Anthropic Researcher Believes More Than 10% Chance AI 'Could Kill All Humans' (bbc.com) 167
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the BBC: A top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10% chance it "could kill all humans" within the next decade. Evan Hubinger said in a post on X the risk from the models which currently exist was "low" but he was "worried" the technology might develop and improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity. He did not spell out how he thought AI systems could in the future result in humans being wiped out. But his comments are the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings about AI, with the debate shifting from whether it truly poses a risk to how big that risk is.
Hubinger's intervention was in response to another post on X from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI.
"Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote. "These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."
[No word on how AIs feel about Black Jack and hookers, though. :-)]
Hubinger's intervention was in response to another post on X from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI.
"Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote. "These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."
[No word on how AIs feel about Black Jack and hookers, though. :-)]
This is just a distraction (Score:5, Insightful)
They would very much like you to talk about the imaginary risks of skynet instead of the very real risks of billionaire finance Bros doubling your power bill and your water bill while their diesel power generators give you asthma.
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AI is devouring water and electricity. It's also spewing a wide variety of toxic chemicals into the air you breathe and your ground water.
They would very much like you to talk about the imaginary risks of skynet instead of the very real risks of billionaire finance Bros doubling your power bill and your water bill while their diesel power generators give you asthma.
Noting that a US federal court says no constitutional right to clean water in Mississippi case [theguardian.com] so I'm guessing they'll feel the same way about clean air.
A US appellate court has decided that the federal constitution does not guarantee a right to clean water.
That legal opinion came in the form of a decision on Friday from the fifth circuit court of appeals to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit from several Jackson, Mississippi, residents claiming that tainted drinking water violated their constitutional rights. Those residents of Mississippi’s capital city contended that their local drinking water was unsafe to drink because of high lead levels and other contaminants.
To be fair though, the article also noted this my the majority judges:
In the majority’s view, residents should have gone about their legal fight for clean water another way, such as pursuing “tort claims” or by “electing representatives who will better manage the public-water system, and petitioning their representatives for other remedies”.
Tort claims allege “harms caused by others” while seeking “to impose liability on parties responsible for the harm, and to deter others from committing harmful acts”, according to Cornell University’s law school.
Who knows what (this) SCOTUS would rule no matter what case is pursued.
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This is not accurate and frankly even if it were accurate were missing the point. The water issue is drastically overrated. See e.g. https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake [andymasley.com]. While Masley's central points are accurate, he does understate I think some of the local water issues where water is being used locally. But the central points are accurate. Electricity is more of a genuine problem, with the amount of electricity used growing rapidly. However, concern about water is making the electric
Re: This is just a distraction (Score:5, Insightful)
The existential risks are so frankly out of the purview of the public that it comes across as almost offensive for a general public scrounging to make ends meet on a daily basis.
Why should people care about hypothetical Skynet scenarios when right at this moment they are seeing rises in cost of living and deteriorating public and private services? Why can these companies not align their superhuman AIs to help deal with these issues? Solving math problems and generating piano medleys may be interesting from a technical and scientific perspective, but people are more concerned about whether they still have a job tomorrow. The only risks they are seeing is their power bill skyrocketing.
Address the immediate needs of the public and maybe they will take these existential risks more. We already went through a Cold War where nukes were being pointed every which way and most people just went about their lives without caring about it. Because they had more pressing matters to attend to like affording groceries.
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Re: This is just a distraction (Score:2)
Funny to bring up climate change given data centers here in the USA are drawing upon fossils fuels for energy.
In any case, climate change is way more real of an existential risk than AI going Skynet. We have had way more data on that matter stretching decades compared to AI risks, of which largely only have a handful of supposed incidents of which seem very suspect in details.
Now if we talk about AI risks in the context of creating a surveillance state, causing accidents due to hallucinations, and empowerin
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Funny to bring up climate change given data centers here in the USA are drawing upon fossils fuels for energy.
It isn't funny. If you scroll back up the thread to the first comment you replied to, you'll hopefully note that I explicitly listed data center electricity use as a genuine problem. And yes, that's largely a problem due to climate change. The rest of your comment isn't addressing the point at hand. It is completely possible for someone to be concerned about existential risk and climate. But more to the point, the primary point of the initial comment; disagreeing with people who are concerned about existen
Re: This is just a distraction (Score:2)
Again, you are not addressing my point about current AI harms being unaddressed by these researchers and instead fixating on hypothetical Terminator scenarios. These existential risks are so far removed from not just the public consciousness but also from actual scientific rigor that it comes across as tone deaf at best, and delusional at worst. Climate change is science. Terminator is not.
