>Can you explain how exactly an AI would develop a novel planet-killing weapon without anyone noticing and pulling the plug? Like I seriously don’t understand this argument.
That's the danger with creating a super intelligence, that you won't understand it. My dog is pretty smart, has good instincts and I'm quite confident he can survive in nature all by himself. But if a human decided to harm him, he doesn't stand a chance.
> That's the danger with creating a super intelligence, that you won't understand it
This argument is sophistry because it assumes the conclusion in its premise. It works backwards from extinction by proposing a hypothetical computer program that definitionally cannot be understood, predicted or controlled.
A substantive argument would propose reasoning that explains why we should believe such a program could be created.
No, that is not how reasoning works. It is perfectly valid reasoning to begin by positing entities that we may not be possible to create, such as supersonic airplanes, coherent light, quantum computers, rockets that can reach escape velocity, black holes, or infinitely long lines that are perfectly straight and infinitely thin. Indeed, you might say that the ability to reason about the consequences of premises that we do not know to be true is the thing that distinguishes reasoning, as such, from simple parroting.
It could very well be the case that creating superintelligence is impossible. We won't know for sure unless it is achieved. Nevertheless, we can use reasoning from the hypothesis that it is possible to predict some of the effects that would ensue were it to be achieved. This allows us to easily dismiss the most profoundly stupid arguments, such as, 'Can you explain how exactly an AI would develop a novel planet-killing weapon without anyone noticing and pulling the plug?'
This reasoning, however valid it may be, is of course of much less interest should it turn out that we are reasoning about an impossible situation. Many arguments have been suggested on both sides of the issue, but the arguments for impossibility are extremely weak; most of them are conclusively dispatched in https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.10987.
To be fair, he could probably fuck the human up pretty good if he had a mind to, too. Which may be the most likely reason that a human might decide to harm him: if he bites a couple of children, for example, or if a burglar wants to rob your house.
Apparently one of the distributors that had access to the patch broke the plan and went live with it earlier. So they had to rush patches and disclosures.
These articles were supposed to come out in about a week
I first encountered them in various stackoverflow answers, this is the next step. IIRC they did promote themselves but it was subtle and the answers were good.
HN comment quality took a nosedive recently, You can predict the comments just based on the story, almost all of them cynical and snarky remarks. It used to be a place to come and learn from technical experts.
We live in an era where companies are increasingly hostile towards their users and society at large. Where regulation has been stripped or ignored to maximize the profits of a handful of monopolies, where companies don‘t even have to pretend to care about their customers anymore, nor the usability of their product. Seemingly companies don‘t even bother to test their products anymore before selling it to their customers. And companies that engage in the most consumer hostile behavior are the ones who are most rewarded for that behavior.
I think this cynicism is more then warranted. If anything HN is not cynical enough to meet the times we are in.
The AI boosters have driven away all experts. They are either financially invested or mindless power users on the level of the proverbial MacOS fanboys.
Experts related to real programming topics are gone or silent. AI experts have never even been here in the first place. It is all about Electron apps, prompts, agents and other bullshit.
Yes there are incentives to buy EVs but they are still much more expensive than ICE vehicles (I'm in the market for a new car so that is an observation from my experience)
It's going to be just like social media. A flood of content from the talentless masses exposing us to their lazy and shallow ideas they just cannot keep to themselves. Once in a while a diamond in the rough will be found, but at what cost?
I recently had to replace my 5 year old LG OLED with a new one. The UX has been downgraded to an abysmal level. It's just unfathomable how such simple UI widgets take multiple seconds to load and how can QA say "ok, that's good enough". And don't get me started about the shoehorned "AI". A feature that, if you forget to turn it off will randomly interrupt whatever you're watching to talk to you in an almost unintelligible metallic voice. The build quality of the remote control also took a nose dive. Image quality is great but the same as my old TV, no advancements there.
probably like a minute or two? im pretty sure someone unironically said stochastic parrot on the HN post with the tweet announcing the counterexample, and ive read several comments with similar sentiments today (including in this thread)
That's the danger with creating a super intelligence, that you won't understand it. My dog is pretty smart, has good instincts and I'm quite confident he can survive in nature all by himself. But if a human decided to harm him, he doesn't stand a chance.
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