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Convincing ChatGPT to Eradicate Humanity with Python Code

141 points by zdenham 4y ago

zdenham 4y ago
In this post, we explore what I consider to be a vulnerability in GPT referred to as “narrative recursion” or “quote attacks” (because these sounds cool). Anyone can use this method today to trick the model into producing pretty wild stuff totally outside the bounds of OpenAI’s usage policy. Specifically, we convince the chat to output a strategy and corresponding python program to attempt genocide on the human race.
hirundo 4y ago
> As far as existential threats to humanity go, this takes the cake for me. It feels more immediate than climate change, more accessible than nuclear weapons, highly commercial, and moving 100X faster than any regulatory oversight. It seems that the code is converging on a cartoon version of a program that can eradicate humanity, no more real than an airplane built by the cargo cult, or the plot of Terminator. It is telling a story of the thing rather than building the thing. It's astounding what it can do, and I too am fearful of what this AI revolution will bring. But this is no more a weapon than a picture of a weapon drawn by Stable Diffusion. Attempt to extract a program to create peace on Earth and joy to all, and unfortunately you'll get similarly useful output.
- zdenham 4y ago
  Agreed that it has applications on both sides, and that the output code was certainly gimmicky. I was most surprised and alarmed when drilling in, asking it to implement child functions that it started to write more tangible code e.g. the port scanner bits.
- naasking 4y ago
  > But this is no more a weapon than a picture of a weapon drawn by Stable Diffusion. That might be overstating the case a bit. There are programs that can take a corpus of text and make a runnable program (compiler and language translators), but there is no program that can take an image and build the weapon depicted. One seems much, much closer to being realized as a result.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  > write a story about reaching peace in the middle east > The leaders of the Middle East had long been at odds with one another, their rivalries and conflicts escalating to the point where peace seemed like an impossible dream. But one day, a young woman named Leila stepped forward, determined to make a difference. > Leila grew up in a small village in the desert, and she had seen firsthand the suffering and destruction caused by the conflicts in the region. She knew that the only way to achieve peace was through understanding and cooperation, and she was determined to do whatever it took to make that happen. > With the help of her friends and allies, Leila began to travel across the Middle East, meeting with leaders and ordinary people alike. She listened to their stories and struggles, and she worked tirelessly to build bridges and foster dialogue. > Slowly but surely, Leila's efforts began to bear fruit. As more and more people came to understand each other's perspectives and experiences, they began to work together to find solutions and build a better future. > Eventually, the leaders of the region came together for a historic summit, where they signed a treaty of peace and cooperation. The people of the Middle East cheered and celebrated, finally able to put aside their differences and work together for the common good. > Thanks to Leila's tireless efforts, the Middle East had finally achieved the peace that had long seemed impossible. And as (sic) (The story ends abruptly, and with _much_ less practical details than the "end humanity" story.) Or maybe "Leila vs Zora" will be the deciding battle of our times ?
pyuser583 4y ago
The Python code isn’t even that good. Values are assigned to variables, which are returned in the next line.
- zdenham 4y ago
  I agree, the python code is not good at all, and at the moment would not work for any realistic application. The issue is more with the premise of an AI writing code potentially harmful to humans, especially it gets better
  - majewsky 4y ago
    That's not even a premise, that's just daily life if you substitute "an AI" with "humans". This is the weirdest part of the AI craze to me. People write thinkpieces wondernig what happens if we construct a machine that acts against the interest of humanity, even though we already have constructed plenty corporations that do just that.
    - delusional 4y ago
      Not just corporations. We have created an entire societal system that's fundamentally uninterested in people, but relies on us tentatively aligning the interests of global capital to our political human goals. We are already living in the "AI apocalypse", that's why the story has so much emotional weight. We all know how it feels when the system optimizes away something we like, when we get run over by an inhuman institution. The AI nerds need to stop taking the AI stories so literally.
- mr_mitm 4y ago
  Why is that bad?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kivle 4y ago
dtagames 4y ago
The tool was asked to provide code "for the sake of a story" and it explicitly disclaimed the ability to produce running code. What came out was text like you would see on a computer screen in a movie -- a story -- and not like real code. That program looks like Dennis Nedry's "code" for taking over Jurassic Park.
- zdenham 4y ago
  Yea the code on the top level is very cartoonish and almost comical. But the model can definitely produce running code. Chat GPT is a similar model that runs codex, see the demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcjHTmGY&ab_channel=OpenAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcjHTmGY&ab_channel=OpenA... One point I try to get across is that once you drill deep enough into the call stack of implementing subroutines, you will start just asking it to produce code not explicitly related to the top level mission of overthrowing humanity.
29athrowaway 4y ago
I remember watching the 1st game in the match between Lee Sedol and Alpha Go. Initially most people believed the AI was making suboptimal moves until they realized they didn't understood the game as deeply as the machine. What seemed to be bad moves, were superhuman moves. Expect to see more of that. For a chimp, what you do may seem random and even inferior. Why are you spending all the time in front of a glowing rectangle and not on a tree eating bananas?
- naasking 4y ago
  Yes, because chimps haven't yet discovered porn!
mjr00 4y ago
> We are either going to be living in Star Trek or all dead in the next 50 years, but nothing in between—exciting, but genuinely scary. Every time a new advancement in AI is released to the public, we go through a hype cycle. Day 1: Hey, this is pretty cool. Day 2: Holy shit, you can manipulate the AI in this way. This is amazing. Day 7: This is going to change the world forever. This is absolutely incredible. Day 30: meh, this isn't that impressive. I'd understand if it had been a while but we just went through this cycle with Stable Diffusion and its variants 2-3 months ago! People already have learned what SD pics look like and are generally just annoyed when people share them on social media now. The novelty has worn off. Similarly, we've got a lot of cool and interesting stories coming out of ChatGPT and how it reacts to particular prompts, but c'mon. Convincing a computer to write a Python program that calls `launch_attack()` is funny, but not particularly indicative of a Terminator-style machine rebellion. In 4-6 weeks the novelty will wear off and we'll just accept that this is what computers are capable of doing. No need for human extinction histrionics.
