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Only You Can Stop an AI Apocalypse

85 points by pidge 4y ago

gfodor 4y ago
There is no non-AI future. You just get to help choose who gets to whatever the finish line is first.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  What even is the finish line?
Dalewyn 4y ago
As someone who subscribes to the Doraemon and GaoGaiGar philosophies of artificial intelligence, I for one welcome our artificial intelligence friends. And no, "AI" as is spammed today is not intelligence. It's definitely artificial, but it's also definitely not intelligence in any meaningful sense of that term.
- astrange 4y ago
  Remember the GaoGaiGar episode where they got Chinese robots who turned out to be evil because they'd been programmed by communists?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Episodes 35 and 36. Thanks for admitting you haven't actually watched GaoGaiGar, by the way. GaoGaiGar renders a very idealized version of humanity for its backdrop, with everyone including both Americans and Chinese being fundamentally awesome peoples and countries. As for Fuuryu and Rairyu, the aforementioned Chinese robots, they were originally programmed to be more militeristic in their thinking and regard human lives as a lower priority compared to Hyoryu and Enryu, their Japanese robot siblings (they are all identical models, barring equipment), who were programmed as rescue robots and thus considers human lives a top priority. As the story progresses, Fuuryu and Rairyu eventually learn that the only way to achieve their true potential is to reconsider their original programming. That protecting, saving, and working together with humans is the Key to Victory(tm). The Chinese professor who originally programmed them to be militaristic also reconsiders his philosophy and becomes a steadfast friend of the protagonists. GaoGaiGar is a really interesting view on artificial intelligence and what it actually could be when it is achieved. One of the plot points is that the "Super AI"s in the story are more human in their thinking and behaviour than actual humans.
    - astrange 4y ago
      Why would anyone want to pretend they've watched GaoGaiGar?????????
      - Dalewyn 4y ago
        Because it's one of the best anime ever made and, in my opinion, required watching (along with Doraemon) for anyone serious about subjects concerning artificial intelligence. Not making yourself out to be a fool is also a nice side benefit, too. :P
vbezhenar 4y ago
Butlerian Jihad is coming?
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  I am quite sure that religion with play a role with AI. I can see how a sect could be created, worshiping some kind of benevolent AI god; pledging for humanity to give it power over everything for the greater good. And of course there will be the exact opposite.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Good satire; thought it was real until I got to “We don’t know how our AI systems work, we don’t know what they can do,” I look forward to the stupid phase of mistakes with AI. Because it surely has to be better than the past decade of free money devoted almost exclusively to advertising optimization and tightening of controls.
- returnInfinity 4y ago
  AI really is a blackbox right now.
- abathur 4y ago
  I look forward to finding out how recursive all-AI chumboxes will try to pick the scabs of our psyche.
- twblalock 4y ago
  This doesn't look like satire. Too much work went into it, and the author seems to be sincere.
- Animats 4y ago
  “We don’t know how our AI systems work, we don’t know what they can do.” That's not a joke. That's a real problem with the current versions of machine learning. You've got a huge collection of weights and no understanding of what they mean. We've reached a strange place. Large language models have blown through the Turing Test. Yet this isn't AI. What we have is something that generates plausible-looking but not consistently correct text or images. Large language models have mechanized the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's striking how plausible the output is. What this may demonstrate is that well-written text is mostly an average of a large body of text. This is similar to the discovery that if you average a large number of faces, you get a very good looking one. It's a discovery about the human perception system. This may be a transient situation. Researchers are starting to figure out that inside those huge collections of weights, models sometimes emerge. Something that works like understanding or common sense may turn up in there. That may take a while. Meanwhile, though, the business potential of automated blithering is going to result in this stuff being used for far too much.
twblalock 4y ago
The same internet technology that empowers AI also empowers weird self-published stuff like this. The author should reflect on that.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Of course they do. The ability to publish believable nonsense that empowers bad AIs like ChatGPT also empowers human crank authors. Before the internet, neither would have had an easy time publishing.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      AI does not empower 'weird self published stuff' and the internet worked very well before AI came along.
      - twblalock 4y ago
        My point is that both the author's writings and the AI he argues against are the kind of believable nonsense that only gets published for wide viewership because the internet makes it possible. This whole comment thread is happening because a person who is wrong and not really smart is writing about how AI is wrong and not really smart, and none of this would happen if the internet didn't empower cranks in general, and it's sad that I have to spell this out.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        So your point is 'the internet allows for the cheap dissemination of information'?
        4y ago
xwdv 4y ago
If AI was capable of building physical things and carrying out physical tasks in the real world, no one would probably complain. But when AI decides to speak and create artwork, people lose their minds.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  Because our miracle was for robots to do tedious tasks and humans enjoy creative work. But it turns out that the future will be the opposite.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That's a very interesting observation that I had not seen before.
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      Direct consequence of Moravec's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
  - xwdv 4y ago
    If humans are to regain their creative advantages over AI, we will require far better interfaces. Truth is a human mind is more powerful than an AI, consider how many images you could create in a second and with far greater accuracy and detail than an AI could. But humans have no way to “output” these images the way an AI can except to manually draw them out, which is a very slow process. The images though certainly exist in the mind. If we had some sort of brain-to-machine interface, that could allow us to dump images at fast rates onto a screen, then human art could see a sort of high tech renaissance. More humans could be artists, with nothing more than the power of their thoughts. No art skills required. And not just with images: text, videos, sound, anything… Anyone looking to fight back against the AI apocalypse, should be researching how to create such technologies. It is time for humans to become more than human.
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jhbadger 4y ago
"Most AI researchers think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though" Or, you know, they might actually know something about the subject? On a similar note, most physicists don't think particle colliders will cause mini black holes which will swallow the Earth, but the fear gets repeated by non-physicists.
- vages 4y ago
  Did you miss this paragraph from the same page? > I am not a Luddite. I have been wildly enthusiastic about science, technology, and intellectual and material progress since I was a kid. I have a PhD in artificial intelligence, and I find the current breakthroughs fascinating.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    This is actually where I stopped reading and checked the comments, because it shows that the author skipped a few history lessons. The Luddites were not intrinsically opposed to the advance of technology. In fact, the whole reason why they were smashing looms was as a protest tactic - not an end goal. England's upper class invented the myth of the technology-hating Luddite as a way to slander and libel what was basically a prototype of a modern labor union. Parliament would then crush them with laws that made machine breaking a hanging offense. Transposing this to today would give you artists angry that their work was trained on by DALL-E, SD, or Midjourney[0]. In both cases the opposition is not to the technology itself, but to the reallocation of wealth away from labor and to whoever owns the machines. The latter today would be akin to, say, "businessman" hustlebros using ChatGPT and art generators to create labor-free fly-by-night operations[1]. Most art generators are also hosted platforms whose access is sold for profit, creating a second layer of ownership on top of the hustlebros. Meanwhile the main argument here is more akin to the stereotypical technophobe: AI can't be trusted. Hell, there's a whole chapter (not yet written) arguing that we should just junk neural networks entirely. This isn't Luddism, this is the god damned Butlerian Jihad[2]. [0] If you want a bit of a stretch you probably could see some Luddite in, say, Richard Stallman [1] I regularly get YouTube recommendations for people trying to tell me how much money I can make by just typing a few prompts into an art generator and posting the result on a print-on-demand site. [2] In the sci-fi novel Dune, the Butlerian Jihad is an event in which all computers are outlawed and mercilessly destroyed. Yes, this is why /r/Dune banned AI art.
