By now, most of us have heard about the survey that asked AI researchers and developers to estimate the probability that advanced AI systems will cause “human extinction or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment of the human species”. Chillingly, the median response was that there was a 10% chance.
How does one rationalize going to work and pushing out tools that carry such existential risks? Often, the reason given is that these systems also carry huge potential upsides – except that these upsides are, for the most part, hallucinatory.
Ummm how about the obvious answer: most AI researchers won’t think they’re the ones working on tools that carry existential risks? Good luck overthrowing human governance using ChatGPT.
The chance of Fossil Fuels causing human extinction carries a much higher chance, yet the news cycle is saturated with fears that a predictive language model is going to make calculators crave human flesh. Wtf is happening
I agree that climate change should be our main concern. The real existential risk of AI is that it will cause millions of people to not have work or be underemployed, greatly multiplying the already huge lower class. With that many people unable to take care of themselves and their family, it will make conditions ripe for all of the bad parts of humanity to take over unless we have a major shift away from the current model of capitalism. AI would be the initial spark that starts this but it will be human behavior that dooms (or elevates) humans as a result.
The AI apocalypse won’t look like Terminator, it will look like the collapse of an empire and it will happen everywhere that there isn’t sufficient social and political change all at once.
Ummm how about the obvious answer: most AI researchers won’t think they’re the ones working on tools that carry existential risks? Good luck overthrowing human governance using ChatGPT.
The chance of Fossil Fuels causing human extinction carries a much higher chance, yet the news cycle is saturated with fears that a predictive language model is going to make calculators crave human flesh. Wtf is happening
Capitalism. Be afraid of this thing, not of that thing. That thing makes people lots of money.
I agree that climate change should be our main concern. The real existential risk of AI is that it will cause millions of people to not have work or be underemployed, greatly multiplying the already huge lower class. With that many people unable to take care of themselves and their family, it will make conditions ripe for all of the bad parts of humanity to take over unless we have a major shift away from the current model of capitalism. AI would be the initial spark that starts this but it will be human behavior that dooms (or elevates) humans as a result.
The AI apocalypse won’t look like Terminator, it will look like the collapse of an empire and it will happen everywhere that there isn’t sufficient social and political change all at once.