To be concerned about AI

[PennineWay]

The tech industry has written to world leaders to ask for AI development to be paused.

There are potential risks to society, economy and national security.

AI development is moving fast - faster than governments and leaders are likely to do anything about it or put anything in place. We probably can't stop this from happening at this point - the flood gates are open.

I have very intelligent friends (e.g. with relevant PhDs) who feel that the next 5 years are going to be unlike anything we have seen before, and as humans we are woefully unprepared for what might happen.

I'm concerned and think world leaders should be discussing this and urgently prioritising it. AIBU? Any thoughts?

I agree that it’s worrying, but people will plough on with it regardless due to money.

Skynet becomes self aware …

Yadnbu

At the very least it will impact the job market - even highly skilled jobs

And the scariest thing will be when ai can create its own artificial world and can’t switch off

Then we are screwed

I thought your post was about an all inclusive holiday OP 🤣

I think a lot of people have missed the point that AI is likely to become an arms race at both national and corporate level so it becomes a “can’t live with, can’t live without if the other guy has it” situation. There’s therefore no easy kill switch. It’s kind of like nuclear weapons- even if we agree it would be better for no one to have them, no one will be prepared to give them up.

YANBU it's already shocking me that my DC can get AI to write a homework essay for them accurately and quickly, and can have a sensible chat with an AI friend. Where is it leading?

The acceleration of the natural language capabilities has been incredible, I agree, OP.

The datasets used to train the machines are massive. And growing.

It just impossible to imagine a halt being called though. Even if it happened on the surface, it would carry on underground.

I think a good approach would be to educate people about what AI is and isn't, and teach children (and adults) critical thinking skills to prompt them to not take all AI at face value.

yeh, will there be no point getting a degree soon?
I guess AI can't serve you in a shop but I feel knowledge will be for its own reward only and not guaranteed to help you in the job market. (I know education is primarily its own reward of course but ykwim).

AI could 100% serve you in a shop and it’s barely needed in that capacity. I mean even now we have order by app, ss checkouts and robot pickers in warehouses. AI can just be used to ID and block the bank accounts/ social credit of shoplifters and job done.

It is scary but quite exciting that the world will shortly become a dystopian hellscape. I for one welcome our AI overlords.

YADNBU since the guys who are making it are asking for it to stop now.

Chat GPT isn't AI it's a language model and it sounds human because it's been trained on the internet where every input is human. It's a fancier version of a search engine pretty much.

a full on AGI is likely a decade away.

If it is anything like the 'helpful' robot I tried to ask for help with my Mum's phone, I don't anticipate it being much cop. I can't explain what the problem is in words it will understand and it can't prompt me for more details or gather together a picture of the problem over several exchanges, it needs me to give the problem in one sentence that it can search for. If I could do that I could solve the problem myself!

I watched the film M3gan the other day, it was really good 🤣

But your worries seem quite vague - do you have a link for context?

YADNBU

Im still not sure what to think. My instinct is to be very weary but talking to my friend who has a STEM background last week she was much more positive. She doesn’t think it will replace many jobs and that it’s a tool & like all tools it’s only as good or bad as it’s used

im in more of the “just becatse we can doesn’t mean we should” camp & that we have still barely come to terms with what it means to have a generation of children grow up on the internet

so yeah splinters in my bum!

Sorry, posted too soon. The video link explains it very well. The issue is not about the development of an AGI although that is also worth worrying about. It's about all the unintended consequences of rapid technological development steered by a profit motive.
We've seen social media develop over our life times and have some positive and negative consequences (polarization, addiction, mental health collapse in young people). It now can't really be put back in the bag. Imagine that kind of change but in every area and progressing at 100x the speed. That's AI. Laws won't keep up. Aligning AI to human values is a problem we have not cracked.
It has massive potential but there are so many unknowns.

Exactly this.

I recently was interviewed on a relatively niche subject (AI related, ironically). For the LOLs I put the interview questions into ChatGTP beforehand to see what it would come back with. It simply repeated my own previous work back at me because the subject was so niche that there wasn’t much of a data set for it to pull from. It’s just an LLM search engine.

Wary not weary!!

I don’t think it’s going to descend into a Terminator movie but I do think it’s going to end with organised crime cartels running the world. So I suppose a drug induced Zombie Apocalypse due to the breakdown of society.

Yeah, I agree with this too.

People are freaking out (semi tongue in cheek skynet references etc) as if the issue is AI becoming self aware, whereas the real issue is much more about the need for a pause to make sure we are using it the right way.

The social media analogy is a good one.

AI is probably more efficient in finding multiple previous threads on this hot take topic

The last 30-40 years have seen the most rapid change to human society in its history thanks to the internet.
We'll see an even more rapid acceleration in the next 10.
But YABU to be anxious. We just have to lean in. I feel excited to be here at a time of unparalleled development. Our lives are likely to be much better in multiple ways in 20 years time - eg the new dementia drug announced last week means people who are 40 now (that's me) are likely to be able to halt the disease in the earliest stages if it hits in later life.

To me it's like the space race, sure we can but doesn't mean we should

The human race has this desire to 'advance' and hang the consequences