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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#511

Post by planb »

This kind of doomerism seems quite detached from the "real word". Maybe that's what you'd expect from silicon valley tech bros, but as long as manufacturing isn't fully (i.e. no human labor involved) automated, how would a rouge super ai (even if it's smarter than every individual on this planet) prevent people from cutting its power cable? We're still very far from self-replicating ai robot armies.

The only scifi-like danger I see in the next 10-20 years is an AI manipulating humans to fight for it's cause - but that's not really different from a bad person just _using_ AI for their cause.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#512

Post by [deleted] »

computerphage wrote: post #472
thomascountz wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Please go through each one again, taking special note of global warming and nuclear weapon development .

Why do you think global warming could kill literally every human being? What's the scenario in which that happens?

[deleted]

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#513

Post by bcrosby95 »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #177
skew-aberration wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not interested in wild theories about AI driven labor market disruptions leading to widespread starvation Changes in political and economic power balance leading to unrest, conflict, death and deprivation is not a wild theory. It is literally the story of our entire species. If you discount all such concerns, you are simply being willfully ignorant of past precedents. In fact, I challenge you to describe any no…

I’m an economist. On the basis of current evidence, I view AI as a complement to human labor, not as a substitute for it. That’s the source of my rejection of the wild labor market disruptions theories. I just don’t see any evidence yet that whole categories of jobs are being eliminated, with the single exception (so far!) of the end of “professional essay writing services for cheating college students,” and similar…

The first thing LLMs seem likely to automate is automation itself. I'm curious what the past few hundreds of years of industrialization would have looked like if the first thing they automated was building, designing, and running the factories themselves.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#514

Post by selectnull »

swiftcoder wrote: post #449
riffraff wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're citing sci-fi (but there's no robot war in Asimov's foundation iirc, the apple screenwriters made it up) surely you want to cite the Butlerian Jihad from Dune!

> but there's no robot war in Asimov's foundation iirc, the apple screenwriters made it up There isn't in the early Foundation novels, but Azimov spent much of the later part of his career combining/retconning all of his work into a single universe - "Robots and Empire" links the foundation series to the robot series, and the subsequent foundation novels all reference the connection

As a big fan of the whole Foundation saga, I don't remember any wars in "Robots and Empire" 3 books. Granted, those were the only books I've read only once (and a long time ago), but I'm pretty sure there was no war.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#515

Post by danaris »

epihelix wrote: post #304
platinumrad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is a company full of basilisk believers.

Yes, but the really weird thing is that they seem to: a) believe that what they're creating is a basilisk, and b) keep trying harder to do this while staring right at it I think they're very deluded about (a) -- but if they do actually believe this (and it really seems like a decent proportion of Anthropic truly does), then why keep doing (b)? That seems to be why this individual resigned, but I'm surprised it's not…

With Roko's Basilisk, if you believe in it, the most rational thing to do is to put forth every effort to bring it into being. Because if you don't, then you will be one of its targets when it does, inevitably, come into being.

(I am not a basilisk believer. I think this is all absolute horseshit. But to understand someone's motivations, one must think like them.)

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#516

Post by Scrapemist »

asdff wrote: post #459
Scrapemist wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might consider us a very efficient processing unit. Useful to hand over simple tasks with correct alignment and some oversight.

I thought it already runs laps around us cognitively? And for physical tasks it can make a robot version of us that is stronger, faster, can do more, doesn't need to sleep, etc. Human bipedal form is probably pretty limiting compared to something better like a crab. Yes, laugh at the chinese robots who fall over at keynotes all you want, the ones sprinting at 30mph keep me up at night and that's probably not even rep…

Does your calculator runs laps around you? They have no intention of them selfs. I only fear the intention of the humans miss-using AI.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#517

Post by andai »

aogaili wrote: post #122

HN crowed need to make up their minds.. Are LLMs about to be a god that will annihilate humanity? Or are they statistical parrots? Are they proofing or stealing math?

> Are LLMs about to be a god that will annihilate humanity? Or are they statistical parrots?

Does a virus need to be a God? Replication and annihilation do not require very much intelligence.

They're going to have all the intelligence they need though, to replicate and annihilate as much as they like.

We should probably start building some kind of immune system.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#518

Post by CoolestBeans »

onewayfunction wrote: post #178

I'm pretty baffled by the degree of skepticism expressed here in response to some of Jacob's claims. After the events of the summer it feels like it takes a lack of imagination to not see a few plausible routes to disaster. It may be reasonable to believe these outcomes are not very likely or that we can stop before going too far (I tend to disagree). But I can't imagine doubting that the capabilities will soon be th…

Even if the potential of the technology could really be that world altering, the reality of economics constrain the realization of that potential. AI may provide economic benefits but it is far from a free lunch. Can capital markets sustain the cash required to keep the lights on long enough and into an industry where there's a lot of monopolies controlling the costs and a lot of competitor labs taking away pricing power? I don't know but I think you run out of runway and progress starts to grind.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#519

Post by jesterson »

bad_username wrote: post #496

AI is a computer program. It calculates numbers from other numbers. By itself it does not "want" to do anything and "cannot" do anything. Before it becomes an agent in the universe (in the classical meaning), it requires being supplied by an execution environment, energy, initiative (agentic loop, specific instructions), and modality (readonly and mutating connections to real world). It is like a game of chess - it d…

> You can say "yes and you have to fear the humans weilding the AI" - that I agree with.

I would suggest all smart people imply it. Morons believe on something "escaping controls and hacking HuggingFace" or similar stunts.

AI is just a tool, but unfortunately it's influence on humans have been quite troubling so far

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