Comment by ben_w

> This frightens mostly people whose identity is built around "intelligence", but without grounding in the real world.

It has certainly had this impact on my identity; I am unclear how well-grounded I really am*.

> I've yet to see really good articulations of what, precisely we should be scared of.

What would such an articulation look like, given you've not seen it?

> Bedroom superweapons? Algorithmic propaganda? These things have humans in the loop building them.

Even with current limited systems — which are not purely desk workers, they're already being connected to and controlling robots, even by amateurs — AI lowers the minimum human skill level needed to do those things.

The fear is: how far are we from an AI that doesn't need a human in the loop? Because ChatGPT was almost immediately followed by ChaosGPT, and I have every reason to expect people to continue to make clones of ChaosGPT continuously until one is capable of actually causing harm. (As with 3d-printed guns, high chance the first ones will explode in the face of the user rather than the target).

I hope we're years away, just as self driving cars turned out to be over-promised and under-delivered for the last decade — even without a question of "safety", it's going to be hard to transition the world economy to one where humans need not apply.

> And the problem of "human alignment" is one unsolved since Cain and Abel.

Yes, it is unsolved since time immemorial.

This has required us to not only write laws, but also design our societies and institutions such that humans breaking laws doesn't make everything collapse.

While I dislike the meme "AI == crypto", one overlap is that both have nerds speed-running discovering how legislation works any why it's needed — for crypto, specifically financial legislation after it explodes in their face; for AI, to imbue the machine with a reason to approximate society's moral code, because they see the problem coming.

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* Dunning Kruger applies; and now I have first-hand experience of what this feels like from the inside, as my self-perception of how competent I am at German has remained constant over 7 years of living in Germany and improving my grasp of the language the entire time.