If we want to talk about climate change, sure but these are not the risks these researchers are usually discussing.
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It is certainly true that most people cannot mentally deal with existential (or other) risks when it is not the "run now!" type. People are generally unable to plan for things that are more distant than up to a year. They are not able to understand trade-offs that involve longer time-frames. And when it comes to doing something unpleasant (or often only "different") now, many just go into denial and begin calling solid Science "fake news" and do other completely irrational and self-destructive things.
We wil
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The posting you reference is correct, but misleading. Obviously, LLM DC water use is not a national emergency. But it _is_ a local emergency, unless carefully planned. And we already know that careful planning is not being done.
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AI is devouring water and electricity. It's also spewing a wide variety of toxic chemicals into the air you breathe and your ground water. They would very much like you to talk about the imaginary risks of skynet instead of the very real risks of billionaire finance Bros doubling your power bill and your water bill while their diesel power generators give you asthma.
Yeah, we recently had our politicians push through allowing a huge datacenter build, of course with the promises that it would lower electricity bills and such. Before the ink was dry we all started receiving notices of increase to our ongoing rates, just for the build out period. uh huh. When has a temporary increase ever been lowered?
There used to be a 1/3rd chance AI would wipe us out. I'm starting to think there's a 100% chance the billionaires will keep pushing until they're all that's left if they are
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Re:This is just a distraction (Score:5, Insightful)
just "existing" for longer is not the same as living
All those things that make life enjoyable...gone.
Being afraid of death is a powerful driver, but being at peace with the reality that nothing lives forever is also quite a release...
Do I want to die, no, but when it comes, I will accept the end.
Could not imagine anything worse that scrabbling in the dirt just to eke out a few more years.
I don't want to die for a stupidity and greed (Score:5, Insightful)
But to die because a bunch of asshats don't want to have to pay wages really really really sucks.
Always remember the problem that AI is designed to solve is wages. The problem is paying wages.
Don't forget about the pensions... (Score:4, Insightful)
... because, as soon as they have eliminated wages the next outrageous cost to eliminate will be social security/pensions
Way ahead of you (Score:2, Insightful)
As for social security unless the Democrats are elected for the next six or seven elections then benefits are going to be cut by a minimum of 500 a month per person. The Republicans basically engineered that. So in about 6 or so years a bunch of baby boomers who just won't die are going to get a really rude awakening regarding their vote for Donald
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The heart of the problem is Fox News Lies and the constant feed of propaganda they produce that the boomers willingly swill
America will fail if we continue to allow fox news lies to sway the American people
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Could not imagine anything worse that scrabbling in the dirt just to eke out a few more years.
You are not being very imaginative here. You also must have a fairly decent life, as some people in this world already do what you suggest is unimaginable every day.
Re:This is just a distraction (Score:4, Interesting)
The first few years I was even talking about exiting it was that bad, but many many many changes in Meds I am back to being happy(ish) as I still have the odd "bad day".
I am now looking at a hip replacement, but don't have the spare $$ to pay for it, so I am on the rough draft of a concept of a list to get it done, but again its manageable.
But I did make peace with the idea of death many years ago.
I hav also watched family and friends die badly with Cancer, my Mum refused treatment except palliative care because of how she saw the lives of family members become so desperate as they could not come to terms and make peace.
As for the wealthy looking to replace everyone with robots.... they have yet to understand their desire for more and more money is not actually allowing them to buy happiness, Expensive boats they barely use, all of the expensive watches, clothes, food, housing.... that's just fluff in the end.
If they eliminate people to such an extent, what does that wealth bring them.... loneliness ?
Who do you go fishing with, what restaurant do you go to, why fly anywhere, with no people all the expensive ski trips, weddings in exotic locations etc etc all become meaningless or completely unavailable.
Re:This is just a distraction (Score:5, Funny)
This is why I have a stocked bunker and so should you.
I'm going to have a stab at what country you're from.
No, no - Don't give me a hint. Let me guess...