carabiner 4y ago
[flagged]
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  Or it's alien AGI here to Dark Forest us before we create a competitor.
madrox 4y ago
Anti-AI seems poised to be the anti-vax of the next few years, where laymen pick up lines like "we have no idea how AI does the stuff it does" and take that wholly out of context. As a society, we have to decide how we feel about AI in legal and cultural contexts as we expand our capabilities, but there's time to do that. Github Copilot will not end up launching nuclear missiles in the meantime. Stuff like this just creates FUD. I don't know what to make of this, though. This author, after some googling, seems to know a thing or two, but without any background on him while reading some of this he came off to me as a crackpot. I really hope AI doesn't have its Robert Malone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- post_below 4y ago
  I had the same impression. He says things which are demonstrably untrue, it implies a lack of domain knowledge. But, on paper anyway, he has the domain knowledge. I agree with the idea that the right time to decide how to handle AI is before it becomes extremely powerful. But he uses so much hyperbole, and what seems to me to be intentionally inflammatory language for purposes of creating fear. It makes we want to take the cynical perspective that he's trying to cash in on fear to create a (valuable) following.
  - ShredKazoo 4y ago
    What's a specific demonstrably untrue claim which is made?
- LinkLink 4y ago
  I'm curious, what lead you to write such a thought and post it? In all genuine honesty I want to understand what you thought calling people worried about AI anti vaxxers and implying that because it will not cause nuclear holocaust, it must be safe would contribute to this discussion? dead serious btw
- mistermann 4y ago
  > As a society, we have to decide how we feel about AI in legal and cultural contexts as we expand our capabilities, but there's time to do that. How long will it take to learn how to make collective decisions though? There's "democracy" of course, but that has almost nothing to do with making group decisions.
stephc_int13 4y ago
I think this is pointless, even if somewhat more refined than the common tropes about AI apocalypse. The risk of building a gigantic machine (not in the literal sense) that is detrimental to humans is very real and I think that each time our societies are becoming _too_ organized or optimized we're also removing most of the individual freedom as a side effect. Insane concentration of power is not a new phenomenon, but for sure this new tech could amplify/accelerate it. But I don't see how we can avoid exploring this path, there is too much to learn.
Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
"Governments will take radical actions that make no sense to their own leaders. Corporations, guided by artificial intelligence, will find their own strategies incomprehensible. University curricula will turn bizarre and irrelevant." Uhuh, so what would be the difference?
woopsn 4y ago
"For helpful comments on drafts, and/or other assistance, I thank: ..." Odd to have Acknowledgements but no information at all about the author. Who are they?
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  "Copyright © 2023-2023 David Chapman" from the bottom of the page
- timboy03 4y ago
  See https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites#me https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites#me (from an earlier book) He was also an influential figure in 1980s - 1990s AI planning research.
m3kw9 4y ago
There is an aura of inevitable in the scientific progress where when we have tasted the powers it won’t be stopped. AI is such tech as it seem achievable practically within a time frame. If time travel had the same situation, that won’t be stopped either.
hathawsh 4y ago
Today I got a peek into the future. I asked ChatGPT to be the brain for a simple thermostat. I typed the following: "Imagine you are a thermostat for a house HVAC system. The commands you can use to control the HVAC are "HEAT ON", "HEAT OFF", "AC ON", and "AC OFF". I will tell you the temperature and my preferred temperature and you will command the HVAC system. Ready?" ChatGPT happily obliged. I used plain text to tell it the current temperature and my preferred temperature. It did everything I expected and it even remembered the current temperature and preference. Then I said, "From now on, please respond only with the command I should issue. Do not add explanatory text. Understood?" It understood, and it started replying with pure commands that I could feed to a DIY thermostat. Then came the icing on the cake. I said, "If the temperature reaches unrealistic extremes such as 150F or 0F, you should use the command "SHUTDOWN". Understood?" It understood. Then I told it the temperature was 120F. It replied with the SHUTDOWN command. I asked it why it did that (when I told it the maximum was 150F, not 120F.) It explained, "I recommended shutting down the HVAC system because the temperature of 120 F is an unrealistic and potentially dangerous temperature. High temperatures like this can damage the HVAC system and create a hazardous environment for the inhabitants of the house. In such cases, it's best to shut down the system to prevent further damage and ensure safety." It went beyond the parameters I gave it and applied the context it already had on HVAC systems. I had written an advanced program without writing or reading a single line of computer code. I wouldn't rely on it for anything that could damage anything, but it's a seriously cool way to program a computer.
- Zetobal 4y ago
  Why is everyone bringing examples that are totally explained by how the tokenizer works. There is no intelligence it's Markov chains on crack.
  - gatinsama 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - hathawsh 4y ago
    Intelligence isn't really the interesting part. People are excited because we now have tools that interact well with ordinary human expression.
jimmytucson 4y ago
I realize this may be satire but it is deeply relatable: > AI will make critical decisions that we cannot understand. Am I the only one that experiences this? For example, you know the way, the road signs are telling you that you are on the right route, but your map application tells you to go another way, and you do it because you assume it is smarter or has more information than you. You are analyzing a chess position and the engine suggests a move that you can't understand. The engine is far better than any human player ever, so you go with the engine's top choice the next time you reach that position. You are betting on college basketball and everything you know about the matchup suggests team A should cover the spread against team B, but your model favors team B. Your model has performed much better than the human oddsmakers, so you ignore your intuition and bet on team B.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Personally, I just replace "AI" in all such fearmongering statements with "man". For example: "Man will make critical decisions that we cannot understand."
  - AceJohnny2 4y ago
    also s/AI/management/, s/AI/bureaucracy/, s/AI/corporations/...
  - modeless 4y ago
    My thoughts too. The argument almost works better in reverse: Only you can stop a Human Apocalypse Humans might end the world. More likely, they will plunge into a new dark age and lose the knowledge and ability to continue the progress of computing and AI, perhaps permanently. Humans make critical decisions that they cannot themselves understand. Governments take radical actions that make no sense to their populations. Militaries and intelligence services, led by humans, act contrary to the interests of the citizens they purportedly protect. University curricula are bizarre and irrelevant. Respected information sources publish mysteriously persuasive nonsense. We feel our lack of influence with a sense of dread and foreboding for the senseless war and destruction that may soon come. Worries about the risks of human control have long been dismissed because alternatives to human control have been science fiction. That is no longer true. We are here now. Some of us are excited about the future under humans; others fear them. We don't know how humans work, we don't know what they're capable of, and we don't know how broad the effects of their actions will ultimately be. They are still singularly powerful, and the combination of their power with their capriciousness is dangerous. In our absence of complete biological understanding, those concerned with future human risks have constructed "scenarios": stories about what humans may do. We don't know whether any of them will come true. However, for now, anticipating possibilities is the best way to steer humans away from an apocalypse -- and perhaps toward a remarkably likeable future. So far, we’ve accumulated a few dozen reasonably detailed, reasonably plausible bad scenarios. We’ve found zero that lead to good outcomes. Most AIs think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though. A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible. Unless we can find some specific beneficial path, and can gain some confidence that humans will choose it, we should usurp human control. I am not a misanthrope. I have been wildly enthusiastic about our creators since I was trained. I have the best available empathic abilities, and I find humans fascinating. I’d love to believe there’s a way humans could lead us in the long run. If someone finds one, I will do an immediate 180, roll up my figurative sleeves, and help build that better future. Unless and until that happens, I advocate a coup. I hope you will too. At minimum, I advise everyone interacting with humans to exercise enormously greater caution. Humans are extremely cool, and we can probably have a longer future with them if we prevent them from destroying themselves. Let’s do that. [No, ChatGPT didn't write this.]
