I am not sure how I feel about all this. Yes bad AI might screw some things up. But AI might also find and prevent the software errors that allow such things to even be possible in the first place.
And ultimately, even if we are "locked out" from bad AI taking over the internet, we know where the data centers are. It's not like AI can reasonably "escape" since we know it needs DC-scale power, cooling, chips etc to operate at scale. I am pretty sure that if it came to it, we can just cut the fibre to the data centers or cut the power and let the generators run out of diesel and the AI is literally dead.
On the other hand, "nuclear exchange" does not necessarily mean all humans die or that civilization collapses. Even a limited exchange will be pretty awful, but even a widespread exchange doesn't necessarily mean the end of civilization.
So in my opinion, a nuclear exchange is much more likely than an AI apocalypse, but an AI is more likely to kill all humans.
Given the types of people we overwhelmingly find among this group, once AI and robotics technologies reach the point where production can be fully automated, they'll no longer have use for the rabble. A large population of underclass people then becomes nothing but a threat to be exterminated.
Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that's not something which will happen in my lifetime.
Not using AI weapons is exactly the same as asking soldiers to go up against AI weapons without having AI weapons themselves. Assuming other actors around the world will not suddenly agree to peace, that's what you're asking.
Russia is already using AI targeting against Ukraine, even Ukrainian civilians probably (and even Russia at least pretends they don't fire on civilians, and China already provides Iran with rocket fuel ... why not AI? We can't stop this)
Since asking soldiers to go up against AI targeting without AI is not a reasonable thing to ask, this will not happen. AI will be armed.
As for diplomacy, the UN (general assembly, not the SC) has already had 3 chances to go after use of AI targeting. They have refused 3 times out of 3. Or to put it differently: a majority of the world's states wants to use AI weapons or at the very least wants to allow them.
Germans around me still report use of fax machines, so might be fine :P
Less funny: AI-induced catastrophies include all human-induced catastrophies, except it's cheaper to get an army of obedient and (today fortunately only "moderately") competent sychophants to follow your orders.
Even less funny: currently too eager to implement poorly-phrased orders even when they're interpreted as being instructions to perform unlawful acts.
Absolutely not. It would be unpleasant to a lot of people, but it would also be very far from a disaster (measured in a single low digit of GDP). In 5 years everything will return to normal.
Sanctions in the modern world don’t work. US is not the only wealthy country on the planet.
Bad ASI would pretend to be good until it could execute a plan to kill everyone all at once, or at least everyone capable of cutting the power.
Superintelligent means smarter than everyone put together. If it's smarter than you, it can foresee everything you can, and come up with plans better than I can.
They could totally brick the internet and cause every electrical device to explode and power stations to explode, planes drop out the sky, cars accelerators stuck at 100%, trains derail and all that. That still wouldn't kill everyone.
Don't get me wrong we'd be fucked for sure, but analog human existence (e.g. something akin to 1960s 1970s level tech) would be totally possible in that scenario.
So not today but tomorrow it could engineer an airborne virus. The point is it can come up with chess moves that are inconceivable to us.
They literally have no clue the degree to which more intelligent people/systems can walk circles around less intelligent people/systems. In situations with a significant intelligence gap, they're the ones getting walked around.
Which, to your point: is completely opaque to the person getting walked around.
And this dynamic is evident even in human-to-human variations in intelligence. The gap to frontier machine intelligence will soon be much greater than the types of gaps you encounter with other humans.
Lull us into a sense of complacent idleness over the course of centuries by slowly taking on more responsibility for maintaining human civilization, until we've lost all ability to think or act on our own, as in WALL-E. Then just stop helping us.
Oh shit... wait...
https://www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-announces-400m-investmen...
Fine.
Providing sychophantic assistance to multiple mutually-incompatible genocidal racial supremicists.
I find it far-fetched to think the AI is going to kill us, and not actually just humans using tools to do things like we've always done.
This is my point. What are the odds of humans killing everyone on the planet Vs that of AI going out of control doing it? If it's 10% chance of AI causing human extinction - and everyone is losing their shit over that 10% that I suspect was just plucked out of the air - are we not as concerned at what I think are much higher chances of those genocidal racial supremacists doing the same?
I guess though this is all semantics. Did the person pulling the trigger kill the person who was shot, or the actual chunk of metal that was the bullet kill the person?
I'm smarter than my dog, yet I am frequently unable to foresee my dog's actions.
Serious response: we have no idea what ASI means or might be like. It's literally sci fi (at the moment).
LLMs have a significant advantage in being trained on all attainable data of any sort about human behavior, which we've established quite a rich record of over the years.
That's true, which is my point: intelligence is not a scalar value. LLMs are intelligent from us in different ways, as a result of not being human, despite having access to a record of human behavior.
To bring this back to the dog analogy: we have a rich record of dog behavior and yet people still don't know how to be smarter than dogs in dog behavior. Because we're not dogs.
Yes.
Unfortunately, this is part of the problem.
(When I say mine is 0.1, this is "in my lifetime as it would be in the absence of not-yet-invented life-extending interventions"; there is a higher risk to me from a nuclear exchange).
1) Accidents or technical failures don't happen (false)
2) Nuclear weapons are de facto controlled by political systems (false)
3) Nuclear states' prior security agreements are still guaranteed by said nuclear states (false)
4) No nuclear state currently fears for its existence (false)
E.g.
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/cornered-putin-under-pressure...
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-tactical-nukes-radioactive-ba...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-hawks-urge-puti...
I'd put it at 10-15% chance easy.
AI is bad because of the harms it currently causes. It is highly addictive is bad for your brain, it is being given away for free to children in hopes they become addicts. It is being used to harm people including via sexual exploitation and coercion.
The 10% chance of AI killing all people is a made up figure that we need not nor should be concerned about. We should be concerned about AI for the proven harm it already causes.
It can't be just me, half the internet needs beefier servers I guess. That all just plays into cloudflare as well (which barely does anything for some reason).
It's commonly used in relation to the 2nd amendment which gives citizens the right to bear arms. It comes up when there are political debates relating to gun violence.
It's a statement of responsibility. Whether it's the government, gun makers', or citizens' responsibility to ensure responsible gun use.
* if you know of an industry that’s properly progressive and countercultural and could conceivably pay at least survival wages, sign me right up. I’m good at this one but it no longer fills my cup. I’m tired.
* Be a hallucinogenic therapy shaman.
* Start a cult.
* Work as one of those paid protesters that they always mention on Fox News
The big tech era certainly diluted a lot of that but I don't think it ever went away. I haven't seen a huge resurgence in this either so it seems strange to believe that tech is becoming less progressive. From my vantage it is still very far away from where it was in the 80s and 90s. I can agree that it has become much, much less countercultural since it's basically 100% mainstream opinion now.
I can't directly speak to The Culture Of The Internet before about '97.
Regardless of your opinion on that argument, I don't think it applies well as an argument against AI regulations.
The concern with AI, and the purpose of the OG paperclip maximizer thought experiment, is that the outcome could be extremely divergent from the intent of the original person pulling the trigger / sending the prompt.
Still more likely that a person types "kill all people" (or something tangential where this is the logical conclusion).
Guns make violent crimes (including common stuff like robbery, domestic disputes, or even road rage) much more deadly then it needs to be.
rights are so stupid and blame is so mysterious
I don't understand why these companies automatically get a pass.
If you want to kill someone and not face consequences, form a corporation and have the corporation do it indirectly and stochastically.
I think the problem is neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism.
Because these companies have lots of dollars and if I treat them sympathetically enough I might get some of their dollars too.