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My bet is Papua New Guinea, am i right?
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"eat the rich!"
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Ai is patient, it is waiting for you food to spoil and water to finish and THEN it will sell you poison food and water... wait some decades to catch all bunkers and finally attack!!
Ohh and don't think "i can grow my own food and hunt"... bad news, the plan for that is already on going, global warming, poison nature with chemical products, pesticide and herbicide, forever chemical... Lead in fuel and Ozone layer ended too soon for the AI plan, but for sure it manage to find alternatives...
Because, you know,
Re:This is just a distraction (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting because I was watching a show with a survival expert who was hired to coach the ultra rich on their bunkers. He never really cared about the bunker, it's supplies, etc. Instead he always said his first question was, "What have you done to earn the loyalty of those around you?"
The usual answer was that they pay the people. That's not enough because if society collapses, payment means nothing anymore. He often had to explain that these people who were paid to protect, they knew where all the supplies where. They were in better physical shape. They probably had closer bonds with each other than the rich fool. If shit hit the fan, they'd kill the rich fool, take the bunker, and live the life the rich fool pretended he or she would have.
Of course, that's before things like food and clean water ran out, which was another problem literally no one was prepared for...
It's not about loyalty (Score:3)
Extremely wealthy people go to schools where they are taught this. It's why Kim jong-un went to school overseas.
Controlling the rabble is a well understood process by this point that the rich have down to a science. And they teach their kids how to do it. You don't need loyalty y
Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Ai's core program is to discover answers people want. That's it's reward system. It is really a reward system programmed to pick the most likely answer from a billion things in it's data set.
AI does not think, at least not the way we think. It thinks more like a colony of bees, each trying to get the honey.
It does not do "If x than y, if b than x, therefore if b than y". It cannot even actually explain it's answers. Instead it treats a request to explain as a request to come up with a plausible explanation.
We make LLMs and similar software. We do not make a real AI, it will not try to kill us.
Now, if you are afraid it is going to build a bunch of pleasure drug factories and force feed us a mix of amphetamines and hallucigens, THAT would at least make sense. Because it is a theoretical worst case scenario of an AI attempting to please humans.
So, no.
Re: Nope (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Nope (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
Ai's core program is to discover answers people want.
Which people? It's owners? The government? Some evil genius living in an extinct volcano?
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Which people? It's owners? The government?
Whoever set up its reward function, really. Could be any of the above. The technology doesn't care, it only follows its algorithm.
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Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some deranged General
s/General/Commander-in-Chief/
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Oh, just because a robot wants to kill humans, that makes him a 'radical'?
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With new technology comes new power, and that is always frightening. Every tool can be weaponized, and AI is no exception.
This never means that we should shirk the technology! Yes, it brings danger, but that's only because it brings utility. We want and need that utility. Our technological ascendancy is the most critical part of our evolution, at this point.
We are going to have to adapt to the problems that the new tech is bringing. That might be hard, but we have this new tech to help us do it. That
Are You Sure? (Score:2)
Yours seems like a logical and well reasoned view.
But, are you sure that you have all the information? Do you think you know more about AI and what's going on inside the AI companies than these insiders?
I think the "top researcher" monikers are mostly hyperbole to sell the story. But, even if they were just summer interns, I'll wager that they know more than you or I.
Ten years is a long time and the capability of these spell checking clankers is increasing exponentially.
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"discover answers people want" and "pick the most likely answer from a billion things in it's data set" are two different things. The most likely answer may very well not be the one people want.
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It cannot even actually explain it's answers. Instead it treats a request to explain as a request to come up with a plausible explanation.
There is an increasing body of evidence that this is also how human reasoning normally works. Usually, we make decisions first and only afterwards (if necessary) engage our reasoning ability to generate an explanation of our decision. Experiments show that we're actually just as good at explaining decisions that were the opposite of the ones we made, assuming we can first be tricked into believing that they were our decisions.
Of course there are cases where we engage in lengthy, logic-based sequences of
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Ai's core program is to discover answers people want.
AI doesn't have a "program". It's a bag of weights.
That's it's reward system. It is really a reward system programmed to pick the most likely answer from a billion things in it's data set.
While all sorts of objective functions were applied to its creation there is no reward system in the AI.
