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

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

4. 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.

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.

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

Listening to them speak about it, no. They’re morons. They clearly didn’t make the tech. Workers made AI. Just like they make everything. These freaks make nothing. They can’t give single coherent explanation of how LLMs work, how they could “kill” us, nor do they seem to know how or what “guardrails” need to be put in place.

But if they really are a cult then we all know what the next step is. They need to STFU and get off of our planet.

That’s what I mean though, the subject of this article was a 27 year old worker. Not some high level Sam Altman type.

They aren’t a homogenous group. They don’t all believe this. The “AI will kill us all” narrative just sells really well.

Right im sure the people working adjacent to the DoD have more insight and fears than the people working with the consumer facing models… Again what motive does a young kid have for quitting the company and going on a media tour?

A Google employee claimed in 2022 that they had sentient AI. He was sacked. What were his motivations? Do you believe he was right?