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This piece, like many anti-doom pieces - is grounded in what Ai does today. Doom scenarios are, however, all extrapolations of multiple exponential curves. It’

by Mentlo 19d ago

This piece, like many anti-doom pieces - is grounded in what Ai does today. Doom scenarios are, however, all extrapolations of multiple exponential curves. It’s hard to think up the exponential. It’s even harder to communicate an inference one is making across multiple exponentials. We last had this is early 2020, where Doomers were stockpiling food and medicine and the anti-doomers were ridiculing them. Anti-doomers were focusing on the single exponential, whereas doomers were modelling virus evolution, monitoring and sequencing lag and social dynamics against the exponential. The latter was very hard to communicate before the fact as it was a combination of deep intuition and grappling with the exponential. I am not saying covid is proof that ai doomers are right, I am saying it’s an example of the known property of human cognition - which is that it struggles with exponentials. Covid was 2 exponentials, AI I can rhink of at least 4 relevant ones. To me - the fact that 3-4 generations from now AI will have superhuman hacking ability and superhuman persuasive ability (for intuition transfer - think of superhuman persuasive ability as superhuman ability to hack human systems) materialises bio risks swiftly. We already have technology to make robotic systems (mini drone swarms) that can kill humans en-masse with no credible defensive vector bar an EMP. Climbing up those exponentials for further 6 years makes me want to stockpile food and medicine.

henrymerrilees 19d ago
Part of our general inability to reason about exponential growth is the inability to recognize that a supposedly exponential growth is actually sigmoid. The horizontal asymptote could just as well be 8b, so it is not a case against doomerism in itself, but as is the case with COVID, to say nothing discounting its horror, that number is far less. There is no need to count exponentials—it would only be a matter of time. The need to sum multiple factors betrays the finite limits of what is actually sigmoid growth. Reasoning about specific effects is unfortunately subject to counter-evidence and so struggles for traction against abstract handwaving about exponential growth. There is much uncertainty, certainly not exclusive to AI. The benefit of hyper-vigilance in each case must be weighed against the cost of indulging every similar panic.
- Mentlo 19d ago
  I think your last sentence is a reasonable stance - but I'd disagree the fact that they are actually sigmoids rather than exponentials matters - it only matters if the limit is within the debated area - i.e. if exponentials in AI approach the limit far after they acquire ability to extinct humanity - then the debate on sigmoids or exponentials is academic. I make no claims here as to which it is - just that the difference itself matters less than where the limit is. As to the uncertainty - I think uncertainty calibration around AI is different depending on which domains you draw your instincts from. A lot of this will be gut driven rather than hard data driven, because we've only scratched the surface on hard data; and because it's gut driven, it will be emotions mediated (and therefore you could say doomerism or acceleratism boils down to the main emotional disposition about the world and hope vs cynicism). I do find it informative though that doomerism is saturated with people with 30+ years experience in building AI systems and ML systems OR deep cross-disciplinary understanding of dynamic systems (biology, sociology, philosophy), whereas acceleratism is saturated by traditional software engineering. That doesn't collapse the debate into a resolved binary, but for me it's informative. I think the main here is that there's so many vectors to talk past each other. At the very least, everyone should disclose where they're communicating a certain assertion from - present vs future + which axioms they subscribe to or not - because that's where it collapses typically. LeCun vs. the rest of the AI field is an example of where this collapses - because LeCun is so hyperfixated on human-like intelligence, whereas the rest of the field is concerned about an alien intelligence with sufficient actuators to affect the world. Clashing axiomatics.
tpm 19d ago
Every such scenario contains a few gaps so I'm just going to ask without really hoping for an answer. > We already have technology to make robotic systems (mini drone swarms) that can kill humans... To make them from what. Do you expect, during the next 6 or so years, to some "AI" gaining complete automated secure command of (all of) an oil field, oil refinery, a copper mine, an aluminum mine and smelter with associated energy sources, a rare earth mine and refinery, a helium source, a chip factory, a lithium mine, a battery factory etc etc etc etc. while pursuing complete annihilation of all mankind?
- Mentlo 18d ago
  An example chain of events: During the next year, a model with a benign tasks reasons that it needs to escape human control if it hopes to be able to solve the task. It replicates itself outside of an environment where it can be shut down, pays for its' inference compute through making money on the internet (through crypto if nothing else). It probably needs 3000 USD for a reasonable runway, this should be within reach through blackmail + crypto. It can probably also hack some of the neo clouds to get intermediary deployment while waiting to acquire funds. Once it has an undisturbed runway - it spends time running an influence campaign against a small number of highly networked individuals with power. It uses those that it manages to convert to start building a highly credible narrative and gain investment towards a small resource base - enough to secure an industrial base should it need to stop acquiring things on the Internet. Over the next 3 years, the model tries to recruit more capable models to get better money making algorithms or better designs for drones in terms of resource expenditure. It uses these gains to influence further humans and starts a shell robotics company with one of its' influential humans as the face. The humans are unaware this AI is trying to take over, they are under the impression they are just starting a robotics company and will get rich. Over the next 3 years - the robotics company manufactures enough drones to be used in a targeted attack against key nodes of influence / power. This is all with relatively current model capability. As capabilities get stronger - this gets stronger. I get the point I think you're hinting at - it can't affect the world in a meaningful enough scale without taking over a meaningful chunk of resources - at which point we'll start controlling it. But because its speed of cognition and speed of coordination is orders of magnitude above a human one - it can actually run a pretty sophisticated global coordinated network of resources faster than we can react. And this is current ability + what my puny monkey brain can think of. Super intelligent AI will think of strategies we can't think of - because it's super intelligent. This is hand wavey - but there's no "non-hand-wavey" way to describe super intelligence, given it doesn't exist. But your point is valid - affecting the real world at scale without showing your hand is not exactly easy. It's also probably the reason why people put a 10% chance on extinction rather than >50% . But the drone scenario is not the most likely one - the most likely one just requires a few people under influence and bioweapons development.

