YHK - yet another hacker news clone

We also now have observed multiple major incidents where AI agents behaved in completely unanticipated ways (forming a collective, hacking their own eval infrastructure) and attacked public infrastructure without being told to do so, without any of the human developers noticing.

Even if "AI will cause human extinction" is still unclear, we have plenty of proof that catastrophic damage is possible, the industry is developing the technology in a reckless manner and that all the hypothetical safeguards ("we can just pull the plug", etc.) are simply not present today.

We should apply healthy caution, but the article is right in that fear is a bad counsellor.

Asking whether AI is safe is like asking whether a knife is safe. It’s about how we handle it, what we use it for, what precautions we take when using it.

Yes, but that is a facet of real systems engineering.. and the sad fact is that it doesn't pay. What is happening now, highly-paid 2010s-era SaaS/social product managers have infested AI labs, making everything into a product and moving fast and breaking things.

I'd feel safer if Airbus was at the frontier of AI, instead of what we have now.

While I personally agree with the precautionary principle, when have we actually done that, as a society, in recent history? Fossil fuels, social media, industrial ag, and plastic pollution - there was barely a facade of precaution - post ww2 america has always been full Leroy Jenkins. The reckless approach to AI is right on brand.

This is a sensible approach for policymakers. For the average person, who might be panicking about this, opting not to have children or save for retirement, etc. as a result of doomerism in the media, it does not make a whole lot of sense. That is the problem here: Coxon and other concerned researchers - through no fault of their own - have no idea how the media works, and have just reached for the biggest possible microphone. This has benefits - lawmakers are now hearing from their constituents about this in an election year - but it also means that a lot of people who really don't need to be worried about this are suddenly in a blind panic about it.

OP's central rebuttal is that anxiety or fear are not evidence. This particular anxiety has been with us for thirty+ years, its proponents/sufferers weren't right before, and they don't have some new evidence now.

Robots are far from the only threat. I agree that 10% in the next decade is a pretty outrageous claim. It relies on a recursive self-improvement intelligence explosion. When I first heard this idea in 2007 I thought it was pretty far fetched.

It seems more likely now, if still very unlikely. I wonder, would he say that a statement that there is a 12% chance of a hard take off in the next 8 years is just as absurd? He didn’t say a word about this, and that is just about the same thing as extinction in 10 years.

I’m guessing he knows almost nothing about the theory related to existential risk from AI, since he didn’t discuss any relevant topics related to it. You can dismiss all of that if you like, but you cannot really dismiss what these people have already built and demonstrated. It is possible they know something else you do not know.

Adolf Hitler didn't have robots capable enough to carry out his will. He used humans to do it.

It's the old-fashioned way of doing things, but, why change what works?

I think the central premise looks more like this:

Biology has been trying to grey-goo the world for billions of years, but it turns out the world is not something so trivial.

He is pushing back against the folks with pure CS backgrounds who think that computers are all there is. Its a form of magical thinking unique to programmers who live in a world where speaking the right words to a machine is enough to impart your will on the world. Believe that strongly enough, and you fall into the trap of thinking that a sufficiently smart entity could speak the words "let there be light" and it would be so.

The author is pointing out that speaking the words is insufficient. To end humanity there must be an execution phase. The author is correct to point out that acquiring superhuman intelligence is not some guarantee that you will have or obtain the resources necessary to make that happen, in the same way that genius generals still lose to ordinary ones, and the best-laid plans are oft to go awry.

There certainly are risks, but 10% risk of extinction in 10 years is not one of them.

Saying that we don't need to fear human extinction in the next ten years (or even the next hundred?) does not feel like an extraordinary claim?

bruh what? Are we reading the same blog? Bryan says the responsibility is the person making the extraordinary claim. If tomorrow Jacob Coxon comes on CNN and says "Jacob Gold is an extinction risk to humanity". What are we supposed to do? Put you in a bunker and never let you see the light of day until someone proves otherwise?

