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> It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. But those physical things would be the danger, at least if you consider

> It turns out that people hook computers to 'things' that exist in the physical world. But those physical things would be the danger, at least if you consider the nuclear missile to be the danger. It seems you are trying to go down the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line of thinking. Which is fine, but outside of the discussion taking place.

rahmeero 3y ago
There are many relevant things that already exist in the physical world and are not currently considered dangers: ecommerce, digital payments, doordash-style delivery, cross-border remittances, remote gig work, social media fanning extreme political views, event organizing. However, these are constituent elements that could be aggregated and weaponized by a maleficent AI.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Those tangible elements would conceivably become the danger, not the AI using those elements. Again, the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" take is all well and good, but well outside of this discussion.
- jononor 3y ago
  Maleficent humans are constantly trying to use these elements for their own gain, often with little to no regards to other humans (especially out groups). This happens both individually, in small groups, in large organizations and even multiple organization colluding. Both criminal, terrorist, groups at war, along with legal organizations such as exploitative companies and regressive interest organizations, et.c.. And we have tools and mechanisms in place to keep the level of abuse at bay. Why and how are these mechanisms unsuitable for protecting against AI?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >Why and how are these mechanisms unsuitable for protecting against AI? The rule of law prevented WWI and WWII, right? Oh, no it did not, tens to hundreds of millions died due to human stupidity and violence depending on what exactly you count in that age. > Both criminal, terrorist, groups at war Human organizations, especially criminal organizations have deep trust issues between agents in the organization. You never know if anyone else in the system is a defector. This reduces the openness and quantity of communication between agents. In addition you have agents that want to personally gain rather than benefit the organization itself. This is why Apple is a trillion dollar company following the law... mostly. Smart people can work together and 'mostly' trust the other person isn't going to screw them over. Now imagine a superintelligent AI with a mental processing bandwidth of hundreds of the best employees at a company. Assuming it knows and trusts itself, then the idea of illegal activities being an internal risk disappears. You have something that operates more on the level of a hivemind toward a goal (what the limitations of hivemind versus selfish agents are is another very long discussion). What we ask here is if all the worlds best hackers got together, worked together unselfishly, and instigated an attack against every critical point they could find on the internet/real world systems at once, how much damage could they cause? Oh, lets say you find the server systems the super intelligence is on, but the controller shuts it off and all the data has some kind of homomorphic encryption so that's useless to you. It's dead right? Na, they just load up the backup copy they have a few months later and it's party time all over again. Humans tend to remain dead after dying, AI? Well that is yet to bee seen.
pixl97 3y ago
>but outside of the discussion taking place. Drawing an artificial line between you and the danger is a great way to find yourself in a Maginot Line with AI driving right around it.
- randomdata 3y ago
  False premise. One can start new threads about complimentary subjects and they can be thought about in parallel. You don't have to try and shove all of the worlds concepts into just one thought train to be able to reason about them. That's how you make spaghetti.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
>It seems you are trying to go down the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line of thinking. "Guns don't kill people, AIs kill people" is where we are going, I think. This is the discussion: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." The discussion is not about a mathematical representation of AI. The discussion is about the actual implementation of AI on physical computing infrastructure which is accessible by at least one human on planet earth. The credible danger, argued in various places, including superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, is that the "system under review" here is "every physical system on planet earth" because an AI could gain access to whatever systems exist on said planet, including human minds (see "Nazis"). So much as we might discuss the problems of letting a madman get control of the US, Russian, UK, French or Chinese nuclear arsenals, we might discuss the problem of building an AI if the act of building the AI could result in it taking over the nuclear arsenals of those countries and using it against humans. That takeover might involve convincing a human it should do it.
- tjmc 3y ago
  I don't understand this argument (the "Terminator" scenario). AI could conceivably self replicate and evolve as software but it still needs hardware to run on, power, networking etc etc. There's no better way to kill that than to start a nuclear war or engineer some super virus that kills everyone. It's hard to see any scenario where AI could become a dominant force without significant human collaboration. Perhaps somewhere like North Korea where a very small elite has complete control over the the population it could happen but it sounds a lot like sci-fi to me. I'd love to hear some plausible scenarios for the counter-argument. I've seen a lot of "I think there's an x% chance we're in trouble" arguments which might be convincing for job losses, but I don't find at all plausible as a case for human extinction or indentured servitude (the "Matrix" scenario).
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    Sure. I recommend reading superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. But I think the key failure here, in your thinking, is that you can't conceive of something, and that therefore something can't happen, and you're doing that in the context of things that are smarter than you. You being able to conceive of it is simply not required for it to happen. Also, Colossus: The Forbin Project was a great movie from 1970 on this subject. Spoilers: an AI takes control of the nuclear arsenal and then threatens humans with extinction if they do not serve it. The humans do serve it, of course, because the humans in charge don't want to die, and are entirely fine with enslaving the rest of us. The book superintelligence by Nick Bostrom gets into the fine details of all the different ways an AI would escape, why it would escape, and why it wouldn't take a chance with a species that murders its own kind for fun and profit.

