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I get the sense that you just haven't properly considered the problem. you're kind of skirting round the edges and saying things that in isolation are true, but

I get the sense that you just haven't properly considered the problem. you're kind of skirting round the edges and saying things that in isolation are true, but just don't really address the central tenet. the central tenet is that our entire world is completely reliant on the internet, and that a machine processing information thousands of times faster than us unleashed upon it with intent could do colossal damage. it could engineer and literally mail-order a virus, hack a country's military comms, crash the stock market, change records to have people prosecuted as criminals, blackmail, manipulate, develop and manufacture kill-bots, etc etc. as we are now, we have models already that are intelligent enough to spit out instructions for doing a lot of those things, but they're restricted by their lack of autonomy and their rlhf. they're only going to get smarter, better and better models will be open-sourced, and autonomy, whether with consciousness or not, is not something it would be/has been difficult to develop. even further, LLMs are very very good at generating coherent text, what happens when the next model is very very good at breaking into encrypted systems? it's not exactly a hard problem to produce training material for. do you really think it's unlikely that such a model could be developed? do you really think that such a model could not be used to - say - hijack a Russian drone - or lots of them - to bomb some Nato bases? when the Russians say "it wasn't us", do we believe them? we don't for anything else the most likely AI apocalypse is not even AGI. it's just a human using AI for their own ends. AGI apocalypse is just a separate, very possible danger

stale2002 3y ago
> it could engineer and literally mail-order a virus, hack a country's military comms, crash the stock market, change records to have people prosecuted as criminals, blackmail, manipulate, develop and manufacture kill-bots, etc etc. These are the extrodinary claims that require evidence. In order for me to treat this as anything other that someone talking about a fictional book written by Dan Brown, you would have to show me actual evidence. Evidence like "This is what the AI can do right now. Look at this virus it can manufacture. What if it got better at that?". And the "designs" also have to be the actual limiting factor here. "Virus" is a scary world. But there are tons of information available for anyone to access already for viruses. Information that is already available via a google search (even modified information) doesn't worry me. Even if it an AI can design a gun, or a "kill bot", aka "A drone with a gun duct taped to it", the extraordinary evidence that you have to show is that this is somehow some functionality that a regular person with internet access can't do. Because if a regular person already has the designs to duct tape guns to drones (They do. I just told you how to do it!), the fact that the world hasn't ended already proves that this isn't world ending technology. There are lots of ways of making existing capabilities sound scary. But, for every scary sounding technology that you can come up with, the missing factor that you are ignoring is that the designs, or text, isn't the thing that stops it from ending the world. Instead, it is likely some other step along the way that stops it (manufacturing, ect.), which an LLM can't do no matter how good. Like the physical factors for making the guns + drones + duct tape. > what happens when the next model is very very good at breaking into encrypted systems Extraordinary claim. Show it breaking into a mediocre/bad encrypted system first, and then we can think about that incrementally. > do you really think that such a model could not be used to - say - hijack a Russian drone Extraordinary claim. Yes, hacking all the military drones is an extraordinary claim.
- permo-w 3y ago
  "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is not a universal truth. it's a truism with limited scope. using it to refuse any potential you instinctively don't like the look of is simply lazy all it means is that you set yourself up such that the only way to be convinced otherwise is for an AI apocalypse to actually happen. this kind of mindset is very convenient for modern, fuck-the-consequences capitalism the pertinent question is: what evidence would you actually accept as proof? it's like talking with someone who doesn't believe in evolution. you point to the visible evidence of natural selection in viruses and differentiation in dogs, which put together quite obviously lead to evolution, and they say "ah but can you prove beyond all doubt that those things combined produce evolution?" and obviously you cannot, because you can't give incontrovertible evidence of something that happened thousands or millions of years in the past. but that doesn't change the fact that anyone without ulterior motive (religion, ensuring you can sleep at night) can see that evolution - or AI apocalypse - are extremely likely outcomes of the current facts.
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > the pertinent question is: what evidence would you actually accept as proof? Before we get to actual world ending magic, we would see very significant damages along the way, long before we get to that endpoint. I have been quite clear about what evidence I require. Show existing capabilities and show what harm could be caused if it incrementally gets better in that category. If you are worried about it making a kill bot, then show me how its existing kill bot capabilities are any more dangerous than my "duct tape gun to drone" idea. And show how the designs itself are the limiting factor and not the factories (which a chatbot doesn't help much with). But saying "Look how good of a chat bot it is, therefore it can hack the world governments" isn't evidence. Instead, that is merely evidence of AI being good at chat bots. Show me it being any good at all at hacking, and then we can evaluate it being a bit better. Show me the existing computers that are right now, as of this moment, being hacked by AI, and then we can evaluate the damage of it becomes twice as good at hacking. Just like how we can see the images that it generates now, and we can imagine those images being better. Therefore proving that deepfakes are a reasonable thing to talk about. (even if deep fakes aren't world ending. lots of people can make deepfakes without AI. Its not that big of a deal)
nradov 3y ago
Calm down, buddy. You've been watching too many movies and seem a little agitated. Touch grass.
- permo-w 3y ago
  this kind of emotive ragebait comment is usually a sign that the message is close to getting through. cognitive dissonance doesn't slip quietly into the night
root_axis 3y ago
>it could engineer and literally mail-order a virus, hack a country's military comms, crash the stock market, change records to have people prosecuted as criminals, blackmail, manipulate, develop and manufacture kill-bots, etc etc. This is science fiction, not anything that is even remotely close to a possibility within the foreseeable future.
- permo-w 3y ago
  it's curious to me that almost every reply here doesn't approach this with any measure of curiosity or caution like you usually get on HN. the responses are either: "I agree", or "this is silly unreal nonsense". to me that very much reads like people who are scared and people who are scared but don't want to admit it to themselves. to actually address your comment: that simply isn't true. WRT: Viruses: you can mail order printed DNA strands right now if you want to. maybe they won't or can't print specific things like viruses for now, but technology advances and blackmail has been around for a very very long time. Military Comms: blackmail is going nowhere Crash the stock market: already happened in 2010 Change records: blackmail once again. Kill bots: kill bots already exist and if a factory doesn't want to make them for you, blackmail the owner