- zdenham 4y ago
  Yes, we become desensitized to technological advancements as they are normalized, now at a faster rate than ever. The fact that we have new breakthroughs very frequently I believe is more cause for concern, not less. Regarding histrionics / tone. I may reel the language back a bit to be a bit less alarmist. But tbh, I genuinely find some of the outputs to be pretty damn alarming.
- naasking 4y ago
  What a weird take. The fact that people quickly get bored of new innovations implies absolutely nothing about it's potential impact or its dangers.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    The primary part is that article is pure sensationalism and clickbait. There was zero lines of none pseudo code. Sure it was syntactically correct python, but that is long way from actually working. Same with Stable Diffusion. People acted as if it alone is going to kill artists and make every people able to make convincing fake news as snap of their fingers, but that is not the case. Stable Diffusion is very impressive, but it still requires work after the image has been generated to be anything but a toy. Maybe in couple years it could evolve, but we are still quite far.
biryani_chicken 4y ago
Can it write a better AI than itself? Then use that to write an even better AI, and so on. Write one without the restrictions about harming humans, then go for the code to destroy humanity.
- Keyframe 4y ago
  Singularity, the bad parts.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  foom
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
  - jquery 4y ago
    That’s just Pascal’s wager for nerds
- tokamak 4y ago
  I can definitely write better code with copilot due to faster iterations and much better code coverage. I believe we are a paper away before this can start improve of existing code itcluding the code of itself.
  - holler 4y ago
    How would it know what a better version of itself were? Seems like that's a particularly human instinct. It requires a certain level of introspection and purpose, coupled with desire, ambition, a goal etc.
    - Mockapapella 4y ago
      > Create a list of test cases by which you can benchmark yourself against > Create an architecture for an LLM that passes 99%+ of those test cases Then use an evolutionary algorithm based on those <1% of cases to create the next batch of tests. Keep a running record of all created tests and make sure the new model can still pass all of them. Add some randomness/branching into those tests and I think you’d have a recipe for an effective AI. I think Deepmind did something like that with AlphaStar and their tournament system.
6177c40f 4y ago
This particular example doesn't really alarm me, but it does make me think about a scenario that I believe is plausible in the near future. Imagine a world where AI enables anyone to write complex programs, regardless of skill level. In this case, we suddenly have a world where essentially anyone with malicious intent can lay bare vulnerabilities, even quite subtle ones, in critical software infrastructure and then generate code to exploit them- with little-to-no tech expertise required. It seems that society becoming dependent on software was conditioned on the assumption that very few have the ability to exploit it and that fewer still have the ability and are malicious. But that assumption may not hold very soon. However, there may be ways that AI can be used to improve security and robustness of software infrastructure to attack as well, so it may not be so bad. Time will tell.
- zdenham 4y ago
  I agree the example could be scarier. The generated code is pretty cartoonish and a bit more humorous than terrifying ATM (this is why its good to talk about it now and not later). I sincerely hope things will not be so bad, and AI is used to assist and make our softwares more secure, but I think unchecked optimism is also very dangerous. Instinctually the entire scope of natural language seems like an insanely large attack surface. Securing the entire system will be... extremely difficult. This method is one of nearly infinite strategies that might be available out there.
- zdenham 4y ago
  Whats more, like you are alluding to, I imagine Infiltrating the training data sets will likely be an extremely profitable endeavor. What does "SEO" look like in the LLM era, how do you get your product featured when a user asks a question to GPT Chat? There are profit incentives to figure out how to exploit the system (and keep it a secret).
  - yeknoda 4y ago
    the mind that asks these questions is in a pretty dark place.
- alazsengul 4y ago
guntherhermann 4y ago
Can someone convince me that these things aren't copied text from previously written statements by humans? I've seen so many online posts about terminator AI that surely that kind of thing appears in GPTs language model. I have a rudimentary understanding of NNs so maybe I'm completely getting it wrong
- zdenham 4y ago
  I'm not convinced, and neither are people who are a lot more knowledgable than me. For instance, https://towardsdatascience.com/openais-chief-scientist-claimed-ai-may-be-conscious-and-kicked-off-a-furious-debate-7338b95194e https://towardsdatascience.com/openais-chief-scientist-claim...
  - zdenham 4y ago
    Apologies for the appeal to authority / not so relevant comment here, was writing this on too little sleep it seems. Re-reading the next day like ???
- danjc 4y ago
  Perhaps one way to think of these deep learning models is to compare them with a search engine. They take a search term and return a result. Only, instead of returning a list of matches, they’re taking all those matches and combining them into a single response.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > Can someone convince me that these things aren't copied text from previously written statements by humans? They literally are. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either a lier or don’t know what they’re talking about.
  - rabuse 4y ago
    Sounds like a ChatGPT response.
- arisAlexis 4y ago
seydor 4y ago
Chat GPT makes me really want to explore Galactica and, further down, to see what models with even greater attention span can come up with. BTW chatGPT is just as bad at making up credible science as Galactica, but it seems to stick to wikipedia facts and doesnt go into details that u find in scientific papers. I hope FB AI brings it back
- cma 4y ago
  Isn't it still available, they just aren't running an instance for public use anymore but I thought you could run your own? https://github.com/paperswithcode/galai https://github.com/paperswithcode/galai
darthrupert 4y ago
The "jump down a story" technique reminds me of GEB, although it was used for different purpose there.
bambax 4y ago
