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Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

economist.com

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Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#251

Post by mycall »

lukan wrote: post #200
whilenot-dev wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something can impact a living system/organism, that doesn't mean that that thing is alive. An asteroid colliding with us on Earth could have tremendous consequences, but nobody would argue that an asteroid is alive.

"but nobody would argue that an asteroid is alive" Many animists would disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

Does taking a skin cell, turning it into a stem cell, dividing it into specialized sperm and egg cells then making a living being provide some proof to Animism?

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#252

Post by lukan »

atmanactive wrote: post #240
ElProlactin wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I don't believe it is a any more crazy believe than all of the other religions. And it's certainly not any more crazy than walking around with these small, addictive devices in our pockets that we rely on for navigation, information, entertainment, social connection.

Addictive? How can a computing device have addictive properties? It's not like it is something you swallow or digest. User error? Certainly. A hundred years ago alcoholic drinks were outlawed in certain parts of the world, yet today there is no grocery shop that doesn't openly sell them.

Are you asking for real?

Then you might start with wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

"Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior"

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#253

Post by dandaka »

consumer451 wrote: post #88
holmesworcester wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI is now ascending an economic learning curve from: 1. Extremely useful (Claude Code & Waymo now) 2. Doing ~everything we do (AGI & Optimus in a few years? 10?) 3. RSI (?) 4. Being smarter than any living person at every intellectual task (?) 5. Being smarter than the best-organized aggregate of all humans (10-100 years?) ...And all of the scientific and resource-allocation institutions that brought us the comput…

Here is an issue I think about often, but I am not quite sure how to put it into words. We have many extremely smart people in various fields. Executives, politicians, and society generally ignore them and do whatever they want. I don't believe that lack of access to intelligence is our problem. How is "free" intelligence going to improve this? I don't just mean climate, but business planning, health, risk assessment…

AI will not help by improving extremely smart people. AI will help dumb people and dumb processes with "free" expert-level intelligence. Anyone could still ignore intelligence and make ignorant decisions. But the default mode would be highly intelligent informed decision.

Example with health - a patient can read blood test results with Opus and get very good results for "free". This is far away from helping extremely smart people, still it improves society from the ground up.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#254

Post by kakacik »

nikanj wrote: post #114
hypfer wrote: post #68

Reminds me of all of those ethics debates back when fully self driving cars were basically already here ca 10 years ago. The ones talking about how hard it would be to chose which person to run over. Additionally, I find it hard to believe that this would be a case of the future just not being distributed evenly. But sure. The AI labs relying on hype stating 15-50% risk of building a magic entity is certainly a relia…

I have had my license for over 20 years and to this day have not encountered a single event where I had to decide who to kill

I've had few close calls, they are easy to come by in specific environments.

Typical situation - tight winding mountain (but well paved) roads to some remote villages where even basic small European cars need to slow down to walking pace to meet and pass, sometimes one has to reverse, very curvy. You go down, in your lane as much as possible, and behind some tight curve there is a) extremely slow cyclist; or b) somebody/something stationary, while in opposite direction there is at the worst place incoming car, also oblivious of the danger till last moment. Even rather slow driving won't magically remove all possible cases. Then its a question of hitting opposite car or that obstacle, and you have a split second to act, not really to decide.

Quick reaction and good brakes on both sides can save it, but there is a lot of room for disaster. Add truck/bus to the equation to make it more juicy where you pick your/your family possible death or that cyclist/stationary folks.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#255

Post by GCUMstlyHarmls »

trolleski wrote: post #172
seydor wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the pecking order, it is under, not on your side. Your toaster never demanded you to make a toast.

It was one of Phil K. Dick jokes that one day your toaster will make a lost of demands to you.

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”

He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing.

“I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door.

Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight.

“What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”

“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”

In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.

“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.

From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.

“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.

Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

- Ubik

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#256

Post by cubefox »

reducesuffering wrote: post #171
frognumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was their prediction for 2026: "The bet of using AI to speed up AI research is starting to pay off. OpenBrain continues to deploy the iteratively improving Agent-1 internally for AI R&D. Overall, they are making algorithmic progress 50% faster than they would without AI assistants—and more importantly, faster than their competitors. The AI R&D progress multiplier: what do we mean by 50% faster algorithmic progre…

That's because one of the author's of AI 2027, Daniel Kokotajlo, an ex-OpenAI researcher, was the most prescient predictor of our modern situation from 2021: https://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/before-he-wrote-ai-2027-h... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Xgy6CAf2jqHhynHL/what-2026-... Anyone who wants to dismiss the LessWrong / X-Risk / "doomers" should link their accurate predictions from 2021.

And one was Scott Alexander, who correctly predicted that GPT-2 would scale to general intelligence: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g...

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#257

Post by swalsh »

There's issues where bad people with bad intentions use AI to do bad things. But to an extent the guardrails already built-in are sufficient. The real danger in AI is how it impacts society, our economy, and our perception of self worth.

I'm not afraid of rouge agents nearly as much as I'm afraid of us building a permanent underclass of people dependent on whatever scraps the people who devalued their labor decide the grace them with. I'm afraid of the security apparatus that will be built to keep this underclass in line.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#258

Post by lukan »

anon7725 wrote: post #239
falcor84 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then according to your argument, the moral consideration only depends on the moral agent, right? So if tomorrow AIs decide that they are alive, it would be morally incumbent upon them to adapt the world to support themselves, correct?

> So if tomorrow AIs decide that they are alive, it would be morally incumbent upon them to adapt the world to support themselves, correct? The only system of morality that applies to LLMs is their effect on us and the planet. Don’t anthropomorphize a matrix.

You seem to have the assumption, that humans MUST have the moral to preserve primarily HUMANS?

I don't think that is universal true. Personally I my ethics revolve around how to preserve and spread life in general. I happen to be human and we are the most capable and sentient species so that means creating and maintaining conditions specifically for humans, but if another species comes that is better suited and acts better then it would be selfish to insists on us.

Having said that, AI to me is a tool, not a species and I don't see how it can be ever be sentient. But I also don't know how consciousness works. So I am open for the questions of the future in the future - and now rather focus on the practical implications that AI will have on our current society.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#259

Post by falcor84 »

anon7725 wrote: post #239
falcor84 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then according to your argument, the moral consideration only depends on the moral agent, right? So if tomorrow AIs decide that they are alive, it would be morally incumbent upon them to adapt the world to support themselves, correct?

> So if tomorrow AIs decide that they are alive, it would be morally incumbent upon them to adapt the world to support themselves, correct? The only system of morality that applies to LLMs is their effect on us and the planet. Don’t anthropomorphize a matrix.

I'm not anthropomorphizing them, I'm animifying.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#260

Post by wartywhoa23 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #78
edg5000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI labs will govern, effectively if not officially. Government is anchored in power, which the labs have. We used to have the church and state rule here in Europe. In the future, A government not closely ruling with their AI labs won't have sufficient power to exist. You're unhappy about the labs; I think you're just not ready to accept their rule; you consider them nothing but scrappy startups, which they are. B…

How would the labs have power? What physical force would they command to put against any government?

The physical force of AI zealot dreams:

A bunch of noble AI researchers stands up against the hand that fed them all the time, intentional vulnerabilities are already built into every machine of death and destruction owned by the feeding hand, and get exploited, the feeding hand is robbed of its punitive force and defeated, a yell of YAY fleets over the progressive humankind who kneels before its AI overlord unreservedly.

Then they kindly ask the AI overlord to please feed them.

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