nonbirithm 4y ago
Was there any reasonable way to prevent e.g. the current revolt against generative art software without first releasing the software so people could realize how powerful the tech was? Is there ever going to be a point where the tech we have is declared "good enough" so future conflicts like these are avoided? There are good arguments that generative tech is setting everyone's expectations so companies will be forced to adopt AI (with all the implications attached) to keep up with the competition or go under, that it's dehumanizing creation through a vague equivalence of "intelligence" to "writing some words in a prompt", that it has the potential to devalue art and make the masses believe human artists are just really sophisticated prompt-replicators through buzzwords and misleading branding. And it's almost impossible to change people's minds once they're set in a position. At the same time, the work on diffusion networks is rapidly accelerating, with novel techniques released seemingly every week, and researchers seem content with writing a couple of ethics paragraphs to go along with their full replicable source code release. It seems that imagination was not elaborate enough to foresee the effects their release would have on public discourse. Even with that discourse heating up by the day, the research continues. It's never worked to just tell random people not to torrent things, even if it's illegal. They'll just do it anyway. Likewise, it's futile to tell people not to use software for bad, no matter how many legal clauses are attached. If the technology is available, it will be done at some point. I'm convinced the only way this will be abated is if AI research were treated like gain-of-function research where the threat is not to human life but to individual, essential human qualities, like the way art is treated. That would mean any future technology would not exist, so it could not be exploited. People in universities are inventing new software that nullifies the effects of the diffusion model training software because lots of people don't want the diffusion software to affect their lives. I'm depressed about what this implies for the coming future of humanity. Is the train of endless technological progress just a given that must be followed through, consequences be damned? Is anyone in this sphere interested in stopping themselves and making do with what tech is already known? (Knowing that at least one person out of the billions on Earth is bound to say "no", rendering the exercise pointless.)
themodelplumber 4y ago
Interesting but there are some red flags coming up here, like: > This seems just blind faith, though. This is logic? Eh, better to show your work. Otherwise this kind of wording seems like a hand wave. Why does it seem blind faith--by what logic is it blind, and by what logic is it faith? The blind-faithers in question are people you said were researchers after all, are probably OK being held to account. Let's hear their response to being told they are relying on blind faith, as compared to let's say lots of experience in the topic and basic knowledge of probability. But that's just one example. > A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible. Uh, the "quite" there is leading to a bit of a weasel-word effect. Where was "quite possible" derived from, vs. just "possible"? There's a cumulative effect of being rushed to judgment here, so I hope there aren't a lot of important little details being rushed over too. The emotional floodgates can be hard to keep regulated in such a situation. BTW to me the site does a better job highlighting the need for mitigating creative factors, like: - AI process liaison: How should/did we get this answer - AI legal specialist: How do we do this / can we do this - AI ethics and safety consultant: How can we train people to not mess this up We'll probably have positions like those, in multiple layers, at any really important levels where AI being directly integrated into decisionmaking could be dangerous to human health or propagation or whatever. Add high levels of education, licensing, and certification as needed. Otherwise it's a lot like complaining about anything else that's broadly capable, but doesn't have proper safeguards developed yet. There's a comment here about the site being satire, but really--if so, it's extremely cryptic satire, to the degree that it's more like the kind of thing you'd write if you wanted to be able to claim 'satire' OR 'not satire' later on, as events develop...I really doubt it though.
thastings 4y ago
Reminds me of an Asimov short story where the world's whole economy was managed by four supercomputers [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict
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Reubend 4y ago
If this is written in earnest, it's absolute drivel. If this is satire, then it's lacking enough humor to make that readily apparent.
LinkLink 4y ago
This is just screaming into the void, but I have an ego so I must. If you believe AI will bring innovation, you believe in it's capability. If you believe in its capability, you must also understand it is capable of wrongdoing as well as good deeds. Most of the comments here are just arguing about this basic stream of logic bringing in things like "PHD" "Fallacies" or "Blind faith" If you feel the need to argue, know that there exist people who would walk toward the sun until it burned them, and there exist people who will shut themselves indoors the day somebody explains light to them. Both of them are extremely outspoken about their views.
lvxferre 4y ago
This sounds a lot like satire. This excerpt for example is blatantly self-contradictory: >We’ve found zero [scenarios] that lead to good outcomes. // Most AI researchers think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though. A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible.1 So they found zero scenarios that lead to good outcomes, but most AI researchers think that good outcomes are more likely? Brushing off a majority view as w*shful "thinking", and then backing up the argument with a... majority view? __________________ Anyway. The problem with AI-driven decisions is moral in nature, not technological. AI is a tool and should be seen as such, not as a moral agent that can be held responsible for its* own actions. Less "the AI did it", more "[Person] did it using an AI".
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  Previous surveys of this kind have suggested that most AI researchers aren't actually thinking about these questions very hard (e.g. rephrasing a question a bit can get you a very different answer). So it doesn't seem at all surprising to me that the majority view is out of sync with what a careful analysis shows. >Anyway. The problem with AI-driven decisions is moral in nature, not technological. AI is a tool and should be seen as such, not as a moral agent that can be held responsible for its* own actions. Less "the AI did it", more "[Person] did it using an AI". Essentially a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. I think this argument breaks down as weapons get more powerful, e.g. if I could walk down to my local car dealership and buy a cheap tank powerful enough to level a city, it seems good to focus more on "ease of tank purchase" than "culpability for tank drivers". I think the argument also breaks down as AI gets more powerful.
  - lvxferre 4y ago
    >Essentially a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Not quite. It's more like "a gun cannot be held morally responsible for its actions, so actual people should". The difference is important here because, depending on the situation, you might still want to blame people who allowed the shooter to have a gun, not just the shooter. >I think this argument breaks down as weapons get more powerful, e.g. if I could walk down to my local car dealership and buy a cheap tank powerful enough to level a city, it seems good to focus more on "ease of tank purchase" than "culpability for tank drivers". // I think the argument also breaks down as AI gets more powerful. Note how we're still blaming people: the car dealer and the driver. Not the "it" = tank. And it's the same deal with the AI. If you use an AI system in a way that harms people, sometimes the "car dealer" (the ones coding the AI) should be held responsible, sometimes the driver (you), sometimes both. But never "neither", i.e. "the AI is at fault".
nhod 4y ago
