Comment by devolving-dev
21 hours ago
Whether driven by fear or by their model weights or whatever, I don't think that the likelihood of an AI agent, at least the current ones like Claude and Codex, acting maliciously to harm my systems is much different than the risk of a human employee doing so. And I think this is the philosophical difference between those who embrace the agents, they view them as akin to humans, while those who sandbox them view them as akin to computer viruses that you study within a sandbox. It seems to me that the human analogy is more accurate, but I can see arguments for the other position.
Sure, current agents are harmless, but that's due to their low capability, not due to their alignment with human goals. Can you explain why you'd view them as more similar to humans than to computer viruses?
It's just in my personal experience, I ask AI to help me and it seems to do it's best. Sometimes it fails because it's incapable. It's similar to an employee in that regard. Whereas when I install a computer virus it instantly tries to do malicious things to my computer, like steal my money or lock my files or whatever, and it certainly doesn't try to help me with my tasks. So that's the angle that I'm looking at it from. Maybe another good example would be to compare it to some other type of useful software like a web browser. The web browser might contain malicious code and stuff, but I'm not going to read through all of the source code. I haven't even checked if other people have audited the source code. I just feel like the risk of chrome or Firefox messing with my computer is kind of low based on my experience and what people are telling me, so I install it on my computer and give it the necessary permissions.
Sure, it's certainly closer to a browser than a virus. But it's pretty far from a human and comparing it to one is dangerous in my opinion. Maybe it's similar to a dog. Not in the sense of moral value, but rather an entity (or something resembling an entity at least) with its own unknowable motivations. I think that analogy fits at least my viewpoint, where members of the public would be justifiably upset if you let your untrained do walk around without a leash.