posted in Technology

Return_of_Chippy@Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world
edited

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

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?

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo
Jacob Coxon, shown on the left, wearing dark frame glasses and a white collored shirt. On the right is BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in a black shirt sitting with her arms on a desk as she looks to the left of frame.www.bbc.comAI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBCIt comes as the AI firm's boss has called for the technology's development to be slowed down, citing "serious" risks.
zarkanian@zarkanian@sh.itjust.works

Replying to @⁨Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve heard a few explanations for the “AI will kill us all” narrative.

  1. AI techies are in a cult. They genuinely believe this stuff because they’re crazy.

  2. It makes the AI sound powerful and impressive, which is ultimately good for the AI companies.

  3. They’re starting to face competition from open-weight models, so they want to scare politicians into crafting regulations. They think that they will be able to influence the regulations to favor them and squeeze out their competition.

And, of course, there’s

  1. It keeps people talking about AI. Because whatever you do, don’t quit talking about AI, because if you quit talking about it, the line might go down! And the line going down is very, very bad.
Return_of_Chippy@Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world

Replying to @⁨zarkanian@sh.itjust.works⁩

Okay cool, thanks!

  1. If the techies believe it and they are the “experts” what makes them crazy? Wouldn’t their opinion be the most informed?

  2. Yeah that part definitely makes sense

  3. That definitely makes sense from a capitalist perspective. But, is the argument against regulations that they would be bad for the concentration of power it would give select companies? Or just that they aren’t necessary because the tool is of little use so it’s just wasted time/money.

  4. That makes sense but trillions of dollars are being spent. Anything that amount of money is sinking into is gonna be talked about a lot. Especially thousands of jobs cut because of it.