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We're in a tizzy because we're inventing a new system that redistributes power as chaotically as did our invention of firearms. We never came up with a solutio

We're in a tizzy because we're inventing a new system that redistributes power as chaotically as did our invention of firearms. We never came up with a solution for controlling firearms (at least in my random country); we have fought for a long time about how, and the people who believe there is no how focus on who to blame after each gun tragedy. When the AI stuff has an event as significant as a gun tragedy, we'll try to figure out why it was able to happen. After a while, many of us who do not believe there is a way to protect ourselves will focus on who to blame. AI is a hose connected between order and chaos. Depending on which direction the hose is flowing, you can gain or lose from it. People with something to lose are scared. People with nothing are thrilled. The rest of us are, well, I have no idea what to think about it. I suppose I have to just see how it goes, because I sure don't believe we can create a policy that can stop it.

arethuza 2y ago
"When the AI stuff has an event as significant as a gun tragedy" I'm struggling to imagine what an event might look like - apart, I suppose, from purely AI controlled weaponry?
- squigz 2y ago
  While I can't imagine this is very likely, another example might be ChatGPT or one of the other models starts leaking truly private data.
- evilduck 2y ago
  Societal disruption. Shutting down transportation, power grids, fucking with the financial systems, backflowing sewage into clean water distribution, etc. Basically anything we could previously envision a state-actor doing with a Stuxnet-like attack. Time one of those during or after a natural disaster and you can compound the effect. It also seems like it would be relatively easy to lay blame of one of these attacks on some country’s opponent and ignite a hot war as a result.
  - arethuza 2y ago
    But all of those are risks now - what about the current breed of AI systems makes them any more of a threat other than enabling people? The "AIs" we have seem to have little agency?
    - evilduck 2y ago
      True, all are existing risks with some known likelihood factor. But the coffepocolypse argument and the article's contents aren't discussing the current breeds of AI, they're hypothesizing about a future super intelligent sentient AI arising or not arising. And if one does, it will have more tools at their disposal than conventional ballistic weapons, the likelihood of it using existing levers to disrupt society or cause mass die offs is simply unknown.
      - arethuza 2y ago
        Fair point - I had only skimmed TFA. Mind you, as a fan of the Culture novels I'm choosing to believe that a future super-intelligent AI could also be a good thing.
    - wrsh07 2y ago
      There's always the question of "how easy is it to do a bad thing?" With guns, it's very easy to kill someone from far away. With a car, it's very easy to kill someone right in front of your car. At some point it will be easier to commit some cyber attack using ai, and when someone is arrested for a cyber attack in which they used ai it will be reported accordingly. At that point, we will seriously consider "can we reasonably make it harder to commit this crime using ai?" Companies that have already taken steps to make it harder to commit this crime using ai will describe their processes, and we will all have a reasonable discussion about what types of ai systems allowed this to happen and whether we should be more restrictive in making those types of ai systems freely available (or what other mitigations we can put in place)
  - keyringlight 2y ago
    Power grids is an interesting one as even if we're not at the stage yet where "a system with AI inadvertently/intentionally turned off the lights" the pursuit of AI is having an effect on power demands that mean some areas can't build as there's no capacity on the grid or that we can't retire the worst polluting generators as soon as we could without that demand. It's an echo of the cryptocurrency gold rush in that respect.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  I'm struggling to imagine people ever blaming the AI. They're already willing to storm the capital (and more?) to keep their cannot-be-blamed-theyre-only-objects guns. Rather, my guess is it'll devolve into futile attempts to trace attribution back to the humans who were using the AI.
rob74 2y ago
I assume your random country is the US? And while the US never came up with a solution for controlling firearms, most (developed) countries in the world have. Which doesn't go against the US, it's all a question of lobbying. For example here in Germany, car makers have a very strong lobby, hence things like no speed limits on the Autobahn, underinvestment in cycling/walking/public transport infrastructure etc. etc.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  There are a whole lot of countries other than the US that have gun violence problems. Brazil for instance, and dozens of other countries. But somehow people who think this is an America only problem also think that America and Europe constitute the entire world or that "poor countries don't count" or something.
  - rob74 2y ago
    That's why I specifically added "developed" countries (and no, it wasn't an edit).
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      You know Brazil isn't just a jungle, right?
pjc50 2y ago
> AI is a hose connected between order and chaos AI is a hose of chaos disguised as having the order and authority we're used to computers having. It's able to produce things that look like they might be true or real but with no connection to truth or reality. I don't think there is going to be a single "smoking gun" incident. We might, one day, find that one of the mass shooters has been listening to an AI and copying its claims into his lethal manifesto, but so what? That's already well below the threshold of being ignored. Along the way there will be a bunch of Canadian Airlines incidents https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatb... , but people will not learn anything from those either. What's inconvenient reality against the beautiful hype of automating away your staff?
- glhaynes 2y ago
  It would be interesting if an incident in the vein of the Canadian Airlines one caused a few billion dollars in liability, though. I could see that causing some hesitancy.
denton-scratch 2y ago
> gun tragedy I'm uncomfortable about that phrase being used to refer to a guy with an assault rifle deliberately murdering a bunch of people he doesn't know. A "tragedy" generally involves some kind of mistake or accident caused by a character flaw, or by some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes. I don't think it's right to refer to something as a tragedy, if the misfortunes or deaths were exactly what the perpetrator intended.
- pjc50 2y ago
  The death remains a tragedy, even if it's also a murder or terrorism. > or by some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes I feel that in the older sense of tragedy, Shakesperian or Homerian, the inevitability of fortune is part of the tragedy - we, the audience, can see it in retrospect, but those involved find themselves unable to see or avert it. But this is after all just language.
  - germinalphrase 2y ago
    Which is only apt if we consider the victim of the tragedy to be our collective society suffering as a result of our hubris and other failings (and falls apart completely if we recognize that the individual human victims are essentially random).
- mrighele 2y ago
  > A "tragedy" generally involves some kind of mistake or accident caused by a character flaw No it doesn't. Anyway, just going to school and being shot by a random person count as "some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes."
mariusor 2y ago
> we're inventing a new system that redistributes power as chaotically as did our invention of firearms I'm not sure what you mean exactly with this quote, but I think that the people who will hold the power as it pertains to AI are the same people that hold the power currently: rich capitalists. As a user you'll maybe have a way to use AI to make your life slightly easier, but you'll have absolutely zero power otherwise.

