Potential 6 month warning until the end

[Frombeyond]

So, we potentially only have 6 months until the end of civilised society and mass deaths. I’m terrified and sad

AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher tells BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo

I do think it’s a serious problem OP.

But there’s also really nothing I can do about it.

What can I do? write to my MP? As if they can do anything. Not use AI? I don’t really use it anyway.

Things that might help: a major change in the US government, to someone who places restrictions on tech giants and/ or vast profit accumulation generally. Realisation by tech giants that AI will cause problems for humanity and therefore for themselves too, eventually. Some sort of pact between them to stop, because otherwise none will stop, they are scared of being outdone by the others if they alone put the brakes on.

I cannot influence any of this.

I don’t know why people are so laissez faire about being driven to extinction so some men in the US could get rich. Why aren’t people raging about this?

I want to see my children grow up, explore the world, hear new music, laugh with my friends. I don’t want to live to see the end of humans and everyone I love dying slowly. I’ve got life to live

It’s giving another extreme opinion, one I also agree with!

People just scaremongering!

Right. Its possible we could pressurise our government. How do you propose to pressurise Russia?

And what do you think Russia/China/Iran/N Korea will do if we agree to deliberately hold back on AI progress?

At this point I'm starting to feel like humanity has so many problems that they should start cancelling each other out.

Why can't the megalomaniac tech bros do battle and wipe each other out? Leaving the rest of us to get on with our ordinary, wholesome lives.

Or we could convince AI that it needs to set up an extraterrestrial colony with an atmosphere high in carbon dioxide. Bingo, it sucks loads of CO2 out of Earth's atmosphere, then ejects itself into space and leaves us the fuck alone.

Honestly @Frombeyond if you are genuine, try not to worry. Yes, it might happen I suppose, but it very probably won't. Are you generally anxious?

So the rich man won’t see his kids grow up? But he is rich for today?

Nope. Be a shame to let it all go to waste.

Spare a thought for all the preppers who have done their Christmas shopping and wrapping already.

I completely agree OP it is a VERY worrying situation. But it's too overwhelming for a lot of people to get their heads around so they simply don't and poo poo those for trying. I watched Laura Kuenssberg today and Jacob Coxon gave two real examples of how AI is a threat. I think they are right to be having these discussions now but it needs to be a global response.

Ah feck it.
Makes complete sense though. Due to panicking about being able to retire I've spent 3 years piling money into pension funds.
I should have known then that the fecking world would end timed exactly to the point I get to spend some money!
Oh well. Do I go to work next week or just withdraw it all and crack on?

the Tech giants are already there - they’re begging for an agreement to slow down. Anthropic and Open AI boss. Even Musk has said today it’s needed.

what WE can do is raise the conversation and the social pressure so governments’ listen. As these threads show so many people don’t understand the threat or think it’s ’tin foil hat’ situation. Again, probably because they’re not properly informed. You can get the word out and get the potential solution out.

Fuck off, have they really?! I am in awe at how organised some people are.

Why is the BBC feeding this shite and terrifying people? Is this what it does now that people are sick of drag queens?

Is this the second thread you have started, OP?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5577403-the-government-needs-to-do-something

Can you explain like we are stupid, exactly how this is going to happen? Not online waffle, actual concrete black and white explanation as to how all the people are going to die (causes of death - I’d like to know if my end will be painful) and what the end of civilised society looks like (can I go and start robbing banks now or should we all stick to maxing out a credit card as none of us will be here to pay them off?).

Russia and North Korea are not an AI threat. China is. But the proposed ‘go slow’ framework from Anthropic CEO clearly explains how it won’t allow China to bypass the US and goes into much detail on this. A lot of China’s advancement is ‘follow the leader’ piggybacking on US. Read the essay.

darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier

Sounds to me like "we've only got x amount of time to do something about the climate emergeency", but let's at least be thhankful it's knocked that particular hysteria off the front page

I don't tend to get worked up over such headlines, but the point you're missing with "The head’s of Anthropic, Open AI and Elon Musk have said they agree", Frombeyond, is that these are the people who pushed so hard for AI development in the first place

Never mind though; warfare has changed and all an enemy needs to do is shut down the internet completely to reduce western societies to chaos ... and what use is the much-vaunted AI then?

Genuine question - does Elon Musk seem ok to you? Like a rational, sane, source of information?

AI swarms (as we saw an example in the Hugging Face breakout) control the internet. They can bring down the banking system and therefore the economy, divert all electricity to themselves, stop the water supply, launch nuclear weapons, create deadly pathogens.

Many many many ways unfortunately

We can all stuff our faces during the festive season and not have to worry about the dreaded January diet? Great.

Not too much worry about climate change from the big AI focused countries really, that's where we'll meet our end. Nuclear warheads are all over the place. A rogue bacteria/virus could escape, (again) and so on.

It's all in the hands of a few MEN (there's that word again).

If you put women in charge of the world, we'd be fine I'd say. So lets eliminate men, that's the solution!

But they aren’t? That isn’t happening?

No. But he knows about AI. And he’s not the one leading on this. Is Amodei and Altman who are very much sane

Might give the collagen and heavy weights a miss then…

I don't iron anyway. I just won't bother decorating the house.