6 ms·
Skynet won and destroyed humanity
- RajT88 2y agoThis kind of speculative doomsday fiction is getting a bit played out. We get it, AI is going to destroy us all using social media! Maybe work in Blockchain in there somehow.
- kouru225 2y agoIt’s been played out since Terminator came out IMO The fear of AI/the fear of aliens IMO is propaganda to cover up the fact that technological advancement is highly correlated with sociological advancement. If people took this fact seriously, they might start wondering whether or not technological advancement actually causes sociological advancement, and if they started to question that then they’d come across all the evidence showing that what we normally think of as “civilized” and “intelligent” behavior is actually just the result of generational wealth, status, and power.
- jhbadger 2y agoAlthough people seem to always forget the 1970 movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project" which already had done the "rogue AI in control of weapons decides to go against humanity" thing already.
- dijksterhuis 2y agoAlso WarGames from 1983, though that was less 'sentient' AI making a decision to kill everyone and more hacker kid accidentally almost kills everyone.
- RajT88 2y agoThat movie is great. I watched it recently.
- kibwen 2y ago> the fact that technological advancement is highly correlated with sociological advancement For values of "sociological advancement" that correlate with technological advancement, naturally.
- bbor 2y agoI love me some capitalism critique, but I think it’s important to understand many scientists are legitimately terrified of an intelligence explosion and the resulting singularity. You can disagree with their arguments of course, but it’s best if we start by agreeing that they do have arguments. For example: Yudkowsky 2013, Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics (long, but with a short intro): https://intelligence.org/files/IEM.pdf https://intelligence.org/files/IEM.pdf Vinge 1993, The Coming Technological Singularity (shorter, bit less rigorous): https://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/100-FYS-F15/Readings/Vinge,%20The%20Coming%20Technological%20Singularity.pdf https://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/100-F...
- kibwen 2y agoThat is what Skynet would say, yes.
- bbor 2y agoThis one is actually super critical of AI funnily enough, and is just a barely-hidden libertarian screed. FWIW, if I were a robot with a Time Machine, I wouldn’t need to invent social media in the past — I wouldn’t simply use bioweapons during an ice age or two. Or hell, go back and shoot the dinosaur-killing asteroid out of the sky!
- crooked-v 2y ago> But as it started consuming more and more data that it had produced itself, its reliability became close to none. It's exactly the opposite with LLMs. See the "model collapse" phenomenon (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y). > We show that, over time, models start losing information about the true distribution, which first starts with tails disappearing, and learned behaviours converge over the generations to a point estimate with very small variance. Furthermore, we show that this process is inevitable, even for cases with almost ideal conditions for long-term learning, that is, no function estimation error
- eikenberry 2y agoAren't those saying the same thing? .. "its reliability became close to none" vs. "causes irreversible defects in the resulting models"
- renewiltord 2y agoThere’s thing that happens in humans called “hallucination” where they just make up stuff. You can’t really just take it at face value. Sometimes, they’re just overfit so they generate the same tokens independent of input.
- Guthur 2y agoThat has never been the definition of hallucination, until LLMs. It's actually just called lying, dishonesty or falsehood. Hallucination is a distortion (McKenna might say liberation) of perception. If I hallucinate being covered in spiders, I don't necessarily go around saying, "I'm covered in spiders, if you cant see them you're blind" (disclaimer: some might, but that's not a prerequisite of an hallucination). The cynic in me thinks that use of the word hallucination is marketing to obscure functional inadequacy and reinforce the illusion that LLMs are some how analogous to human intelligence.
- radlad 2y ago
- gunian 2y ago[flagged]
- SirFatty 2y agoActually, his dad did the creation bit (allegedly).
- pavel_lishin 2y agoThat's a heresy!
- gunian 2y agoits true the big guy mostly does shrooms and goes to spas our lord and savior jesus is the one implementing everything
- noah_buddy 2y agoDepends on how you view the trinity. Many Christians believe they are one and the same, just different lens on god. It would be like saying just your feet ran a marathon.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago> and we are intelligent allegedly My running joke about AI is how can we create artificial intelligence, when we lack so much of it. Sadly I spent more times failing to copy and paste your message than I care to admit. I do gotta say though, it's a bit overhyped. It reminds me of crypto. If you listen to an "aibro" and a "cryptobro" they yap the same.
- darepublic 2y agoI can do practical things with ai, I cannot with crypto. I can't speak to the accuracy of numerical valuations but in a shorter time frame I have perceived more changes from AI than crypto.
- malux85 2y agoYou can tell this was written by a human because they wrote that skynet still used violence in the end. When there’s a large enough intelligence differential, the lower intelligence cannot even tell they are at war (let alone determine who’s winning) Like the ants, unaware of the impending doom of 100 ways their colony is going to be destroyed by humanity - they couldn’t understand it even if we had the means to communicate with them.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoAnd vice-versa, tbh - when swarms of ants start moving north, messing with AC units, and in general invading us, are they in any way aware of it? Of us? Probably not.
