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LeCun has "zero concerns" about AI wiping out humanity, recent "rogue" incidents

400 points · 756 comments · Anon84

  1. wewewedxfgdf · · focus · HN ↗
    Please explain exactly how all humanity could be wiped out.

    It's ridiculous - anyone who thinks about it for a minute or two will realize that its utterly impossible.

    Ordinary people/politicians don't understand AI so they turn off their rational mind and assume there is something super incredible some magical powers that they cannot understand that can destroy all humans.

    Even humans - the real risk to humanity - could not destroy all humans even if they tried. There is no plausible scenario.

    Even climate change and nuclear war and bio weapons - the most damaging mechanisms - would still only get some percentage of the people on earth.

    And if we are talking about Skynet and self replicating robots and Terminators - please, grow up.

    1. ajross · · focus · HN ↗
      > It's ridiculous - anyone who thinks about it for a minute or two will realize that its utterly impossible.

      Well, in a narrow sense of "wiped out" (c.f. Terminator/SkyNet), sure.

      But the deeper worry is better expressed this way: AI is now starting to accomplish things that defy explanation, or prediction. We don't know if Alignment is even a solvable problem as we thought we understood it.

      So basically, yes: "humanity" is probably not at risk of extinction per se in a biological sense. Human culture, civilization? Who the fuck knows any more.

      1. pixl97 · · focus · HN ↗
        What is really insane about thinking about all of this is, go back a few hundred years and tell them what 'now' looks like.

        "Oh yea, we have weapons capable of sundering nations because everything is made from atoms"

        "Oh, yea, there are invisible waves all around you that you can't see, can't feel, can't touch, but they can hold massive amounts of information. Also you can transfer that information to the other side of the planet in less than a second. We're talking text, pictures, movies"

        "Movies, ya, we can record real life and play it back on this glass square".

        "Oh, yea, we've conquered a ton of diseases, we can even see the teeny tiny little bits that make them. Oh, and for fun we can edit them and make them worse".

        "Oh yea, we fly thru the sky all the time too. Like super fast and millions of us do it every day".

        Our lives our unimaginable fiction. Just about everything we do compared to those people defy explanation in any reasonable amount of time. And now, suddenly it's "Don't worry, there isn't any more science or new things to find after this so this super smart and super capable thing that can connect directly to computers and machines and have them do things is completely and totally safe".

        It's mass insanity.

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