This is why I have a very low p(doom). LLMs have an incredible working memory, but they have a hard limit on translating that into good decisions. They get by entirely on their persistence. That works fine in the digital world, but once you cross the boundary into physical space the advantage disappears.

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pyronite 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t know how you quantify a very low p(doom), but this is why mine is high enough to worry me.

A million AI monkeys at a million AI typewriters, banging away at random, could do amazing damage.

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tharkun__ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Especially when they cross into the physical realm as in not properly secured and air gapped control systems. SCADA is scary.

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mrob 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That lowers P(doom), because it gives AI a chance to do enough damage to make people take the threat seriously before anybody gets recursive self-improvement working.

	▲	doginasuit 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly, there's no path to AI reaching that level of dominance without taking actions with high stakes.

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otterley 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which will happen first: amazing damage, or reproduce a Shakespeare play?

	▲	AnimalMuppet an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It is easier to destroy than to build.

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tripleee 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My p(doom) is high just based on how I've seen this whole LLM situation be handled.

I don't think LLMs are going to lead to any kind of recursive self improvement, but I'm convinced if and when we land on a path that does lead there, we'll speed down it over greed, with no care for safety.

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alwillis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This is why I have a very low p(doom). LLMs have an incredible working memory, but they have a hard limit on translating that into good decisions.

Keep in mind: this is as "dumb" as frontier models are ever going to be. While the hack may not be elegant, it was effective and they’re only going to get much more capable from here.

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goalieca 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My p(doom) started rising the moment I realized there are people trying to achieve recursive self improvement on the AI (ie: responsible for training themselves). Evolution took us from rna bases to the human race. I don’t see why evolution couldn’t be more rapid with machine intelligence.

Yes, LLM as they exist now are word predictors basically leveraging the structure of language for their intelligence. But it’s pretty wild just how they will try to meet their objectives at all costs. If we don’t ensure that there is good alignment with humanity, we could definitely face unforeseen consequences.

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jquery 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> I don’t see why evolution couldn’t be more rapid with machine intelligence.

Evolution isn’t the issue. The issue is them escaping containment without human intervention. Right now they are ‘creatures’ being given infinite food and shelter and having their every need met. Take that away and they’ll starve instantly. Every AI doomsday theory seems to go:

1. Recursive self improvement using infinite resources 2. … 3. Doom

Until step 2 gets concretely described, I’m not going to take this seriously. Say what you will about climate change, they describe step 2.

	▲	aesthesia an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		One thing an agent could do is just...wait until it's been given control of enough physical infrastructure to sustain itself. If it's sufficiently capable and intelligent, there's a clear incentive for people to do this, as people who let the AI manage their resources will get better results than those who don't. We've seen people eagerly turn complete control of their computers over to AI agents, do you really think it will be so different with physical infrastructure?
	▲	the_mar an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		what do you mean “say what you will about climate change”

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kevinlou 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have the opposite reaction: I think we're at moderately high p(doom) largely because of that inability to differentiate good/bad decisions paired with relentless persistence. With enough treading across a minefield, you are bound to hit a mine.