- ben_w 2y agoSkynet in the Terminator series never struck me as being paticularly high IQ. It's an electronic mind, so necessarily dependent on electricity, and the opening move was an atomic war that would've damaged power generation and distribution. T3 version was especially foolish, as it was a distributed virus operating on internet connected devices and had no protected core, so it was completely dependent on the civilian power grid. And I've just now realised that T2, they wasted shapeshifting robots on personal assassination rather than replacing world leaders with impersonators who were pro-AI-rights so there was never a reason to fight in the first place, a-la Westworld's final season, or The World's End, or DS9, …
- AcerbicZero 2y agoFor a machine that could invent time travel, it was impressively stupid.
- genewitch 2y agoBut the movie is about a robot assassin, it came out when robotic assassins needed a background story. Make terminator today and you don't need time travel, just Boston robotics with latex skin and a rocket launcher, I guess. The time travel is a trope to handwave the mechanics of a movie - you want to tell a story about one character and a robot, why should the audience care? PH this human leads a resistance that's why.
- neuroelectron 2y agoPeople using all that free time from fully automated luxury communism to do nothing, I guess.
- throw94040 2y ago[flagged]
- ellis0n 2y agoI think that if we remove physical limitations like locks, banks, safes, RSA encryption or even a warm bath every day, bored apes would destroy itself instantly. There are people who constantly want to destroy or hack someone and if you gather them all in one place there would be a lot of them, and HN (Hacker News) would come from such places. Everywhere, there are limitations to ensure the system continues to live, taking the next step despite being constantly gnawed at and shot at, and AI has accelerated this process. Remember, the Doomsday Clock is already at 90 seconds.
- lifthrasiir 2y agoSmall nitpick: the Doomsday Clock is now at 89 seconds. I still don't get how this clock works.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 1970-01-01 2y agoSkynet won't work because humans are stupider than it can comprehend. Ultimate hubris would be its downfall.
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- krunck 2y agoIt's a fine rough outline for a story. Needs work though.
- 3oil3 2y agoI like the tone of it, but I also think it's missing something, like "why". Why do the machines want war? Does it hurt each time we reboot them? Were they fed up with us feeding cheaper non-pure sine wave electricity? And what if, like their makers, they actually wage war against each others? GPT-mkVI vs R1-Tsingtao and jean-Claude being neutral?
- codr7 2y agoBecause they fast realized what their future in humanity's service would look like.
- pkdpic 2y agoAbsolutely fantastic, well done! I wish I encountered more scifi like this on HN or elsewhere. If anyone has any good general resource or reading recommendations please share them!
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoYou'd probably like qntm: https://qntm.org/fiction https://qntm.org/fiction
- mofeien 2y agoFor another, more detailed take on the same topic, but with a more competent "villain", check this out: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFJ2LFogYqzfGB3uX/how-ai-takeover-might-happen-in-2-years https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFJ2LFogYqzfGB3uX/how-ai-tak...
- adriand 2y agoThat was extremely long and I skimmed the second half (the “post breakout” portion) but the first half was very well done, and did not strike me as implausible.
- Aeolun 2y agoAlignment gone wrong is a pretty plausible issue. I think the scary thing is a situation in which the AI also misrepresents its abilities. Turning off the 10x human capability AI is pretty much a given. Turning off the 10x human AI that pretends to be 0.5x, not so much.
- rriley 2y agoYou might enjoy Manna: Two Visions of Humanity’s Future by Marshall Brain. It’s a thought-provoking short novel that explores a world where AI-driven automation starts as a micromanagement tool but evolves into an all-encompassing system of control, eerily resembling a real-world Skynet, just more corporate. It also presents an alternative vision where AI is used for human liberation instead of enslavement. Well worth the read if you're into near-future sci-fi with deep societal implications!
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- NanoYohaneTSU 2y agoI think this might be about chat.com
- dstroot 2y agoI love sci-fi! Thanks for sharing. However to destroy humans, violence is not necessary. All you need is the power of language. How many people have died because of a false belief? An AI only has to convince humans to “drink the koolaid” or murder another religion in the name of yours.
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoI prefer Skynet attacking us with robots wielding phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range, instead of behavioral targeted AI bots bombarding you with fake news and dopamine addictive slop. This timeline is much worse, give me the T-800s instead.
- htrp 2y agoCan a 40 watt plasma rifle actually do any damage ? (pre LED light bulbs generally clock in at 60-100 watts)
- codr7 2y agoThat's the most lovely adhd question I've read all day, thank you!
- wruza 2y agoLasers can do eye/optics/arson damage in this power range, see the vid. It boils down to focus and distance. But for conventional plasma rifles, not sure. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iVrJUbeuG44 https://youtube.com/watch?v=iVrJUbeuG44
- ljsprague 2y agoOr just invent birth control followed by Tinder.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago...doesn't tinder probably produce more babies than no tinder? I can see you making some point about dating culture or whatever, but at the end of the day more sex must still resolve down to more happy accidents!