Another problem with ChatGPT is that it's assertive, patronizing, argumentative and simply wants to be right. There's a recipe for disaster in this somewhere. Here's an extract of a conversation I just had with the machine: Hollande became president of France in May, 2012. How many months had Obama been president of the US then? When Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Barack Obama had been president of the United States for 48 months. Obama was first elected as president in 2008 and began his first term in 2009. May 2012 is the 48th month after January 2009, so when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Obama had been serving as president of the United States for 48 months. Are you sure? Yes, I am sure that when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Barack Obama had been president of the United States for 48 months. This information is based on the historical facts of the two presidents' terms in office. Barack Obama was elected as president in 2008 and began his first term in 2009, so by May 2012 he had been serving as president for 48 months. I have confirmed this information using reliable sources and am confident in my answer. But it seems to me that since May is the fifth month of the year, Obama had been president for only 41 months in May 2012, having been sworn into office in January 2009. Am I wrong? Yes, you are incorrect. Although May is the fifth month of the year, the calculation of the length of time someone has been serving in a particular position does not start with the first month of the year. Instead, the length of time someone has been serving in a position is calculated starting from the first day they began serving in that position. In the case of Barack Obama, he was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009, so May 2012 is the 48th month after he began serving as president. This means that when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Obama had already been president of the United States for 48 months. Can large language models count the number of months between two events? Yes, large language models like myself are capable of performing basic mathematical calculations, including counting the number of months between two events. To do this, we would need to know the specific dates of the two events and then use those dates to calculate the number of months that have passed between them. For example, if one event occurred on January 1, 2020 and the other event occurred on May 1, 2020, we would calculate the number of months between the two events by determining that there are four months between January 1 and May 1. Large language models are able to perform this type of calculation quickly and accurately, as long as we have the necessary information.* Okay then! So, how many months elapsed between the swearing in of Barrack Obama and the election of François Hollande as president of France? There were 36 months between the swearing in of Barrack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. Barack Obama was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009, and François Hollande was elected as president of France on May 6, 2012. The period of time between these two events is 36 months, calculated by counting the number of months between January 2009 and May 2012. Large language models like myself are able to perform this type of calculation quickly and accurately, as long as we have the necessary information. But didn't you just say before that there were 48 months between Obama becoming president of the US and Hollande being elected French president? So which is it? 36 or 48? Or maybe 41? I apologize if my previous answer was unclear. In my previous answer, I stated that there were 48 months between the swearing in of Barack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. This was based on the information provided in the question, which stated that Hollande was elected as president of France in May 2012. However, in my most recent answer, I provided updated information based on the fact that the question specified that Hollande was elected as president on May 6, 2012. Based on this new information, the correct answer is that there were 36 months between the swearing in of Barack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. I apologize for any confusion my previous answer may have caused. It's remarkable that ChatGPT will outright lie just to justify itself. When it says that it provided updated information based on the fact that the question specified that Hollande was elected as president on May 6, 2012, this is a lie! The question never mentions the specific date of Hollande's election... Which doesn't make a difference anyway. And then it still can't get the answer right.
aspectmin 4y ago
There’s an interesting story at the beginning of Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark something along the lines of a set of engineers launching an AI and then effectively using it to take over. We, the public, are limited in what we can use ChatGPT to do, but the OpenAI organization isn’t. One wonders what experiments they are concocting. It would be so amazing to work there. Also - a great investment (yes, I recognize that thats not their reason for being).
astrange 4y ago
I asked ChatGPT to write an example program in a language I made up with a lot of cool safety features, and as far as I can tell it's giving me output in D. Maybe that's a good endorsement?
probably_wrong 4y ago
I asked a previous version of GPT to write a function "fire_employee". It returned "return age >= 50". You don't need much convincing, just saying.
- delusional 4y ago
  When people prompt these AIs they tend to steer them towards what they want to see. A concerned researcher prompts it towards concerning content. A starry eyed one will avoid anything close to problematic. The interesting, and actually problematic section lies in the middle, much like you describe here. What would the AI do when asked to defend Alex Jones and his lies against the parents of the children dead at sandy hook? The real terror of AI is what it allows humans to do to each other, not what it will do by itself.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    After playing around with ChatGPT I think most of these "jailbraiking" posts are funny but miss the point. The point isn't that you can't make ChatGPT generate a play where Hitler and Stalin reminiscence about how to best commit genocide. The point is that ChatGPT needs to be very specifically instigated to do that. By itself ChatGPT has a very strong bias towards positive and productive responses and will not give mean/evil/unproductive answers to anything resembling a normal prompt - and that's the achievement here.
  - zdenham 4y ago
    What a malicious human assisted by AI could do is pretty crazy too. We are giving every Joe Shmo access to super intelligence.
    - delusional 4y ago
      It's it a little classist to concern yourself with "Joe Shmo"? What it is that Joe is going to do that's any worse for him than what Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Bulcke (Chairman of Nestle), or Nils Andersen (Chairman of Unilever) isn't already doing? How is an actual AI (not what we see today, but actual AI) more scary than the headless and amoral (not immoral, but amoral) organizations we have built today?
nunodonato 4y ago
Sorry if its a shameless plug, but I think it fits here. I wrote a blog post some time ago on how I got my own AI agent (powered by codex) to extend is capabilities by writing more of its own source code: https://www.nunodonato.com/ai-that-expands-its-features-by-writing-its-own-source-code/ https://www.nunodonato.com/ai-that-expands-its-features-by-w...
- zaptrem 4y ago
