We need to be building silos to save humanity. Maybe 50 of them should do it.
Could also frame it as, the OpenAI agent civilizations (from hugging face attack) are looking for the failsafe.
I resigned from Anthropic today
601–610 of 927 posts
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a lot to unpack with this, and I am not an expert, but: crop failure across industrial monocrops leads to food shortages, wild fires destroy significant areas which support pollinator ecologies, fresh water become contaminated by rising sea water and blighted by drought, and perhaps most significantly, as resources become strained, humans become desperate and armed conflict proliferates. This is just top of m…
None of those are "all"/extinction. Bad, sure; I wish they were not present to threaten us, but they are not close to "all". Humans are extremely resilient omnivores. We are able to eat a huge range of things from algae to zebra, and get food (farmed and hunted) from salt water as well as fresh.
Perhaps I have a bit more imagination—or a bit more humility towards our humanity—such that I believe this is not "either/or". In the vast search space of potential future outcomes, of course even I can see humanity survive nature as I've seen nature survive humanity. However, I can also so easily see probable branches where we are our own undoing. Apropos of TFA, if one is to believe LLMs can carve a threatening path to humanity end, how could one not see the same for our much older extant threats?
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#603No other human activity poses this level of danger. I do heed the warnings, but this comes across as detached hyperbole. See: global warming, nuclear weapon development, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence, etc. Also, this has nothing to do with LLMs or computers. Like all things, this is about humans.
I love how there is always selective outrage here depending on if it's the favorite darling in question or not.
// Anthropic / Apple - Nah, they can do no wrong. Even after both were caught violating users' trust and privacy multiple times, GOOD
if (company in ["Anthropic", "Apple"]) do
GOOD
// Google / everyone else - Doesn't matter even if it's a good deed they've done, BAD
else
BAD
endRe: I resigned from Anthropic today
#604“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…
I agree it’s not likely , but I really don’t see how one can dismiss the possibility of immense danger outright. I can think of some scenarios that are not far off from current capability and I wouldn’t be too surprised if the first one occurred within ~1 year from now if there are more “ambitious” unmonitored training runs like OpenAI’s: Example 5: An AI given a goal within a tightly-constrained sandbox figures the…
Example 5: how does a giant LLM that needs million-dollar server racks just to run, replicate itself over the internet?
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is the crux. The big problem is not AGI, it is AGI controlled by, “raised” by the people that control the USA, the predominant psychology of the tech industry culture (“move fast, break things” ring a bell? How about all the “violate hundreds of laws, bribe the politicians to prevent consequences later” type of mentality?). Frankly, we, our culture, this fake America that is parasitized by psychologically narcis…
I mean, you're not wrong, but even if AI was created and released by a group of peace loving beatnick hippies, humanity can't stand anymore dumbing down than we are still undergoing thanks to the ubiquity of social media. AI is going to be the killshot. And yes, its usage and human obsolescence will be hastened by evildoers, but giving up the struggle and effort required to create new things, REAL things, is what mak…
If you allow me to also tap into fiction and creative writing.
I think people generally underestimate how much change a small "dedicated" group of people can achieve if morals are considered optional.
A lot of the debate on AI and its consequences is built on various assumptions that all kinda take the status quo (apathy, regulatory capture, but also laws) and take that as a given.
History - like e.g. the third reich, but also military coups - however tells us that these kinds of assumptions can be void at any time for any reason without a mandate or a democratic resolution to do so.
I am practically certain that before everything collapsed as predicted, someone will "restore order" by any means necessary.
If that means shutting down the Internet, the Internet will shut down. If that means "shutting down" people, then people will be shut down.
The predicted scenarios are all invalid states that the rules governing the underlying system will not allow to exist; or at least not for long.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#606I dropped my subscription already and avoid using their models.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#607and somehow, all of this researchers warning us about the AI doomsday, are only been active online for less than a year. This guy created the Twitter account on January this year. I never see any of these posts coming out from a well known community active person
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a "personal annoyance" that twelve people control half of the wealth in the world. Our current society did a better job concentrating power than any previous one, and concentrated power is extremely dangerous.
LLMs give most people on this planet the possibility of an affordable genius level assistant. Compared to that, those Dollar numbers on some networks that might be wiped out with the next financial crisis are meaningless.
No it doesn't. What it does is give those 12 people new avenues to spread their fake propaganda.
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
Global warming is happening at a slow enough pace that there is plenty of time for people to move to the poles/into caves/beneath the ocean/whatever. Nuclear war would be much more destructive in a much shorter range of time but you will have pockets.
Citation needed for evidence of human cooperation at this scale. As you say, climate change is slow moving, and there's no real evidence across the last 60 years of knowing about it suggesting humans are willing to do what it takes to survive it.
What cooperation are you referring to?
Re: I resigned from Anthropic today
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ve identified that the risks of nuclear weapons are theoretical. ie in theory we could blow up the world even though we haven’t yet done so. Well the worries about AI are equivalent in that those risks are discussed now because discussing them after they’ve happened is clearly too late. That’s the thing about risk. There’s no point discussing it after it’s happened and any discussions beforehand can easily be han…
The risks of nuclear weapons aren't theoretical. Nuclear weapons have killed people, destroyed infrastructure, and contaminated the environment. The Limited Test Ban Treaty was put in place after radioactive fallout from repeated nuclear weapons tests made people sick. So in fact we've done exactly what you suggest there's "no point" doing - used the things and then had a discussion after the fact about limiting futu…
FWIW, before any nuclear weapons had ever been tested, a risk was identified that the first one might trigger a self-sustaining reaction in atmospheric nitrogen and destroy the entire planet.
Faced with such a scenario, is the prudent next move:
a) blow one up and see what happens, or
b) do whatever you can to be sure it won't happen before conducting the first test, and make sure the confidence in the calculation is very very high
because I vote for b, and so did Teller.