- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Many people found it hard to believe that AI researchers think this way. Some explained it as a PR campaign to promote AI regulation, or as self-promotion, or as a way to boost AI company stock prices. Others felt it had to be impossible, because if you really believed this you’d be bombing datacenters instead of posting on Twitter.
In fact, not only do many AI researchers1 seriously believe this, they’ve been thinking and writing about it since the mid-2000s. Eliezer Yudkowsky — the ur-figure for most modern AI safety culture — has been publishing papers since at least 2008 saying that superintelligent AI could destroy all human life. It’s been such a common idea that the AI research community has abbreviated “how likely you think AI is to kill everyone” to “p(doom)” (i.e. the probability2 of doomsday) since around 2010.
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What always feels weird to me, is that we don’t need that inflection point of AI turning superintelligent or whatever. Already today, we’re producing drones that do autonomous killing, where we just need to scale up production.
I guess, on the plus(?) side, the same is true for bombs and we have not wiped everyone out yet with those either.
That is, I guess, where the inflection point comes in. Killing humans is ultimately quite pointless from a human perspective. But an AI with no understanding of this pointlessness might coordinate the killing with no restraint.
Or well, as the blog post mentions, it might see wiping out humanity as the solution to climate change, or as a way to end violence between humans etc…Current AI iterations certainly prove to be much better at doing things than deciding whether these things make sense.
The “Paperclip Maximizer” in all of its absurdity is much closer to the actual worry of the people thinking AI might destroy us than autonomous weapons. Killer drones to me are much more of a cartoon example than something super unspectacular that’s equivalent to humanity being an anthill on a plot AI wants to build a house on.
because if you really believed this you’d be bombing datacenters instead of posting on Twitter.
No. That wouldn’t stop AGI - only delay it at best. That’s like pouring water on every person rubbing two stick together thinking it’s going to stop the invention of fire.
