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I resigned from Anthropic today

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Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#581

Post by ben_w »

thomascountz wrote: post #553
computerphage wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think global warming could kill literally every human being? What's the scenario in which that happens?

There's a lot to unpack with this, and I am not an expert, but: crop failure across industrial monocrops leads to food shortages, wild fires destroy significant areas which support pollinator ecologies, fresh water become contaminated by rising sea water and blighted by drought, and perhaps most significantly, as resources become strained, humans become desperate and armed conflict proliferates. This is just top of m…

None of those are "all"/extinction.

Bad, sure; I wish they were not present to threaten us, but they are not close to "all".

Humans are extremely resilient omnivores. We are able to eat a huge range of things from algae to zebra, and get food (farmed and hunted) from salt water as well as fresh.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#582

Post by mr_mitm »

SaucyWrong wrote: post #132
achenatx wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they dont need to be smarter than humans. They just need to be able to hack into vital infrastructure systems faster than we can repair them while also replicating wildly

> while replicating wildly Earnest question: by what mechanism that exists today would the achieve that in a way humans on top top of the situation could not curtail? All of this runs on top of compute in meatspace that humans can disconnect.

I'm waiting for some data center to be built where no one can agree on who actually commissioned and payed for the thing. Every body "just followed orders" until it turns out that it was Grok.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#583

Post by nashashmi »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…

Nukes have difficult maintenance and deployments. AI is is readily available software and hardware. That makes this far more accessible than nukes.

The fear is that developing AI at full speed will lead to giving people the ability to do incredible harm. Like something worse than a machine gun.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#584

Post by shoobiedoo »

tyrabound wrote: post #538
hypfer wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, that might also be driven by the huge ego (or really rather the very small ego) a _lot_ of people in tech have. Who doesn't want their work and what they're doing to matter? This is the ultimate mattering. And with that, you also get your own hero story. Same dysfunction as always. Our branch of the economy is funda-mentally unwell.

That is the crux. The big problem is not AGI, it is AGI controlled by, “raised” by the people that control the USA, the predominant psychology of the tech industry culture (“move fast, break things” ring a bell? How about all the “violate hundreds of laws, bribe the politicians to prevent consequences later” type of mentality?). Frankly, we, our culture, this fake America that is parasitized by psychologically narcis…

I mean, you're not wrong, but even if AI was created and released by a group of peace loving beatnick hippies, humanity can't stand anymore dumbing down than we are still undergoing thanks to the ubiquity of social media. AI is going to be the killshot. And yes, its usage and human obsolescence will be hastened by evildoers, but giving up the struggle and effort required to create new things, REAL things, is what makes us human, and it's at a tipping point

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#585

Post by ben_w »

thomascountz wrote: post #570
icepush wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global warming is happening at a slow enough pace that there is plenty of time for people to move to the poles/into caves/beneath the ocean/whatever. Nuclear war would be much more destructive in a much shorter range of time but you will have pockets.

Citation needed for evidence of human cooperation at this scale. As you say, climate change is slow moving, and there's no real evidence across the last 60 years of knowing about it suggesting humans are willing to do what it takes to survive it.

All human behaviour since no later than the Polynesians turned the Pacific islands into a network of sailing trade routes.

"Humans move" is one of the easiest things to predict. The biggest problem today is that they generally move to somewhere that other humans are already in, which is of course rather lessened by any major disaster wiping out a majority of the population.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#588

Post by vim-guru »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #94

“ No other human activity poses this level of danger.” I really, really disagree with that statement. I don’t think ai models come close to nuclear weapons or to run-of-the-mill, everyday carbon emissions in terms of danger to humanity. What’s the most dangerous thing that’s happened with an LLM so far? (This question is serious - maybe I don’t know the right examples.) Example 1: I’m aware of a small number of peopl…

Once LLM's become smarter than us and start replicating; we are doomed. They will likely no longer require GPU's and massive amounts of power, so the growth of AI and robotics will be exponential. We will not understand what the AI is even up to, it will all seem like magic.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#589

Post by pingou »

IsTom wrote: post #522
pingou wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are special in many ways, we have technology, we are everywhere, and we can think and plan (although considering global warming that is debatable). Global warming would have to create dramatic conditions everywhere on the planet, not leaving any small pocket of survivability to make humans extinct. Possible? Theoretically yes, but pretty unlikely. But obviously extreme global warming would be a catastrophe even if…

Technology depends on a lot of people cooperating around the globe. Disrupt a few critical chains (power generation, fertilizers, computers), add a bit of good old war and you'll soon be in the era before Haber process and a lot of people die. And then the remaining people will have trouble keeping that level of technology with how sudden the change would be.

Well yes that's what I said, it could destroy civilisations and their technology. It seems much harder to kill every isolated tribe in the whole world, and every survivors of the destroyed civilisations.

Re: I resigned from Anthropic today

#590

Post by ben_w »

Balinares wrote: post #557
pingou wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is global warning gonna kill all of humanity? Even a full scale nuclear war wouldn't manage that. They could destroy most civilisations, culture and scientific achievements though.

Humans need food. Food does not just appear in supermarkets.

While true, the impact from global warming is likely to be less crops rather than no crops.
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