posted in Technology

Return_of_Chippy@Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world
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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.
MangoCats@MangoCats@feddit.it

Replying to @⁨mEEGal@lemmy.world⁩

Unlike a bio-virus that has evolved for a billion years across all the niches of our ecosystems, when AI “escapes the lab” it’s entirely confined to man-made infrastructure, it’s not going to infect a flock of migrating birds and hop to the other hemisphere, it’s going to be in systems we built, mostly within the past 30 years or less, mostly in the past 30 months for the powerful ones.

When AI starts demonstrating “copying itself” through DNA encoding infecting living beings without killing them (too quickly), and/or “running” on something more ubiquitous than massive data-center hardware, that’s when it’s over.

isleepinahammock@isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Replying to @⁨MangoCats@feddit.it⁩

It may be confined to man-made infrastructure, but that same infrastructure is what keep billions of people from starving to death. At this point, computers and networked systems are so baked in to every facet of our logistics chains and government that simply shutting it all down isn’t an option. The nightmare scenario is where rogue AI escapes the lab and copies itself to so many systems that the only way to kill it is to shut down every computer on Earth.

Cryxtalix@Cryxtalix@programming.dev
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Replying to @⁨daggermoon@piefed.world⁩

Every issue has been because corporations have “get out of jail free cards” these days, greed is sky high, and AI psychosis is rampant.

All those supposed AI agent hacks happened because someone set that as a task for the AI agents. Yes, someone thought it was ok to do so for marketing and profit. That’s the problem, companies are willing to use the AI tool to commit crimes.

Imagine if weapons companies advertised their products by shooting people in the streets. Someone thought it was a good idea, and can get away with it.

I don’t believe at all that AI agents have free will enough to decide to hack companies for fun. They’re just glorified text generation machines hooked up to an interface. They don’t have intentionality unless some human gave them the directive and wrote them a large cheque.

Also, we know all these AI company billionaires read dystopian scifi novels like business strategy textbooks. That’s why everything surrounding AI is so overtly scifi coded.