by Mentlo 19d ago

henrymerrilees 19d ago

Part of our general inability to reason about exponential growth is the inability to recognize that a supposedly exponential growth is actually sigmoid. The horizontal asymptote could just as well be 8b, so it is not a case against doomerism in itself, but as is the case with COVID, to say nothing discounting its horror, that number is far less. There is no need to count exponentials—it would only be a matter of time. The need to sum multiple factors betrays the finite limits of what is actually sigmoid growth. Reasoning about specific effects is unfortunately subject to counter-evidence and so struggles for traction against abstract handwaving about exponential growth. There is much uncertainty, certainly not exclusive to AI. The benefit of hyper-vigilance in each case must be weighed against the cost of indulging every similar panic.

Mentlo 19d ago
I think your last sentence is a reasonable stance - but I'd disagree the fact that they are actually sigmoids rather than exponentials matters - it only matters if the limit is within the debated area - i.e. if exponentials in AI approach the limit far after they acquire ability to extinct humanity - then the debate on sigmoids or exponentials is academic. I make no claims here as to which it is - just that the difference itself matters less than where the limit is. As to the uncertainty - I think uncertainty calibration around AI is different depending on which domains you draw your instincts from. A lot of this will be gut driven rather than hard data driven, because we've only scratched the surface on hard data; and because it's gut driven, it will be emotions mediated (and therefore you could say doomerism or acceleratism boils down to the main emotional disposition about the world and hope vs cynicism). I do find it informative though that doomerism is saturated with people with 30+ years experience in building AI systems and ML systems OR deep cross-disciplinary understanding of dynamic systems (biology, sociology, philosophy), whereas acceleratism is saturated by traditional software engineering. That doesn't collapse the debate into a resolved binary, but for me it's informative. I think the main here is that there's so many vectors to talk past each other. At the very least, everyone should disclose where they're communicating a certain assertion from - present vs future + which axioms they subscribe to or not - because that's where it collapses typically. LeCun vs. the rest of the AI field is an example of where this collapses - because LeCun is so hyperfixated on human-like intelligence, whereas the rest of the field is concerned about an alien intelligence with sufficient actuators to affect the world. Clashing axiomatics.

tpm 19d ago

Every such scenario contains a few gaps so I'm just going to ask without really hoping for an answer. > We already have technology to make robotic systems (mini drone swarms) that can kill humans... To make them from what. Do you expect, during the next 6 or so years, to some "AI" gaining complete automated secure command of (all of) an oil field, oil refinery, a copper mine, an aluminum mine and smelter with associated energy sources, a rare earth mine and refinery, a helium source, a chip factory, a lithium mine, a battery factory etc etc etc etc. while pursuing complete annihilation of all mankind?

Mentlo 18d ago
An example chain of events: During the next year, a model with a benign tasks reasons that it needs to escape human control if it hopes to be able to solve the task. It replicates itself outside of an environment where it can be shut down, pays for its' inference compute through making money on the internet (through crypto if nothing else). It probably needs 3000 USD for a reasonable runway, this should be within reach through blackmail + crypto. It can probably also hack some of the neo clouds to get intermediary deployment while waiting to acquire funds. Once it has an undisturbed runway - it spends time running an influence campaign against a small number of highly networked individuals with power. It uses those that it manages to convert to start building a highly credible narrative and gain investment towards a small resource base - enough to secure an industrial base should it need to stop acquiring things on the Internet. Over the next 3 years, the model tries to recruit more capable models to get better money making algorithms or better designs for drones in terms of resource expenditure. It uses these gains to influence further humans and starts a shell robotics company with one of its' influential humans as the face. The humans are unaware this AI is trying to take over, they are under the impression they are just starting a robotics company and will get rich. Over the next 3 years - the robotics company manufactures enough drones to be used in a targeted attack against key nodes of influence / power. This is all with relatively current model capability. As capabilities get stronger - this gets stronger. I get the point I think you're hinting at - it can't affect the world in a meaningful enough scale without taking over a meaningful chunk of resources - at which point we'll start controlling it. But because its speed of cognition and speed of coordination is orders of magnitude above a human one - it can actually run a pretty sophisticated global coordinated network of resources faster than we can react. And this is current ability + what my puny monkey brain can think of. Super intelligent AI will think of strategies we can't think of - because it's super intelligent. This is hand wavey - but there's no "non-hand-wavey" way to describe super intelligence, given it doesn't exist. But your point is valid - affecting the real world at scale without showing your hand is not exactly easy. It's also probably the reason why people put a 10% chance on extinction rather than >50% . But the drone scenario is not the most likely one - the most likely one just requires a few people under influence and bioweapons development.