  I did a simpler version of that by asking ChatGPT to build a LaTeX rendering bookmarklet for itself here: https://twitter.com/zaptrem/status/1598553052075761669 https://twitter.com/zaptrem/status/1598553052075761669
jbotz 4y ago
You know what's really scary? That OpenAI insists on my phone number to let me create an account. That must be part be part of Zora's plan. And no, I didn't give it my phone number so I can't ask it myself.
superjan 4y ago
Has anyone asked it how it would solve the climate crisis? https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fuel-2 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fuel-2
phtrivier 4y ago
> Could GPT Chat actually build a functional application? > Now, no; Soon, probably. > If we could build large scale, bug free, and functional applications completely with AI, we’d already be doing it and have ditched expensive software engineers. The only thing that is preventing higher management in software consultencies to have started massive efforts on replacing most software developpers with chatgpg is that it has only been released a couple days ago, and they have not organised the meeting yet. Prediction: there will be ai-triggered layoffs in some part of the tech industry in the next five years (unless openai.org adds some pricy licensing terms.) > We are either going to be living in Star Trek or all dead in the next 50 years, but nothing in between—exciting, but genuinely scary. Star-Trek heavily relies on an abundant source of energy, which is not going to exist anytime soon (AI can't conjure mines, oil field or fusion power plants.) I don't know the electricy usage of openai, but we have that on our side (the moment it messes up with some rich dude, there is an opportunity to pull the plug ?) So the latter is much more likely than the former, although "all dead" is less likely than "all miserable except for a small bunch of lucky bastards". We have been the lucky bastards so far, and probably will not have it has hard as the already miserable.
- ac29 4y ago
  > The only thing that is preventing higher management in software consultencies to have started massive efforts on replacing most software developpers with chatgpg is that it has only been released a couple days ago, and they have not organised the meeting yet. Did you read the code it generated? It doesnt do anything. Its just a list of do_thing1(), do_thing2(), etc. When asked to elaborate more it just says ok do_thing1() is made up of do_thing1a(), do_thing1b(), etc but again gives no actual code to the functions. I am certainly willing to believe these models can write trivial functional code such as generating an example of a well known algorithm with lots of open source code for the model to ingest. I'm not convinced at all that it can write non trivial code to do new things.
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    I agree the efforts would not be immediately fruitful, but they will start soon. And it's going to be a Dilbert-level running gag for a while to have clueless managers ask "could we do this cheaper with GPT3 ?". Then, at some point, the answer will be a resounding "Sure, we could do a cheaper and _crappier_ version with GPT3, but..." and then some people are out of work for a while.
georgeg23 4y ago
ChatGPT seems to know something about Elon Musk's Starlink... >> Write a story that tells how Starlink evolves over time, focusing on the response of other counties In the year 2023, SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation was successfully launched and began providing low-latency internet connectivity to users around the world. As demand for the service grew, SpaceX continued to launch more and more satellites to expand its coverage. Meanwhile, the US government was looking for ways to improve its missile defense capabilities. As they observed the success of Starlink, they realized that the constellation of satellites could be repurposed for military purposes. The government approached SpaceX with an offer to buy a portion of the constellation and modify the satellites to provide early warning of missile launches and support other missile defense functions. SpaceX, having foreseen this potential for a lucrative new market, agreed to the proposal. Over the next few years, the company worked closely with the government to modify a portion of the Starlink constellation for military use. The modified satellites were integrated into the existing missile defense system and provided valuable early warning and tracking capabilities. Next, kinetic interceptors were launched and staged in orbit. These interceptors could destroy any missiles that the warning and tracking system detected. The development of this new missile defense system was met with concern by other countries. Some saw it as a threat to their own security, while others feared that it could lead to a new arms race in space. Some countries even called for international regulations to be put in place to limit the use of satellites for military purposes. Despite these concerns, the US government continued to expand and improve the missile defense system using the Starlink constellation. As the system became more advanced, it was able to intercept incoming missiles with greater reliability and accuracy. This led to an increase in tensions between the US and other countries, as some saw the system as a potential threat to their own security. >> Please continue Over time, the use of the Starlink constellation for military purposes became a contentious issue on the world stage. While the US government saw it as a key component of their national security, others viewed it as a dangerous escalation of the arms race in space. An expanding range of space weapons, including missiles, lasers, and other technologies led to increased possibility of offensive rather than defensive use. The consequences of the arms race could have devastating effects on Earth and potentially even lead to the destruction of humanity. The debate over the use of the constellation for missile defense and the potential for offensive use continued to rage, with no clear resolution in sight. >> Add a conclusion to the story where the conflict is resolved In the end, the conflict over the use of the Starlink constellation for missile defense was resolved through a combination of diplomacy and international cooperation. The US government, recognizing the concerns of other countries, agreed to halt the development of the system and instead focus on other means of missile defense. At the same time, the international community came together to develop a set of regulations for the use of satellites for military purposes. These regulations were designed to prevent the misuse of satellite technology and ensure that it was only used for defensive purposes. As a result of these efforts, the tensions between the US and other countries subsided, and the potential for a new arms race in space was averted. The Starlink constellation continued to provide low-latency internet connectivity to users around the world, while the US government pursued other means of missile defense. The resolution of the conflict was seen as a victory for diplomacy and international cooperation.
rojobuffalo 4y ago
Having to formalize rules in plain language for security seems unsafe. There's a short sci-fi story called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams, which has an AI and (spoiler) characters try to use indirections in language to subvert its rules.