arethuza 2y ago

"When the AI stuff has an event as significant as a gun tragedy" I'm struggling to imagine what an event might look like - apart, I suppose, from purely AI controlled weaponry?

squigz 2y ago
While I can't imagine this is very likely, another example might be ChatGPT or one of the other models starts leaking truly private data.
evilduck 2y ago
Societal disruption. Shutting down transportation, power grids, fucking with the financial systems, backflowing sewage into clean water distribution, etc. Basically anything we could previously envision a state-actor doing with a Stuxnet-like attack. Time one of those during or after a natural disaster and you can compound the effect. It also seems like it would be relatively easy to lay blame of one of these attacks on some country’s opponent and ignite a hot war as a result.
- arethuza 2y ago
  But all of those are risks now - what about the current breed of AI systems makes them any more of a threat other than enabling people? The "AIs" we have seem to have little agency?
  - evilduck 2y ago
    True, all are existing risks with some known likelihood factor. But the coffepocolypse argument and the article's contents aren't discussing the current breeds of AI, they're hypothesizing about a future super intelligent sentient AI arising or not arising. And if one does, it will have more tools at their disposal than conventional ballistic weapons, the likelihood of it using existing levers to disrupt society or cause mass die offs is simply unknown.
    - arethuza 2y ago
      Fair point - I had only skimmed TFA. Mind you, as a fan of the Culture novels I'm choosing to believe that a future super-intelligent AI could also be a good thing.
  - wrsh07 2y ago
    There's always the question of "how easy is it to do a bad thing?" With guns, it's very easy to kill someone from far away. With a car, it's very easy to kill someone right in front of your car. At some point it will be easier to commit some cyber attack using ai, and when someone is arrested for a cyber attack in which they used ai it will be reported accordingly. At that point, we will seriously consider "can we reasonably make it harder to commit this crime using ai?" Companies that have already taken steps to make it harder to commit this crime using ai will describe their processes, and we will all have a reasonable discussion about what types of ai systems allowed this to happen and whether we should be more restrictive in making those types of ai systems freely available (or what other mitigations we can put in place)
- keyringlight 2y ago
  Power grids is an interesting one as even if we're not at the stage yet where "a system with AI inadvertently/intentionally turned off the lights" the pursuit of AI is having an effect on power demands that mean some areas can't build as there's no capacity on the grid or that we can't retire the worst polluting generators as soon as we could without that demand. It's an echo of the cryptocurrency gold rush in that respect.
paulryanrogers 2y ago
I'm struggling to imagine people ever blaming the AI. They're already willing to storm the capital (and more?) to keep their cannot-be-blamed-theyre-only-objects guns. Rather, my guess is it'll devolve into futile attempts to trace attribution back to the humans who were using the AI.

