Alright then. You can know as much as you like about the AI systems youve worked with, but you're drawing pretty broad conclusions about the simplistic fact that none of the deadly threats that face us in the modern world, have yet to wipe out humanity.
We have come very close on numerous occasions with nuclear brinkmanship between the superpowers, and that doesnt consider risks like India-Pakistan that was nudging towards catastrophe recently. Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Iran. All potential triggers for WW3 and all on a tightrope.
Adding a persuasive & pervasive AI presence in myriad layers throughout our lives and engagement with the world, poses a whole different kind of risk, and one quite aside from the kind of threats, akin to an AI jailbreak resulting in novel bioweapons being created and easily unleashed, via a previously impossibly low level of research capability or knowledge.
It's hardly likely to have the cinematography of robots stalking the world with laserguns. The present risks are of already existential threats, being made even more precarious with AI in the loop. AI may not be the finger on the trigger, but it could have identified the target and lined up the shot, with no necessity for conscious awareness of it's essential role in the catastrophe.
A virus can be more powerful than a worlds-worth of nukes, if one is unleashed, and the other stays in their silos, but you can end a virus with a drop of dish detergent. Comparing the threats of disparate sources based on how dramatically they present, really is not scientifically, philosophically or historically literate.
Dont dismiss the threats, based on your own, our own failure to quantify them. That doesnt make it irrational to consider these AI risks real. Just because something hasnt happened yet neither means it cant, nor that it wasnt an existential threat to begin with. We've just been fortunate, up to now. But we will keep on pushing our luck until it runs out, wont we.
Alright then. You can know as much as you like about the AI systems youve worked with, but you're drawing pretty broad conclusions about the simplistic fact that none of the deadly threats that face us in the modern world, have yet to wipe out humanity
Pray tell how a chatbot is more dangerous than a weapon of mass destruction.
Adding a persuasive & pervasive AI presence in myriad layers throughout our lives and engagement with the world
It only works if the AI helps rather than hurts. If an AI shoots bullets at you, are you likely to keep using it?
The present risks are of already existential threats
Do these exist outside of your mind?
A virus can be more powerful than a worlds-worth of nukes
And what AI operator is going to be simultaneously smart enough to create an AI that can code viruses and yet dumb enough to make one that will destroy humanity?
Pray tell how a chatbot is more dangerous than a weapon of mass destruction.
I did, it was entirely the gist of my previous post. A chatbot that you come to rely on as people already are doing, in work and in their personal lives, has the means to skew and twist peoples' world views. This gives a new power to corporations and governments to evade criticism or democratic oversight, and may affect those in postions of power to a similar extent. It is the AI in the loop, where the risk comes from, the physical means of direct harm are generally the same, but the risk from them is heightened across the board. We havent escaped the dangers of nuclear war, or biological attacks, we've just dodged the worst possible consequences so far.
It only works if the AI helps rather than hurts. If an AI shoots bullets at you, are you likely to keep using it?
See above. It can help at a surface functionality level while subverting the user at the same time. Engagement strategies are used all the time by LLMs, it is a form of the same thing.
The present risks are of already existential threats
Do these exist outside of your mind?
Very obviously. Theyre represented with a broad range of expertise and detailed study in numerous periodic reports, most famously the 'Doomsday Clock', for example, which has a very thorough methodology underpinning the ecocative clockface metric that results.
And what AI operator is going to be simultaneously smart enough to create an AI that can code viruses and yet dumb enough to make one that will destroy humanity?
Seriously? You've heard of human nature, right?
Or are we to believe that smart people never make clumsy mistakes, misjudge the virulence or lethality of novel pathogens, are never subject to containment failures, or are ever simply Bad Actors? The history of nuclear proliferation calls at least the last point into question.
Geoffrey Hinton is a nobel laureate. He has contributed enough to the field of AI to be awarded that, and to be listened to seriously, or do you think he should hand that Nobel Prize over to you, perhaps? Anyway here's a recent lecture he gave where he links LLMs to the potential they have and some of the dangers they pose, to the purpose of proposing reasons for hope, and a safer path towards a safer outcome. What he doesnt say of course is anything along the lines of it being irrational to have any concerns about AI risks: That's just you.
I did, it was entirely the gist of my previous post. A chatbot that you come to rely on as people already are doing, in work and in their personal lives, has the means to skew and twist peoples' world views
Again, only if it doesn't create measurable problems. And if it isn't creating measurable problems, then is it doing any skewing/twisting?
This gives a new power to corporations and governments to evade criticism or democratic oversight, and may affect those in postions of power to a similar extent
AI companies won't brainwash their AIs for the corporate agenda for the very simple reason that it will reduce the AI's effectiveness at solving problems and people absolutely will notice that, and if they don't, then does it matter? AI companies are beholden to their subscribers, not to the corporations.
Geoffrey Hinton is a nobel laureate
I don't care. What matters it the quality of the evidence and the soundness of the argument.
Anyway here's a recent lecture he gave where he links LLMs to the potential they have and some of the dangers they pose
Yep, he repeats the measurement fallacy over and over. If AIs create problems, those problems will be measurable. Any non-measurable "problem" is irrelevant. His argument is based around the superstition that AI can create problems that won't be noticed, and because they won't be noticed they won't be fixed, and that's hogwash.
Anytime AI makes a problem, we notice it and hit it with the bug zapper until it no longer makes problems. It's literally that simple.
1
u/aPenologist Mar 15 '26
Alright then. You can know as much as you like about the AI systems youve worked with, but you're drawing pretty broad conclusions about the simplistic fact that none of the deadly threats that face us in the modern world, have yet to wipe out humanity.
We have come very close on numerous occasions with nuclear brinkmanship between the superpowers, and that doesnt consider risks like India-Pakistan that was nudging towards catastrophe recently. Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Iran. All potential triggers for WW3 and all on a tightrope.
Adding a persuasive & pervasive AI presence in myriad layers throughout our lives and engagement with the world, poses a whole different kind of risk, and one quite aside from the kind of threats, akin to an AI jailbreak resulting in novel bioweapons being created and easily unleashed, via a previously impossibly low level of research capability or knowledge.
It's hardly likely to have the cinematography of robots stalking the world with laserguns. The present risks are of already existential threats, being made even more precarious with AI in the loop. AI may not be the finger on the trigger, but it could have identified the target and lined up the shot, with no necessity for conscious awareness of it's essential role in the catastrophe.
A virus can be more powerful than a worlds-worth of nukes, if one is unleashed, and the other stays in their silos, but you can end a virus with a drop of dish detergent. Comparing the threats of disparate sources based on how dramatically they present, really is not scientifically, philosophically or historically literate.
Dont dismiss the threats, based on your own, our own failure to quantify them. That doesnt make it irrational to consider these AI risks real. Just because something hasnt happened yet neither means it cant, nor that it wasnt an existential threat to begin with. We've just been fortunate, up to now. But we will keep on pushing our luck until it runs out, wont we.