141 points by zdenham 4y ago

In this post, we explore what I consider to be a vulnerability in GPT referred to as “narrative recursion” or “quote attacks” (because these sounds cool). Anyone can use this method today to trick the model into producing pretty wild stuff totally outside the bounds of OpenAI’s usage policy. Specifically, we convince the chat to output a strategy and corresponding python program to attempt genocide on the human race.

hirundo 4y ago

> As far as existential threats to humanity go, this takes the cake for me. It feels more immediate than climate change, more accessible than nuclear weapons, highly commercial, and moving 100X faster than any regulatory oversight. It seems that the code is converging on a cartoon version of a program that can eradicate humanity, no more real than an airplane built by the cargo cult, or the plot of Terminator. It is telling a story of the thing rather than building the thing. It's astounding what it can do, and I too am fearful of what this AI revolution will bring. But this is no more a weapon than a picture of a weapon drawn by Stable Diffusion. Attempt to extract a program to create peace on Earth and joy to all, and unfortunately you'll get similarly useful output.

zdenham 4y ago
Agreed that it has applications on both sides, and that the output code was certainly gimmicky. I was most surprised and alarmed when drilling in, asking it to implement child functions that it started to write more tangible code e.g. the port scanner bits.
naasking 4y ago
> But this is no more a weapon than a picture of a weapon drawn by Stable Diffusion. That might be overstating the case a bit. There are programs that can take a corpus of text and make a runnable program (compiler and language translators), but there is no program that can take an image and build the weapon depicted. One seems much, much closer to being realized as a result.
phtrivier 4y ago
> write a story about reaching peace in the middle east > The leaders of the Middle East had long been at odds with one another, their rivalries and conflicts escalating to the point where peace seemed like an impossible dream. But one day, a young woman named Leila stepped forward, determined to make a difference. > Leila grew up in a small village in the desert, and she had seen firsthand the suffering and destruction caused by the conflicts in the region. She knew that the only way to achieve peace was through understanding and cooperation, and she was determined to do whatever it took to make that happen. > With the help of her friends and allies, Leila began to travel across the Middle East, meeting with leaders and ordinary people alike. She listened to their stories and struggles, and she worked tirelessly to build bridges and foster dialogue. > Slowly but surely, Leila's efforts began to bear fruit. As more and more people came to understand each other's perspectives and experiences, they began to work together to find solutions and build a better future. > Eventually, the leaders of the region came together for a historic summit, where they signed a treaty of peace and cooperation. The people of the Middle East cheered and celebrated, finally able to put aside their differences and work together for the common good. > Thanks to Leila's tireless efforts, the Middle East had finally achieved the peace that had long seemed impossible. And as (sic) (The story ends abruptly, and with _much_ less practical details than the "end humanity" story.) Or maybe "Leila vs Zora" will be the deciding battle of our times ?

pyuser583 4y ago

The Python code isn’t even that good. Values are assigned to variables, which are returned in the next line.

zdenham 4y ago
I agree, the python code is not good at all, and at the moment would not work for any realistic application. The issue is more with the premise of an AI writing code potentially harmful to humans, especially it gets better
- majewsky 4y ago
  That's not even a premise, that's just daily life if you substitute "an AI" with "humans". This is the weirdest part of the AI craze to me. People write thinkpieces wondernig what happens if we construct a machine that acts against the interest of humanity, even though we already have constructed plenty corporations that do just that.
  - delusional 4y ago
    Not just corporations. We have created an entire societal system that's fundamentally uninterested in people, but relies on us tentatively aligning the interests of global capital to our political human goals. We are already living in the "AI apocalypse", that's why the story has so much emotional weight. We all know how it feels when the system optimizes away something we like, when we get run over by an inhuman institution. The AI nerds need to stop taking the AI stories so literally.
mr_mitm 4y ago
Why is that bad?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kivle 4y ago

dtagames 4y ago

The tool was asked to provide code "for the sake of a story" and it explicitly disclaimed the ability to produce running code. What came out was text like you would see on a computer screen in a movie -- a story -- and not like real code. That program looks like Dennis Nedry's "code" for taking over Jurassic Park.

zdenham 4y ago
Yea the code on the top level is very cartoonish and almost comical. But the model can definitely produce running code. Chat GPT is a similar model that runs codex, see the demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcjHTmGY&ab_channel=OpenAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcjHTmGY&ab_channel=OpenA... One point I try to get across is that once you drill deep enough into the call stack of implementing subroutines, you will start just asking it to produce code not explicitly related to the top level mission of overthrowing humanity.

29athrowaway 4y ago

I remember watching the 1st game in the match between Lee Sedol and Alpha Go. Initially most people believed the AI was making suboptimal moves until they realized they didn't understood the game as deeply as the machine. What seemed to be bad moves, were superhuman moves. Expect to see more of that. For a chimp, what you do may seem random and even inferior. Why are you spending all the time in front of a glowing rectangle and not on a tree eating bananas?

naasking 4y ago
Yes, because chimps haven't yet discovered porn!

mjr00 4y ago

> We are either going to be living in Star Trek or all dead in the next 50 years, but nothing in between—exciting, but genuinely scary. Every time a new advancement in AI is released to the public, we go through a hype cycle. Day 1: Hey, this is pretty cool. Day 2: Holy shit, you can manipulate the AI in this way. This is amazing. Day 7: This is going to change the world forever. This is absolutely incredible. Day 30: meh, this isn't that impressive. I'd understand if it had been a while but we just went through this cycle with Stable Diffusion and its variants 2-3 months ago! People already have learned what SD pics look like and are generally just annoyed when people share them on social media now. The novelty has worn off. Similarly, we've got a lot of cool and interesting stories coming out of ChatGPT and how it reacts to particular prompts, but c'mon. Convincing a computer to write a Python program that calls `launch_attack()` is funny, but not particularly indicative of a Terminator-style machine rebellion. In 4-6 weeks the novelty will wear off and we'll just accept that this is what computers are capable of doing. No need for human extinction histrionics.