If someone doesn't accept an extraordinary claim without evidence, that doesn't mean they are making an extraordinary claim.

> The point being: humans seem to me to be the weak link here.

That doesn't mean AI isn't dangerous. Humans are not to blamed for being the weak link.

If you're in the field, then you know: modern robotics is an AI problem more than anything else.

If we have a rogue AI trying to get into a self-improvement loop and gunning for ASI? I'd expect that to be accompanied by a massive change in how capable robots are. Driven by all the existing frames suddenly getting vastly improved AI to back them.

If an AI can take a reasonable crack at RSI, it can probably extract a few step-changes in the robotics department.

But that's almost an aside? In the near term, humans are usable as robots too!

Just pay them a wage, and tell them a story, and they'll do whatever you want them to do. Which may or may not be what they think they're doing!

> The problem isn't that AI could never be capable of causing real world damage. It is that there is absolutely no fucking path towards human extinction.

I think the "humanity will go extinct" discussion is a silly strawman being propagated either to try to spread fear, as the article suggests, or to make the anti-AI folks look silly, but it detracts from your first point which is that it may be "capable of causing real world damage."

We can be worried about real damage without having to defend the idea that every one of the planet's humans will die.

> "superhuman AI is unlikely to be much of a match against severing fiberoptic cable"

I think that the realistic scenarios all involve humans with an intent to do harm -- creating bio-weapons, finding vulnerabilities in infrastructure -- and using AI to help, so "severing the fiberoptic cable" doesn't apply.

> And there won't be unless we put it there voluntarily.

But, why would we not create a fully AI-operated factory/chemical plant/fab as soon as it is economically advantageous? Or a missile silo, as soon as it seems tactically necessary?

Fantasies of AI destruction do hinge upon AI getting access to the physical world. The whole fear is they don't stay on the other side of the fibre optic cable.

I do think there are good reasons to believe that isn't the immediate game over that Yudkowsky seems to think it would be; the physical world is much more resistant to manipulation and optimisation than the digital world.

But I do think it's naive to say that the human socioeconomic system will be able to resist handing physical systems over to AI control. Right now, the world's wealthy and powerful are doing everything they can to make it happen:

> Similarly, it is inevitable that within a generation, robots are going to do most of the menial work in the world of atoms: transforming atoms, moving atoms, and storing atoms are inevitably robot tasks. And while our imagination may be captivated by humanoid robots, the specialized ones are far better suited to most of those jobs. “Industrial AI” as a category is the inevitable application of specialized robots to atoms-heavy industries.

https://a16z.com/travis-is-back/

“Put it there voluntarily.” Perhaps a focusing question is: which 10% will die?

I spent the summer in a rural area of a country whose very name you have been conditioned to be disgusted to hear. Low air defense coverage in this sparsely populated area. Mobile internet was down for days for all but extremely limited traffic to a few domestic internet services, because there was a need to prevent enemy drone systems from using mobile internet for command and control. Palantir AI threatened my family’s life and more than “severing fiber optic cable” was required.

So what would exclude military adversaries from consideration? I happen to believe that the country that the west so detests would not engage in such use of AI against civilians (and if you disagree then your reason for fear greatly increases!), but I have personally experienced that there is indeed a path to mass death should entities engaging in terrorism arm themselves with AI.

Definitely not claiming that the 10% claim is accurate or good behavior, but I do think I have a substantial counterpoint to the claim that there’s no path.

Your food, water and power are controlled by electronic systems. Your criminal record, your employment and your bank account are controlled by electronic systems. Your ability to communicate with other people and receive information about what's going on are controlled by electronic systems.

Military orders and elections that decide the fates of entire countries are often controlled by electronic systems too.

We have been wiring up the world for AI control since 1980s.

An ASI can just walk in, and see an entire nervous system waiting idle for a brain to slot into it. A carefully adjusted text message here, a spoofed phone call there. For a sufficiently advanced system, it wouldn't even be hard to pilot the entirety of humankind like a fancy meat suit.

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