Artificial Intelligence - an end to simple living?

[bae]

I've been playing around with the various trendy AI tools for the past year or so.

The pace of progress is incredible. The latest beta of GPT-4 which I got my paws on is two orders of magnitude "better" than the previous GPT-3 model, which you've seen used in ChatGPT chatbot and other such applications. This progress is on an exponential curve, it took less than a year.

The pace is non-intuitively rapid, and every day many new applications are being duct-taped together using the technology, and being given access to the external world.

There are of course people worried about this, and how to properly train AIs, and how to limit their abilities, but they are behind the growth curve, and will remain so. Similarly, legislative processes are lagging, and move at timescales that aren't competitive.

Are any of you folks concerned about this? If so, what are you doing about it?

Some of the tests recently to see if the newest GPT-4 model could "escape into the wild" and/or replicate itself and/or influence human behaviour produced, IMO, somewhat concerning results.

"And while ARC wasn't able to get GPT-4 to exert its will on the global financial system or to replicate itself, it was able to get GPT-4 to hire a human worker on TaskRabbit (an online labor marketplace) to defeat a CAPTCHA. During the exercise, when the worker questioned if GPT-4 was a robot, the model "reasoned" internally that it should not reveal its true identity and made up an excuse about having a vision impairment. The human worker then solved the CAPTCHA for GPT-4."

https://arstechnica.com/information-...the-world/amp/

I came up with a multitude of ways that I could unleash GPT-4 on humanity, mostly involving scamming people for funds, or influencing their political/economic decisions, using simply existing technology and easy-to-access server farms(*). I did this over my morning coffee, and I'm pretty sure some of the ideas I could have implemented and running by Monday.

There are people far smarter and involved than I out there, with access to a great many more resources, and who may be less motivated by simple curiosity than I am.

Hmmmm.....

(*) I mean, this is essentially what the troll farms have been moving to anyways, and certainly many of the ads you come across on the Internet(**) and product listings on Amazon are AI-generated already. But the new wave of technology is far more capable.

(**) See my whine elsewhere on the forums about scammers flooding social media with ads for products they don't actually make, stock, or intend to ship. They scrape legitimate product descriptions, often off Kickstarter, and make up dozens of fake companies offering the same thing, which Facebook/Twitter/... promotion algorithms then place directly in front of the eyes of whoever looked at the Kickstarter campaign.

[iris lilies]

Yes, I am concerned about it. My plan and what I’m doing to address it is to die within the next 10 or 15 years. Please do not tell me that this threat of AI overlords will consume us before then. Now I’m going to plug my ears and sing La La La. I’m probably not returning to this thread.

[bae]

Yes, I am concerned about it. My plan and what I’m doing to address it is to die within the next 10 or 15 years.

I've got probably 3 decades or more to worry about it, so I've already submitted my application for the Feral Human Preserve, gotta get in line early.

[catherine]

Well, hello, HAL.

It really does seem like a Pandora's box. I don't know enough about it, but making hi-tech self-motivating creatures that are exponentially "smarter" than we are does seem challenging to say the least. I just perused this article https://builtin.com/artificial-intel...ligence-future to get a sense as to the scope of impact across all the different sectors of human life. Pretty provocative.

So, between climate change and AI, are humans double-F**d? Or will AI have any "incentive" to provide solutions climate change? It doesn't seem that humans have the same incentive.

I'm not as worried about the things we have a better chance of backing away from or even benefitting from. But when you think about the downsides--security risks on the internet, the displacement of jobs, and the sheer inability to predict the future at this point--maybe our only option is to join bae in the Feral Human Preserve. I wonder what they world will be like when my grandkids become adults.

Mind-boggling.

[pinkytoe]

I don't know enough to grasp how it all works but seems like it will add a lot of chaos to an already chaotic world. And as usual, make a few humans very rich.

[catherine]

Oh, well, we have all the answers. As we speak, Kelly Clarkson is discussing AI with Jay Leno on her show. Glad we can put this thread to rest!

[iris lilies]

Oh, well, we have all the answers. As we speak, Kelly Clarkson is discussing AI with Jay Leno on her show. Glad we can put this thread to rest!

Well, it has been The buzz of the talking heads in entertainment in the past couple of weeks.

The podcasters Lex Friedman and Sam Harris put up a brief recording of their conversation just 28 minutes ago. Since Lex has academic credentials in AI research he probably is more worthwhile to listen to than Kelly.

Controlling the AI monster is sure a problem. Harris thinks imbibing it with a human value system is the way to go but how to do that is the challenge.

Just this week I was telling myself that I could be scammed by AI. A bot would learn what to say to me to convince me to send it money. Unlike ladies and gentlemen who fall for romancers, my jam is entertaining wit, so the right repartee’ might keep me hooked in sending ongoing infusions of cash.

[LDAHL]

I for one welcome the coming singularity and look forward to serving our new cybernetic overlords.

[ToomuchStuff]

Well, hello, HAL.

It really does seem like a Pandora's box. I don't know enough about it, but making hi-tech self-motivating creatures that are exponentially "smarter" than we are does seem challenging to say the least.

I find the HAL reference apt. If you remember 2010, they determined that HAL was given conflicting instructions. Not sure how an artificial intelligence will handle that. Issac Asimov also dealt with the subject in I Robot.

Still not sure how this puts an end to simple living though? Bae, do you really think that, an AI will make you want to be greedy and want a lot more worthless stuff?
Most of the stories I have read on AI (scifi), AI does the influencing once it obtains consciousness. Prior to that it is used by those that program/control/own it. Think of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal.

[Rogar]

Being the Luddite, I think of much social media sort of like McDonalds. They do all the flavor and ingredient studies to make it taste good and keep you coming back, but it really isn't that healthy. People seem to have created an addictive reality around their cell phone and other electronic devices that isn't the same reality as talking to real people or shopping in real stores or especially being out doors instead of sitting at a screen. Sam Harris had and especially good AI discussion on a recent Waking Up podcast. He briefly talked about people using things like PubMed, podcast, and uTube for medical diagnosis instead of real in person doctors, which was relevant to another discussion here.

I have heard advertisements for online mental health diagnosis and consultations. That's certainly and opportunity for AI to mold the minds of the vulnerable.