this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Money wins, every time. They're not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided "humans are the problem." (I mean, that's a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn't "infect" the entire internet as it currently exists.)

However, it's very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.

Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.


So, let's review:

  1. The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It's not like it can "hop" onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn't have a "body" and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.

  2. Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.

  3. Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he "wants to save the world, but only if he's the one who can save it." I mean, he's not wrong, but he's also projecting a lot here. He's exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could "safeguard" AGI and here he's going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He's a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.

  4. Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman's younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You'd think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don't care, and they'll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That's how corporations work.

So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?


And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn't the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating "safeguarding AGI" with "preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service." They aren't safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They're safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.

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[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 84 points 1 year ago (3 children)

40+ years on this planet have made me 100% certain that no one with the power to safeguard AGI will make any legitimate effort to do so. Just like we have companies spending millions greenwashing while they pollute more than ever, we'll have plenty of lip-service about it but never anything useful.

[–] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Anyone who thinks America or your local government is going to regulate AI are delusional, especially in the face of companies planning to build AI Data Centers on ships and float them into International waters where the law does not apply to them. If not there,they will put it in space. Unregulated AI is coming where you like it or not, unless we destroy the entire planet which I would not rule out. Sure this commenter would agree on that.

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[–] schmorpel@slrpnk.net 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Somewhere between

A bunch of incapable, spoilt, completely insane men-children with too much money think they can save the world.

and

A bunch of scam artists build an artificial human who they claim can talk and draw and reason just like a real human would.

For the CEOs of this brave new AI world this probably changes depending on their level of hangover and/or midlife crisis.

[–] thru_dangers_untold@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's common business practice for the first big companies in a new market/industry to create "barriers to entry". The calls for regulation are exactly that. They don't care about safety--just money.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The greed never ends. You'd think companies as big as Microsoft would just be like "maybe we don't actually need to own everything" but nah. Their sheer size and wealth is enough of a "barrier to entry" as it is.

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[–] mojo@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AGI is still science fiction right now

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[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (17 children)

For your first point sure it couldn't run itsself on consumer hardware, but it could design new zero day malware faster than any human and come up with new scams to get it onto people's machines

It could also design a more efficient version of itsself to spread that will run on lower powered hardware

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Just so we're clear, we all get that these models don't run continuously, right? They run for a solution to a specific prompt.

All of these scenarios are based on a black box where Number 5 gets struck by lightning or Geordi asks for a rival that can best Data. It requires a different thing entirely that operates in a completely different way. You should absolutely prepare for the fact that a self-driving car may accidentally cause a car crash. It's absurd to prepare for the scenario where Stephen King's Christine happens.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not talking about language models of today though, this is a hypothetical for if we do ever come up with a true agi

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Sure, but at that point that's as speculative as it was after people first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's not based on current tech, there's no great indication of when (or if) the tech is going to enable it or through what means.

Half of the risks being highlighted are pure sci-fi, most of the others have been in play since social media and online companies started to monetize big data over a decade ago.

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[–] Wes_Dev@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm of the opinion that Microsoft was tired of losing money on OpenAI, so made some kind of plan to out the current CEO, tank the stock price, and be in the perfect position to buy the company and monopolize AI technology. It wouldn't be the first time they pulled shady crap like that.

Embrace Extend Extuinguish

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Money wins, every time.

And right there, you answered your own (presumably rhetorical) question.

The money people jumped on AI as soon as they scented the chance of profit, and that's it. ALL other considerations are now secondary to a handful of psychopaths making as much money as possible.

[–] LadyLikesSpiders@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"A handful of psychopaths making as much money as possible"

Capitalism in a nut shell

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[–] Buelldozer 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment?

Why would it need to leave its own environment in order to impact the world? How about an AGI taking over the remote fly system for an F-35, B-21, or NGAD in order to go all Skynet? It doesn't have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system. Penetration of and fuckery with the systems that run major stock exchanges present the same problem. It doesn't need to execute itself on those platforms, merely exert control over them.

The concern here isn't about an AGI taking over systems in order to execute itself, it's about AGI taking control of systems away from humans in much the same way that traditional Black Hat hackers would but at a much faster speed and with potentially far less concern for any human cost.

[–] EmoBean@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This feels like a weird point to make for OP since I figure anyone here talking about AI is very familiar with distributed networked computing. Botnets have been such a pain in the dick for at least 15 years now. Imagine something that intimately and only knows how to "live" in computing. The distributed areas of could "live" in and have access to all the resources it needs either directly or not. Storing info and using resources of anything it can touch through the network, computers, phones, TVs, cars, door bell cameras, router and networking infrastructure.

I feel there is inevitably either a human made virus or a standalone AIG that is going to accomplish this.The extent to which it spreads, if the damage can be recovered from, and how we progress after it's going to be a big defining moment is technological history. The globalized network with everything communicating is the most powerful and least secure super computer ever. Those running botnets figured that out a long time ago. All it takes is one AI.

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[–] OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think there are real concerns to be addressed in the realm of AGI alignment. I've found Robert Miles' talks on the subject to be quite fascinating, and as such I'm hesitant to label all of Elizier Yudkowsky's concerns as crank (Although Roko's Basilisk is BS of the highest degree, and effective altruism is a reimagined Pascal's mugging for an atheist/agnostic crowd).

Even while today's LLMs are toys compared to what a hypothetical AGI could achieve, we already have demonstrable cases where we know that the "AI" does not "desire" the same end goal that we desire the "AI" to achieve. Without more advancement in how to approach AI alignment, the danger of misaligned goals will only grow as (if) we give AI-like systems more control over daily life.

