AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBC
25 days ago by Return_of_Chippy to c/technology
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?
The nuanced take way down at the bottom as usual.
Thats all good info, thanks for taking the time to type it out for me.
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@Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world I think the answer is somewhere in the middle probably. The issue from what I've read seems to come from humans giving AI too much control and it having misaligned goals. See AI alignment on this, there is a lot of research literature on it, I can't say I am familiar with most of it but I do know the basic gist of what it is about.
There is also risk of it being used with bad intentions, we see that with AI systems used in war, and also the pollution and general societal impact. It is also a powerful tool in the hands of an autocratic leader. This for me personally is what worries me the most.
Also should note that "AI" as technology is very wide, LLMs are just one type of it. It "AI" as in more generally machine learning is a very powerful method that has a lot of uses in scientific research. Crucially, I should also mention that I do dislike the term "AI" little bit since it creates and association with the fictional sentient artificial intelligence which it is not. It's not even clear whether it can ever be sentient, but that is a different and very hard question.
While I do think there is a motive for large AI companies to boast that their AIs are escaping and dangerous to make it seem more legitimate, I also think this is not the whole story. If it was just overglorification of a faulty technology, we wouldn't have all the real advancements in say scientific research that AI has brought. At the same time however, the front of AI they are trying to push to like average consumer is very sloppy.
Also, the topic is complex imo, can't say I have some authoritative account of it. Also also, I am quite disconnected from the discourse online since it sucks ass.
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