Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

The threat to humanity from AI

111 replies

Youreeavinalaff · 01/04/2023 14:03

Just read a terrifying article about the threat AI poses to humanity.
https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/
ChatGPT (AI chatbot) is amazing - my kids have been talking with it and setting it tasks and challenges. It's incredible. Apparently it's making such sudden and huge leaps in its abilities that Elon Musk and others are petitioning to pause it along with AI labs and programmes for 6 months whilst safety mechanisms and limitations are put in place. Reading this article however makes me feel that these won't be sufficient. We're about the unleash something we can't control by the look of it - or something we can't persuade all nations to agree to. I am worried.

The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough

One of the earliest researchers to analyze the prospect of powerful Artificial Intelligence warns of a bleak scenario

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough

OP posts:
Youreeavinalaff · 01/04/2023 16:35

Good link, thanks Peverellshire. 2040 - that's a bit worrying. We simply can't comprehend the levels AI will reach over the next decade or two.

"What we do know is that humans’ utter dominance on this Earth suggests a clear rule: with intelligence comes power. Which means an ASI, when we create it, will be the most powerful being in the history of life on Earth, and all living things, including humans, will be entirely at its whim—and this might happen in the next few decades.
If our meager brains were able to invent wifi, then something 100 or 1,000 or 1 billion times smarter than we are should have no problem controlling the positioning of each and every atom in the world in any way it likes, at any time—everything we consider magic, every power we imagine a supreme God to have will be as mundane an activity for the ASI as flipping on a light switch is for us. Creating the technology to reverse human aging, curing disease and hunger and even mortality, reprogramming the weather to protect the future of life on Earth—all suddenly possible. Also possible is the immediate end of all life on Earth. As far as we’re concerned, if an ASI comes to being, there is now an omnipotent God on Earth—and the all-important question for us is:
Will it be a nice God?"

OP posts:
Youreeavinalaff · 01/04/2023 16:39

Best hope is that we're already just a simulation created as a zoo for AI or another much more advanced civilisation 😁

OP posts:
Nepmarthiturn · 01/04/2023 16:39

Youreeavinalaff · 01/04/2023 16:35

Good link, thanks Peverellshire. 2040 - that's a bit worrying. We simply can't comprehend the levels AI will reach over the next decade or two.

"What we do know is that humans’ utter dominance on this Earth suggests a clear rule: with intelligence comes power. Which means an ASI, when we create it, will be the most powerful being in the history of life on Earth, and all living things, including humans, will be entirely at its whim—and this might happen in the next few decades.
If our meager brains were able to invent wifi, then something 100 or 1,000 or 1 billion times smarter than we are should have no problem controlling the positioning of each and every atom in the world in any way it likes, at any time—everything we consider magic, every power we imagine a supreme God to have will be as mundane an activity for the ASI as flipping on a light switch is for us. Creating the technology to reverse human aging, curing disease and hunger and even mortality, reprogramming the weather to protect the future of life on Earth—all suddenly possible. Also possible is the immediate end of all life on Earth. As far as we’re concerned, if an ASI comes to being, there is now an omnipotent God on Earth—and the all-important question for us is:
Will it be a nice God?"

It is likely to have as little interest in whether humans think it is nice as we show for the welfare of ants in our garden...

We would likely be of little significance to it at all.

TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat · 01/04/2023 16:44

There's also this. 🤣🤣

www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html

UnDruidlyWords · 01/04/2023 16:50

TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat · 01/04/2023 16:44

That's a great story. You probably know that there's a film to go with it.

Have you read Bisson's 'Bears Discover Fire'?

Back on topic - terrifying ideas and fascinating at the same time.

shadypines · 01/04/2023 16:58

AI or not it seems a vast majority of humans have had their brains hijacked by smartphones already. On a daily basis I witness schoolchildren who cannot interact with each other going to school as glued to smartphones; parents who don't interact with their primary age child as glued to smartphones and people not paying attention the potentially dangerous activity they are doing eg riding a bike, crossing the road but CANNOT tear their eyes from a screen.
We've already created a nation of phone zombies. I could go on with endless other examples.
Yes, I agree it's a threat, the horse has bolted from the stable imo, whether we can rein it back in is another matter.