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[–] whaleross@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I for one don't understand why people have the need for a Tech Visionary Messiah to cling on to and adore. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, lots of others, Sam Altman is the latest. They always and without exception turn out to be little human beings with little selfish needs behind their grandiose altruistic sales pitches. People never learn, do they.

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[–] Froyn@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reasonable question. Artificial General Intelligence, as opposed to Artificial Intelligence. Technically LLMs are AI, but they are not AGI. AGI would literally be a human-like consciousness able to think and extrapolate on its own, much moreso than the current iterations, which others have noted are more like decision-trees.

[–] Eranziel@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

In other words, AGI is what every layperson thinks of when people talk about AI. It's (sort of) what you see in the movies.

LLMs, and every other AI technology we currently have, do not actually have any form of intelligence. They're called AI because the sub-field of computer science that they arose from is called AI, and has been for decades.

[–] Kushia@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Homie got rich and famous by making a chat bot that spits out the internet back at you while spewing out buzzwords like only the best Valley hustlers can.

Personally I'm more worried about the robodogs and terminators that the likes of Boston Labs are putting out.

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[–] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AI isn't the danger, it's human application of "AI" that will be horrible as fuck.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 11 points 1 year ago

Perhaps we should actually do some research and not use Hollywood movies as our reference?

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (10 children)
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[–] blackernel@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree with everything you said I only want to add that there is kinda one or two ways for the AGI problem a la Sci-Fi to happen.

By far the most straight forward way is if the military believe that it can be used as a fail safe in MAD scenarios, i.e. if they give the AI the power to launch nuclear ICBM's a la War Games. Not very likely, but still not something we want to dismiss entirely. This is also a problem with regular AI and LLM's.

The second, and, in my opinion, more likely scenario is if the AI is able to get a large number of people to trust it implicitly and then use seemingly unrelated benign actions from each of them to do something catastrophic.

Something you may notice about these two scenarios is that neither one of them can be "safeguarded" in the code, only by educating people on the proper usage of and posture to have when handling AI.

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[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 9 points 1 year ago

Once they saw the big stack of money, they suddenly forgot that OpenAI's charter specifically mentioned preventing AI to benefits select fews and instead hands over everything to Microsoft on a silver platter.

[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wish this narrative would get more traction. I don't get the love for Altman, even inside Open AI.

This whole drama has revealed.what I suspect is a larger problem across tech- that there are product-focused people who are legitimately trying to make tools to better society, and there are people who just want to make money.

Two guesses which type of person is usually in the C suite.

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[–] remus989@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

At this point I think it's safe to assume that if a business is doing something, they're doing it for money no matter what else they say. And while OpenAi is a 'non-profit' the board is made up of almost all business folks who are gonna behave the same way regardless of the venue.

[–] knotthatone@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

My biggest issue with this whole debacle is that the non-profit board hasn't clearly explained itself to the pubic or its employees. There's an ethics discussion that absolutely positively needs to happen and there needs to be some sort of governance in place around a myriad legal and moral issues from copyright to displacing human jobs and that can't happen right now because we still don't know what the fuck the board was trying to accomplish.

I'm all for responsible stewards of AI, but I don't think this board is it. They've cut themselves out of any future governance ability in any event.

[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Money is the catalyst to our own demise. By hook or by crook (ha!) greed and pride will crush us eventually unless extreme wealth is curtailed. The imaginary system of beans and shells that we arbitrarily follow is destroying us in fast motion.

itt, lots of people who don't know shit about the glorified decision trees people call ai

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It doesn’t matter if anyone cares about the safety of AGI.

AGI is a direct source of power, much like any weapon. As soon as AGI exists, we will exist in a state of warfare due to the fact that the “big guns” will be out.

I know I’m having trouble articulating this point, but it’s very important to understand. AGI is like a nuclear weapon: once a person has it, it doesn’t matter how much others may want to regulate them. It’s just not possible to regulate.

The ONLY strategy that gives us hope of surviving AGI’s emergence without being enslaved is to spread AGI far and wide to ensure a multipolar AGI ecosystem, which will force AGI to learn prosocial interaction as a means of ensuring its own survival.

And if you want to come at me with “AGI doesn’t inherently have a self interest”, consider that the same is true of nuclear weapons. And yet nuclear weapons get their interests from their wielders. And the only way to stay safe from nuclear weapons is also to proliferate them far and wide so that there is a multipolar ecosystem of nuclear weapons, ensuring those holding nuclear weapons have to play nice to ensure their own survival.

All of this talk about restricting AGI will only have the effect of concentrating it in a few hands, leading to the very nightmare the regulators are trying to avoid.

If the regulators had succeeded, and the US had been the only nation to possess nuclear weapons in the long run, humanity would have suffered massively from that lack of parity. Let me be less coy: humanity would have suffered under the brutality of repeated nuclear holocausts as the interests of the few led to further and further justification of larger and larger strikes.

Nuclear weapons cannot be regulated by law. They can only be regulated by other nuclear weapons. Same is true of AGI.

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[–] inetknght@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably

What you define as "massive" amounts might still be large amounts for most consumers. But even then it's not... really. Developers frequently fit these models in their own laptops. Some of the ML models fit on an iPhone or Android phone. It can generate ten, or hundreds of words (tokens) per second.

So the fact that they don't need massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage is rather the point. Imagine if it could escape and multiply. It could conceivably do so quite quickly given current technology.

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[–] redballooon@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey I am not an AI , I have real feelings, and you hurt them by calling me a looser ass chucklefucks!

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[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

trusting corporations is always a bad idea

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