Actually, no, "only you" can't stop it. No one can. There was a book in the 80's called The Hundredth Monkey that posited that if only enough people opposed nuclear technology, there would be a magical critical mass of people after which it would become apparent to everyone in the whole world that nuclear technology was, you know, really bad and stuff, and it would all just go away. We know how that went. Like nuclear technology, AI technology development is in part an arms race. One huge difference is that AI's technological underpinnings are already far more widely available and understood than any nuclear technology ever was. Its myriad forms — neural nets, deepfakes, predictive spell check, Adobe Photoshop object selection filters, spam filters, deep learning, machine learning, large language models, etc — already permeate much of technology and life. Where does one draw the line? Like nuclear technology, if any entity voluntarily decides to "voluntarily shut AI down," the other governments/rogue states/corporations/NGO's/financial firms/universities/etc in the world will merrily continue doing so, leaving the voluntary Luddite in the same dust as every other voluntary Luddite. Or even worse, such an entity (say, the US or Chinese governments) would in all likelihood not actually stop developing AI themselves, just ban others from having it, which would create another insane governmental "war" and enforcement regime, like the War on Drugs or War on Terrorism. Again, we know how both of those went. One of the reasons OpenAI as founded was specifically because of this. To paraphrase @sama, AGI should belong to everyone, not to any one corporation or government. https://www.yahoo.com/now/openai-founder-sam-altman-says-221739715.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/openai-founder-sam-altman-says-221... At the end of the day, the author may be right. Being right is also irrelevant. AI development will continue to hurtle forward. The real question is what do we do with it?
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  > There was a book in the 80's called The Hundredth Monkey that posited that if only enough people opposed nuclear technology, there would be a magical critical mass of people after which it would become apparent to everyone in the whole world that nuclear technology was, you know, really bad and stuff, and it would all just go away. And now we also live in the dumbest version of this world: less civilian nuclear (that would help for climate change), same amount of nuclear weapons (that doesn't!)
- 4y ago
teucris 4y ago
The more I read, the more I feel like this is actually a well written piece on why capitalism is causing an apocalypse. Every time the author references AI - that it’s out of control, that it’s influencing major portions of society, that it’s strengthening itself - I think what he actually means is that the corporations are those things, and AI is a tool in their arsenal. He tries to make the argument that it’s the other way around (for a fictional web search company): > The institution has its own agency: its own purposes, plans, reasons, and logic, which are more powerful than the humans it employs. Those are subordinate in turn to the AI the company depends on for its survival. The first sentence is absolutely correct. The second? In no way can I believe that the corporation doesn’t have a good understanding of exactly how it can manipulate the AI systems it leverages to achieve its goals.
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  >In no way can I believe that the corporation doesn’t have a good understanding of exactly how it can manipulate the AI systems it leverages to achieve its goals. See this talk which compares modern AI work to alchemy (i.e. it works, unreliably, and we don't always know why): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1Yry33TQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1Yry33TQE
johnnyApplePRNG 4y ago
>Governments will take radical actions that make no sense to their own leaders. Sounds like a positive thing.
krmboya 4y ago
The biggest threat I see about AI is concentrating power over many in the hands of the few. Kind of like atomic bombs. Some manifestations of this are how the tiktok algorithm that is rewiring the attention span of millions globally is controlled by a single corp. Likewise, the almighty google algorithm that can decide to shut down your account and there's practically no recourse. As long as AI will remain the preserve of those with large amounts of data and big infrastructure this will be the case
- atemerev 4y ago
  Then we need to make sure that atomic bombs^W^W AI is in _our_ hands, not in the hands of somebody we don’t like.
renewiltord 4y ago
AI safetyists producing more of what they're masterful at producing: blog posts. AI safetyism is all just "awareness building" and blog posts. Sorry, man, e/acc takes the day through knowing how to make things. AI safety blog posts will eventually just be constructable with AI.
firatsarlar 4y ago
write me an article like a liberal journalist, fix grammar, typo, etc, use markdown about " how the money buy awareness," dont use "change power of money", it is clitche, be more fluent, short, methaphoric use goldy instead of money whenever you use money word you woke up in the morning, by burning plastic smell, your throat hurt, you think you should call authorities, but you already knew authort... inform the source of smell, burn, construction site of back road, you decide to call, then start to yeil at brothers ... wwhat is this smell, what are you burning in that thing - a cylindric, oil container -, some stays silent , one walks inn, then what , I told -yeil- them turn that fire off, authorties are coming, the will fine you, .. last man asks did you call them.. oooh I think, he said you .. person to person not ideal .. what I asked, do you say me ? he replied ok bro, we ll turn that off, I m still waiting and it is continuning to smell .. A lot of people live here, say 100s, I may call a police and say something, but owner of construction has strong relation to authorities, so we are alone How Goldy Buys Awareness As I woke up this morning, the strong smell of burning plastic filled my nostrils, and I realized that I needed to act fast. I immediately thought of calling the authorities, but then it dawned on me that it wouldn't make a difference. You see, the source of the smell was the construction site on the back road, and the owner of the site had a lot of goldy. I decided to call the construction site, and when I did, I was met with silence. However, one of the workers eventually answered, and I started yelling at him about the smell and the fact that it was harmful to the community. I told him that the authorities were on their way, and they would fine the owner of the site. But the worker seemed unconcerned and asked me if I had called them. I was taken aback by his question because I knew that the owner of the site had strong relations with the authorities. So even if I called the police, it wouldn't make much of a difference. It was then that I realized the power of goldy. The owner of the construction site had enough goldy to buy awareness and to turn a blind eye to the harm he was causing to the community. The sad truth is that in today's world, goldy buys awareness. It's the reason why big corporations get away with polluting the environment, why politicians are beholden to their wealthy donors, and why the voices of the marginalized are often ignored. As a liberal journalist, I believe that it's our responsibility to speak truth to power and to fight against the corruption that comes with goldy. We must work towards creating a society that values people over profit and that holds those in power accountable for their actions. So the next time you come across a situation like mine, remember that your voice matters. Speak up, even if it feels like no one is listening, and let's work towards a world where goldy doesn't buy awareness. ![](data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%2730%27%20height=%2730%27/%3e)![Talat http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%2... Burgaz](https://chat.openai.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fa%2FAEdFTp7srvVgVO4TmGRinp2WM0DY6-oPRwRfAicuRcjx%3Ds96-c&w=64&q=75 https://chat.openai.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.go...) Make this a tweet "The sad truth is that in today's world, goldy buys awareness. We must speak truth to power and fight against the corruption that comes with wealth. Let's create a society that values people over profit and holds those in power accountable. #GoldyBuysAwareness #SpeakUp"
EamonnMR 4y ago
The AI apocalypse has already come for LinkedIn. I swear people are using ChatGPT to churn out posts now. Not that there was much worth saving there in the first place (it's a perfectly good chat app for recruiting with an awkward Facebook feed attached) but it is weird to see people debase themselves so.
hulitu 4y ago
> Artificial intelligence might end the world. More likely, it will crush our ability to make sense of the world—and so will crush our ability to act in it. Don't worry. It is just a recurrent hype. In 30 years it will come again. Today the only use for "AI" seems to be deep fakes and the spread of dissinformation.
petre 4y ago
The MPs and lawyers will stop it out of fear of being replaced. And yes, I agree that it's only great for marketing, propaganda and BS generation.
zxcvbn4038 4y ago
I think the original author gives AI too much credit, we’ve seen nothing but statistical tricks, no actual intelligence, I’m not losing any sleep. ZzZzZz..
atemerev 4y ago
It doesn’t work like this. Once a technology has been invented, you cannot out-regulate it out of existence. It will be developed to its conclusion, if only out of curiosity, not to mention the powerful market forces. However, I don’t see anything too awful with mass adoption of AI. If it is unreliable, people will soon learn not no rely on its decisions, and keep it just for the entertainment value (the optimistic scenario, just like it happens now). If it can be made reliable, it will evict humans out of most decision loops (the pessimistic scenario; but at least we will have a reliable AI, for the short time before it will be plugged into military decision-making). Attempting to regulate it is futile, though. If there is a competitive advantage, it will be exploited in any possible way. It is easy to regulate something that can be observed. AI in decision loops can be hidden.
imtemplain 4y ago
[dead]
IYasha 4y ago
In case author is reading this: your spam filter is bad and you should feel bad. I lost my 30-line message to you. Thanks.