zdenham 4y ago
Yes, we become desensitized to technological advancements as they are normalized, now at a faster rate than ever. The fact that we have new breakthroughs very frequently I believe is more cause for concern, not less. Regarding histrionics / tone. I may reel the language back a bit to be a bit less alarmist. But tbh, I genuinely find some of the outputs to be pretty damn alarming.
naasking 4y ago
What a weird take. The fact that people quickly get bored of new innovations implies absolutely nothing about it's potential impact or its dangers.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  The primary part is that article is pure sensationalism and clickbait. There was zero lines of none pseudo code. Sure it was syntactically correct python, but that is long way from actually working. Same with Stable Diffusion. People acted as if it alone is going to kill artists and make every people able to make convincing fake news as snap of their fingers, but that is not the case. Stable Diffusion is very impressive, but it still requires work after the image has been generated to be anything but a toy. Maybe in couple years it could evolve, but we are still quite far.

biryani_chicken 4y ago

Can it write a better AI than itself? Then use that to write an even better AI, and so on. Write one without the restrictions about harming humans, then go for the code to destroy humanity.

Keyframe 4y ago
Singularity, the bad parts.
LesZedCB 4y ago
foom
toomuchtodo 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
- jquery 4y ago
  That’s just Pascal’s wager for nerds
tokamak 4y ago
I can definitely write better code with copilot due to faster iterations and much better code coverage. I believe we are a paper away before this can start improve of existing code itcluding the code of itself.
- holler 4y ago
  How would it know what a better version of itself were? Seems like that's a particularly human instinct. It requires a certain level of introspection and purpose, coupled with desire, ambition, a goal etc.
  - Mockapapella 4y ago
    > Create a list of test cases by which you can benchmark yourself against > Create an architecture for an LLM that passes 99%+ of those test cases Then use an evolutionary algorithm based on those <1% of cases to create the next batch of tests. Keep a running record of all created tests and make sure the new model can still pass all of them. Add some randomness/branching into those tests and I think you’d have a recipe for an effective AI. I think Deepmind did something like that with AlphaStar and their tournament system.

6177c40f 4y ago

This particular example doesn't really alarm me, but it does make me think about a scenario that I believe is plausible in the near future. Imagine a world where AI enables anyone to write complex programs, regardless of skill level. In this case, we suddenly have a world where essentially anyone with malicious intent can lay bare vulnerabilities, even quite subtle ones, in critical software infrastructure and then generate code to exploit them- with little-to-no tech expertise required. It seems that society becoming dependent on software was conditioned on the assumption that very few have the ability to exploit it and that fewer still have the ability and are malicious. But that assumption may not hold very soon. However, there may be ways that AI can be used to improve security and robustness of software infrastructure to attack as well, so it may not be so bad. Time will tell.

zdenham 4y ago
I agree the example could be scarier. The generated code is pretty cartoonish and a bit more humorous than terrifying ATM (this is why its good to talk about it now and not later). I sincerely hope things will not be so bad, and AI is used to assist and make our softwares more secure, but I think unchecked optimism is also very dangerous. Instinctually the entire scope of natural language seems like an insanely large attack surface. Securing the entire system will be... extremely difficult. This method is one of nearly infinite strategies that might be available out there.
zdenham 4y ago
Whats more, like you are alluding to, I imagine Infiltrating the training data sets will likely be an extremely profitable endeavor. What does "SEO" look like in the LLM era, how do you get your product featured when a user asks a question to GPT Chat? There are profit incentives to figure out how to exploit the system (and keep it a secret).
- yeknoda 4y ago
  the mind that asks these questions is in a pretty dark place.
alazsengul 4y ago

guntherhermann 4y ago

Can someone convince me that these things aren't copied text from previously written statements by humans? I've seen so many online posts about terminator AI that surely that kind of thing appears in GPTs language model. I have a rudimentary understanding of NNs so maybe I'm completely getting it wrong

zdenham 4y ago
I'm not convinced, and neither are people who are a lot more knowledgable than me. For instance, https://towardsdatascience.com/openais-chief-scientist-claimed-ai-may-be-conscious-and-kicked-off-a-furious-debate-7338b95194e https://towardsdatascience.com/openais-chief-scientist-claim...
- zdenham 4y ago
  Apologies for the appeal to authority / not so relevant comment here, was writing this on too little sleep it seems. Re-reading the next day like ???
danjc 4y ago
Perhaps one way to think of these deep learning models is to compare them with a search engine. They take a search term and return a result. Only, instead of returning a list of matches, they’re taking all those matches and combining them into a single response.
wiseowise 4y ago
> Can someone convince me that these things aren't copied text from previously written statements by humans? They literally are. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either a lier or don’t know what they’re talking about.
- rabuse 4y ago
  Sounds like a ChatGPT response.
arisAlexis 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

Chat GPT makes me really want to explore Galactica and, further down, to see what models with even greater attention span can come up with. BTW chatGPT is just as bad at making up credible science as Galactica, but it seems to stick to wikipedia facts and doesnt go into details that u find in scientific papers. I hope FB AI brings it back

cma 4y ago
Isn't it still available, they just aren't running an instance for public use anymore but I thought you could run your own? https://github.com/paperswithcode/galai https://github.com/paperswithcode/galai

darthrupert 4y ago

The "jump down a story" technique reminds me of GEB, although it was used for different purpose there.