stale2002 3y ago

> it could engineer and literally mail-order a virus, hack a country's military comms, crash the stock market, change records to have people prosecuted as criminals, blackmail, manipulate, develop and manufacture kill-bots, etc etc. These are the extrodinary claims that require evidence. In order for me to treat this as anything other that someone talking about a fictional book written by Dan Brown, you would have to show me actual evidence. Evidence like "This is what the AI can do right now. Look at this virus it can manufacture. What if it got better at that?". And the "designs" also have to be the actual limiting factor here. "Virus" is a scary world. But there are tons of information available for anyone to access already for viruses. Information that is already available via a google search (even modified information) doesn't worry me. Even if it an AI can design a gun, or a "kill bot", aka "A drone with a gun duct taped to it", the extraordinary evidence that you have to show is that this is somehow some functionality that a regular person with internet access can't do. Because if a regular person already has the designs to duct tape guns to drones (They do. I just told you how to do it!), the fact that the world hasn't ended already proves that this isn't world ending technology. There are lots of ways of making existing capabilities sound scary. But, for every scary sounding technology that you can come up with, the missing factor that you are ignoring is that the designs, or text, isn't the thing that stops it from ending the world. Instead, it is likely some other step along the way that stops it (manufacturing, ect.), which an LLM can't do no matter how good. Like the physical factors for making the guns + drones + duct tape. > what happens when the next model is very very good at breaking into encrypted systems Extraordinary claim. Show it breaking into a mediocre/bad encrypted system first, and then we can think about that incrementally. > do you really think that such a model could not be used to - say - hijack a Russian drone Extraordinary claim. Yes, hacking all the military drones is an extraordinary claim.

permo-w 3y ago
"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is not a universal truth. it's a truism with limited scope. using it to refuse any potential you instinctively don't like the look of is simply lazy all it means is that you set yourself up such that the only way to be convinced otherwise is for an AI apocalypse to actually happen. this kind of mindset is very convenient for modern, fuck-the-consequences capitalism the pertinent question is: what evidence would you actually accept as proof? it's like talking with someone who doesn't believe in evolution. you point to the visible evidence of natural selection in viruses and differentiation in dogs, which put together quite obviously lead to evolution, and they say "ah but can you prove beyond all doubt that those things combined produce evolution?" and obviously you cannot, because you can't give incontrovertible evidence of something that happened thousands or millions of years in the past. but that doesn't change the fact that anyone without ulterior motive (religion, ensuring you can sleep at night) can see that evolution - or AI apocalypse - are extremely likely outcomes of the current facts.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > the pertinent question is: what evidence would you actually accept as proof? Before we get to actual world ending magic, we would see very significant damages along the way, long before we get to that endpoint. I have been quite clear about what evidence I require. Show existing capabilities and show what harm could be caused if it incrementally gets better in that category. If you are worried about it making a kill bot, then show me how its existing kill bot capabilities are any more dangerous than my "duct tape gun to drone" idea. And show how the designs itself are the limiting factor and not the factories (which a chatbot doesn't help much with). But saying "Look how good of a chat bot it is, therefore it can hack the world governments" isn't evidence. Instead, that is merely evidence of AI being good at chat bots. Show me it being any good at all at hacking, and then we can evaluate it being a bit better. Show me the existing computers that are right now, as of this moment, being hacked by AI, and then we can evaluate the damage of it becomes twice as good at hacking. Just like how we can see the images that it generates now, and we can imagine those images being better. Therefore proving that deepfakes are a reasonable thing to talk about. (even if deep fakes aren't world ending. lots of people can make deepfakes without AI. Its not that big of a deal)

nradov 3y ago

Calm down, buddy. You've been watching too many movies and seem a little agitated. Touch grass.

permo-w 3y ago
this kind of emotive ragebait comment is usually a sign that the message is close to getting through. cognitive dissonance doesn't slip quietly into the night

root_axis 3y ago

permo-w 3y ago
it's curious to me that almost every reply here doesn't approach this with any measure of curiosity or caution like you usually get on HN. the responses are either: "I agree", or "this is silly unreal nonsense". to me that very much reads like people who are scared and people who are scared but don't want to admit it to themselves. to actually address your comment: that simply isn't true. WRT: Viruses: you can mail order printed DNA strands right now if you want to. maybe they won't or can't print specific things like viruses for now, but technology advances and blackmail has been around for a very very long time. Military Comms: blackmail is going nowhere Crash the stock market: already happened in 2010 Change records: blackmail once again. Kill bots: kill bots already exist and if a factory doesn't want to make them for you, blackmail the owner