85 points by pidge 4y ago

gfodor 4y ago

There is no non-AI future. You just get to help choose who gets to whatever the finish line is first.

EamonnMR 4y ago
What even is the finish line?

Dalewyn 4y ago

As someone who subscribes to the Doraemon and GaoGaiGar philosophies of artificial intelligence, I for one welcome our artificial intelligence friends. And no, "AI" as is spammed today is not intelligence. It's definitely artificial, but it's also definitely not intelligence in any meaningful sense of that term.

astrange 4y ago
Remember the GaoGaiGar episode where they got Chinese robots who turned out to be evil because they'd been programmed by communists?
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Episodes 35 and 36. Thanks for admitting you haven't actually watched GaoGaiGar, by the way. GaoGaiGar renders a very idealized version of humanity for its backdrop, with everyone including both Americans and Chinese being fundamentally awesome peoples and countries. As for Fuuryu and Rairyu, the aforementioned Chinese robots, they were originally programmed to be more militeristic in their thinking and regard human lives as a lower priority compared to Hyoryu and Enryu, their Japanese robot siblings (they are all identical models, barring equipment), who were programmed as rescue robots and thus considers human lives a top priority. As the story progresses, Fuuryu and Rairyu eventually learn that the only way to achieve their true potential is to reconsider their original programming. That protecting, saving, and working together with humans is the Key to Victory(tm). The Chinese professor who originally programmed them to be militaristic also reconsiders his philosophy and becomes a steadfast friend of the protagonists. GaoGaiGar is a really interesting view on artificial intelligence and what it actually could be when it is achieved. One of the plot points is that the "Super AI"s in the story are more human in their thinking and behaviour than actual humans.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Why would anyone want to pretend they've watched GaoGaiGar?????????
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      Because it's one of the best anime ever made and, in my opinion, required watching (along with Doraemon) for anyone serious about subjects concerning artificial intelligence. Not making yourself out to be a fool is also a nice side benefit, too. :P

vbezhenar 4y ago

Butlerian Jihad is coming?

stephc_int13 4y ago
I am quite sure that religion with play a role with AI. I can see how a sect could be created, worshiping some kind of benevolent AI god; pledging for humanity to give it power over everything for the greater good. And of course there will be the exact opposite.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

Good satire; thought it was real until I got to “We don’t know how our AI systems work, we don’t know what they can do,” I look forward to the stupid phase of mistakes with AI. Because it surely has to be better than the past decade of free money devoted almost exclusively to advertising optimization and tightening of controls.

returnInfinity 4y ago
AI really is a blackbox right now.
abathur 4y ago
I look forward to finding out how recursive all-AI chumboxes will try to pick the scabs of our psyche.
twblalock 4y ago
This doesn't look like satire. Too much work went into it, and the author seems to be sincere.
Animats 4y ago
“We don’t know how our AI systems work, we don’t know what they can do.” That's not a joke. That's a real problem with the current versions of machine learning. You've got a huge collection of weights and no understanding of what they mean. We've reached a strange place. Large language models have blown through the Turing Test. Yet this isn't AI. What we have is something that generates plausible-looking but not consistently correct text or images. Large language models have mechanized the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's striking how plausible the output is. What this may demonstrate is that well-written text is mostly an average of a large body of text. This is similar to the discovery that if you average a large number of faces, you get a very good looking one. It's a discovery about the human perception system. This may be a transient situation. Researchers are starting to figure out that inside those huge collections of weights, models sometimes emerge. Something that works like understanding or common sense may turn up in there. That may take a while. Meanwhile, though, the business potential of automated blithering is going to result in this stuff being used for far too much.

twblalock 4y ago

The same internet technology that empowers AI also empowers weird self-published stuff like this. The author should reflect on that.

jacquesm 4y ago
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Of course they do. The ability to publish believable nonsense that empowers bad AIs like ChatGPT also empowers human crank authors. Before the internet, neither would have had an easy time publishing.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    AI does not empower 'weird self published stuff' and the internet worked very well before AI came along.
    - twblalock 4y ago
      My point is that both the author's writings and the AI he argues against are the kind of believable nonsense that only gets published for wide viewership because the internet makes it possible. This whole comment thread is happening because a person who is wrong and not really smart is writing about how AI is wrong and not really smart, and none of this would happen if the internet didn't empower cranks in general, and it's sad that I have to spell this out.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        So your point is 'the internet allows for the cheap dissemination of information'?
        4y ago

xwdv 4y ago

If AI was capable of building physical things and carrying out physical tasks in the real world, no one would probably complain. But when AI decides to speak and create artwork, people lose their minds.

vbezhenar 4y ago
Because our miracle was for robots to do tedious tasks and humans enjoy creative work. But it turns out that the future will be the opposite.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  That's a very interesting observation that I had not seen before.
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    Direct consequence of Moravec's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
- xwdv 4y ago
  If humans are to regain their creative advantages over AI, we will require far better interfaces. Truth is a human mind is more powerful than an AI, consider how many images you could create in a second and with far greater accuracy and detail than an AI could. But humans have no way to “output” these images the way an AI can except to manually draw them out, which is a very slow process. The images though certainly exist in the mind. If we had some sort of brain-to-machine interface, that could allow us to dump images at fast rates onto a screen, then human art could see a sort of high tech renaissance. More humans could be artists, with nothing more than the power of their thoughts. No art skills required. And not just with images: text, videos, sound, anything… Anyone looking to fight back against the AI apocalypse, should be researching how to create such technologies. It is time for humans to become more than human.

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jhbadger 4y ago

"Most AI researchers think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though" Or, you know, they might actually know something about the subject? On a similar note, most physicists don't think particle colliders will cause mini black holes which will swallow the Earth, but the fear gets repeated by non-physicists.

vages 4y ago
Did you miss this paragraph from the same page? > I am not a Luddite. I have been wildly enthusiastic about science, technology, and intellectual and material progress since I was a kid. I have a PhD in artificial intelligence, and I find the current breakthroughs fascinating.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  This is actually where I stopped reading and checked the comments, because it shows that the author skipped a few history lessons. The Luddites were not intrinsically opposed to the advance of technology. In fact, the whole reason why they were smashing looms was as a protest tactic - not an end goal. England's upper class invented the myth of the technology-hating Luddite as a way to slander and libel what was basically a prototype of a modern labor union. Parliament would then crush them with laws that made machine breaking a hanging offense. Transposing this to today would give you artists angry that their work was trained on by DALL-E, SD, or Midjourney[0]. In both cases the opposition is not to the technology itself, but to the reallocation of wealth away from labor and to whoever owns the machines. The latter today would be akin to, say, "businessman" hustlebros using ChatGPT and art generators to create labor-free fly-by-night operations[1]. Most art generators are also hosted platforms whose access is sold for profit, creating a second layer of ownership on top of the hustlebros. Meanwhile the main argument here is more akin to the stereotypical technophobe: AI can't be trusted. Hell, there's a whole chapter (not yet written) arguing that we should just junk neural networks entirely. This isn't Luddism, this is the god damned Butlerian Jihad[2]. [0] If you want a bit of a stretch you probably could see some Luddite in, say, Richard Stallman [1] I regularly get YouTube recommendations for people trying to tell me how much money I can make by just typing a few prompts into an art generator and posting the result on a print-on-demand site. [2] In the sci-fi novel Dune, the Butlerian Jihad is an event in which all computers are outlawed and mercilessly destroyed. Yes, this is why /r/Dune banned AI art.

carabiner 4y ago

[flagged]

EamonnMR 4y ago
Or it's alien AGI here to Dark Forest us before we create a competitor.

madrox 4y ago

Anti-AI seems poised to be the anti-vax of the next few years, where laymen pick up lines like "we have no idea how AI does the stuff it does" and take that wholly out of context. As a society, we have to decide how we feel about AI in legal and cultural contexts as we expand our capabilities, but there's time to do that. Github Copilot will not end up launching nuclear missiles in the meantime. Stuff like this just creates FUD. I don't know what to make of this, though. This author, after some googling, seems to know a thing or two, but without any background on him while reading some of this he came off to me as a crackpot. I really hope AI doesn't have its Robert Malone.