UnDruidlyWords · 01/04/2023 17:06

@shadypines I see that too and it worries me. I wonder where it'll end up.

Choconut · 01/04/2023 17:09

But surely an AI can only do what it is programmed to do. It doesn't 'think' in the way something that is conscious does, it just analyses the information it is given and learns from repeated experience and uses that to make the best possible choice. There is no advantage to an AI to wipe out all humans so why would it choose it?
With quantum computing yes something could be hugely smarter, but it's only smarter in certain ways, how is it going to control atoms? and why would it want to?

If it's actually so much smarter than humans then maybe it won't be so selfish, greedy, destructive and power hungry. Ah yeah......but of course it's the humans at the heart of it that are the actual problem not the AI at all - the problem of course is that it's going to get into the wrong hands, of course it is. Do you want to let the genie out the bottle? How many people would put nuclear weapons back in the bottle if they could? Would we be better or worse off without the fear of MAD? It's the same with AI IMO, but it's likely that the genie will only stay in the bottle so long and personally I'd prefer that we were ahead of the game rather than way behind the likes of China and Russia.

goldenotter · 01/04/2023 17:14

i was reading elon used to hold shares in OpenAi who developed chatgpt, then sold them before it was obvious that it was going stratospheric. So he might have a vested interest in slowing it down. Not sure how much of this is true BTW, not researched, but found an interesting thread on reddit.

CandlelightGlow · 01/04/2023 17:16

BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz · 01/04/2023 15:08

Apparently it's making such sudden and huge leaps in its abilities that Elon Musk and others are petitioning to pause it along with AI labs and programmes for 6 months whilst safety mechanisms and limitations are put in place

They cynic in me suggests these people are pretending this is the reason while they work out how to monetise it, and see what damage it has to their multi billion pound businesses

Also could be a marketing strategy - "we need to hold back on this amazing, super advanced technology we have made because it's so life changing"

I got chatGPT to draw me some very cute guinea pig drawings in the style I wanted, so that's nice!

Skippingabeat · 01/04/2023 17:37

Chat GPT wrote the wittiest funniest poetry for me. That's what worries me most. Its ability to do art better than humans.

sorrynotathome · 01/04/2023 17:41

Mycathatesmecuddling · 01/04/2023 16:18

If we ask a genuine AI to solve the climate crisis it would probably exterminate humanity thereby removing a huge cause

Fair point!

TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat · 01/04/2023 17:42

That's a great story. You probably know that there's a film to go with it.

No I did not! Thank you! Of the same name?

Have you read Bisson's 'Bears Discover Fire'?

No, but shall look this up as well!

UnDruidlyWords · 01/04/2023 17:51

@TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat, yes, it's very good.

There's also a short film of 'Bears Discover Fire' but the ending is terrible enough that I cannot recommend it. The short story is delightful.

TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat · 01/04/2023 18:03

UnDruidlyWords · 01/04/2023 17:51

@TheyAreMadeOutOfMeat, yes, it's very good.

There's also a short film of 'Bears Discover Fire' but the ending is terrible enough that I cannot recommend it. The short story is delightful.

Thank you! This will keep me busy. Grin

Carouselfish · 01/04/2023 18:10

Stephen Hawking was convinced AI would be the greatest threat to humanity.

Nepmarthiturn · 01/04/2023 18:41

Carouselfish · 01/04/2023 18:10

Stephen Hawking was convinced AI would be the greatest threat to humanity.

He wasn't wrong!

The singularity approaching can be shown on graphs, tracking the acceleration of technology back to when it started. It is terrifying and tbh I don't think there is anything that can be done to prevent it. And unlike anything humans have faced before we have literally no way to plan for it or even comprehend what it means.

OkayBozo · 01/04/2023 19:02

Between this, nuclear war and climate change it all seems futile!

MobilityCat · 01/04/2023 19:03

I've had Alexa for years and all it really does apart from controlling WiFi connected devices, it just seems to search the Web for answers to any questions.

BasicDad · 01/04/2023 19:22

It will need some form of regulation. Ethical AI is already a thing, but globally, there's a huge disparity in the parameters of what that actually is.

Right now AI is fantastic. We've surrounded by itnfor longer than we realise, in small use cases. Weather predictions, Google Maps, Siri/hey google/cortana to a lesser extent.

