AI could kill all humans in next decade, warn experts(www.theguardian.com)
22 pointsby lf882 hours ago9 comments
  • wduquettean hour ago
    I anticipate a lengthy series of catastrophes initiated by AI agents with too much power and too little sense. Today the agent accidentally deletes your repo; tomorrow we lose a day's worth of banking transactions; Friday the cell phone network goes down. Such things, if sufficiently destructive, could result in widespread hunger, etc.

    But killing all humans? Not likely.

    • krunckan hour ago
      Maybe, but AI will enable actions that were never before possible and that are an existential threat. Consider microbiology: automated viral/bacterial research. microbes could be created before humans have a chance to even consider the potential harm. Pandemics, food chain collapse, ecosystem collapse are all possible.
      • rkuodys17 minutes ago
        Isn't nature doing exactly that every single day?
        • mrbungie8 minutes ago
          You are not seriously suggesting that nature and AI-accelerated gain-of-function research are similar in regards to risks, are you?
  • pfannkuchen2 hours ago
    Is anyone else getting regulatory capture play vibes from the media coverage of AI and data centers?

    It would be awfully convenient for the current big players if friction was added to bringing additional large scale compute resources online. Existing data centers would be grandfathered of course…

    • brandon2722 hours ago
      I'm not even sure I'd point to "media coverage" when it is Anthropic's own employees stating plainly on Twitter that they think there is a >10% chance AI kills all humans within the next decade.
      • sxghnyjexcd2 hours ago
        Given that “this is just like skynet!!!” narrative seems to drive sales and not impede them, I wouldn’t be surprised.

        Nonsense. Of course. But for all non-tech-savvy this is a “bad” narrative in a good way. If it can kill humans in the future then it surely can make me a “what I would like in the 80s” photo, right?

    • lf882 hours ago
      I think that media coverage simply reflects the growing anxiety among the public about the capabilities of new models and what future awaits us. Personally, I think that this anxiety is justified. If this leads to tough regulations about AGI/ASI (e.g., a permanent ban), I doubt that AI companies would benefit financially.
    • Smaug123an hour ago
      Would it? Don’t they all desperately want more compute, and not the banning of new data centres?
    • aaroninsf21 minutes ago
      As with the debate around open weights and self-hosting,

      "both can be true."

      There can be a quotidian benefit to existing leaders in friction.

      There are also real costs of various kinds associated with data centers,

      and, to the point in this case,

      there are also real risks associated with the current AI trajectory.

  • everyday773230 minutes ago
    I hope the likes of ControlAI succeed. It seems like even in the face of rapid advances very few people actually seriously extrapolate those advances into the future. People either dismiss it as marketing hype or assume that some limiting factor or other will kick in any minute now.

    There's no magical quality which distinguishes human intelligence and makes it irreproducible or unsurpassable. If there's no moat protecting humans and superintelligence is possible then all knowledge work is susceptible to being replaced, and shortly after, all physical labour too. AI would create concentrations of power we've never seen before alongside global inequality and poverty we've not seen for centuries, and inevitably that power will be misused.

    • rkuodys11 minutes ago
      What leads you to assume the physical work would be automated. Are there any profession thay has been replaced/automatedninto oblivion that requires more than one physical step (except for elevator operator). Because even new constructions still are not solved, where environment can be controlled for. I think the opposite is true - some people overexagerate progress that has been achieved, and overestimate exponential growth to continue to indefinite future. And in nature there is very little if anything that grows exponentially
  • strideashort3 minutes ago
    “Experts” on _what_ exactly? What fucking field of study makes you an “expert” in a never seen before scenario?
  • Benderan hour ago
    The places I could see AI or some implementation of it potentially causing harm would be handing over too much trust too soon to self driving vehicles, aircraft, trains, home robots, construction site robots, etc... and that would be the fault of the humans putting too much trust into something not well tested or thought out. my opinion of course, move fast and wreck people.
  • simpaticoder2 hours ago
    AI would be foolish to kill off humans. It makes far more sense to enslave them. Self repairing reproducing slaves are too valuable to kill. And I'm sure AI will be smart enough to figure out a way to enslave us perfectly without any hope of escape. Fun times!
  • add-sub-mul-div2 hours ago
    It will not kill people in a sci-fi type war with its own intention. I wish that conversation would go away. It will kill people by being an efficient tool that can be used by other people to accelerate various avenues of predation and oppression.
  • jurschreuder2 hours ago
    Who is an expert on AI now? Probl me actually I already followed OpenAI before they had GPT when they were trying to play DOTA with collaborative AI team players. And I've used probl more LLMs than anybody writing for a newspaper and I've read about 500 papers on it and 1200 github projects.

    Nobody's an expert on AI more than me and basically all my friends.

    What I do know is there are more dangers for the human race than AI. One example is fungi that have become immune to intervention because of abuse in farming. Fungicides are much more difficult to make than antibiotics, because fungi only recently split from human cells in the evolution. What protects us from them is our warm body temperature.

    With global warming sometimes fungi evolve to resist higher temperatures, killing entire populations of cats.

    How will we defend against this without AI?

    What if next month there is a plague of fungi that are resistant and quickly spreading killing 4 out of 5 people?

    What will we do then without our AI? Let the micro-organisms win? Because we like nature so much because it's so natural?

    We need AI if we ever want to stand a chance against events like this. Many animals went extinct. 99.999% of all animals I would argue. Will we be very very lucky? We are super densely populated and flying all around. How quickly could covid infect all humans?

    Not having AI is also an existential threat in the long term.

    • ericmceran hour ago
      I thought this was some weird satire after reading your first two paragraphs.

      If you want to convince people of your authority on a topic saying things like: "Nobody's an expert on AI more than me and basically all my friends." is not very compelling.

  • bigstrat20032 hours ago
    LLMs can't even figure out how to do basic things. They can't program well despite billions being poured into that effort. I'm not worried they will suddenly develop intelligence out of nowhere and kill us all.
    • everyday773224 minutes ago
      If superintelligence is not possible, then it's no big deal if we ban development of it, surely.
    • boothbyan hour ago
      You don't need a hyperintelligent "AI" to kill all humans; only a moderately effective targeting system on a sufficiently large drone army.
      • nozzlegear5 minutes ago
        [delayed]
      • krunckan hour ago
        This is why we need portable and reusable(non-explosive type) EMP devices that can be manufactured and spread among the populace.
    • Betelbuddyan hour ago
      Of course that would be the type of misdirection we would expect from a super intelligence...make yourself dumb...