Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You are the scariest monster in the woods

jamie.ideasasylum.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 405 posts

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#201

Post by buu700 »

I see the point the author is making, but AI doesn't need to be AGI or malicious to cause mass destruction. A poorly implemented deployment of AI in the right circumstances with too much access and insufficient guardrails could theoretically wind up LARPing as Skynet purely by chance.

This is why I've always considered current AI "safety" efforts to be totally wrongheaded. It's not a threat to humanity if someone has an AI generate hate speech, porn, misinformation, or political propaganda. AI is only a threat to humanity if we don't take security seriously as we roll out increasingly more AI-driven automation of the economy. It's already terrifying to me that people are relying on containers to sandbox yolo-mode coding agents, or even raw dogging them or their personal machines.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#203

Post by j2kun »

theodorejb wrote: post #187
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution This is an assumption, not a fact. Perhaps human cognition was created by God, and our minds have an essential spiritual component which cannot be reproduced by a purely physical machine.

Even if you don't believe in God, scientific theories of how human cognition came about (and how it works and changes over time) are all largely speculation and good storytelling.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#204

Post by soiltype »

theodorejb wrote: post #187
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution This is an assumption, not a fact. Perhaps human cognition was created by God, and our minds have an essential spiritual component which cannot be reproduced by a purely physical machine.

It is completely unreasonable to assume our intelligence was not evolved, even if we acknowledge that an untestable magical process could be responsible. If the latter is true, it's not something we could ever actually know.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#205

Post by bangaroo »

myrmidon wrote: post #30
alansaber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the AGI people thinking we can catch up millions of years of evolution in a handful of years

If you make the same argument for flight it looks really weak. Cognition is (to me) not even the most impressive and out-of-reach achievement: That would be how (our) and animals bodies are self-assembling, self-repairing and self-replicating, with an impressive array of sensors and actors in a highly integrated package. I honestly believe our current technology is much closer to emulating a human brain than it is to…

> if you make the same argument for flight it looks really weak.

flight is an extremely straightforward concept based in relatively simple physics where the majority of the critical, foundational ideas involved were already near-completely understood in the late 1700s.

i really don't think it's fair to compare the two

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#206

Post by j2kun »

pennomi wrote: post #200
theodorejb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution This is an assumption, not a fact. Perhaps human cognition was created by God, and our minds have an essential spiritual component which cannot be reproduced by a purely physical machine.

It’s not an assumption, it’s a viable theory based on overwhelming evidence from fossil records. What’s NOT supported by evidence is an unknowable, untestable spiritual requirement for cognition.

What overwhelming evidence do fossil records provide about human cognition?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#207

Post by hitarpetar »

jncfhnb wrote: post #188
MountDoom wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you could make AGI right now tbh. Seems like you figured out a simple method. Why not go for it? It's a free Nobel prize at the very least.

Will you pay for my data center and operating costs?

that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone else from trying. what's different about your idea?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#208

Post by webstrand »

aniviacat wrote: post #198
messe wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't have agency, because they don't have persistent state. They're like a function that you can query and get an answer. During that answer the LLM has state, but once it's done the state is gone. That's solved by the simplest of agents. LLM + ability to read / write a file.

But they can only change their context, not the model itself. Humans update their model whenever they receive new data (which they do continuously). A live-learning AI would be theoretically possible, but so far it hasn't been done (in a meaningful way).

It has been tried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophic_interference> but it has been unsuccessful.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#209

Post by throwuxiytayq »

Aerroon wrote: post #176
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

> I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line either; this might be true for now, but this is already being circumvented with current LLMs (by giving them web access etc). They don't have agency, because they don't have persistent state. They're like a function that you can query and get an answer. During that answer the LLM has state, but once it's done the state is gone. Humans (and other "agents") have persis…

I have no words to express how profoundly disappointed I am to keep reading these boring, shallow, shorttermist, unimaginative takes that are invalidated by a model/arch upgrade next week, or - in this case - more like years ago, since pretty much all big LLM platforms are already augmented by RAG and memory systems. Do you seriously think you’re discussing a serious long term limitation here?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#210

Post by andy99 »

potsandpans wrote: post #194
theodorejb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution This is an assumption, not a fact. Perhaps human cognition was created by God, and our minds have an essential spiritual component which cannot be reproduced by a purely physical machine.

Maybe there's a small teapot orbiting the earth, with ten thousand angels dancing on the tip of the spout.

I think you’re both saying the same thing
Post reply on HN