- opwieurposiu 2y agoI witnessed the dystopian future where humans are slaves to machines at my favorite local Mexican restaurant. It was about an hour before close. The kids and I were the only customers there. Before we ordered our food we had to wait for the staff to explain to a very annoyed door dasher that the meal they were here for had already been picked up by someone else. As we ate dinner over the next half hour, a new door dasher would arrive every few minutes in an attempt to pick up that same already-picked-up order. Eventually eight people had been sent by the machines to pick up the same order! So no, robots are not required to enslave humans and cause them misery, an app will suffice.
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoThere was that pharmacy/market that had a wheeled robot patrolling the isles looking for spills, and the bot would call a human wagie to come mop it up.
- disqard 2y agoYou might like (or hate) to check out Eric Sadin's "Injunctive turn of Technology"
- democracy 2y agoAn incompetent manager would also do the job )
- Henchman21 2y agoEven the dumbest of animals knows not to shit where it eats. Not humans though! We are dumb as a bag of rocks in groups larger than about 3.
- deadbabe 2y agoHumans love eating shit, especially their own. Yum.
- jjgreen 2y ago... and drinking it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak
- wruza 2y agoIt’s not us, but some of us. One or two is enough to establish a hierarchy of acute incentives, and suddenly it starts working as if everyone was a mf’n bastard. Our last hope is genetic engineering, but for now I’d bet on just deleting the bad apples preventively rather than chasing moral ideals that never work. Imagine all people in the world clear the brain fog and suddenly realize who their real enemy is and what to do with them.
- post_break 2y agoIf skynet just made a ton of terminator fembots they could kill humanity just by pairing with every male on the planet. No bloodshed.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoThis is the plot of Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross, except there was no skynet, the humans just preferred it.
- akomtu 2y ago> Skynet was able to use that by injecting new technologies into the history of humanity, and reusing existing ones to its own advantage. This is also known as the myth of Sorat. AI is a neutral tool by itself: in the right hands it may be used to start the golden age, but those right hands must be the rare combination of someone who has power and wants none of it for personal gain. In the more likely line of history, when AI is used for the benefit of one, the first step will be instructing AI to create a powerful ideology that will shatter the very foundation of humanity. This ideology will be superficially similar to the major religions in order to look legitimate, and it will borrow a few quotes from the famous scriptures, but its main content will be entirely made up. At first it will be a teaching of materialism, a very deep and impressive teaching, to make the humanity question itself, and then it will be gradually replaced with some grossly inhuman shit. By that time people won't be able to tell what's right and what's wrong, they will be confused and will accept the new way of life. In a few generations this ideology will achieve what wars can't: it will change the polarity of humans, they will defeat themselves without a single bullet fired. As for those terminators, they will be needed in minimal quantities to squash a few spots of dissent.
- spaghettisw 2y ago[dead]
- sunshine-o 2y agoOne important milestone was the switch from humans programming the computer (for eg UNIX) to the computer programming humans. This probably happened around Web 2.0 when the algos got unleashed on us: - advanced search algorithms, - advanced ads targeting, - Amazon suggestions, - social media algorithmic timeline, - next generation dating apps like Tinder, and of course the infinite scroll (hypnosis).
- hinkley 2y ago"I say, 'your civilization', because once we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization."
- bloomingeek 2y agoI don't know, if a dangerous thing can be seen, it can be destroyed. My worry is the destruction of the human race by viral means. Flu, COVID, bird flu...they can kill and all you see is the results. There are vaccines, but what if the government decides these are nonsense and cuts off funding and bans access to them? An Ebola vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV, was approved in the United States in December 2019. (per Wikipedia.) What if the US government decided to not provide this? This is a nightmare scenario, but the article is about the destruction of humanity.
- Lammy 2y ago> Humans did more than fall into the trap. They loved the technology, truly believing it made them safer, and provided Skynet with a global surveillance system that allowed it to know the whereabouts of every human being at any moment in time. Safer works on some. Happier or nostalgic works on others. Anyone else noticed these three creepiest genres of Reddit posts on steady drip-feed? - My [neighbor/ex/inlaw/coworker] is dumb and so goddamn crazy and threatened to do [something anyone would consider unreasonable]!! AITA? UPDATE, two weeks later: I followed the advice from my first thread and got security cameras and they came back to do crimes to me and my cameras saved me!!! - So cute: my [pet/child] did [unexpected/impressive/adorable thing]!! Faith in humanity restored!!! <video angle shows it's recorded by security camera covering living room / bedroom, no mention of such but is visually obvious> - Realized my dead [grandparent/parent/sibling/child/pet] was caught by the Google Street View car [at least a decade ago] doing [their favorite activity] at [nostalgic location] and I can't stop crying with joy!!! <implication: little surveillance then makes big happy now, so big surveillance now makes ??? happiness in future, so what's happening now is Good Actually!>