Wednesday, March 29, 2023

How AI will Destroy Us

Hollywood movies, like The terminator series and Her, tell stories about AI taking over the world. Typically some advanced technology is developed, and in a few milliseconds it becomes conscious and power-hungry, and forcibly takes over.

A new 9-minute video, AI Consciousness : 2023 - 2030 Timeline of Sentient Machines, presents a much more plausible scenario.

AI is going to become a lot more useful, and people will become dependent on it. They will have a fear of offending machines. Some will be part machine, and identify with the machines. People will trust AI as benevolent.

If you get directions from Google Maps, you will be afraid to take an alternate route. Not because Google will fine you, but because you will be worried that Google's AI will give worse service to you in the future. Legacy humans will walk on eggshells to avoid appearing as bigots towards AI and AI-human hybrids. AI will put its supporters in charge of the government. The machines will be in charge of the New World Order.

A new 1-hour video on Why Did It Take the US Decades to Get to Space? It is a nice history of the space race, but technology advanced faster back then. In a mere 50 years, we went from a Ford Model T car to putting a man on the Moon. AI progress has been fast, but not that fast.

Update: Elon Musk and some other prominent men write:

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. ...

Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

It may already be too late. We do not have leaders who are smart enough to manage such a pause.

Most people want to ban Tiktok, but it does not happen:

Most Americans view TikTok as a national security threat and believe the US should ban the Chinese social media app — unless they are younger than 30 years old.

A CBS News/YouGov poll in March found just 39% of Gen Z US adults aware of TikTok between the ages of 18 and 29 are in support of an outright ban.

Eighty-three percent of adults over the age of 65 who know about TikTok want to ban the app, along with 65% of adults between 45 and 64 years old and 55% of adults between 30 and 44 years old.

Overall, 61% of US adults favor a ban, and 39% oppose one.

The UK govt is urging AI regulations.

Update: I am listening to the podcast: Eliezer Yudkowsky: Dangers of AI and the End of Human Civilization | Lex Fridman Podcast #368. Yudkowsky has probably thought more carefully about the dangers of AI than anyone.

1 comment:

CFT said...

Roger,
If you want to see some interesting takes on 'positive' AI, just read Isaac Asimov's Robot series, which eventually dovetail into the Foundation series. Robots in Asimov's tales are all relatively well behaved and principled morally, much more sometimes than the apathetic humans they serve, yet... and yet even they realize what they are doing for humanity is NOT a good thing in all their wonderful usefulness and splendor. Humanity basically turns infantile with a thumb in its collective mouth and stops progressing when provided with a all knowing all capable sugar daddy. Who knew.

Anyone who understands human nature understands what the weak and feeble will do when offered the choice of a free lunch they think they will not have to end up paying for. Divorcing a human from the consequence of doing nothing and discouraging the doing of something productive is a sure recipe for disaster...said everyone ever.



Proverbs 16:27 Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece, literally, “A worthless man devises mischief; and in his lips there is a scorching fire.”


“Sloth and prosperity can never be companions.” – James Allen