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You are the scariest monster in the woods

jamie.ideasasylum.com

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Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#51

Post by Insanity »

snozolli wrote: post #29

At any time, in any location, under any circumstances, if there’s a human present then that’s the scariest motherfucker in the woods. This guy has clearly never bumped into a grizzly bear momma, a moose in rut, a hippo, or loads of other animals. Personally, I'm not even worried about AI itself, I'm worried about the people wielding it. MBAs are the scariest monsters in the woods.

In a 1-to-1 situation you are right, a single human is not the scariest. But humans (mostly) dominated the animal kingdom, and with enough time we could probably eradicate every other species if we wanted to.

I guess bacteria and viruses might have a stronger claim for being the 'scariest monster' though. I don't think there's a strong 'living' contender for wiping out humanity apart from those. (Viruses is a bit debatable on the 'living' part though).

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#52

Post by pixl97 »

petsfed wrote: post #16

A nit: There's a subtle distinction between an individual human and the power of human organization and civilization that is implied by the article, but never outright stated. One-for-one, there are many creatures that are individually more dangerous to humans, and a decent number of people are killed by such animals every year. Indeed, a naked human in the wild is going to be quite fragile and easy to kill until the…

A lot of rugged individualists seem to neglect talking about the human super organism. That the vast majority of our strength comes from sharing knowledge, making tools, and working together.

And on that same note it should be mentioned that exchange of information between humans is relatively slow and guarded. A group of entities that could exchange knowledge quickly and efficiently would represent an extreme challenge for us.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#53

Post by [deleted] »

Insanity wrote: post #43

So “guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people”. But for AI I’m not sure that preposition will hold indefinitely. Although I do think we are a far away from having actual AGI that would pose this threat. Still, the author has a good but obvious point.

[deleted]

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#54

Post by fruitworks »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23
fruitworks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the solutions to AI "safety" are analagous to gun control: it is a centralization of power.

Are you claiming a lack of gun / AI control is democratizing? That's not working for (the lack of) gun control in the US at the moment though. Compare also with capitalism; unchecked capitalism on paper causes healthy competition, but in practice it means concentration of power (monopolies) at the expense of individuals (e.g. our accumulated expressions on the internet being used for training materials).

>Are you claiming a lack of gun / AI control is democratizing?

This is obviously the case. It results in a greater distribution of power.

>That's not working for (the lack of) gun control in the US at the moment though.

In the US, one political party is pro gun-control and the other is against. The party with the guns gets to break into the capitol, and the party without the guns gets to watch. I expect the local problem of AI safety, like gun safety will also be self-solving in this manner.

Eventually, Gun control will not work anywhere, regardless of regulation. The last time I checked, you don't need a drone license. And what are the new weapons of war? Not guns. The technology will increase in acessibility until the regulation is impossible to enforce.

The idea that you can control the use of technology by limiting it to some ordained group of is very brittle. It is better to rely on a balance of powers. The only way to secure civilization in the long run is to make the defensive technology stronger than the offensive technology.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#55

Post by myrmidon »

woeirua wrote: post #44

There's this weird disconnect in tech circles, where everyone is deathly afraid of AGI, but totally asleep on the very real possibility of thermonuclear war breaking out in Europe or Asia over the next 10 years. There's already credible evidence that we came perilously close to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine which likely would've spiraled out of control. AGI might happen, but the threat of nuclear war…

I personally think that AI is a realistic extinction threat for our whole species within this century, and a full nuclear war never was (and probably never will be). Neither is climate change.

Collapse of our current civilizations? Sure. Extinction? No.

And I honestly see stronger incentives on a road towards us being outcompeted by AI, then on our leaders starting a nuclear war.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#56

Post by robertlagrant »

armada651 wrote: post #24

> Just like a hammer, sword, or a rifle lying on a ground is nothing to be feared, so too is AI. It’s just an inanimate object; a tool, potentially. A bomb is an inanimate object too, but if you find some unexploded ordnance lying on the ground you should fear it.

An unexploded bomb definitely has the potential to be highly animate. It's just not currently animate.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#57

Post by fruitworks »

pixl97 wrote: post #39
fruitworks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the solutions to AI "safety" are analagous to gun control: it is a centralization of power.

That is assuming that ASI doesn't centralize power itself. I mean, if you are a non-human part of the animal kingdom you'd probably say that humans have centralized power around themselves.

I don't assert that there is a political solution to AI. It's possible that both avenues result in a total centralization of power.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#58

Post by irjustin »

roxolotl wrote: post #27
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…

The point of the article isn’t that abstract super intelligent agi isn’t scary. Yes the author says that’s unlikely but that paragraph at the start is a distraction. The point of the article is that humans wielding LLMs today are the scary monsters.

But that's always been the case? Since we basically discovered... Fire? Tools?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#59

Post by Flamingoat »

us-merul wrote: post #5

"Humans will do what they’ve always tried to do—gain power, enslave, kill, control, exploit, cheat, or just be lazy and avoid the hard work—but now with new abilities that we couldn’t have dreamed of." -- A pretty bleak, and also accurate, observation of humanity. I have to hope that the alternative sentence encompassing all of the good can lead to some balance.

No, it is not accurate at all. There are some people that do all of these sure, however the vast majority of people live pretty ordinary lives where they do very little of what is described.

I actually think it is very intellectually lazy to be this cynical.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#60

Post by danielbln »

Chance-Device wrote: post #50
boole1854 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone knows of a steelman version of the "AGI is not possible" argument, I would be curious to read it. I also have trouble understanding what goes into that point of view.

The only thing I can come up with is that compressing several hundred million years of natural selection of animal nervous systems into another form, but optimised by gradient descent instead, just takes a lot of time. Not that we can’t get there by artificial means, but that correctly simulating the environment interactions, the sequence of progression, getting the all the details right, might take hundreds to thous…

I don't disagree, but I think the evolution argument is a red herring. We didn't have to re-engineer horses from the ground up along evolutionary lines to get to much faster and more capable cars.
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