5 ms·
The best comparable would be the first big computer disaster or the first big internet disaster. Do we have consensus on what that would be?
by pizlonator 1y ago
The best comparable would be the first big computer disaster or the first big internet disaster.
Do we have consensus on what that would be?
- reasonableklout 1y agoFor acute disasters: maybe the Morris worm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm Longer-term there's an argument to be made for political destabilization driven by social media. We are still seeing this play out.
- pizlonator 1y agoThat's a good one. I always think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
- AIPedant 1y agoMaybe the 1985 software bug that led to massive overdoses of radiation for cancer patients: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 There are also cases of airplane crashes due to software defects, blackouts, critical hospital failures, etc. I suspect the first "AI disaster" will be pretty similar: a sudden and undetected drop in software quality with life-threatening consequences. (Doesn't help that the author of the post blithely asserted that programmer-agents is a solved problem, when it very much is not). But I could see an LLM doctor/etc causing a very different kind of disaster.