At what point are people going to start taking this risk seriously? Maybe Eric Schmidt is right: it won't be until a bunch of people die that legislators take action. Let us hope it happens sooner rather than later, before it's hopelessly beyond our ability to control it.

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againstapples 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I was reading about ozone layer depletion this morning, and it seems like history is repeating itself again.

> The Rowland–Molina hypothesis was strongly disputed by representatives of the aerosol and halocarbon industries. The Chair of the Board of DuPont was quoted as saying that ozone depletion theory is "a science fiction tale ... a load of rubbish ... utter nonsense". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Rowland%E2%80%...

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fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it won't be until a bunch of people die

In the context of rogue misaligned AI won't it be far too late to recover by then? In other words isn't that more or less a doomsday prophecy?

	▲	Gareth321 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It depends on the cause. 1. The AI chooses, of its own volition, to kill people. It is likely that by the time AI has this level of control and intelligence, it is too late to stop it. 2. A malicious person uses AI to cause a terrorist event or some other kind of catastrophe. This is more likely. The AI in this scenario is more like a tool. Attributing AI to the cause might be difficult, but it's likely that any new bioweapons which emerge in the next 1-2 years are likely developed by AI. I think we should all hope that 2 happens before 1, but it doesn't feel good to hope for a catastrophe.
	▲	myrmidon 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't think so. A very large part of the total AI risk in my view comes from selfreplication/physical independence, and that still seems decades away. But deaths caused directly/indirectly by rogue AI could happen much earlier.

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Systemerror7A69 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So, alignment does need to be taking seriously, you're right.

But keep in mind this is a report from OpenAI about OpenAI, who have a financial incentive to present this in a certain light. Take these things with a grain of salt.

This does not mean that models are now self-aware.

	▲	Gareth321 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I agree, and to be clear, I do not think it is capable of human-like self-actualisation - yet. However we are clearly seeing many indications that, if not human-like self-actualisation, AI-like self-actualisation is emerging. We can even refrain from calling it self-actualisation. Let's just call it emergent actions. A confluence of trillions of parameters all creating an unintended outcome. The complexity of these models is already far beyond our ability to dissect them. As they increase in scope and scale at this pace, new "thinking" and actions will emerge outside of the researcher's intended scope.

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ks2048 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sadly “a bunch of people dying” is clearly insufficient also.