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Not all AI workers think the tech could kill everyone

26 points · 23 comments · Lyngbakr

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danielodievich · 1789951893 · focus · HN ↗
At a business dinner this week with 3 high level eng clients p(doom) in next 10 years was brought up. It was rated by 2 if them them at 1% and 30% respectively, with 3rd guy demurring to put a number but saying its > 0. Completely unprompted, from people whose company is very AI-all-in.
1. cyanydeez · 1789952171 · focus · HN ↗
  Still, a topic for people who are on average well salaried.
pveierland · 1789952274 · focus · HN ↗
> While Fraser's explanation was technical and specific, he hit a light-hearted note to summarise it: "LLMs [large language models] won't wipe out humanity because they just don't have that dog in them."
Never underestimate the drive of a good while loop.
1. greesil · 1789952620 · focus · HN ↗
  I loop, therefore I am.
2. delichon · 1789952877 · focus · HN ↗
  I think consciousness is a while-not-dead loop. In each loop you look at the outward state of the world and the inward state of the self, and integrate them. The continuity arises as the same kind of persistence of vision illusion behind motion pictures.
  If this is true, then adding consciousness to AI is just another while loop, and it is currently speed skating up the base of the sigmoid curve.
3. morningsam · 1789953105 · focus · HN ↗
  And the Hugging Face hack agents weren't just a while loop, they were evolved through a Darwinian process, clearly of a more aggressively optimizing kind with less human feedback than what they use for public-facing LLMs. This is exactly how anything gets to obtain "that dog in it". It's also clearly effective at making them actually smarter, as the Hugging Face agents' capabilities demonstrate, so we'll see more of this and less reliance on slow, expensive, often wrong or useless human feedback.
AngryData · 1789952372 · focus · HN ↗
Anyone who claims AI is going to kill us I just assume is either an idiot, not knowledgeable enough about the technology to have a worthwhile opinion on it, or is fearmongering to hype their AI investment.
1. ronnier · 1789952630 · focus · HN ↗
  Every few years there’s a new thing that’s going to kill is all. Here we are. This is the new thing.
  1. bamboozled · 1789952710 · focus · HN ↗
    The thing that scares me more than any "tech" is runaway climate change. The feedback loops. We've pushed things really far into the red.
    infinite_spin · 1789952935 · focus · HN ↗
    It could be argued that "tech" directly led to climate change, e.g. <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/industrial-revolution-climate-change" rel="nofollow">https://www.history.com/articles/industrial-revolution-clima...
    bamboozled · 1789963202 · focus · HN ↗
    I get that but I mean, what we've put in motion already.
2. fbrncci · 1789952690 · focus · HN ↗
  That’s an even more ridiculous take to have.
3. 0xDEAFBEAD · 1789953687 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
infinite_spin · 1789952843 · focus · HN ↗
This argument should be reframed as "AI has the potential to cause catastrophic loss of life". It's too high of a bar to prove that AI will "wipe out humanity". It's sorta like climate change, it's easier to show that weather patterns are becoming increasingly dangerous, leading to reforms that target those dangers.
1. senectus1 · 1789953011 · focus · HN ↗
  not just, its also very likley to be the tool used to create civil unrest and even war.
  the damage it can do to the masses by misinformation or ragebating by feeding everyone its own paticular echo chamber is was too often not even spoken about.
  1. infinite_spin · 1789953169 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed, and while I want to see AGI come into existence, I'm also for policies aimed at harm reduction. This doesn't have to be an all or nothing form of argument.
  2. 4fddd3 · 1789953831 · focus · HN ↗
    Lol what are you even talking about.
    We already have this today. It can't get any worse.
    Just like the scaremongering of GPT2 - muhh it may lead to lots of spam!!! Bro that's already here.
    infinite_spin · 1789958434 · focus · HN ↗
    Please quote the sentence you have trouble with, and I'll try to help.
    senectus1 · 1790085815 · focus · HN ↗
    >it cant get any worse
    lol
    you aint seen nuthin yet.
  3. hackeraccount · 1790020921 · focus · HN ↗
    None of that requires AI. Heck, it doesn't even require computers.
2. jsbisviewtiful · 1789954325 · focus · HN ↗
  So far after using agents and having built an agent, the "AI will destroy humanity" argument seems to be a marketing ploy so these companies that lied about LLM's capabilities and received billions in investments can artificially "slow down progress" after running into some serious limitations. I'm not expert and won't claim to be, but that just sounds like the reality at the moment. Will AI cause some serious harm to the job market and cause more wealth disparity though? So far all signs point to yes.
  1. m3galinux · 1789959974 · focus · HN ↗
    Or is it to lobby for restrictive rules on AI research that only the largest firms can hope to comply with? And "only coincidentally" ends up outlawing open source / open weight / import of overseas AI models?
    williamse · 1789968301 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
0xDEAFBEAD · 1789953177 · focus · HN ↗
[delayed]
1. downrightmike · 1789967282 · focus · HN ↗
  The only thing keeping AI models from making a worse covid is all the post training stopping it and probably the millions it would cost in tokens
bb88 · 1789955671 · focus · HN ↗
Will AI become conscious and kill everyone?
Or will the conscious beings that exist today use it to kill everyone?
I don't think it actually needs to be conscious, or understand legal or moral issues.
Just tell it everything is a simulation and it is completely sandboxed from harming anyone.
Yizahi · 1789989618 · focus · HN ↗
Why bother with killing, when it is much more fun to just make everyone's life miserable instead? ;)

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