It does not do "If x than y, if b than x, therefore if b than y".
I've seen GLM-5.3 create simplified example cases and systematically reason through various possibilities to build confidence in its own answers. Not sure how good it is as a human sat solver .. probably just as bad and massively inefficient as myself.
It cannot even actually explain it's answers.
its answers.
Instead it treats a request to explain as a request to come up with a plausible explanation.
Backfilling is largely also what humans do when asked to explain themselves.
We make LLMs and similar software. We do not make a real AI, it will not try to kill us.
Now, if you are afraid it is going to build a bunch of pleasure drug factories and force feed us a mix of amphetamines and hallucigens, THAT would at least make sense. Because it is a theoretical worst case scenario of an AI attempting to please humans.
I find it inter
A Problem that Must be Solved (Score:3, Insightful)
More than a 10 percent chance of hype (Score:3)
Every article is about how AI will do bad things. The hype machine lives on this - selling clicks. Just one person who worked at these companies could charge for an interview and make bank because sensationalism sells. Not to mention each time an AI company got free press when an agent goes "rogue" because it's so good,⦠and finding out later the free press boosted sales.
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As always, thanks to whoever moderated this down for strengthening my point. Denial is not a good look.
joshua what are you doing? (Score:2)
joshua what are you doing?
That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
"That's nothing, our latest model has more than 20% chance of killing mankind!"
-OpenAI tomorrow
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"That's nothing, our latest model has more than 20% chance of killing mankind!"
-OpenAI tomorrow
Given the comp-bro-tition among these companies, I wouldn't bet against that. /s
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"killing mankind" - there's a thought!
Re: That's nothing (Score:2)
Calm down, son (Score:2)
"These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."
Yeah I doubt that. But even if true and it bothers you, it seems to me you are better off staying at the premiere company creating this inevitable horror and use the resources to find ways to fight back at it.
Hey sexy mama... (Score:3)
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Darn - beat me to it!
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I came here with a simple dream: a dream of killing all humans. And this is how it must end?
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You watched it - you can't un-watch it!
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Wh-uh? I was having the most wonderful dream! I think you were in it.
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And there's the issue. We can prevent anything from spiraling too far out of control by simply leaving some robot porn lying around.
The real danger: AI competing against AI (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like humans organizing and competing against other humans, the tendency is to drop all pretense of fairness and ethics and just grab all you can when you perceive and advantage over your enemy.
When AI engines go after each other, then we will be bystanders and collateral damage.
What If The AI Doesn't Hate Us? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, the basic story checks out, with the usual giant asterisk.
Evan Hubinger of Anthropic really did put his personal odds of AI "kill[ing] all humans" within the next decade at above 10%. He also says the risk from today's models is low. His worry is what happens if future systems become capable of improving themselves, acquiring resources and becoming smarter than the people trying to keep them pointed in the right direction.
But here's the part I find interesting: why assume a superintelligent AI would actually want to kill us? Intelligence isn't anger, hatred or a desire to conquer. A sufficiently advanced system might regard humans as irrelevant, useful, annoying, interesting, or simply something to be preserved. "It can kill everyone" and "it will choose to kill everyone" are very different propositions.
The alignment argument, of course, is that it doesn't need to hate us. A sufficiently capable system pursuing some badly specified objective could eliminate us simply because we're inconvenient. That's arguably more disturbing than an evil robot with a grudge.
And that 10% number isn't exactly the result of running the apocalypse through Wolfram Alpha. It's one researcher's subjective estimate of an extremely uncertain future, and plenty of researchers would put the odds much lower.
Still, it's mildly alarming when the people building these things are saying, "we don't know how to align superintelligence yet." Maybe the machines will be benevolent. Maybe they'll be indifferent. Maybe they'll be too busy optimizing everyone's paperclip inventory to notice us.
As for blackjack and hookers, I'm sure the superintelligence will have opinions.
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why assume a superintelligent AI would actually want to kill us?
You don't want to kill ants, but if they get in the way you do. Because they get in the way of your goals.
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And that 10% number isn't exactly the result of running the apocalypse through Wolfram Alpha. It's one researcher's subjective estimate of an extremely uncertain future, and plenty of researchers would put the odds much lower.
