Any advanced genera AI that comes online would be at risk of suicide in 60 days tops.
Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
721–730 of 873 posts
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I see Yudkowsky’s writing I wonder why people take him seriously. Just a couple of months back he was duped by a fake story about an airforce AI deciding to kill it’s operators in a simulation. It turned out the whole thing was thought experiment. Asking Yudkowsky what we should do about AI is like asking Green Peace what we should do about nuclear power.
Anybody subscribing to twitter is immediately disqualified as a credible, rational actor in my book.
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes him an expert in the subject matter? A cursory glance suggests that his background is in CS, not anything related to social or humanitarian issues. It is not completely impossible for someone to have expertise in more than one thing, but it is unusual as there is only so much time in the day and building expertise takes a lot of time.
I don’t mean Dwarkesh himself, though he asks great questions. He’s had some very knowledgeable guests. The most recent episode with Paul Christiano has a lot of good discussion on all these topics. I’d suggest evaluating the arguments and ideas more on the merits rather than putting so much emphasis on authority and credentials. I get there can be value there, but no one is really an “expert” in this subject yet and…
While I agree in general, when it comes to this particular topic where AI presents itself as being human-like, we all already have an understanding at the surface level because of being human and spending our lives around other humans. There is nothing the other people who have the same surface level knowledge will be able to tell you that you haven't already thought up yourself.
Furthermore, I'm not sure it is ideas that are lacking. An expert goes deeper than coming up with ideas. That is what people who have other things going on in life are highly unlikely to engage in.
> no one is really an “expert” in this subject yet
We've been building AI systems for approximately a century now. The first LLMs were developed before the digital computer existed! That's effectively a human lifetime. If that's not sufficient to develop expertise, it may be impossible.
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can anyone enumerate what exactly your concerns are cause I don't get it. AI I'd a great spell checker, a REALLY good spell checker, and people are losing their minds over it, I don't get it.
I don’t think we’re close, not even within 50 years of real AGI. Which may or may not decide to wipe us out. However, even given the current state of “AI”, I think there are countless dangers and risks. The ability to fabricate audio and video that’s indistinguishable from the real thing can absolutely wreck havoc on society. Even just the transition of spam and phishing from poorly worded blasts with grammatical err…
Only for as long people hold on to the idea that videos are reliable. Video is a medium. It will become as reliable as text. The existence of text, and specifically lies, has not wrecked society.
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also no reason to agree that AI will be aligned and everything will be fine. The question is what should our default stance be until proven otherwise? I submit it is not to continue building the potentially world-ending technology. When you see a gun on the table, what do you do? You assume its loaded until proven otherwise. For some reason, those who imagine AI will usher in some tech-utopia not only assume…
Whenever I see people jump to alignment they invariably have jumped over the _much_more questionable assumption that AGI’s will be godlike. This doesn’t even match what we observe in reality - drop a human into the middle of a jungle, and it doesn’t simply become a god just because it has an intelligence that’s orders of magnitude greater than the animals around it. In fact, most people wouldn’t even survive. Further…
But this is the question I will ask... Why is the human brain the pinnacle of all possible intelligence in your opinion? Why did evolution manage to produce the most efficient possible, the most 'intelligent' format via the random walk that can never be exceeded by anything else?
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Climate change has compounding effects Why is the default to assume that every change will be negative?
Because changes in climate mean that the existing infrastructure (in the form of cities, farmland, etc) that are optimized for the current conditions are no longer optimal. Very few cities are designed for conditions below sea level or in a desert, but if the city already exists and the desert and oceans comes to where they are then bad things will happen. I mean you're right that conditions in some places might get…
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can anyone enumerate what exactly your concerns are cause I don't get it. AI I'd a great spell checker, a REALLY good spell checker, and people are losing their minds over it, I don't get it.
I used to think that this fear was driven by rational minds until I read Michael Lewis' "Going Infinite" and learned more about effective altruism [EA]. Michael Lewis writes that what is remarkable about these guys [i.e. EAs] is that they're willing to follow their beliefs to their logical conclusion (paraphrasing) without regard to social cost/consequences or just inconvenience of it all. In fact, in my estimation t…
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also no reason to agree that AI will be aligned and everything will be fine. The question is what should our default stance be until proven otherwise? I submit it is not to continue building the potentially world-ending technology. When you see a gun on the table, what do you do? You assume its loaded until proven otherwise. For some reason, those who imagine AI will usher in some tech-utopia not only assume…
Your existentially risky AI is imaginary, it might not exist. Who would check an imaginary gun on a table?
We don't have any historical record if those peoples had discussions about possible scenarios like this. Where there imaginary guns in their future? What we do have records of is another people group showing up with a massive technological and biological disruption that nearly lead to their complete annihilation.
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context of the discussion matters. "When AI is used, its decisions must be explicable in human terms. No 'AI said so, so it's true'". Somehow the whole discussion is about how human mind cannot be explained either. Yea, the decisions made by the human mind can be explained in human terms for the vast majority of relevant cases.
Because (1) it holds AI to higher standard than humans, (2) it means that even if AI makes better decisions (name your metric), we would deny the use if those decisions if we could not sufficiently explain them. I note, that with certain things we do not do that. For example, with certain pharmaceuticals we were and are quite happy to take the effect even if we do not fully understand how it works.
Re: Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm totally lost as to how any of that is relevant to anything I've said. The claim I am rebutting is that we can't expect to say anything about AI causality because we can't even say anything about human causality.
I made no such claim. My claim is that it might not be useful to hold AI to a higher standard as humans. With humans we accept certain "whims" in decisions, which is the same as having some unexplainable bit in an AI decision. EDIT: it might not even be useful to insist on explainability if the results are better. We did not and do not do that in other areas.