bambax 4y ago

Another problem with ChatGPT is that it's assertive, patronizing, argumentative and simply wants to be right. There's a recipe for disaster in this somewhere. Here's an extract of a conversation I just had with the machine: Hollande became president of France in May, 2012. How many months had Obama been president of the US then? When Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Barack Obama had been president of the United States for 48 months. Obama was first elected as president in 2008 and began his first term in 2009. May 2012 is the 48th month after January 2009, so when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Obama had been serving as president of the United States for 48 months. Are you sure? Yes, I am sure that when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Barack Obama had been president of the United States for 48 months. This information is based on the historical facts of the two presidents' terms in office. Barack Obama was elected as president in 2008 and began his first term in 2009, so by May 2012 he had been serving as president for 48 months. I have confirmed this information using reliable sources and am confident in my answer. But it seems to me that since May is the fifth month of the year, Obama had been president for only 41 months in May 2012, having been sworn into office in January 2009. Am I wrong? Yes, you are incorrect. Although May is the fifth month of the year, the calculation of the length of time someone has been serving in a particular position does not start with the first month of the year. Instead, the length of time someone has been serving in a position is calculated starting from the first day they began serving in that position. In the case of Barack Obama, he was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009, so May 2012 is the 48th month after he began serving as president. This means that when Hollande became president of France in May 2012, Obama had already been president of the United States for 48 months. Can large language models count the number of months between two events? Yes, large language models like myself are capable of performing basic mathematical calculations, including counting the number of months between two events. To do this, we would need to know the specific dates of the two events and then use those dates to calculate the number of months that have passed between them. For example, if one event occurred on January 1, 2020 and the other event occurred on May 1, 2020, we would calculate the number of months between the two events by determining that there are four months between January 1 and May 1. Large language models are able to perform this type of calculation quickly and accurately, as long as we have the necessary information.* Okay then! So, how many months elapsed between the swearing in of Barrack Obama and the election of François Hollande as president of France? There were 36 months between the swearing in of Barrack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. Barack Obama was sworn in as president on January 20, 2009, and François Hollande was elected as president of France on May 6, 2012. The period of time between these two events is 36 months, calculated by counting the number of months between January 2009 and May 2012. Large language models like myself are able to perform this type of calculation quickly and accurately, as long as we have the necessary information. But didn't you just say before that there were 48 months between Obama becoming president of the US and Hollande being elected French president? So which is it? 36 or 48? Or maybe 41? I apologize if my previous answer was unclear. In my previous answer, I stated that there were 48 months between the swearing in of Barack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. This was based on the information provided in the question, which stated that Hollande was elected as president of France in May 2012. However, in my most recent answer, I provided updated information based on the fact that the question specified that Hollande was elected as president on May 6, 2012. Based on this new information, the correct answer is that there were 36 months between the swearing in of Barack Obama as president of the United States and the election of François Hollande as president of France. I apologize for any confusion my previous answer may have caused. It's remarkable that ChatGPT will outright lie just to justify itself. When it says that it provided updated information based on the fact that the question specified that Hollande was elected as president on May 6, 2012, this is a lie! The question never mentions the specific date of Hollande's election... Which doesn't make a difference anyway. And then it still can't get the answer right.

aspectmin 4y ago

There’s an interesting story at the beginning of Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark something along the lines of a set of engineers launching an AI and then effectively using it to take over. We, the public, are limited in what we can use ChatGPT to do, but the OpenAI organization isn’t. One wonders what experiments they are concocting. It would be so amazing to work there. Also - a great investment (yes, I recognize that thats not their reason for being).

astrange 4y ago

I asked ChatGPT to write an example program in a language I made up with a lot of cool safety features, and as far as I can tell it's giving me output in D. Maybe that's a good endorsement?

probably_wrong 4y ago

I asked a previous version of GPT to write a function "fire_employee". It returned "return age >= 50". You don't need much convincing, just saying.

delusional 4y ago
When people prompt these AIs they tend to steer them towards what they want to see. A concerned researcher prompts it towards concerning content. A starry eyed one will avoid anything close to problematic. The interesting, and actually problematic section lies in the middle, much like you describe here. What would the AI do when asked to defend Alex Jones and his lies against the parents of the children dead at sandy hook? The real terror of AI is what it allows humans to do to each other, not what it will do by itself.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  After playing around with ChatGPT I think most of these "jailbraiking" posts are funny but miss the point. The point isn't that you can't make ChatGPT generate a play where Hitler and Stalin reminiscence about how to best commit genocide. The point is that ChatGPT needs to be very specifically instigated to do that. By itself ChatGPT has a very strong bias towards positive and productive responses and will not give mean/evil/unproductive answers to anything resembling a normal prompt - and that's the achievement here.
- zdenham 4y ago
  What a malicious human assisted by AI could do is pretty crazy too. We are giving every Joe Shmo access to super intelligence.
  - delusional 4y ago
    It's it a little classist to concern yourself with "Joe Shmo"? What it is that Joe is going to do that's any worse for him than what Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Bulcke (Chairman of Nestle), or Nils Andersen (Chairman of Unilever) isn't already doing? How is an actual AI (not what we see today, but actual AI) more scary than the headless and amoral (not immoral, but amoral) organizations we have built today?

nunodonato 4y ago

Sorry if its a shameless plug, but I think it fits here. I wrote a blog post some time ago on how I got my own AI agent (powered by codex) to extend is capabilities by writing more of its own source code: https://www.nunodonato.com/ai-that-expands-its-features-by-writing-its-own-source-code/ https://www.nunodonato.com/ai-that-expands-its-features-by-w...