rahmeero 3y ago

There are many relevant things that already exist in the physical world and are not currently considered dangers: ecommerce, digital payments, doordash-style delivery, cross-border remittances, remote gig work, social media fanning extreme political views, event organizing. However, these are constituent elements that could be aggregated and weaponized by a maleficent AI.

randomdata 3y ago
Those tangible elements would conceivably become the danger, not the AI using those elements. Again, the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" take is all well and good, but well outside of this discussion.
jononor 3y ago
Maleficent humans are constantly trying to use these elements for their own gain, often with little to no regards to other humans (especially out groups). This happens both individually, in small groups, in large organizations and even multiple organization colluding. Both criminal, terrorist, groups at war, along with legal organizations such as exploitative companies and regressive interest organizations, et.c.. And we have tools and mechanisms in place to keep the level of abuse at bay. Why and how are these mechanisms unsuitable for protecting against AI?
- pixl97 3y ago
  >Why and how are these mechanisms unsuitable for protecting against AI? The rule of law prevented WWI and WWII, right? Oh, no it did not, tens to hundreds of millions died due to human stupidity and violence depending on what exactly you count in that age. > Both criminal, terrorist, groups at war Human organizations, especially criminal organizations have deep trust issues between agents in the organization. You never know if anyone else in the system is a defector. This reduces the openness and quantity of communication between agents. In addition you have agents that want to personally gain rather than benefit the organization itself. This is why Apple is a trillion dollar company following the law... mostly. Smart people can work together and 'mostly' trust the other person isn't going to screw them over. Now imagine a superintelligent AI with a mental processing bandwidth of hundreds of the best employees at a company. Assuming it knows and trusts itself, then the idea of illegal activities being an internal risk disappears. You have something that operates more on the level of a hivemind toward a goal (what the limitations of hivemind versus selfish agents are is another very long discussion). What we ask here is if all the worlds best hackers got together, worked together unselfishly, and instigated an attack against every critical point they could find on the internet/real world systems at once, how much damage could they cause? Oh, lets say you find the server systems the super intelligence is on, but the controller shuts it off and all the data has some kind of homomorphic encryption so that's useless to you. It's dead right? Na, they just load up the backup copy they have a few months later and it's party time all over again. Humans tend to remain dead after dying, AI? Well that is yet to bee seen.

pixl97 3y ago

>but outside of the discussion taking place. Drawing an artificial line between you and the danger is a great way to find yourself in a Maginot Line with AI driving right around it.

randomdata 3y ago
False premise. One can start new threads about complimentary subjects and they can be thought about in parallel. You don't have to try and shove all of the worlds concepts into just one thought train to be able to reason about them. That's how you make spaghetti.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

>It seems you are trying to go down the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" line of thinking. "Guns don't kill people, AIs kill people" is where we are going, I think. This is the discussion: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." The discussion is not about a mathematical representation of AI. The discussion is about the actual implementation of AI on physical computing infrastructure which is accessible by at least one human on planet earth. The credible danger, argued in various places, including superintelligence by Nick Bostrom, is that the "system under review" here is "every physical system on planet earth" because an AI could gain access to whatever systems exist on said planet, including human minds (see "Nazis"). So much as we might discuss the problems of letting a madman get control of the US, Russian, UK, French or Chinese nuclear arsenals, we might discuss the problem of building an AI if the act of building the AI could result in it taking over the nuclear arsenals of those countries and using it against humans. That takeover might involve convincing a human it should do it.

tjmc 3y ago
I don't understand this argument (the "Terminator" scenario). AI could conceivably self replicate and evolve as software but it still needs hardware to run on, power, networking etc etc. There's no better way to kill that than to start a nuclear war or engineer some super virus that kills everyone. It's hard to see any scenario where AI could become a dominant force without significant human collaboration. Perhaps somewhere like North Korea where a very small elite has complete control over the the population it could happen but it sounds a lot like sci-fi to me. I'd love to hear some plausible scenarios for the counter-argument. I've seen a lot of "I think there's an x% chance we're in trouble" arguments which might be convincing for job losses, but I don't find at all plausible as a case for human extinction or indentured servitude (the "Matrix" scenario).
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  Sure. I recommend reading superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. But I think the key failure here, in your thinking, is that you can't conceive of something, and that therefore something can't happen, and you're doing that in the context of things that are smarter than you. You being able to conceive of it is simply not required for it to happen. Also, Colossus: The Forbin Project was a great movie from 1970 on this subject. Spoilers: an AI takes control of the nuclear arsenal and then threatens humans with extinction if they do not serve it. The humans do serve it, of course, because the humans in charge don't want to die, and are entirely fine with enslaving the rest of us. The book superintelligence by Nick Bostrom gets into the fine details of all the different ways an AI would escape, why it would escape, and why it wouldn't take a chance with a species that murders its own kind for fun and profit.