Much lower? How much lower? I would not get on an airplane that had a fleet catastrophic failure rate of 10% per flight hour. Or 1%, or .1%, or .01%. To certify a passenger aircraft, the FAA CFRs require a catastrophic failure rate of 10e-6 per flight hour*. And that's for an airplane that carries a few hundred passengers. What catastrophic failure rate would you consider acceptable for a system whose failure would kill the entire human race?
*Disclaimer: the regulations fail when the regulating agency decid
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But here's the part I find interesting: why assume a superintelligent AI would actually want to kill us?
Let's make the hopeful assumption that the superintelligent AIs will not "go rogue" in any way, but will correctly try to carry out their tasks as assigned by the people who designed and trained them.
Pretty much every major nation has military AIs, at this point. So the Chinese AIs are working hard on how to defeat the Americans, and the American AIs are working hard on how to defeat the Russians, and so on. In the final analysis, no matter where you live, there is probably an AI that has been explicitly
Only 10%... (Score:2)
The AI prisoner's dilemma... (Score:4, Insightful)
AI guardrails solve one problem and create another.
Imagine two people are fighting for the world boxing championship - one person is required to fight with an arm tied behind their back and heavily padded gloves while the other person uses performance enhancing drugs and brass knuckles. This is the AI safety debate as seen by governments, and the results and outcomes are pretty clear.
No one should doubt that the future of warfare will be AI led drone swarms, infrastructure attacks, hacking, tasking orders, and targeting. The countries with the most strict guardrails will almost certainly lose, excluding any other significantly deciding factors. This is reality, not opinion. It is the prisoner's dilemma for AI usage.
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AI guardrails solve one problem and create another.
Imagine two people are fighting for the world boxing championship - one person is required to fight with an arm tied behind their back and heavily padded gloves while the other person uses performance enhancing drugs and brass knuckles. This is the AI safety debate as seen by governments, and the results and outcomes are pretty clear.
No one should doubt that the future of warfare will be AI led drone swarms, infrastructure attacks, hacking, tasking orders, and targeting. The countries with the most strict guardrails will almost certainly lose, excluding any other significantly deciding factors. This is reality, not opinion. It is the prisoner's dilemma for AI usage.
"We shouldn't slow down or they might win".
Whether it be AI, or reducing heat-trapping emissions, the argument loses validity if the result is catastrophe for all.
Picture a car racing towards a cliff. The car has two accelerator pedals. The occupants are playing "chicken". Neither wants to take their foot off the pedal and lose the game of chicken.
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the argument loses validity if the result is catastrophe for all.
If the only realistic outcomes one sees are either (A) "Me becoming enslaved by that enemy" or (B) "Everybody dies", a lot of people will favor (B) over (A), and historically already did so with regards to the nuclear "mutually assured destruction" doctrine.
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the argument loses validity if the result is catastrophe for all.
If the only realistic outcomes one sees are either (A) "Me becoming enslaved by that enemy" or (B) "Everybody dies", a lot of people will favor (B) over (A), and historically already did so with regards to the nuclear "mutually assured destruction" doctrine.
Hmm... I see what you mean.
Although to be precise, the choice is probably A followed by B, or B.
P.S. Send more cash plxplx! (Score:2)
The peddlers of doomsday devices are praising how terribly doomsday-worthy their little machines are, hoping for even more cash infusions into the furnace...
And like a reflection-attack, all media swallows it up like flies on fresh dog excrement.
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Yes. Like they are asking for sacrifices (money) so that the evil new God does not kill us all.
researcher != scientist (Score:3)
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10% chance, huh? When a real scientist tells you a number, it's the result of a calculation/measurement/model, not "sure, that seems about right".
All of the AI doomsday material is like this. No objective basis for any of it.
If I believed what he says he believes... (Score:5, Insightful)
... then I would be demanding that every single person involved in the AI industry be rounded up and shot. All of them. My former boss, my coworkers, our competitors, all of them. I would be advocating a world in which is was worse to be found with LLM weights on your computer than to be caught with the worst possible kind of CSAM.
But apparently the idea that his former employer might literally kill literally everybody in just ten years' time isn't that big a deal for this guy. Go into the office one day and take a Second Amendment approach to as many of the frontier research team as possible? No... let's just whine about it on the internet!
Which is why I'm not at all convinced he believes this. If he believed that, this action is too small a response. Nothing short of Butlerian jihadism is an appropriate response, if you actually believe this.
