AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion • Hacker News Board

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#121

Post by antonvs » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

lumenwrites wrote: post #20

PaulHoule wrote: post #6

There is "A.I. doomism" in general and there is also a specific cult-like group at the lesswrong website that really is an apocalyptic religion. It is astonishing how anything that deviates from its dogma in any way has to have "trigger warnings" and the senseless comments that users write on anything that suggests there could be intrinsic limits on intelligence. There ideology is such that a higher intelligence is g…

This is an inaccurate and ignorant comment that does not engage with the arguments people on LessWrong are making. If you have something smart to say about why these people are wrong in their beliefs, please do. Name calling a group of people a "cult" or "apocalyptic religion" is not an argument that contributes anything interesting to the conversation. If anyone is actually curious about what these people are saying…

A good intro for why they’re wrong in their beliefs is https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#122

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

This is reasoning by analogy. X is like Y, Y has property A, therefore X has A. This approach seems much less compelling to be than saying "AI can become more intelligent than humans. A more intelligent entity without our moral values may cause extreme harm up to and including human extinction. We should be worried about AI."

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#123

Post by cubefox » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #65

Something can go wrong (premise). Therefore, something will go wrong (invalid conclusion). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_probability Sure seems to me that the whole Lesswrong crowd has forgotten their founding principles around cognitive biases. Or maybe they're just having a bit of fun riding the hypecycle.

There are a lot of arguments that the probability of doom is substantial. Orthogonality thesis, instrumental convergence, goodharting, mesa-optimization, etc. Here is an introduction: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vMM6HmSQaKmKadvBi/the-core-o...

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#124

Post by olalonde » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #119

olalonde wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the tangent, it wasn't related to this thread. I've been in the habit of bookmarking predictions on HN to revisit them later, and your username caught my eye. I'm a bit surprised you maintain it, but the final verdict remains to be seen.

What have you seen since the new year that makes you surprised I'd change an opinion I had then?

OpenAI's GPT4. Bing's AI chat. Google's bard. Midjourney v5. GitHub copilot X. etc.

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#125

Post by jtode » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:48 PM UTC

In actuality, the large hardon collider caused that black hole everyone was concerned about we are experiencing the evaporation of our atoms through an extreme time dilation; the perception of a coming AI beast is actually a hallucination of our own consciousness, from which we have been torn asunder.

Makes as much sense as any of the other prophecies of doom.

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#126

Post by oliwarner » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

We're already seeing jobs being done by AI. Many creative jobs that would take a team a week to handle are being shopped out to a bot to handle in an hour.

VFX are going to get hit particularly hard by this. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a visually stunning film yet had a 6-member team handling graphics post. They were smart, but they also shopped out all the dull rotoscoping work to AI. Look at any Marvel film from the past decade. Hundreds of artists per title, thousands if you include costume design, storyboarding, audio, even writing.

Most of this "doomism" is people realising how quickly their jobs could be automated. A future where your once-valued skillset suddenly has no monetary value is scary.

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#127

Post by moonchrome » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #113

moonchrome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can go wrong. The outcome of the thing going wrong is literally the worst thing that can happen to the entire humanity. Therefore we should do everything in our power to avoid doing that thing untill we can eliminate the risk.

By that rather sloppy logic, we should be urgently working on capping the Yellowstone supervolcano and constructing impenetrable meteorite defense shields. I acknowledge that it's a possibility; that's not the argument at hand.

Except there's concrete evidence that the execution of safety is subpar due to market pressures to release and monetize (Google panic release).

There's also evidence that progress is exceeding people's expectations and we might not even realize what we have is dangerous untill too late.

If we had a probable collision trajectory of a meteor or signs of Yellowstone activating then yeah those would be good ideas.

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#128

Post by IIAOPSW » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:53 PM UTC

blast wrote: post #116

IIAOPSW wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a sizeable chunk of people possibly so, but it seems not so universal. Lots of people don't find any form of "just have faith" convincing.

They're probably doing it unconsciously.

That's the sort of conjecture which lets you arbitrarily dismiss evidence against a theory. Even worse, its the sort of conjecture that is plausibly true yet hard to find conclusive evidence. Any lack of evidence for a subconscious explanation can itself be rationalized away as they just didn't look hard enough to uncover it.

So where's the goalpost for falsifying the theory that they do it unconsciously? Whats the bar of evidence where you change your mind?

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#129

Post by woodson » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

eggsmediumrare wrote: post #4

Am I an apostate if my concern about AI doom now outweighs my concern about climate change?

Well, in general, there seems to be a correlation between what news coverage focuses on and what is considered worrisome at any given time. In times of high inflation and increased fuel prices, climate change action takes a back seat.

Re: AI doomism is quickly becoming indistinguishable from an apocalyptic religion

#130

Post by version_five » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #124

version_five wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have you seen since the new year that makes you surprised I'd change an opinion I had then?

OpenAI's GPT4. Bing's AI chat. Google's bard. Midjourney v5. GitHub copilot X. etc.

I was deeply involved in the last AI hype cycle. I'd want to see lasting applications giving clear benefits before I change my opinion. More foundation models don't change that, nor do the startup launches based around llms I've seen so far. It all has the same 2016 "deep learning" vibe, lots of apparent potential but no pathway to actual use cases.