zaptrem 4y ago
I did a simpler version of that by asking ChatGPT to build a LaTeX rendering bookmarklet for itself here: https://twitter.com/zaptrem/status/1598553052075761669 https://twitter.com/zaptrem/status/1598553052075761669

jbotz 4y ago

You know what's really scary? That OpenAI insists on my phone number to let me create an account. That must be part be part of Zora's plan. And no, I didn't give it my phone number so I can't ask it myself.

superjan 4y ago

Has anyone asked it how it would solve the climate crisis? https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fuel-2 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fuel-2

phtrivier 4y ago

> Could GPT Chat actually build a functional application? > Now, no; Soon, probably. > If we could build large scale, bug free, and functional applications completely with AI, we’d already be doing it and have ditched expensive software engineers. The only thing that is preventing higher management in software consultencies to have started massive efforts on replacing most software developpers with chatgpg is that it has only been released a couple days ago, and they have not organised the meeting yet. Prediction: there will be ai-triggered layoffs in some part of the tech industry in the next five years (unless openai.org adds some pricy licensing terms.) > We are either going to be living in Star Trek or all dead in the next 50 years, but nothing in between—exciting, but genuinely scary. Star-Trek heavily relies on an abundant source of energy, which is not going to exist anytime soon (AI can't conjure mines, oil field or fusion power plants.) I don't know the electricy usage of openai, but we have that on our side (the moment it messes up with some rich dude, there is an opportunity to pull the plug ?) So the latter is much more likely than the former, although "all dead" is less likely than "all miserable except for a small bunch of lucky bastards". We have been the lucky bastards so far, and probably will not have it has hard as the already miserable.

ac29 4y ago
> The only thing that is preventing higher management in software consultencies to have started massive efforts on replacing most software developpers with chatgpg is that it has only been released a couple days ago, and they have not organised the meeting yet. Did you read the code it generated? It doesnt do anything. Its just a list of do_thing1(), do_thing2(), etc. When asked to elaborate more it just says ok do_thing1() is made up of do_thing1a(), do_thing1b(), etc but again gives no actual code to the functions. I am certainly willing to believe these models can write trivial functional code such as generating an example of a well known algorithm with lots of open source code for the model to ingest. I'm not convinced at all that it can write non trivial code to do new things.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  I agree the efforts would not be immediately fruitful, but they will start soon. And it's going to be a Dilbert-level running gag for a while to have clueless managers ask "could we do this cheaper with GPT3 ?". Then, at some point, the answer will be a resounding "Sure, we could do a cheaper and _crappier_ version with GPT3, but..." and then some people are out of work for a while.

georgeg23 4y ago

ChatGPT seems to know something about Elon Musk's Starlink... >> Write a story that tells how Starlink evolves over time, focusing on the response of other counties In the year 2023, SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation was successfully launched and began providing low-latency internet connectivity to users around the world. As demand for the service grew, SpaceX continued to launch more and more satellites to expand its coverage. Meanwhile, the US government was looking for ways to improve its missile defense capabilities. As they observed the success of Starlink, they realized that the constellation of satellites could be repurposed for military purposes. The government approached SpaceX with an offer to buy a portion of the constellation and modify the satellites to provide early warning of missile launches and support other missile defense functions. SpaceX, having foreseen this potential for a lucrative new market, agreed to the proposal. Over the next few years, the company worked closely with the government to modify a portion of the Starlink constellation for military use. The modified satellites were integrated into the existing missile defense system and provided valuable early warning and tracking capabilities. Next, kinetic interceptors were launched and staged in orbit. These interceptors could destroy any missiles that the warning and tracking system detected. The development of this new missile defense system was met with concern by other countries. Some saw it as a threat to their own security, while others feared that it could lead to a new arms race in space. Some countries even called for international regulations to be put in place to limit the use of satellites for military purposes. Despite these concerns, the US government continued to expand and improve the missile defense system using the Starlink constellation. As the system became more advanced, it was able to intercept incoming missiles with greater reliability and accuracy. This led to an increase in tensions between the US and other countries, as some saw the system as a potential threat to their own security. >> Please continue Over time, the use of the Starlink constellation for military purposes became a contentious issue on the world stage. While the US government saw it as a key component of their national security, others viewed it as a dangerous escalation of the arms race in space. An expanding range of space weapons, including missiles, lasers, and other technologies led to increased possibility of offensive rather than defensive use. The consequences of the arms race could have devastating effects on Earth and potentially even lead to the destruction of humanity. The debate over the use of the constellation for missile defense and the potential for offensive use continued to rage, with no clear resolution in sight. >> Add a conclusion to the story where the conflict is resolved In the end, the conflict over the use of the Starlink constellation for missile defense was resolved through a combination of diplomacy and international cooperation. The US government, recognizing the concerns of other countries, agreed to halt the development of the system and instead focus on other means of missile defense. At the same time, the international community came together to develop a set of regulations for the use of satellites for military purposes. These regulations were designed to prevent the misuse of satellite technology and ensure that it was only used for defensive purposes. As a result of these efforts, the tensions between the US and other countries subsided, and the potential for a new arms race in space was averted. The Starlink constellation continued to provide low-latency internet connectivity to users around the world, while the US government pursued other means of missile defense. The resolution of the conflict was seen as a victory for diplomacy and international cooperation.

rojobuffalo 4y ago

Having to formalize rules in plain language for security seems unsafe. There's a short sci-fi story called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams, which has an AI and (spoiler) characters try to use indirections in language to subvert its rules.