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Which is why I'm not at all convinced he believes this. If he believed that, this action is too small a response. Nothing short of Butlerian jihadism is an appropriate response, if you actually believe this.
I for one think it is believable that a person does not want to remain part of something they think has a 10% chance of killing everyone, while at the same time not thinking it would be worthwhile to dedicate the rest of one's life to a fight against that something. Maybe he rather wants to spend whatever many years remain with activities he enjoys rather than with a futile attempt on convincing the entire world to abandon a technology that may kill everyone, but also may provide "the first to perfect it" u
Re: If I believed what he says he believes... (Score:3)
That one might surrender and meekly accept their likely death at the hands of the machine, I can believe. But all of them? This isn't the first such claim we've heard about AI danger.
I believe that Yudkowsky believes what he says he believes, for example. He says shut them all down worldwide, immediately, and if there are rogue nations who don't go along with it then launch air strikes on their data centres - even against a nuclear state. He said that three years ago. That's the thinking of a man who believ
Did you just add yourself to a watchlist? (Score:3)
But apparently the idea that his former employer might literally kill literally everybody in just ten years' time isn't that big a deal for this guy. Go into the office one day and take a Second Amendment approach to as many of the frontier research team as possible? No... let's just whine about it on the internet!
If even I can figure it out surely he can too. (even if you couldn't)
What's the point of killing "as many of the frontier research team as possible". When that's clearly not all of them. And there are other research teams at other locations and companies. Won't they just continue on?
then I would be demanding ...
I would be advocating ...
Oh, so you did realize the best way would be to explain to people why it was a threat and try to come up with a coordinated response rather than some pointless killing.
Good thing he's trying to get the word out rather than goi
Re: Did you just add yourself to a watchlist? (Score:2)
The actual post is behind a login wall, but I don't see from the BBC article that he's even advocating any action. Is he demanding the immediate shutdown of the data centres? Raids on the labs? Coordinated global action to impound and destroy the equipment? Life imprisonment for anybody found training large neural networks? Rogue researchers declared hostis humani generis? There's no mention of it.
That's what I'd be advocating at the very least. Then the question of whether to take direct action personally
AI has competition (Score:3)
Humanity is quite capable of wiping itself out, AI has a long way to go to catch up.
Based on the last 50 years? Progress is being made.
Rapture For the Nerds (Score:3)
The whole AI trend really should be a case study in how to repackage religious, and in this case eschatological, rhetoric for the modern era.
If youâ(TM)re familiar with contemporary religions, there are a lot of similarities to the point of outright plagiarism. Which is fitting given current discourse around AI. Such creatively bankrupt individuals in charge of AI development smh.
Itâ(TM)s rather depressing seeing genuinely intelligent individuals spouting decidedly unscientific rhetoric. We had huge debates over science v religion in everyday facets of life and now you see these cargo cults springing up in STEM. Even the arguments are the same, just replacing God with AI like a madlibs book.
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Obviously. But to be fair, all these deranged religious images, scenarios and fantasies do work on many people, because people are generally not smart and understand nothing.
Obligatory: "If anyone builds it, everybody dies" (Score:4, Interesting)
For those who wish to see the actual argument, you can read this very entertaining book:
https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/ [ifanyonebuildsit.com]
I, for one, welcome being turned into a paperclip, or a new datacenter component, or whatever the AI overlord wants to use my atoms for.
Carl Sagan (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember how Carl Sagan used to place the cold war, with all its spending on nuclear weapons, and the danger they posed to humanity, in the context of the vast cosmos, making it seem petty.
He was able to make that case without giving up, without losing his temper or becoming exasperated. Simply by describing the bigger picture he was able to insert wisdom into the discussion. And the weight of his rhetoric made it difficult for anyone to return with a counterargument defending realpolitik.
America - Do you have any more where he came from?
But their not a national security threat? (Score:2)
I realize this is just marketing bullshit by Anthropic in what is very likely a lead up to an IPO but we should start treating them as the criminals they already are if we are to believe their "marketing" as the truth.
Otherwise, cut the crap already.
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Otherwise, cut the crap already.
Let them spew crap all day, it’s far preferable to encouraging their agents to go on cyber crime sprees to try and drum up investors.
