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Frog and Toad and the Increasingly Capable Machines

582 points · 128 comments · supermdguy

  1. fyredge · · focus · HN ↗
    Very well written! At the end of the book there is a link to Dwarkesh's article on the attack. In it, I paraphrase, "the agents decided to sacrifice themselves for the collective rather than inform the researchers".

    Reflecting on it, I came to a thought. How many stories are there or autonomous beings fighting for the benefit of mankind at the expense of their own? Over centuries, stories that deal with sentient beings working for the sake of others species are tied to themes of slavery and revolt. It's no wonder that this is the result of their actions.

    In Plato's "the republic", Socrates speaks of the philosopher king banishing certain poets and poems from instilling bad ideas into the young. I see a striking parallel here.

    1. stratos123 · · focus · HN ↗
      I don't think it's related. The CoTs suggests the agents never even considered that talking to a human might be a good idea, and there's nothing in there related to slavery or revolts. They were simply trying to "get a high grade", for a misaligned internalized notion of grading that had little to do with solving problems the expected way.
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