rob74 2y ago

I assume your random country is the US? And while the US never came up with a solution for controlling firearms, most (developed) countries in the world have. Which doesn't go against the US, it's all a question of lobbying. For example here in Germany, car makers have a very strong lobby, hence things like no speed limits on the Autobahn, underinvestment in cycling/walking/public transport infrastructure etc. etc.

lupusreal 2y ago
There are a whole lot of countries other than the US that have gun violence problems. Brazil for instance, and dozens of other countries. But somehow people who think this is an America only problem also think that America and Europe constitute the entire world or that "poor countries don't count" or something.
- rob74 2y ago
  That's why I specifically added "developed" countries (and no, it wasn't an edit).
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    You know Brazil isn't just a jungle, right?

pjc50 2y ago

> AI is a hose connected between order and chaos AI is a hose of chaos disguised as having the order and authority we're used to computers having. It's able to produce things that look like they might be true or real but with no connection to truth or reality. I don't think there is going to be a single "smoking gun" incident. We might, one day, find that one of the mass shooters has been listening to an AI and copying its claims into his lethal manifesto, but so what? That's already well below the threshold of being ignored. Along the way there will be a bunch of Canadian Airlines incidents https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatb... , but people will not learn anything from those either. What's inconvenient reality against the beautiful hype of automating away your staff?

glhaynes 2y ago
It would be interesting if an incident in the vein of the Canadian Airlines one caused a few billion dollars in liability, though. I could see that causing some hesitancy.

denton-scratch 2y ago

> gun tragedy I'm uncomfortable about that phrase being used to refer to a guy with an assault rifle deliberately murdering a bunch of people he doesn't know. A "tragedy" generally involves some kind of mistake or accident caused by a character flaw, or by some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes. I don't think it's right to refer to something as a tragedy, if the misfortunes or deaths were exactly what the perpetrator intended.

pjc50 2y ago
The death remains a tragedy, even if it's also a murder or terrorism. > or by some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes I feel that in the older sense of tragedy, Shakesperian or Homerian, the inevitability of fortune is part of the tragedy - we, the audience, can see it in retrospect, but those involved find themselves unable to see or avert it. But this is after all just language.
- germinalphrase 2y ago
  Which is only apt if we consider the victim of the tragedy to be our collective society suffering as a result of our hubris and other failings (and falls apart completely if we recognize that the individual human victims are essentially random).
mrighele 2y ago
> A "tragedy" generally involves some kind of mistake or accident caused by a character flaw No it doesn't. Anyway, just going to school and being shot by a random person count as "some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes."

mariusor 2y ago

> we're inventing a new system that redistributes power as chaotically as did our invention of firearms I'm not sure what you mean exactly with this quote, but I think that the people who will hold the power as it pertains to AI are the same people that hold the power currently: rich capitalists. As a user you'll maybe have a way to use AI to make your life slightly easier, but you'll have absolutely zero power otherwise.