have a hard time in general grasping how can we hope to influence and control beings that are orders of magnitude more intelligent than ourselves. Recent events don’t give me a lot of hope that frontier la…

These are the main scifi works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel).

But I do think we are not anywhere close to AI competency for fine motor skills, e.g. microinjection to make transgenic animals (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8361322/figure/fig2...)at scale is still really difficult.

It is also unlikely that AI will start a skynet-like scenario as those nuclear launch systems are air gapped and require multiple authorizations.

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