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

But what is the point of worrying? There’s bugger all we can do as individuals.

I don’t use AI, as much as possible, although it’s increasingly creeping into my workplace and everything I access on the internet. But most people seem to love it and use it all the time.

The same with climate change: I’ve done my bit (mostly because I’m poor!) - I’ve only taken 2 flights in ten years, I recycle, buy second hand, eat hardly any meat… but I’m aware most westerners continue to fly multiple times a year, eat meat every day, buy fast fashion, drive big cars. So the planet continues to cook.
ETA: Of course, I’m well aware that the contribution to global warming made by ordinary individuals is nothing compared to billionaires, big business and the old military industrial complex.

Like all of the world’s problems, the AI threat is caused by unrestrained capitalism. I was an active trade unionist and revolutionary socialist in the past, but now I’m old and jaded. The “left” have been infiltrated by social liberals with no class consciousness, abandoning the servile masses to be swept along with rightwing propaganda rather than acting in their own best interests.

Best to make the most of whatever time we have left.

This is a good overview. It's a long read, but compelling. The concern is the shift from where we are now (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) through Artificial General Intelligence (we're on the cusp) into Artificial Superintelligence (an inevitable? product of AGI, so that the one accelerates, pretty much unstoppably, into the other, within months or years.

Our ANI is the slop-producing labour-saver. AGI may be, in evolutionary terms, to humans as we are to chimps - a half-step up on the metaphorical staircase... and ASI is something of which we simply can't conceive: a thousand steps up, representing a gulf in understanding and control like nothing in the history of the world.

And yet, we're building it.

Having gone down a bit of a rabbit-hole reading what those in the know have to say about it, and particularly how it may happen (no killer robots or malevolent intent involved; all very mundane, really!), I find it convincing and frightening, OP. Analogies with the Industrial Revolution, Y2K and even nuclear war are so far off the mark relative to this. What we're messing with is on an unimaginably different scale.

But... I also agree with others about just getting on with stuff in the meantime. What can we do?!

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html

ETA: Just reread the stair case analogy and realise have summarised it incorrectly above - but the issue's the same, really. Read the opening paragraphs of the link. It's fascinating stuff.

Maybe if we all put on so much weight they won't recognise us as human so we won't be one of the ones killed off !

That's ridiculous, year 2000 was just a bad computer design where year numbers had 2 digits. It didnt cause many problems because coders like me spent many boring hours sorting out the original computer programmes (which now look so simplistic). And there were actually problems where a bit of code was missed, but guess what, we didn't tell the media and quietly resolved it.
AI is in such a different league, its like comparing a worm brain to a human brain.

I've been fantasising about quitting my job. I have 2 years' salary in savings. Maybe I should do it reading this.

Oh for goodness sake. Switch off your TV, phone and radio and just go enjoy life. There are always doomsayers like this. Remember Y2K? Just live your life without this external negativity affecting you.

It's not my world, but as a leading IT whizz explained to me at the time, that whole thing was largely driven by a desire to make £££££ out of being seen to "save us all" from the armageddon the Millenium Bug was claimed to be

And so it's proved, as we still see in assurances that we would indeed have been doomed had thousands not worked tirelessly to save us ... the same people, incidentally, who failed to notice that you get an "00" every new century and that it might have been worth taking this into account

It’s the end of the world as we know it
( can’t remember the rest of the song)

We nearly had a nuclear strike. An officer disobeying orders prevented it.
AIDS killed a lot of people. But mainly gay men which is why I guess you are so dismissive of it.

OP, you really should put a trigger warning in the title if you’re going to post something like this. There are a lot of people who suffer from anxiety and posts like this can cause a lot of distress to some.

In the words of Private Frazer We're doomed I tell ye, doomed!

Most of the posts on this thread are from people who are completely ignorant and want to stay that way, or are in denial

Some things are so beyond our control it is pointless worrying. The only thing we can do is be prepared for any short term disruption that might occur at some point. If something bigger than that happens, then there is not a lot we can do.

No of course not. Start prepping.
Personally Id want to be one of the first dead. I couldnt face living in a post apocalyptic world.

Not mainly gay men. 42 million have been killed by AIDS worldwide.

Well even if it turns out to be true, there is sod all you can do about it, so stop fretting. Enjoy your life while you can, eat the chocolate, go on the trip, make lots of nice memories to sustain you through the end times, and go without regrets. Obviously make sensible provision for the future as well, if you can, then if it isn't true, you will still have had a great life, so its a win win.

I know. I was talking about in the UK.

yup....If I really believed it, I'd max out the credit card too

The comparison is about the mass hysteria. People were stockpiling, talking about hiding in bunkers etc, and like you say it took some changes to computer programming to fix it.

I don’t know if AI will destroy the world. I hope not. But spending years of life panicking about it to the level that some people are is a waste of energy! All those people who spent years in a state of anxiety and distress prior to Y2K must have woken up on 1/1/00 and realised how much time and life they had wasted!

...but AI would probably look at the word woMEN and see them as MEN too so women eliminated as well ...sorry !☹️

Perfectly put

Good thinking Batman

Well there you are, then. We'll be fine

They’re all suffering from Oppenheimers

There is ZERO logic in saying that because we haven't been killed by nuclear war yet everything is always going to be fine.
If a bus driver warned you that stepping in front of his bus would probably kill you, would you just shrug your shoulders and go ahead, on the basis that everything always works out well?

I cannot see how stopping using AI to draft an email has any effect on AI bring down the banking system.

It's like asking us not to take a paracetamol because someone might poison the national water supplies with a chemical.