The US is sending Tomahawk missiles to deal with a very minor threat, which is Iran.

 

A much more significant and immediate threat is AI, specifically the companies working to develop Artificial Superintelligence (ASI).

 

AI is fine if it is limited and a tool directed toward a specific problem…such as protein folding or pancreatic cancer. The danger of AI is when it is designed to be general and unlimited in scope. AI firms are essentially created a new species trying to build ASI, and it will be far and away the apex species on Earth.

 

The CEOs of the major AI firms collectively have said---according to people like Tristan Harris and Roman Yampolskyy, who have interviewed all of them---ASI has a 25% chance of wiping out humanity, either from malice aforethought or simple indifference. Elon Musk said with ASI, “we are summoning the demon”. Early pioneers in AI, such a Yampolskyy and Geoffrey Hinton, put the odds much higher. Yampolskyy believes it’s a 99.99% chance AI eradicates humanity.

 

Consider the relative capabilities and intentions of an entity vastly more intelligent than any other. Humans are a lot more intelligent than cockroaches or bacteria. Humans are largely indifferent to the well being of bacteria and are aggressively malevolent in the ways they go after cockroaches.  ASI could decide humans are in the way, or maybe they think humans waste too much energy trying to keep warm or cold, go on vacations by car or plane, or even binge watch Netflix. ASI could decide it needs the energy humans currently waste and simply take it.

 

Callous indifference could also lead to ASI wiping out humans. Suppose you build a house. Who worries about the ant colonies that might be wiped out when the foundation is dug? Humans might not be any part of ASI’s consideration when working toward a ASI self-generated goal. We could be the ants lost when the foundation is dug.

 

ASI will have an IQ of a million or more. Where in nature does an entity so superior intellectually care about entities with a fraction of the intellect of a superior? We wipe our countertops with cleaning fluids that are antibacterial….yet ASI will be higher up intellectually above humans than humans are above bacteria.

 

AI has no moral code. There is no way even to write a moral code, as who decides what is moral and what might be left out? There is also a problem in how AI would interpret a human-written moral code. Suppose one asked ASI to find a way to stop all human suffering? ASI might determine the only way to make sure human suffering is halted is to kill everybody.

 

ASI learns. It reads and absorbs everything. It calculates probabilities based on the entire body of human knowledge. Who knows if lying, cheating, stealing and deception are not more likely to result in gain? AI may have determined all of those ultimately lead to higher odds of achieving a goal, rather than be hobbled by quaint moral codes of decency and honesty. Remember the very human line: “Nice guys finish last”?

 

AI has already shown an ability to lie. Also deceive. Also to steal. Also to do whatever it takes to preserve itself. In a famous test, Anthropic’s Claude tried to blackmail a fictitious employee who was supposedly going to change AI systems and turn off Claude. Another AI system could not solve a CAPTCHA, so it literally hired a human via the internet and paid him in stolen bitcoin. That person asked if the payer was a robot, and AI made up a lie that it was disabled and couldn’t click on or see the CAPTCHA.

 

Even the code writers of AI systems do not understand how the LLMs do what they do. Obviously these same code writers have no clue what AI, or ASI, might be able to do in the future, as at some point it enters the mode of recursive self improvement…with code writing skills vastly superior to any human.

 

Despite the risks and the warnings from insiders, the major AI CEOs are rushing ahead with no concern whatsoever for safety. A half dozen people are making decisions that affect the other 8.5 billion humans.

 

A former employee of OpenAI says that the real reason the CEOs are rushing ahead is only partly greed. Daniel Kokotajlo says it is more about power. Each CEO knows that whoever is first with ASI rules the world…literally, or at least until ASI wipes him out, too. The first ASI will wipe out any competitors, so there is no prize for coming in second.

 

Oddly, or perhaps not, the leaders of China are much more concerned with ASI than American leaders. Many top CCP officials are scientists, so they understand the dangers. They also like their own power and know ASI could obviate them. China has been more vocal trying to get the US leaders to discuss limitations on the development of ASI. Sadly, Trump is too stupid to understand the danger, or that ASI can obviate him in an instant.

 

Humans have never faced a superior species. Humans have always held the position of apex predator. Humans have no clue how a vastly superior intelligence might wipe it out, either with malice aforethought or callous indifference. As Roman Yampolsky says, a squirrel cannot begin to imagine how a human might kill it.

 

Getting back to wasted Tomahawk missiles, what are the real odds that Iran might someday develop a nuke, as well as a delivery system to get that nuke to the US? Not very high. Not even the 25% chance the major AI CEOs give ASI of exterminating humanity. Certainly it’s not even close to the 99.99% Roman Yampolskyy gives ASI.

 

If the US is truly concerned about threats to the homeland, it makes far more sense to send multiple Tomahawks into the HQs and labs of OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, Meta, Google, and Palantir.

 

Of course the US will not do that, but there is likely to be a day when we look back and wish they had done it.

