I’m not an AI techie and I’m not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I’m having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I’ve heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can’t really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?
AI use is like drug-use. One of its effects is hopium. These people are effectively high on their own supply.
I’ve heard a few explanations for the “AI will kill us all” narrative.
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AI techies are in a cult. They genuinely believe this stuff because they’re crazy.
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It makes the AI sound powerful and impressive, which is ultimately good for the AI companies.
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They’re starting to face competition from open-weight models, so they want to scare politicians into crafting regulations. They think that they will be able to influence the regulations to favor them and squeeze out their competition.
And, of course, there’s
- It keeps people talking about AI. Because whatever you do, don’t quit talking about AI, because if you quit talking about it, the line might go down! And the line going down is very, very bad.
Okay cool, thanks!
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If the techies believe it and they are the “experts” what makes them crazy? Wouldn’t their opinion be the most informed?
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Yeah that part definitely makes sense
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That definitely makes sense from a capitalist perspective. But, is the argument against regulations that they would be bad for the concentration of power it would give select companies? Or just that they aren’t necessary because the tool is of little use so it’s just wasted time/money.
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That makes sense but trillions of dollars are being spent. Anything that amount of money is sinking into is gonna be talked about a lot. Especially thousands of jobs cut because of it.
If the techies believe it and they are the “experts” what makes them crazy? Wouldn’t their opinion be the most informed?
Listening to them speak about it, no. They’re morons. They clearly didn’t make the tech. Workers made AI. Just like they make everything. These freaks make nothing. They can’t give single coherent explanation of how LLMs work, how they could “kill” us, nor do they seem to know how or what “guardrails” need to be put in place.
But if they really are a cult then we all know what the next step is. They need to STFU and get off of our planet.
That’s what I mean though, the subject of this article was a 27 year old worker. Not some high level Sam Altman type.
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‘Sensationalist hooey, cooked by superstitious yokels seeing phantoms of their own imagining.’
It’s been reported a few times that Ukraine is already using AI for drones.
The human operator chooses the target, the AI takes over and eliminates the target.
Is that “just an LLM”?
Seems more capable than that to me. But, I don’t know if this is actually true, or just a claim to frighten the Russians (and me).
Not quite true. It was an experiment almost a year ago. I think three Russians were killed.
Am not sure if my pedantic correction brings any comfort to anyone.
Whatever. Ban all these people from employment and public assistance. Make them starve
I doubt any of them have ever been employed nor do they look like they ever eaten anything that wasn’t adderall or ketamine.
Good job in helping with their guerilla marketing campaign.
When a corporation realises that working for government will be more profitable than working for consumers, they pivot to scaremongering, but always with the undercurrent of “and that’s why you should PAY US so that you own the nukes, and not your enemies”
I don’t have the confidence in my knowledge/understanding of the topic to just take a “its all bullshit” view. Especially when many of the people who believe that act like you. You don’t have to be a prick to explain something or talk about it.
LLMs basically work like auto-correct. They’re much more sophisticated, but it’s the same basic principle. Instead of “Which letter is most likely to follow after this series of letters?” it’s “Which token is most likely to follow after this series of tokens?” A token can be anything, but usually it’s a word.
Now, given that, consider a statement like
We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!
Okay, how? A statistical model generating tokens doesn’t have thought, it doesn’t have emotions, so it can’t want to do something, much less make plans and carry them out.
Could AI give somebody the ability to kill all humans? How? Under what scenario? Is somebody putting an LLM in charge of their nuclear stockpile? You don’t blame the LLM. You blame the humans who made that decision.
Okay that all makes sense. Appreciate you taking the time to type it out.
Personally, this just feels like marketing and these big asshole companies trying to resurrect the 2025 level of hype in order to salvage their IPO’s.
If they honestly believed this I can’t imagine that their workers wouldn’t do something more drastic.
The people claiming it’s humanity ending are all directly involved in the AI companies. One take is that they are the ones that know the most about it.
My take is they are financially incentivized in making sure their investments grow in value.
I knew a guy in high school that told girls they shouldn’t date him because his dick was so big it would hurt them. You can wax philosophical on his motives if you’d like, but spoiler alert - his dick wasn’t big.
That’s exactly what I think is happening. Remember a few months ago anthropic saying mythos is too dangerous to release until the government as the idiots they are starting believing them and banned them from exporting it, therefore losing them money. Very quickly they came up with fable (ironic name isn’t it) a week or two later saying it’s got the proper safeguards now. Now they’re all trying this marketing strategy asking the gov to regulate them, seemingly because they’re dangerous and not because they’re getting diminishing returns and feel threatened by the chinese competition
Did it work?
I mean there are people eating up this Anthropic crap.
The biggest risk I see is Idiocracy. Like, the movie.
Business workers become afraid to do or propose anything without AI signoff. Retail & service workers are told to do what the AI says, the way the AI says to do it, or get fired.
Technology innovator Marshall Brain (RIP) wrote a book in the early 2000s about an AI called “Manna” designed to replace fast food managers:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201204080050/https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The AI just talks in your ear all day: “Empty one bag of fries into the fryer. You have 6.5 minutes, switch to the sandwich station. Make one Big Burger: grab one patty from the 1/4 pound bin and place it on the griddle… … The fries are ready, turn around and lift them into the drain hopper…”
All day, every day, exactly 8 hours plus mandatory breaks, employees on autopilot listening on ear buds.
Ed Zitron’s podcast “Better Offline” recently talked about this. There is a small tech community called the Rationalists who believe AI super intelligence is inevitable and it will either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species. These rationalists are actually a very prominent faction within tech and the AI industry. Apparently the language used within top AI firms is largely about the immense danger posed by AI super intelligence if any other group or company were to achieve it first. This creates an echo chamber that makes the people in the industry kind of lose their mind and misinterpret the capability of LLMs.
Everyone outside that faction recognizes that LLMs are just unreliable cloud software with limited use cases and that there’s no evidence LLMs could actually lead to any kind of intelligence.
Edit: Please, someone stop me from commenting on an AI post next time I’m tempted. I’m so tired of people replying, arguing with opinions I don’t have, based entirely around a hypothetical technology that doesn’t exist yet. LLMs make slop. Thats it. They hacked a company after weeks of 100s of instances being run, using old exploits published online. San Francisco will be underwater from climate change before LLMs can do anything more.
Aren’t they called TESCREALists or something? It’s like a mish-mash of pop culture and pseudo intellectual BS
It’s just a freaking machine, unplug it lol
But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?
there are too many people who don’t care about shit until they see results (good or not). like our greatest billionaires.
Check out Robert MILES’ channel: he’s an expert, one of the most prominent on AI safety
take your time to understand the mechanics of it, its a bit technical at times but ultimately very understandable
and try not to freak out when you find out it’s from several years ago, mostly before the advent of LLMs
