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Societal disruption. Shutting down transportation, power grids, fucking with the financial systems, backflowing sewage into clean water distribution, etc. Basic

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.

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.