There's definitely reasons to be worried about. As the limited use cases start to get stitched together with voice, image, data, pattern recognition, the power of it becomes exponential. It can definitely be used for a lot of individual harm. Crime for instance will sky rocket. At the same time security will need to keep up too. The biggest issues are that our antiquated laws and policing are already a way behind.

World threat level Super AI...maybe. It's possible, but a bit far off to predict if it will manifest into a problem, despite the masses of Scifi and theory.

But, I'm a massive believer in AI for good. Just like the Internet,.it's a huge global leveller. There's so much good that can be done from the top, all the way down to individual citizens. So I'll support its development as much as possible.

BertieBotts · 01/04/2023 19:26

There is no advantage to an AI to wipe out all humans so why would it choose it?

The difficulty here is in wording the goal. There is a really good explanation on the wait but why AI post linked above. But in short if the AI's goal is to find the most efficient way to create paperclips for example, it could potentially and eventually get so smart that it's just turning all matter on earth into paperclips. Let's say we thought about overproducing paperclips and set the goal instead to be for the machine to produce as many paperclips as humans need in real time, based on evaluating previous usage and predicting future usage. Well, the most efficient number to produce is 0. So it's actually in the machine's interest to ensure that nobody needs any more paperclips ever again. It could just create another machine to create paperclips for it, or invent something that means paperclips are obsolete. But the simplest way to ensure that humans don't need any more paperclips is probably just to kill all the humans.

We can't just tell it not to harm humans because what does that even mean? We don't really understand morality very well ourselves let alone being able to explain it to a machine that doesn't understand humans. You could tell it to prevent human suffering and actually the most efficient way for it to do that would be for it to kill everyone. So you can tell it explicitly not to kill anyone, but in order to eliminate suffering it just kind of unplugs everyone's brain. No more suffering, but no more anything either. We think it's obvious that no suffering meant that we still want to experience all the nice things about being human, but that's not obvious to a machine that only understands literally exactly what you tell it.

Language is full of assumption and shared understanding, most of which is very cultural and learned. Culture and learning that a machine would not have and we take for granted so would not be able to program it in.

People have strange ideas about what AI might be, they think of it as like an intelligent animal, like you can teach crows to do simple puzzles. Or they think it's like teaching a child, not really understanding that we only directly teach children a fraction of what they learn, most of their learning is primed in the brain and comes from experimentation having been honed through evolution (with lots of death along the way). Think about all the daft experiments that toddlers like to do that could get them killed or harmed or other people killed or harmed if they had more body strength, ability to manipulate computers, or adults weren't around to stop them.

Or they think AI is some malevolent force like a movie villain who just wants power. That's a very human interpretation, it's unlikely that AI would "want" this - but it's possible that AI might see power as a means towards some other goal in a way that we fail to predict.

Surplus2requirements · 01/04/2023 20:51

sorrynotathome · 01/04/2023 15:18

Climate change is FAR more of an immediate and obvious threat to humanity. I think we should ask AI to work on that.

International Cat Day Cats GIF by MOODMAN

And from a completely dispassionate point of view what do you think the obvious solution is? 😬

Mycathatesmecuddling · 01/04/2023 21:01

Surplus2requirements · 01/04/2023 20:51

And from a completely dispassionate point of view what do you think the obvious solution is? 😬

Exactly

How do you stop climate change
Kill all humans

How do you stop wars
Kill all humans

How do you cure over population
Kill all humans

How do you stop deforestation
Kill all humans

I means it wouldn't be wrong either 😂

Knickerthief1 · 01/04/2023 21:05

I think it's terrifying too. It's all about when AI reaches the point of singularity - the point where the growth of AI becomes irreversible and we can't control it anymore. There is a man called Kurzwell who works for google. He believes that we will reach singularity in the next 30 years. He has made 147 predictions on technology since the 90's and has had an 86% success rate.

BlueJellycat · 01/04/2023 21:06

sorrynotathome · 01/04/2023 15:18

Climate change is FAR more of an immediate and obvious threat to humanity. I think we should ask AI to work on that.

Climate change is caused by humans, so if you asked AI to work on that, it would start by wiping us out.

Swipe left for the next trending thread