this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Some days it looks to be a three-way race between AI, climate change, and nuclear weapons proliferation to see who wipes out humanity first.
But on closer inspection, you see that humans are playing all three sides, and still we are losing.
One of those is not like the others. Nuclear weapons can wipe out humanity at any minute right now. Climate change has been starting the job of wiping out humanity for a while now. When and how is AI going to wipe out humanity?
This is not a criticism directed at you, by the way. It's just a frustration that I keep hearing about AI being a threat to humanity and it just sounds like a far-fetched idea. It almost seems like it's being used as a way to distract away from much more critically pressing issues like the myriad of environmental issues that we are already deep into, not just climate change. I wonder who would want to distract from those? Oil companies would definitely be number 1 in the list of suspects.
Agreed. This kind of debate is about as pointless as declaring self-driving cars are coming out in 5 years. The tech is way too far behind right now, and it's not useful to even talk about it until 50 years from now.
For fuck's sake, just because a chatbot can pretend it's sentient doesn't mean it actually is sentient.
Here. Here's the real lead. Google has been scared of AI open source because they can't profit off of freely available tools. Now, they want to change the narrative, so that the government steps in regulates their competition. Of course, their highly-paid lobbyists will by right there to write plenty of loopholes and exceptions to make sure only the closed-source corpos come out on top.
Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Oldest fucking trick in the book.
With nuclear weapons and climate change.
Uh nice a crossover episode for the series finale.
Is this a crossover episode??!
The two things experts said shouldn’t be done with AI, allow open internet access and teaching them to code, have been blithely ignored already. It’s just a matter of time.
I don't think the oil companies are behind these articles. That is very much a wheels within wheels type thinking that corporations don't generally invest in. It is easier to just deny climate change instead of getting everyone distracted by something else.
You're probably right, but I just wonder where all this AI panic is coming from. There was a story on the Washington Post a few weeks back saying that millions are being invested into university groups that are studying the risks of AI. It just seems that something is afoot that doesn't look like just a natural reaction or overreaction. Perhaps this story itself explains it: the Big Tech companies trying to tamp down competition from startups.
It is coming from ratings and click based economy. Panic sells so they sell panic. No one is going to click an article titled "everything mostly fine".
Because of dumb fucks using ChatGPT to do unethical and illegal shit, like fraudulently create works that mimic a writer and claim it's that writer's work to sell for cash, blatant copyright infringement, theft, cheating on homework and tests, all sorts of dumbassery.
52-yo American dude here, no longer worried about nuclear apocalypse. Been there, done that, ain't seeing it. If y'all think geopolitics are fucked up now, 🎵"You should have seen it in color."🎶
We can close a time or three, but no one's insane enough to push the button, and no ONE can push the button. Even Putin in his desperation will be stymied by the people who actually have to push MULTIPLE buttons.
AI? IDGAF. Computers have power sources and plugs. Absolutely disastrous events could unfold, but enough people pulling enough plugs will kill any AI insurgency. Look at Terminator 2 and ask yourself why the AI had to have autonomous machines to win. I could take out the neighborhood power supply with a couple of suitable guns. I'm sure smarter people than I could shut down DCs.
Climate change? Sorry kids, it's too late and you are righteously fucked. Not saying we shouldn't go full force on mitigation efforts, but y'all haven't seen the changes I've seen in 50 years. Winters are clearly warmer, summers hotter, and I just got back from my camp in the swamp. The swamp is dry for the first time in 4 years.
And here's one you might not have personally experienced; The insects are disappearing. I could write an essay on bugs alone. And don't start me on wildlife populations.
Nukes are becoming a problem, because China is ramping up production. It will be just natural for India to do the same. From a two-way MAD situation, we're getting into a 4-way Mexican standoff. That's... really bad.
There won't be an "AI insurgency", just enough people plugging in plugs for some dumb AIs to tell them they can win the standoff. Let's hope they don't also put AIs in charge of the multiple nuclear launch buttons... or let the people in charge check with their own, like on a smartphone, dumb AIs telling them to go ahead.
Climate change is clearly a done thing, unless we get something like unlimited fusion power to start some terraforming projects (seems unlikely).
You have a point with insects, but I think that's just linked to climate change; populations will migrate wherever they get something to eat, even if that turns out to be Antarctica.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
You should have seen it in color.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I'm sitting here hoping that they all block each other out because they are all trying to fit through the door at the same time.
Then the errant gamma ray burst sneaks in for the kill.
An ai will detonate nuclear weapons to change the climate into an eternal winter. Problem solved. All the win at the same time. No loosers… oh. Wait, no…
Bold of you to assume that people behind maximizing profits (high frequency trading bot developers) and behind weapons proliferation (wargames strategy simulation planners) are not using AI... or haven't been using it for well over a decade... or won't keep developing AIs to blindly optimize for their limited goals.
First StarCraft AI competition was held in 2010, think about that.
I will appeal to my previous ignorance. I had no idea that AI saw that much usage over 10 years ago!
We used to run "machine learning", "neural networks", over 25 years ago. The "AI" term has always been kind of a sci-fi thing, somewhere between a buzzword, a moving target, and undefined since we lack a fixed comprehensive definition of "intelligence" to begin with. The limiting factors of the models have always been the number of neurons one could run in real-time, and the availability of good training data sets. Both have increased over a million-fold in that time, progressively turning more and more previously untractable problems into solvable ones to the point where the results are equal or better and/or faster than what people can do.
Right now, there are supercomputers out there orders of magnitude more capable than what runs stuff like ChatGPT, DallE, or all the public facing "AI"s that made the news. Bigger ones keep getting built... and memristors are coming, to become a game changer the moment they can be integrated anywhere near current GPU/CPU levels.
For starters, a supercomputer with the equivalent neural network processing power of a human brain, is expected for 2024... that's next year... but it won't be able to "run a human brain", because we lack the data on how "all of" the human brain works. It will likely become obsoleted by ones with several orders of magnitude more processing power, way before we can simulate an actual human brain... but the question will be: do we need to? Does a neural network need to mimick a human brain, in order to surpass it? A calculator already does, and it doesn't use a neural network at all. At what point the integration of what size and kind of neural network, with what kind of "classical" computer, can start running circles around any human... or all of humanity taken together?
And of course we'll still have to deal with the issue of dumb humans telling/trusting dumb "AI"s to do things way over their heads... but I'm afraid any attempt at "regulation", is going to end up like the case with "international law": those who want, obey it; those who should, DGAF.
Even if all tech giants with all lawmakers got to agree on the strictest of regulations imaginable, like giving all "AI"s the treatment of weapons of mass destruction, there is a snowflake's chance in hell that any military in the world will care about any of it.