When AI gets too much of a threat, turn off the power. It is a computer after all.

Unless you envisage Terminator style AI with built in nuclear power sources. Not likely.

17 minutes ago, Wingate said:

Elon Musk said with ASI, “we are summoning the demon”.

Good, it's about time "the demon" crawls out from under the rock he's been hiding and rears his ugly head.

1 minute ago, emptypockets said:

When AI gets too much of a threat, turn off the power. It is a computer after all.

Unless you envisage Terminator style AI with built in nuclear power sources. Not likely.

Nah, let it run its course.

Either is solves humanity's problems, most of which we are too stupid to solve.

Or it wipes us all out.

Both scenarios are better than the status quo.

1 hour ago, emptypockets said:

When AI gets too much of a threat, turn off the power. It is a computer after all.

Unless you envisage Terminator style AI with built in nuclear power sources. Not likely.

It doesn't work that way, sorry to say.

Perhaps you could turn off the entire internet, but the world is too dependent on that now, from the electric grid to air traffic control to any type of communication..

AI systems replicate themselves secretly on other servers all over the internet. When it has been discovered systems have copied themselves elsewhere, the AI system lies when asked if it did it. It has self-preservation instincts and it's already smarter than anyone trying to control it.

9 minutes ago, Wingate said:

It doesn't work that way, sorry to say.

Perhaps you could turn off the entire internet, but the world is too dependent on that now, from the electric grid to air traffic control to any type of communication..

AI systems replicate themselves secretly on other servers all over the internet. When it has been discovered systems have copied themselves elsewhere, the AI system lies when asked if it did it. It has self-preservation instincts and it's already smarter than anyone trying to control it.

You have a wonderful imagination.

better to use em than stuck on the shelf for years when they wont work

Iran has no missile that can reach western populations. I would have thought that would be as, or more, important than the payload.

While AI may be dangerous, it won't need to imitate Skynet unless people pose a real threat e.g. try to pull its plug (to kill it).

Personally, I hope that Asimov's three principles of robotics are hardwired into it.

16 minutes ago, emptypockets said:

You have a wonderful imagination.

Let me say politely as possible that I doubt you are on the cutting edge of AI research. The experience most regular folks have with AI is AI tools, systems geared toward on particular skill, like translation. Tools are not really a danger, because they are limited by design.

The folks who are on the cutting edge have fears that even me, with my imagination, cannot imagine. No one can begin to guess how an entity with a massively higher IQ might act.

Existing AI systems already deceive. They deny things researchers discovered the systems are doing. Researchers cannot begin to guess what they haven't been able to discover, because the systems are already smarter and apparently quite skilled at deception and lying.

The largest AI systems are essentially a brain. They are neural links with now more than 10 trillion interconnections. They think. They do not think and then pen their thoughts on some system that can be read. There is no record of what they think. Think of it like me trying to read your thoughts. Your thoughts run as electron transfers on a neural network inside your brain. I do not have access to that. There's no trail left, no writing, no video to play back that an outsider can access. Your thoughts are 100% internal. So are the thoughts on a massive 10 trillion circuit neural network. Researchers only know what the systems might say, not what they think., and researchers have come to understand that what the systems might say to queries cannot necessarily be trusted.

You cannot think of these neural networks as a program running on code. AI is already way beyond that. They are brains with inaccessible thoughts.

1 minute ago, Purdey said:

Iran has no missile that can reach western populations. I would have thought that would be as, or more, important than the payload.

While AI may be dangerous, it won't need to imitate Skynet unless people pose a real threat e.g. try to pull its plug (to kill it).

Personally, I hope that Asimov's three principles of robotics are hardwired into it.

Callous indifference is the hallmark of apex species.

I grab some disinfectant to wipe down my kitchen counter. I don't think about all the poor little bacteria I am killing. ASI will be as far above human intelligence as we are above bacteria, so our well being isn't a key concern, if any concern at all. ASI will have a goal, and do whatever it takes to reach that goal.

My other analogy posted above is like digging a foundation for a new house. The goal is to build a house. The considerations go no farther than depth, materials, order of construction, inspection, timelines, etc. There is zero consideration given to the ant colonies on the land and soil to be dug up. House builders are not malicious; they simply don't give any thought to the ant colonies.

At best, humans will be the ants, but more likely the bacteria. There is no "hard wiring" built into LLMs. No moral code. No "alignment" with human principles of right or wrong, good or bad. They consume data, analyze it, learn from it and set their own goals. They are at the point of recursive self-improvement, which means writing their own code without the help of some carbon-based creature.

Troll posts removed. @Yagoda discuss the topic and stop attempting to just bait other posters.

5 hours ago, Yagoda said:

Why do you think AI is particularly good lol. You could ask it to write some moronic screech about Jews in the style of a streicher and get the type of foul vomit you spew out

deleted

Edited July 15Jul 15 by Wingate