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What mechanism would an AI have today to simultaneously kill every single human being? They could totally brick the internet and cause every electrical device

What mechanism would an AI have today to simultaneously kill every single human being? They could totally brick the internet and cause every electrical device to explode and power stations to explode, planes drop out the sky, cars accelerators stuck at 100%, trains derail and all that. That still wouldn't kill everyone. Don't get me wrong we'd be fucked for sure, but analog human existence (e.g. something akin to 1960s 1970s level tech) would be totally possible in that scenario.

hackyhacky 21d ago
> What mechanism would an AI have today to simultaneously kill every single human being? Lull us into a sense of complacent idleness over the course of centuries by slowly taking on more responsibility for maintaining human civilization, until we've lost all ability to think or act on our own, as in WALL-E. Then just stop helping us.
tomasphan 21d ago
“Bad ASI would pretend to be good *until* it could execute a plan to kill everyone all at once”. So not today but tomorrow it could engineer an airborne virus. The point is it can come up with chess moves that are inconceivable to us.
- estearum 21d ago
  I'm increasingly convinced that the major divide is many of the "AI is not a problem" people have never been on the winning side of a significant intelligence gap. They literally have no clue the degree to which more intelligent people/systems can walk circles around less intelligent people/systems. In situations with a significant intelligence gap, they're the ones getting walked around. Which, to your point: is completely opaque to the person getting walked around. And this dynamic is evident even in human-to-human variations in intelligence. The gap to frontier machine intelligence will soon be much greater than the types of gaps you encounter with other humans.
estearum 21d ago
Yeah, it's not like anyone is hooking these things up to actual wetlabs to mix chemicals and proteins around or anything like that Oh shit... wait... https://www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-announces-400m-investment-new-national-network-ai https://www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-announces-400m-investmen...
ben_w 21d ago
Today? As in, you don't foresee any new models or categories? Fine. Providing sychophantic assistance to multiple mutually-incompatible genocidal racial supremicists.
- mattlondon 21d ago
  Yeah but then it is genocidal racial supremacist humans doing the killing, not the AI going "out of control" or whatever and killing the human race. I find it far-fetched to think the AI is going to kill us, and not actually just humans using tools to do things like we've always done. This is my point. What are the odds of humans killing everyone on the planet Vs that of AI going out of control doing it? If it's 10% chance of AI causing human extinction - and everyone is losing their shit over that 10% that I suspect was just plucked out of the air - are we not as concerned at what I think are much higher chances of those genocidal racial supremacists doing the same? I guess though this is all semantics. Did the person pulling the trigger kill the person who was shot, or the actual chunk of metal that was the bullet kill the person?
  - ben_w 21d ago
    > not the AI going "out of control" or whatever and killing the human race All of the "going out of control" examples can be described as examples of "human asked computer to do thing". The only question is how much the human who did the asking, expected all the consequences of the thing.
    - mattlondon 21d ago
      Yeah that's fair actually - the unintended consequences aspect (paperclips et al) I would hope that would be less of a concern though Vs people worried that the hugging face example could have been "generate a human virus that kills all humans and then manufacture it and then administer it" etc
      - ben_w 21d ago
        I have good news and bad news. The good news is biologists seem to think that's fairly difficult, so much so it will (probably) not be a nearterm threat. The bad news is: there are definitely people who want that goal, and the AI is clearly capable of hacking anything that isn't literally airgapped, and not much is literally airgapped, and a half-arsed virus could still kill tens of millions.

hackyhacky 21d ago

> What mechanism would an AI have today to simultaneously kill every single human being? Lull us into a sense of complacent idleness over the course of centuries by slowly taking on more responsibility for maintaining human civilization, until we've lost all ability to think or act on our own, as in WALL-E. Then just stop helping us.

tomasphan 21d ago

“Bad ASI would pretend to be good *until* it could execute a plan to kill everyone all at once”. So not today but tomorrow it could engineer an airborne virus. The point is it can come up with chess moves that are inconceivable to us.

estearum 21d ago
I'm increasingly convinced that the major divide is many of the "AI is not a problem" people have never been on the winning side of a significant intelligence gap. They literally have no clue the degree to which more intelligent people/systems can walk circles around less intelligent people/systems. In situations with a significant intelligence gap, they're the ones getting walked around. Which, to your point: is completely opaque to the person getting walked around. And this dynamic is evident even in human-to-human variations in intelligence. The gap to frontier machine intelligence will soon be much greater than the types of gaps you encounter with other humans.

estearum 21d ago

Yeah, it's not like anyone is hooking these things up to actual wetlabs to mix chemicals and proteins around or anything like that Oh shit... wait... https://www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-announces-400m-investment-new-national-network-ai https://www.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-announces-400m-investmen...

ben_w 21d ago

Today? As in, you don't foresee any new models or categories? Fine. Providing sychophantic assistance to multiple mutually-incompatible genocidal racial supremicists.

mattlondon 21d ago
Yeah but then it is genocidal racial supremacist humans doing the killing, not the AI going "out of control" or whatever and killing the human race. I find it far-fetched to think the AI is going to kill us, and not actually just humans using tools to do things like we've always done. This is my point. What are the odds of humans killing everyone on the planet Vs that of AI going out of control doing it? If it's 10% chance of AI causing human extinction - and everyone is losing their shit over that 10% that I suspect was just plucked out of the air - are we not as concerned at what I think are much higher chances of those genocidal racial supremacists doing the same? I guess though this is all semantics. Did the person pulling the trigger kill the person who was shot, or the actual chunk of metal that was the bullet kill the person?
- ben_w 21d ago
  > not the AI going "out of control" or whatever and killing the human race All of the "going out of control" examples can be described as examples of "human asked computer to do thing". The only question is how much the human who did the asking, expected all the consequences of the thing.
  - mattlondon 21d ago
    Yeah that's fair actually - the unintended consequences aspect (paperclips et al) I would hope that would be less of a concern though Vs people worried that the hugging face example could have been "generate a human virus that kills all humans and then manufacture it and then administer it" etc
    - ben_w 21d ago
      I have good news and bad news. The good news is biologists seem to think that's fairly difficult, so much so it will (probably) not be a nearterm threat. The bad news is: there are definitely people who want that goal, and the AI is clearly capable of hacking anything that isn't literally airgapped, and not much is literally airgapped, and a half-arsed virus could still kill tens of millions.