Oh. I thought it would be a museum of slightly misaligned things.
It would be a fun place to visit for OCD-type people.
Misalignment Museum
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Misalignment Museum
#32This actually brings to mind a conversation I've been having with my buddies recently. Has there ever been a case of harm from AI misalignment? Not some kind of speculative art exhibit, but real harm?
Corporations can be regarded as AI agents with misaligned goals. In a bit over a century this has resulted in damage to the climate and Earth's ecosystem that is threatening the survival of our civilization. And that's just slow, badly optimized paperclippers so far.
It's really not though is it, that's just your programming thinking for you.
Human deaths from weather and climate related events are near all time lows, while overall population is indeed at all time highs. We have better crop yields (3) and productivity thanks to both technology and indeed, CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere (4), which is driven by photosynthesis, a process which is optimized at thousands of ppm for the vast majority of plant species, many multiples from where we now stand.
Of course, the most abundant periods for life on earth have been periods of abundant carbon, such as the Carboniferous era, and the Cambrian era (5).
Clearly the ecosystem is far from collapse as a result of mild warming and improved plant productivity. In many regards, it's thriving, and certainly more so than 100-120 years ago, which predated any pretense of conservation at all.
And we know that it's indeed glaciation (global cooling) that so often leads to catastrophe in ecosystems (1)(2).
But that we can program human beings with subtle prods of horrific and exaggerated headlines, along with cult-like expectations of consensus, into believing the opposite to be true from reality, is certainly an indication of paperclip optimization gone awry.
(1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259495017_Ecologica... (2) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360894775_Global_co... (3) https://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/usda-raises-the-us-co... (4) https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer... (5) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5942912/
Re: Misalignment Museum
#33Wow, didn't expect my https://www.niche-museums.com/ website to show up on Hacker News! It's actually running on a templated instance of Datasette - try the "Use my location" button on the homepage to see tiny museums near you that I've been to.
Is there a way to add entries to this collection, or do you only list museums you have been personally been at? I ask because I tried look for listings of places I know well (e.g. Turin, Italy or Budapest, Hungary) and found that the closest entry was hundreds of miles away. Turin has, for example, this: http://www.museodellafrutta.it/en/ which is pretty niche, imho. Budapest has a chocolate museum: https://www.csoko…
I second the wish to add.
Who didn’t want to know what happened to East London Victorian Sewage.
Or the mysterious cave of shells which no science know it came to be [I suspect due to lack of interest, lols]
Re: Misalignment Museum
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations can be regarded as AI agents with misaligned goals. In a bit over a century this has resulted in damage to the climate and Earth's ecosystem that is threatening the survival of our civilization. And that's just slow, badly optimized paperclippers so far.
It's really not though is it, that's just your programming thinking for you. Human deaths from weather and climate related events are near all time lows, while overall population is indeed at all time highs. We have better crop yields (3) and productivity thanks to both technology and indeed, CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere (4), which is driven by photosynthesis, a process which is optimized at thousands of ppm f…
Clearly the ecosystem is far from collapse while we're in the middle of a rapid human-caused mass-extinction. What kind of propaganda are you smoking, bro.
Re: Misalignment Museum
#35Wow, didn't expect my https://www.niche-museums.com/ website to show up on Hacker News! It's actually running on a templated instance of Datasette - try the "Use my location" button on the homepage to see tiny museums near you that I've been to.
Is there a way to add entries to this collection, or do you only list museums you have been personally been at? I ask because I tried look for listings of places I know well (e.g. Turin, Italy or Budapest, Hungary) and found that the closest entry was hundreds of miles away. Turin has, for example, this: http://www.museodellafrutta.it/en/ which is pretty niche, imho. Budapest has a chocolate museum: https://www.csoko…
I accept tips of where I should go next, but the site is exclusively museums I've been to myself - it's a really rewarding hobby.
Re: Misalignment Museum
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations can be regarded as AI agents with misaligned goals. In a bit over a century this has resulted in damage to the climate and Earth's ecosystem that is threatening the survival of our civilization. And that's just slow, badly optimized paperclippers so far.
It's really not though is it, that's just your programming thinking for you. Human deaths from weather and climate related events are near all time lows, while overall population is indeed at all time highs. We have better crop yields (3) and productivity thanks to both technology and indeed, CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere (4), which is driven by photosynthesis, a process which is optimized at thousands of ppm f…
I’m loath to reply to a comment that’s either idiotic, propaganda, or a troll, but one word:
d/dt
Re: Misalignment Museum
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with that is - until we have "true AGI" about which everybody agree it's "true AGI" - you can always dismiss deaths caused by software as "just a bug, not an AI safety problem". For example when Tesla autopilot kills someone (which has happened). https://impakter.com/tesla-autopilot-crashes-with-at-least-a...
I guess maybe one could make that argument, but the majority of AI alignment concerns seem more along the lines of skynet level scenarios. The paperclip optimizer could be called a "bug" I guess. But the comparison to Tesla autopilot is interesting. First, is anyone calling that an AI? Second, when an objective baseline comparison to human drivers is possible, shouldn't that determine whether the AI is a net benefit…
>is anyone calling that an AI?”
Sure. And TSLA unveils their beta FSD during their AI Day.
Re: Misalignment Museum
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess maybe one could make that argument, but the majority of AI alignment concerns seem more along the lines of skynet level scenarios. The paperclip optimizer could be called a "bug" I guess. But the comparison to Tesla autopilot is interesting. First, is anyone calling that an AI? Second, when an objective baseline comparison to human drivers is possible, shouldn't that determine whether the AI is a net benefit…
I think of it more like "Corporation X making whole species extinct because it has better uses for rainforests" not like "Skynet hates people". But the end result is the same. Humanity doesn't hate polar bears. We just love burning oil more than we love them. Polar bears die as an unintended side effect. We might even be sad about that. We might even keep a few alive in ZOOs. But we won't change our whole economy to…
[deleted]
Re: Misalignment Museum
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really not though is it, that's just your programming thinking for you. Human deaths from weather and climate related events are near all time lows, while overall population is indeed at all time highs. We have better crop yields (3) and productivity thanks to both technology and indeed, CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere (4), which is driven by photosynthesis, a process which is optimized at thousands of ppm f…
I’m loath to reply to a comment that’s either idiotic, propaganda, or a troll, but one word: d/dt
[deleted]
Re: Misalignment Museum
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess maybe one could make that argument, but the majority of AI alignment concerns seem more along the lines of skynet level scenarios. The paperclip optimizer could be called a "bug" I guess. But the comparison to Tesla autopilot is interesting. First, is anyone calling that an AI? Second, when an objective baseline comparison to human drivers is possible, shouldn't that determine whether the AI is a net benefit…
Misalignment is not malice. The paperclip optimizer isn't malicious. The risk isn't software going evil on us. The risk is software doing exactly what we made it do. A software bug is generally what we call the situation where software does exactly what its creator asked it to do, but that thing is not a thing its creator actually intended or wanted. The creator did not correctly express their request, and/or did not…
> Surely the AI doomers are overstating the risk of doom - surely no-one working in safety critical systems would do things any other way? "Has there ever been a case of harm form AI misalignment?" - this is the real thrust of that question. What sort of idiot would wire an unintended consequence generator directly to anything that might harm or hurt?
You don't have to look far to find people doing exactly that. AutoGPT, ChaosGPT (!), a lot of random people copying its output into a Python prompt.
"It's not safety-critical", you might say, but that's only because the AI isn't smart enough yet. A human-level AI could easily do a lot of damage this way, and I don't think we'll learn our lesson until it's already happened. Here's hoping it happens before we get superhuman AI!