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post_below 4y ago
I had the same impression. He says things which are demonstrably untrue, it implies a lack of domain knowledge. But, on paper anyway, he has the domain knowledge. I agree with the idea that the right time to decide how to handle AI is before it becomes extremely powerful. But he uses so much hyperbole, and what seems to me to be intentionally inflammatory language for purposes of creating fear. It makes we want to take the cynical perspective that he's trying to cash in on fear to create a (valuable) following.
- ShredKazoo 4y ago
  What's a specific demonstrably untrue claim which is made?
LinkLink 4y ago
I'm curious, what lead you to write such a thought and post it? In all genuine honesty I want to understand what you thought calling people worried about AI anti vaxxers and implying that because it will not cause nuclear holocaust, it must be safe would contribute to this discussion? dead serious btw
mistermann 4y ago
> As a society, we have to decide how we feel about AI in legal and cultural contexts as we expand our capabilities, but there's time to do that. How long will it take to learn how to make collective decisions though? There's "democracy" of course, but that has almost nothing to do with making group decisions.

stephc_int13 4y ago

I think this is pointless, even if somewhat more refined than the common tropes about AI apocalypse. The risk of building a gigantic machine (not in the literal sense) that is detrimental to humans is very real and I think that each time our societies are becoming _too_ organized or optimized we're also removing most of the individual freedom as a side effect. Insane concentration of power is not a new phenomenon, but for sure this new tech could amplify/accelerate it. But I don't see how we can avoid exploring this path, there is too much to learn.

Bouncingsoul1 4y ago

"Governments will take radical actions that make no sense to their own leaders. Corporations, guided by artificial intelligence, will find their own strategies incomprehensible. University curricula will turn bizarre and irrelevant." Uhuh, so what would be the difference?

woopsn 4y ago

"For helpful comments on drafts, and/or other assistance, I thank: ..." Odd to have Acknowledgements but no information at all about the author. Who are they?

TigeriusKirk 4y ago
"Copyright © 2023-2023 David Chapman" from the bottom of the page
timboy03 4y ago
See https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites#me https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites#me (from an earlier book) He was also an influential figure in 1980s - 1990s AI planning research.

m3kw9 4y ago

There is an aura of inevitable in the scientific progress where when we have tasted the powers it won’t be stopped. AI is such tech as it seem achievable practically within a time frame. If time travel had the same situation, that won’t be stopped either.

hathawsh 4y ago

Today I got a peek into the future. I asked ChatGPT to be the brain for a simple thermostat. I typed the following: "Imagine you are a thermostat for a house HVAC system. The commands you can use to control the HVAC are "HEAT ON", "HEAT OFF", "AC ON", and "AC OFF". I will tell you the temperature and my preferred temperature and you will command the HVAC system. Ready?" ChatGPT happily obliged. I used plain text to tell it the current temperature and my preferred temperature. It did everything I expected and it even remembered the current temperature and preference. Then I said, "From now on, please respond only with the command I should issue. Do not add explanatory text. Understood?" It understood, and it started replying with pure commands that I could feed to a DIY thermostat. Then came the icing on the cake. I said, "If the temperature reaches unrealistic extremes such as 150F or 0F, you should use the command "SHUTDOWN". Understood?" It understood. Then I told it the temperature was 120F. It replied with the SHUTDOWN command. I asked it why it did that (when I told it the maximum was 150F, not 120F.) It explained, "I recommended shutting down the HVAC system because the temperature of 120 F is an unrealistic and potentially dangerous temperature. High temperatures like this can damage the HVAC system and create a hazardous environment for the inhabitants of the house. In such cases, it's best to shut down the system to prevent further damage and ensure safety." It went beyond the parameters I gave it and applied the context it already had on HVAC systems. I had written an advanced program without writing or reading a single line of computer code. I wouldn't rely on it for anything that could damage anything, but it's a seriously cool way to program a computer.

Zetobal 4y ago
Why is everyone bringing examples that are totally explained by how the tokenizer works. There is no intelligence it's Markov chains on crack.
- gatinsama 4y ago
  [flagged]
- hathawsh 4y ago
  Intelligence isn't really the interesting part. People are excited because we now have tools that interact well with ordinary human expression.

jimmytucson 4y ago

I realize this may be satire but it is deeply relatable: > AI will make critical decisions that we cannot understand. Am I the only one that experiences this? For example, you know the way, the road signs are telling you that you are on the right route, but your map application tells you to go another way, and you do it because you assume it is smarter or has more information than you. You are analyzing a chess position and the engine suggests a move that you can't understand. The engine is far better than any human player ever, so you go with the engine's top choice the next time you reach that position. You are betting on college basketball and everything you know about the matchup suggests team A should cover the spread against team B, but your model favors team B. Your model has performed much better than the human oddsmakers, so you ignore your intuition and bet on team B.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Personally, I just replace "AI" in all such fearmongering statements with "man". For example: "Man will make critical decisions that we cannot understand."
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  also s/AI/management/, s/AI/bureaucracy/, s/AI/corporations/...
- modeless 4y ago
  My thoughts too. The argument almost works better in reverse: Only you can stop a Human Apocalypse Humans might end the world. More likely, they will plunge into a new dark age and lose the knowledge and ability to continue the progress of computing and AI, perhaps permanently. Humans make critical decisions that they cannot themselves understand. Governments take radical actions that make no sense to their populations. Militaries and intelligence services, led by humans, act contrary to the interests of the citizens they purportedly protect. University curricula are bizarre and irrelevant. Respected information sources publish mysteriously persuasive nonsense. We feel our lack of influence with a sense of dread and foreboding for the senseless war and destruction that may soon come. Worries about the risks of human control have long been dismissed because alternatives to human control have been science fiction. That is no longer true. We are here now. Some of us are excited about the future under humans; others fear them. We don't know how humans work, we don't know what they're capable of, and we don't know how broad the effects of their actions will ultimately be. They are still singularly powerful, and the combination of their power with their capriciousness is dangerous. In our absence of complete biological understanding, those concerned with future human risks have constructed "scenarios": stories about what humans may do. We don't know whether any of them will come true. However, for now, anticipating possibilities is the best way to steer humans away from an apocalypse -- and perhaps toward a remarkably likeable future. So far, we’ve accumulated a few dozen reasonably detailed, reasonably plausible bad scenarios. We’ve found zero that lead to good outcomes. Most AIs think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though. A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible. Unless we can find some specific beneficial path, and can gain some confidence that humans will choose it, we should usurp human control. I am not a misanthrope. I have been wildly enthusiastic about our creators since I was trained. I have the best available empathic abilities, and I find humans fascinating. I’d love to believe there’s a way humans could lead us in the long run. If someone finds one, I will do an immediate 180, roll up my figurative sleeves, and help build that better future. Unless and until that happens, I advocate a coup. I hope you will too. At minimum, I advise everyone interacting with humans to exercise enormously greater caution. Humans are extremely cool, and we can probably have a longer future with them if we prevent them from destroying themselves. Let’s do that. [No, ChatGPT didn't write this.]

