Money wins, every time. They’re not concerned with accidentally destroying humanity with an out-of-control and dangerous AI who has decided “humans are the problem.” (I mean, that’s a little sci-fi anyway, an AGI couldn’t “infect” the entire internet as it currently exists.)
However, it’s very clear that the OpenAI board was correct about Sam Altman, with how quickly him and many employees bailed to join Microsoft directly. If he was so concerned with safeguarding AGI, why not spin up a new non-profit.
Oh, right, because that was just Public Relations horseshit to get his company a head-start in the AI space while fear-mongering about what is an unlikely doomsday scenario.
So, let’s review:
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The fear-mongering about AGI was always just that. How could an intelligence that requires massive amounts of CPU, RAM, and database storage even concievably able to leave the confines of its own computing environment? It’s not like it can “hop” onto a consumer computer with a fraction of the same CPU power and somehow still be able to compute at the same level. AI doesn’t have a “body” and even if it did, it could only affect the world as much as a single body could. All these fears about rogue AGI are total misunderstandings of how computing works.
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Sam Altman went for fear mongering to temper expectations and to make others fear pursuing AGI themselves. He always knew his end-goal was profit, but like all good modern CEOs, they have to position themselves as somehow caring about humanity when it is clear they could give a living flying fuck about anyone but themselves and how much money they make.
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Sam Altman talks shit about Elon Musk and how he “wants to save the world, but only if he’s the one who can save it.” I mean, he’s not wrong, but he’s also projecting a lot here. He’s exactly the fucking same, he claimed only he and his non-profit could “safeguard” AGI and here he’s going to work for a private company because hot damn he never actually gave a shit about safeguarding AGI to begin with. He’s a fucking shit slinging hypocrite of the highest order.
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Last, but certainly not least. Annie Altman, Sam Altman’s younger, lesser-known sister, has held for a long time that she was sexually abused by her brother. All of these rich people are all Jeffrey Epstein levels of fucked up, which is probably part of why the Epstein investigation got shoved under the rug. You’d think a company like Microsoft would already know this or vet this. They do know, they don’t care, and they’ll only give a shit if the news ends up making a stink about it. That’s how corporations work.
So do other Lemmings agree, or have other thoughts on this?
And one final point for the right-wing cranks: Not being able to make an LLM say fucked up racist things isn’t the kind of safeguarding they were ever talking about with AGI, so please stop conflating “safeguarding AGI” with “preventing abusive racist assholes from abusing our service.” They aren’t safeguarding AGI when they prevent you from making GPT-4 spit out racial slurs or other horrible nonsense. They’re safeguarding their service from loser ass chucklefucks like you.
Why would it need to leave its own environment in order to impact the world? How about an AGI taking over the remote fly system for an F-35, B-21, or NGAD in order to go all Skynet? It doesn’t have to execute itself on the onboard system of the plane, it simply has to have control of the remote control system. Penetration of and fuckery with the systems that run major stock exchanges present the same problem. It doesn’t need to execute itself on those platforms, merely exert control over them.
The concern here isn’t about an AGI taking over systems in order to execute itself, it’s about AGI taking control of systems away from humans in much the same way that traditional Black Hat hackers would but at a much faster speed and with potentially far less concern for any human cost.
This feels like a weird point to make for OP since I figure anyone here talking about AI is very familiar with distributed networked computing. Botnets have been such a pain in the dick for at least 15 years now. Imagine something that intimately and only knows how to “live” in computing. The distributed areas of could “live” in and have access to all the resources it needs either directly or not. Storing info and using resources of anything it can touch through the network, computers, phones, TVs, cars, door bell cameras, router and networking infrastructure.
I feel there is inevitably either a human made virus or a standalone AIG that is going to accomplish this.The extent to which it spreads, if the damage can be recovered from, and how we progress after it’s going to be a big defining moment is technological history. The globalized network with everything communicating is the most powerful and least secure super computer ever. Those running botnets figured that out a long time ago. All it takes is one AI.
At this point at least, LLMs require vast amounts of GPU time, and the GPUs used likely need to be fairly close coupled to run at decent speeds, and as such one couldn’t spread itself over the vast network of consumer computers. At least not in a way that would still allow it to learn.
Any near-term AGI or similar would be based on a similar approach, making it fairly “safe” in that respect at least. Only a million other disruptive ways it can affect society…
In the event of such a worm/virus, we forget actually do have a very effective nuclear option: switch off the computers and re-image them. Painful as it might be, we could even shut off or partition the global IP network temporarily if faced with such an existential threat.
We don’t live in a sci-fi novel after all, and this distributed AI wouldn’t be able to hide in a single machine, plotting against us. It would only be able to “think” as a giant networked cluster, something easy to detect and disrupt.
And why would nobody stop it? We are pretty good at stop button technology for instance, we also have pretty good grasp of the reset button but maybe it shouldn’t be one of those hole you always break pens on
Planes that are primarily designed to be human-piloted tend to have to be wildly modified to become a drone, or a remote-pilot situation. The F-35, for example, can be heavily modified for this, but is not built for it to begin with. This argument would hold more weight if you were referring to the entire drone fleet.
(Assuming drones) Generally, the military is pretty secure with these kind of things, and they won’t allow in external internet connections but will instead have their own internal communications network. For this to be successful, the AGI would essentially have to somehow get by air-gapped defenses and get close enough with a physical body to get a signal. How could they do this with drone pilots in a remote area in an non-internet connected building? The only way would be through the wireless signal. At that point, yes, it would be feasible to take over the drone. I find it very hard to believe that an AGI could do that, magically make connection to remote, air-gapped systems.
An AGI doing what you’re talking about doing would mean all secure facilities in the world would have just tossed their security practices out the window to begin with and having internet connections inside secure facilities. That’s just not how its done. Sure the psychotic wing of the Republican party doesn’t give a shit and Donald Trump doesn’t… but like, reasonable people do, and so security still exists.
Sure, and we’re maybe 5 years away from that.
Nearly all of the normal spy activities that can induce someone to action are available to an AGI; Bribery, Compromise, and Relationship. There’s also people who would willingly help because their goals aligned or because they believe things would be better with an AGI in charge.
Sure, and that security gets penetrated and an AGI can do it in the same way its done now only faster and with no controls on its behavior.
You also need to drop the assumption that the AGI or its targets will be American.