AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBC

23 days ago by Return_of_Chippy to c/technology

It comes as the AI firm's boss has called for the technology's development to be slowed down, citing "serious" risks.

I'm not an AI techie and I'm not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I'm having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I've heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can't really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?

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FRYD 50 points 23 days ago

Ed Zitron’s podcast “Better Offline” recently talked about this. There is a small tech community called the Rationalists who believe AI super intelligence is inevitable and it will either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species. These rationalists are actually a very prominent faction within tech and the AI industry. Apparently the language used within top AI firms is largely about the immense danger posed by AI super intelligence if any other group or company were to achieve it first. This creates an echo chamber that makes the people in the industry kind of lose their mind and misinterpret the capability of LLMs.

Everyone outside that faction recognizes that LLMs are just unreliable cloud software with limited use cases and that there’s no evidence LLMs could actually lead to any kind of intelligence.

Edit: Please, someone stop me from commenting on an AI post next time I’m tempted. I’m so tired of people replying, arguing with opinions I don’t have, based entirely around a hypothetical technology that doesn’t exist yet. LLMs make slop. Thats it. They hacked a company after weeks of 100s of instances being run, using old exploits published online. San Francisco will be underwater from climate change before LLMs can do anything more.

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HumbleExaggeration 9 points 23 days ago

My Problem is: Even if your take on AI is true, we give an unreliable piece of software access to the internet and more and more systems and infrastructure. Even if it is not a malicious AI, it can be so unreliable, it might kill us by incompetence. a Sme can be said about some presidents...

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Mondez 13 points 23 days ago

It won't kill us as a species, but its use may lead to disasters that were unintended and didn't need to happen. Much of the regulation in other industries is due to that kind of thing happening. Worse, the companies making them are trying to get regulation to curtail other parties development for economic advantage rather than regulation on use which will steer the entire industry.

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FRYD 3 points 23 days ago

LLMs are not intelligent. They lack morals, knowledge, and intent. The only remote risk of extermination is if a company with absolute impunity and endless resources told an LLM to hack the nuclear weapons and if knowledge of how to do that was already published online and processed as training data.

LLMs cannot do anything new, they can only regurgitate information thats already been stolen.

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MangoCats 2 points 23 days ago

can be so unreliable, it might kill us by incompetence.

Same can be said of Homer Simpson manning the console at a nuclear power plant.

AI is a tool, irresponsible use of a tool is... irresponsible. Just like people puttting "not-self-driving" cars into "supervised driving assistance mode" and taking a nap at the wheel at 80mph.

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Gradually_Adjusting 4 points 23 days ago

Aren't they called TESCREALists or something? It's like a mish-mash of pop culture and pseudo intellectual BS

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MangoCats 1 point 23 days ago

either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species

Arguably those are two ways of describing the same event.

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firecoals 1 point 23 days ago path: 0 25902975 25909711, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
thegarbagebird 1 point 23 days ago

@FRYD @Return_of_Chippy i love that the logic and reason guys’ next evolution is even less tethered to either

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MangoCats -1 points 23 days ago

any kind of intelligence

A photocell that turns on a streetlamp after sundown, or when a dark cloud passes over the sun, is a kind of intelligence.

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zarkanian 1 point 22 days ago

Got it. So plants are intelligent.

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FRYD 1 point 23 days ago
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