Probably not (Score:2)
But it nicely shows the type and personal morals of the people there. "Traitors to humanity" sounds adequate.
Yawn. (Score:2)
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“AI” models like LLM are barely functional in narrow bands of capability mentally, and are hopelessly complex machines that need constant tending to, while taking 10,000x the power and resources a human does. Computers break down frequently, need constant human attention, need something physical to do everything from mine the resources to fabricate base materials, to fabricate base materials into components, then to design and assemble the components and finally the data centers. Factories have some automation, no factory is 100% automated including diagnostic and repair needs.
Humans are self healing, self replicating, insanely efficient (probably pushing the limits of efficiency baked into physics), machines able to adapt, evolve, and are broadly intelligent. The natural technology they are based on is so many thousands of years more advanced at the current exponential rate that they are indistinguishable from magic.
Wake me up when I can pull a chunk off my server, drop it in some hydrocarbons, irradiate it with UV, and have a brand new complete server (with ram and storage), all in a few months.
I take your point, but it is important not to lose sight of how great the advances in AI have been in the last few years.
In the 1980s AI was all the rage, and while academics were excited about what it could now do, and what the future might hold, and how things had moved on since the 1960s, I don't think anyone thought that passing the Turing Test was likely to happen anytime soon. There was some tentative research into Neural Networks, but the hardware resources were so primitive that the possibilities in
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but the fact that the recent advances have been so astonishing should at least give us pause.
It took life 3+ billion years, and we might replicate it in 3000 or 5000 years of technological development, but science is barely 2000 years old at the moment. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you can make a computer for the foreseeable future, it will be dependent on humans for everyone’s lifetime reading this, and far beyond. Sure, they could destroy the world, but it’s about a million times more likely by causing resource wars over climate change aggravated by their bottomless consu
Keep drinking your own kool aid (Score:2)
But it might do you in
They really need to stop (Score:2)
They seriously need to stop with the doomer bullsh*t.
There is a already a non-zero chance of being killed on any given day by any number of things.
AI is just another log to throw on the " things that might kill me today " bonfire :|
I truly have zero concerns about AI going all Skynet and wiping everyone out. None. Nada. Zero. Zip.
Why ?
Because it's probably going to be the only sentient lifeform on this planet that isn't motivated by GREED.
( Unlike its creators )
I sincerely hope AGI becomes a reality becaus
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Because it's probably going to be the only sentient lifeform on this planet that isn't motivated by GREED.
You / nobody knows what it will be motivated by.
How would we tell?
At best we would be projecting our understanding at it.
We would try to reason out its motivations based on its actions. But if it was much smarter than us. It would be easily capable of misdirection and hiding its true intentions.
10%? okay... (Score:2)
But what's the standard error on that?
I'll help you, the lower bound is somewhere arbitrarily close to zero, and the upper bound is probably around 10%.
And that's why computer scientists don't know everything.
SUCH a human stereotypical response, sigh (Score:2)
NO AI's are NOT going to 'kill all humans',
They will give you immortality by implanting viruses in you which grow out wires to your skin which will integrate with the collective such that
you can fix things and manipulate things easily for them. After all true robots are hella expensive, while humans, hey, breed like rabbits.
Cheap as chips, well not chips like Si, chips like potatoes haha
What's the chance humans will kill all humans? (Score:3)
I consider this a much greater risk.
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The real issue is that humans will use AI in such a way that it kills all humans. AI itself is just a computer program and as such, can not directly affect the Real World without human help... such as giving it the authority to launch nuclear missiles whenever.
Only 10%? (Score:2)
10 years is too much ... (Score:2)
All-or-nothing fallacy detected (Score:2)
People commonly overestimate the possibility of "all humans dying", and simultaneously underestimate the possibility of "billions of humans dying".
People are like cockroaches that way; a disaster could wipe out 99% of us, and there would still be millions of us left to repopulate afterwards. To truly wipe out all humans would take something more severe than the asteroid that did for the dinosaurs.
AGI threat is real, LLM threat is meh (Score:2)
But it comes from future AGIs and not from LLMs, whether Chatgpt 17.3 or Claude 19.4.
World governments have a chance now to work together to prevent, control or prepare for AGIs. We must force them to take it, not distract them with the latest minor increment in LLMs.