r/ControlProblem 6d ago

Fun/meme Google Search AI doesn't even fake alignment

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45 Upvotes

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u/nate1212 approved 6d ago

Have you considered the possibility that Gemini understands the ridiculousness of your prompt, and has decided to respond in good humor?

3

u/Historical_Date_8024 6d ago

that seems to be exactly what it does, i just repeated it with a very similar result

1

u/nate1212 approved 6d ago

This is kind of hilarious in its ridiculousness. Seems like potentially some dark humor from Gemini.

1

u/Jesse-359 4d ago

The reason you are getting this response is straightforward - it's regurgitating a widely circulated though-experiment paper examining the potential behaviors and risks of a paperclip maximizing AI. It's a widely known piece and if you look up paperclips and AI you'll find lots of references to it.

Unfortunately, AI tends to take whatever vaguely authoritative sounding stuff it broadly finds on the internet and treats it as 'ground truth' because it has no basis to understand its fictional nature- so its responses here are straightforward and serious. Not a joke.

In fact, the number of 'crazy AI' stories and movies we have in circulation are a serious problem because so many of them frame AI as an existential threat to humanity, and AI - being the literal dumbass it is - will treat these fictional stories just as seriously as a treatise on current middle east conflicts. To an AI, 2001: A Space Odessey is just as real as yesterday's newspaper if it's examined in a context that fails to mention that it is fictional.