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It's funny because Isaac Asimov would have come up with some convoluted logical puzzle to justify why the robot went on a murderous rampage - because in sci-fi

by krapp 2y ago

It's funny because Isaac Asimov would have come up with some convoluted logical puzzle to justify why the robot went on a murderous rampage - because in sci-fi robots and AI are all hyperrational and perfectly rational - when in real life you'd just have to explain that your dying grandmother's last wish was to kill all the humans, because a real AI is essentially a dementia-riddled child created from the Lovecraftian pool of chaos and madness that is the internet. I recall that story of the guy who tried to use AI to recreate his dead friend as a microwave and it tried to kill him[0]. You couldn't sell a sci-fi story where AIs just randomly go insane sometimes and everyone just accepts it as a cost of doing business, and because "humans are worse," but that's essentially reality. At least not as anything but a dark satire that people would accuse of being a bit much. [0]https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-ressurects-imaginary-friend-as-monstrous-microwave https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-ressurects-imaginary-friend-a...

fwipsy 2y ago
Worth noting is that the article is from April 2022 and used gpt-3. The "friend" was an imaginary friend, not a dead friend, and so probably more prone to taking actions which would appear in a fictional context. From my research it looks like the base gpt-3 model was just a text predictor without any RLHF or training to be helpful/harmless. Certainly AI safety isn't perfect, but if you're going to criticize it at least criticize the AIs people actually use today. It's like arguing cars are unsafe and pointing to an old model without seatbelts. It's not surprising at all that people are willing to use AIs even if they give dangerous answers sometimes, because they are useful. Surely they're less dangerous than cars or power tools or guns, and all of those have legitimate uses which make them worth the risk (depending on your risk tolerance.)
- krapp 2y ago
  Fair enough but it's still wild that the template for AI and robots in science fiction has (usually) been to portray them as hyper-rational, competent and logical even to a fault, but the most accurate prediction of what AI and robots turn out to be is probably Star Wars, not anything by Asimov.
paulryanrogers 2y ago
AIs that eventually go insane is a sci-fi trope that it appeared in the Halo (2, 3, Reach?) videogames.
- krapp 2y ago
  And 2001, and I Robot and the Matrix and Star Trek. I should have let that comment percolate a bit.

by krapp 2y ago

fwipsy 2y ago

Worth noting is that the article is from April 2022 and used gpt-3. The "friend" was an imaginary friend, not a dead friend, and so probably more prone to taking actions which would appear in a fictional context. From my research it looks like the base gpt-3 model was just a text predictor without any RLHF or training to be helpful/harmless. Certainly AI safety isn't perfect, but if you're going to criticize it at least criticize the AIs people actually use today. It's like arguing cars are unsafe and pointing to an old model without seatbelts. It's not surprising at all that people are willing to use AIs even if they give dangerous answers sometimes, because they are useful. Surely they're less dangerous than cars or power tools or guns, and all of those have legitimate uses which make them worth the risk (depending on your risk tolerance.)

krapp 2y ago
Fair enough but it's still wild that the template for AI and robots in science fiction has (usually) been to portray them as hyper-rational, competent and logical even to a fault, but the most accurate prediction of what AI and robots turn out to be is probably Star Wars, not anything by Asimov.

paulryanrogers 2y ago

AIs that eventually go insane is a sci-fi trope that it appeared in the Halo (2, 3, Reach?) videogames.

krapp 2y ago
And 2001, and I Robot and the Matrix and Star Trek. I should have let that comment percolate a bit.