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Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

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Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#21

Post by dpflan »

Slyfox33 wrote: post #13
nilawafer wrote: post #9

When China & India form an alliance and send a peace keeping army to protect the former citizens of the fallen American Empire Megacorp, then the American public might have reason to have regrets about AI. But until then it’s just another distraction.

Lmao. As if chatbots are going to destroy the world. Give me a break. LLMs, while having some cool uses, are clearly just the next in line of a never ending tech hype scam cycle. Honestly I'm kind of dreading what's coming next because each iteration just gets more insufferable.

It's pretty obvious that LLMs can be used to give instructions to machines, those machines could be hooked up to other sensors, like cameras with facial recognition, and actuators. Now imagine a Boston Dynamics DOG robot with a machine gun that can target specific people. This is already possible. If someone were to manufacture and let loose say 100 or 1000 in public, that seems pretty drastic...or flying drones, etc.

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#22

Post by pixl97 »

deadbabe wrote: post #11

Isn’t taking risks just a standard part of technological innovation?

Hmm, this is a common line of thought I saw in other young men around me when growing up...

[Takes risk]: See I took a risk and nothing happened.

[Takes risk]: See I took a risk and nothing happened.

[Takes risk]: See I took a risk and nothing happened.

[Takes risk]: "Dies horribly and tragically in a completely avoidable fashion after taking excessive risk"

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#23

Post by rurp »

skwirl wrote: post #10

It’s pretty interesting how widely divergent views of the current state and promise this technology is. The dominant view here on HN seems to be that generative models are overhyped toys that burn massive amounts of energy and investment capital with little signs of promise. Meanwhile you have these AI researchers who are warning about “the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extin…

I think in most cases it's wrong to treat HN opinion as a monolith, including in this case. There certainly are a lot of people here who think that LLMs are overhyped, but there are also many who find the current tools useful and expect them to improve dramatically in the near future. I think most people have a more nuanced view though.

There is without a doubt a lot of marketing and hype bullshit around AI right now, but that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons to be optimistic about LLM capabilities.

I do think that the strong divergence of opinions among knowledgeable people is interesting. No matter what your position is on this topic, there are smart people arguing against it. The thing I'm most confident about is that anyone being overly confident is likely to be wrong.

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#24

Post by malfist »

dpflan wrote: post #17
skwirl wrote: post #10

It’s pretty interesting how widely divergent views of the current state and promise this technology is. The dominant view here on HN seems to be that generative models are overhyped toys that burn massive amounts of energy and investment capital with little signs of promise. Meanwhile you have these AI researchers who are warning about “the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extin…

The technology is indeed powerful; it's pretty obvious you can make military grade or better propaganda pretty easily with this technology and disseminate it more easily. Let's just classify that as "misinformation" generally, which could also be applied to ideas of teenagers making deepfakes of classmates, etc. So misinformation is a big risk, and already affecting society. It is also clearly useful to whomever is c…

What is "military grade propaganda"?

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#25

Post by tuatoru »

kyledrake wrote: post #18
skwirl wrote: post #10

It’s pretty interesting how widely divergent views of the current state and promise this technology is. The dominant view here on HN seems to be that generative models are overhyped toys that burn massive amounts of energy and investment capital with little signs of promise. Meanwhile you have these AI researchers who are warning about “the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extin…

Per usual, it's somewhere in the middle. I find LLMs to be very useful for coding and solving quick tasks, but I don't think it's going to turn into skynet or make humans worthless. There's a lot of momentum (driven by incentivization) around sensationalizing and storyboarding emerging technology into the "to the moon" and "neo Luddite" camps, and there's far too many people that fall into that uncritically. My guess…

The cynicism (in my case, and probably others') comes from remembering self-driving cars, blockchain, crypto, the millennial internet hype, and previous AI hype. Smartphones have arguably made life worse for many people too, judging by skyrocketing mental illness.

Edit: oh, and Uberisation (workforce casualisation), and AirBNB. Enshittification all round.

They might be right this time, but the prior has to be this is yet another hyped nothingburger, or more enshittification.

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#26

Post by throwup238 »

Slyfox33 wrote: post #13
nilawafer wrote: post #9

When China & India form an alliance and send a peace keeping army to protect the former citizens of the fallen American Empire Megacorp, then the American public might have reason to have regrets about AI. But until then it’s just another distraction.

Lmao. As if chatbots are going to destroy the world. Give me a break. LLMs, while having some cool uses, are clearly just the next in line of a never ending tech hype scam cycle. Honestly I'm kind of dreading what's coming next because each iteration just gets more insufferable.

They might! Imagine if an LLM went full Vogon and attacked us with weapons grade awful poetry. We wouldn’t stand a chance!

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#27

Post by [deleted] »

throwup238 wrote: post #26
Slyfox33 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmao. As if chatbots are going to destroy the world. Give me a break. LLMs, while having some cool uses, are clearly just the next in line of a never ending tech hype scam cycle. Honestly I'm kind of dreading what's coming next because each iteration just gets more insufferable.

They might! Imagine if an LLM went full Vogon and attacked us with weapons grade awful poetry. We wouldn’t stand a chance!

[deleted]

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#28

Post by pixl97 »

ein0p wrote: post #16

Periodic reminder: at the moment, governments worldwide are literally developing killer robots which can’t disobey their orders. Your fears are comically misplaced.

No, not misplaced at all, both need monitored and regulated. And large companies like Google and whoever else will gladly sell their model for use in the latest killbot for some of that unlimited military industrial complex money.

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#29

Post by rshah_45 »

ein0p wrote: post #16

Periodic reminder: at the moment, governments worldwide are literally developing killer robots which can’t disobey their orders. Your fears are comically misplaced.

A heat-seeking missile or nuclear bomb can't disobey orders either. Therefore we should not worry about the dangers of guns or knives.

Re: Current and former AI employees warn of the technology's dangers

#30

Post by dgfitz »

rurp wrote: post #23
skwirl wrote: post #10

It’s pretty interesting how widely divergent views of the current state and promise this technology is. The dominant view here on HN seems to be that generative models are overhyped toys that burn massive amounts of energy and investment capital with little signs of promise. Meanwhile you have these AI researchers who are warning about “the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extin…

I think in most cases it's wrong to treat HN opinion as a monolith, including in this case. There certainly are a lot of people here who think that LLMs are overhyped, but there are also many who find the current tools useful and expect them to improve dramatically in the near future. I think most people have a more nuanced view though. There is without a doubt a lot of marketing and hype bullshit around AI right now…

> The thing I'm most confident about is that anyone being overly confident is likely to be wrong.

So does this mean you're wrong? This sentence really amused me.

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