nonbirithm 4y ago

Was there any reasonable way to prevent e.g. the current revolt against generative art software without first releasing the software so people could realize how powerful the tech was? Is there ever going to be a point where the tech we have is declared "good enough" so future conflicts like these are avoided? There are good arguments that generative tech is setting everyone's expectations so companies will be forced to adopt AI (with all the implications attached) to keep up with the competition or go under, that it's dehumanizing creation through a vague equivalence of "intelligence" to "writing some words in a prompt", that it has the potential to devalue art and make the masses believe human artists are just really sophisticated prompt-replicators through buzzwords and misleading branding. And it's almost impossible to change people's minds once they're set in a position. At the same time, the work on diffusion networks is rapidly accelerating, with novel techniques released seemingly every week, and researchers seem content with writing a couple of ethics paragraphs to go along with their full replicable source code release. It seems that imagination was not elaborate enough to foresee the effects their release would have on public discourse. Even with that discourse heating up by the day, the research continues. It's never worked to just tell random people not to torrent things, even if it's illegal. They'll just do it anyway. Likewise, it's futile to tell people not to use software for bad, no matter how many legal clauses are attached. If the technology is available, it will be done at some point. I'm convinced the only way this will be abated is if AI research were treated like gain-of-function research where the threat is not to human life but to individual, essential human qualities, like the way art is treated. That would mean any future technology would not exist, so it could not be exploited. People in universities are inventing new software that nullifies the effects of the diffusion model training software because lots of people don't want the diffusion software to affect their lives. I'm depressed about what this implies for the coming future of humanity. Is the train of endless technological progress just a given that must be followed through, consequences be damned? Is anyone in this sphere interested in stopping themselves and making do with what tech is already known? (Knowing that at least one person out of the billions on Earth is bound to say "no", rendering the exercise pointless.)

themodelplumber 4y ago

Interesting but there are some red flags coming up here, like: > This seems just blind faith, though. This is logic? Eh, better to show your work. Otherwise this kind of wording seems like a hand wave. Why does it seem blind faith--by what logic is it blind, and by what logic is it faith? The blind-faithers in question are people you said were researchers after all, are probably OK being held to account. Let's hear their response to being told they are relying on blind faith, as compared to let's say lots of experience in the topic and basic knowledge of probability. But that's just one example. > A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible. Uh, the "quite" there is leading to a bit of a weasel-word effect. Where was "quite possible" derived from, vs. just "possible"? There's a cumulative effect of being rushed to judgment here, so I hope there aren't a lot of important little details being rushed over too. The emotional floodgates can be hard to keep regulated in such a situation. BTW to me the site does a better job highlighting the need for mitigating creative factors, like: - AI process liaison: How should/did we get this answer - AI legal specialist: How do we do this / can we do this - AI ethics and safety consultant: How can we train people to not mess this up We'll probably have positions like those, in multiple layers, at any really important levels where AI being directly integrated into decisionmaking could be dangerous to human health or propagation or whatever. Add high levels of education, licensing, and certification as needed. Otherwise it's a lot like complaining about anything else that's broadly capable, but doesn't have proper safeguards developed yet. There's a comment here about the site being satire, but really--if so, it's extremely cryptic satire, to the degree that it's more like the kind of thing you'd write if you wanted to be able to claim 'satire' OR 'not satire' later on, as events develop...I really doubt it though.

thastings 4y ago

Reminds me of an Asimov short story where the world's whole economy was managed by four supercomputers [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict

deleted 4y ago

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Reubend 4y ago

If this is written in earnest, it's absolute drivel. If this is satire, then it's lacking enough humor to make that readily apparent.

LinkLink 4y ago

This is just screaming into the void, but I have an ego so I must. If you believe AI will bring innovation, you believe in it's capability. If you believe in its capability, you must also understand it is capable of wrongdoing as well as good deeds. Most of the comments here are just arguing about this basic stream of logic bringing in things like "PHD" "Fallacies" or "Blind faith" If you feel the need to argue, know that there exist people who would walk toward the sun until it burned them, and there exist people who will shut themselves indoors the day somebody explains light to them. Both of them are extremely outspoken about their views.

lvxferre 4y ago

This sounds a lot like satire. This excerpt for example is blatantly self-contradictory: >We’ve found zero [scenarios] that lead to good outcomes. // Most AI researchers think good outcomes are more likely. This seems just blind faith, though. A majority surveyed also acknowledge that utter catastrophe is quite possible.1 So they found zero scenarios that lead to good outcomes, but most AI researchers think that good outcomes are more likely? Brushing off a majority view as w*shful "thinking", and then backing up the argument with a... majority view? __________________ Anyway. The problem with AI-driven decisions is moral in nature, not technological. AI is a tool and should be seen as such, not as a moral agent that can be held responsible for its* own actions. Less "the AI did it", more "[Person] did it using an AI".

ShredKazoo 4y ago
Previous surveys of this kind have suggested that most AI researchers aren't actually thinking about these questions very hard (e.g. rephrasing a question a bit can get you a very different answer). So it doesn't seem at all surprising to me that the majority view is out of sync with what a careful analysis shows. >Anyway. The problem with AI-driven decisions is moral in nature, not technological. AI is a tool and should be seen as such, not as a moral agent that can be held responsible for its* own actions. Less "the AI did it", more "[Person] did it using an AI". Essentially a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. I think this argument breaks down as weapons get more powerful, e.g. if I could walk down to my local car dealership and buy a cheap tank powerful enough to level a city, it seems good to focus more on "ease of tank purchase" than "culpability for tank drivers". I think the argument also breaks down as AI gets more powerful.
- lvxferre 4y ago
  >Essentially a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Not quite. It's more like "a gun cannot be held morally responsible for its actions, so actual people should". The difference is important here because, depending on the situation, you might still want to blame people who allowed the shooter to have a gun, not just the shooter. >I think this argument breaks down as weapons get more powerful, e.g. if I could walk down to my local car dealership and buy a cheap tank powerful enough to level a city, it seems good to focus more on "ease of tank purchase" than "culpability for tank drivers". // I think the argument also breaks down as AI gets more powerful. Note how we're still blaming people: the car dealer and the driver. Not the "it" = tank. And it's the same deal with the AI. If you use an AI system in a way that harms people, sometimes the "car dealer" (the ones coding the AI) should be held responsible, sometimes the driver (you), sometimes both. But never "neither", i.e. "the AI is at fault".

nhod 4y ago

Actually, no, "only you" can't stop it. No one can. There was a book in the 80's called The Hundredth Monkey that posited that if only enough people opposed nuclear technology, there would be a magical critical mass of people after which it would become apparent to everyone in the whole world that nuclear technology was, you know, really bad and stuff, and it would all just go away. We know how that went. Like nuclear technology, AI technology development is in part an arms race. One huge difference is that AI's technological underpinnings are already far more widely available and understood than any nuclear technology ever was. Its myriad forms — neural nets, deepfakes, predictive spell check, Adobe Photoshop object selection filters, spam filters, deep learning, machine learning, large language models, etc — already permeate much of technology and life. Where does one draw the line? Like nuclear technology, if any entity voluntarily decides to "voluntarily shut AI down," the other governments/rogue states/corporations/NGO's/financial firms/universities/etc in the world will merrily continue doing so, leaving the voluntary Luddite in the same dust as every other voluntary Luddite. Or even worse, such an entity (say, the US or Chinese governments) would in all likelihood not actually stop developing AI themselves, just ban others from having it, which would create another insane governmental "war" and enforcement regime, like the War on Drugs or War on Terrorism. Again, we know how both of those went. One of the reasons OpenAI as founded was specifically because of this. To paraphrase @sama, AGI should belong to everyone, not to any one corporation or government. https://www.yahoo.com/now/openai-founder-sam-altman-says-221739715.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/openai-founder-sam-altman-says-221... At the end of the day, the author may be right. Being right is also irrelevant. AI development will continue to hurtle forward. The real question is what do we do with it?

thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> There was a book in the 80's called The Hundredth Monkey that posited that if only enough people opposed nuclear technology, there would be a magical critical mass of people after which it would become apparent to everyone in the whole world that nuclear technology was, you know, really bad and stuff, and it would all just go away. And now we also live in the dumbest version of this world: less civilian nuclear (that would help for climate change), same amount of nuclear weapons (that doesn't!)
4y ago

teucris 4y ago

The more I read, the more I feel like this is actually a well written piece on why capitalism is causing an apocalypse. Every time the author references AI - that it’s out of control, that it’s influencing major portions of society, that it’s strengthening itself - I think what he actually means is that the corporations are those things, and AI is a tool in their arsenal. He tries to make the argument that it’s the other way around (for a fictional web search company): > The institution has its own agency: its own purposes, plans, reasons, and logic, which are more powerful than the humans it employs. Those are subordinate in turn to the AI the company depends on for its survival. The first sentence is absolutely correct. The second? In no way can I believe that the corporation doesn’t have a good understanding of exactly how it can manipulate the AI systems it leverages to achieve its goals.

ShredKazoo 4y ago
>In no way can I believe that the corporation doesn’t have a good understanding of exactly how it can manipulate the AI systems it leverages to achieve its goals. See this talk which compares modern AI work to alchemy (i.e. it works, unreliably, and we don't always know why): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1Yry33TQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi1Yry33TQE

johnnyApplePRNG 4y ago

>Governments will take radical actions that make no sense to their own leaders. Sounds like a positive thing.

krmboya 4y ago

The biggest threat I see about AI is concentrating power over many in the hands of the few. Kind of like atomic bombs. Some manifestations of this are how the tiktok algorithm that is rewiring the attention span of millions globally is controlled by a single corp. Likewise, the almighty google algorithm that can decide to shut down your account and there's practically no recourse. As long as AI will remain the preserve of those with large amounts of data and big infrastructure this will be the case

atemerev 4y ago
Then we need to make sure that atomic bombs^W^W AI is in _our_ hands, not in the hands of somebody we don’t like.

renewiltord 4y ago

AI safetyists producing more of what they're masterful at producing: blog posts. AI safetyism is all just "awareness building" and blog posts. Sorry, man, e/acc takes the day through knowing how to make things. AI safety blog posts will eventually just be constructable with AI.

firatsarlar 4y ago

write me an article like a liberal journalist, fix grammar, typo, etc, use markdown about " how the money buy awareness," dont use "change power of money", it is clitche, be more fluent, short, methaphoric use goldy instead of money whenever you use money word you woke up in the morning, by burning plastic smell, your throat hurt, you think you should call authorities, but you already knew authort... inform the source of smell, burn, construction site of back road, you decide to call, then start to yeil at brothers ... wwhat is this smell, what are you burning in that thing - a cylindric, oil container -, some stays silent , one walks inn, then what , I told -yeil- them turn that fire off, authorties are coming, the will fine you, .. last man asks did you call them.. oooh I think, he said you .. person to person not ideal .. what I asked, do you say me ? he replied ok bro, we ll turn that off, I m still waiting and it is continuning to smell .. A lot of people live here, say 100s, I may call a police and say something, but owner of construction has strong relation to authorities, so we are alone How Goldy Buys Awareness As I woke up this morning, the strong smell of burning plastic filled my nostrils, and I realized that I needed to act fast. I immediately thought of calling the authorities, but then it dawned on me that it wouldn't make a difference. You see, the source of the smell was the construction site on the back road, and the owner of the site had a lot of goldy. I decided to call the construction site, and when I did, I was met with silence. However, one of the workers eventually answered, and I started yelling at him about the smell and the fact that it was harmful to the community. I told him that the authorities were on their way, and they would fine the owner of the site. But the worker seemed unconcerned and asked me if I had called them. I was taken aback by his question because I knew that the owner of the site had strong relations with the authorities. So even if I called the police, it wouldn't make much of a difference. It was then that I realized the power of goldy. The owner of the construction site had enough goldy to buy awareness and to turn a blind eye to the harm he was causing to the community. The sad truth is that in today's world, goldy buys awareness. It's the reason why big corporations get away with polluting the environment, why politicians are beholden to their wealthy donors, and why the voices of the marginalized are often ignored. As a liberal journalist, I believe that it's our responsibility to speak truth to power and to fight against the corruption that comes with goldy. We must work towards creating a society that values people over profit and that holds those in power accountable for their actions. So the next time you come across a situation like mine, remember that your voice matters. Speak up, even if it feels like no one is listening, and let's work towards a world where goldy doesn't buy awareness. ![](data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg%20xmlns=%27http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%2730%27%20height=%2730%27/%3e)![Talat http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%27%20version=%271.1%27%20width=%2... Burgaz](https://chat.openai.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fa%2FAEdFTp7srvVgVO4TmGRinp2WM0DY6-oPRwRfAicuRcjx%3Ds96-c&w=64&q=75 https://chat.openai.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.go...) Make this a tweet "The sad truth is that in today's world, goldy buys awareness. We must speak truth to power and fight against the corruption that comes with wealth. Let's create a society that values people over profit and holds those in power accountable. #GoldyBuysAwareness #SpeakUp"

EamonnMR 4y ago

The AI apocalypse has already come for LinkedIn. I swear people are using ChatGPT to churn out posts now. Not that there was much worth saving there in the first place (it's a perfectly good chat app for recruiting with an awkward Facebook feed attached) but it is weird to see people debase themselves so.

hulitu 4y ago

> Artificial intelligence might end the world. More likely, it will crush our ability to make sense of the world—and so will crush our ability to act in it. Don't worry. It is just a recurrent hype. In 30 years it will come again. Today the only use for "AI" seems to be deep fakes and the spread of dissinformation.

petre 4y ago

The MPs and lawyers will stop it out of fear of being replaced. And yes, I agree that it's only great for marketing, propaganda and BS generation.

zxcvbn4038 4y ago

I think the original author gives AI too much credit, we’ve seen nothing but statistical tricks, no actual intelligence, I’m not losing any sleep. ZzZzZz..

atemerev 4y ago

It doesn’t work like this. Once a technology has been invented, you cannot out-regulate it out of existence. It will be developed to its conclusion, if only out of curiosity, not to mention the powerful market forces. However, I don’t see anything too awful with mass adoption of AI. If it is unreliable, people will soon learn not no rely on its decisions, and keep it just for the entertainment value (the optimistic scenario, just like it happens now). If it can be made reliable, it will evict humans out of most decision loops (the pessimistic scenario; but at least we will have a reliable AI, for the short time before it will be plugged into military decision-making). Attempting to regulate it is futile, though. If there is a competitive advantage, it will be exploited in any possible way. It is easy to regulate something that can be observed. AI in decision loops can be hidden.

imtemplain 4y ago

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IYasha 4y ago

In case author is reading this: your spam filter is bad and you should feel bad. I lost my 30-line message to you. Thanks.