Comment by anilgulecha
16 hours ago
This brings upon an ethical dilemma soon, partly explored by a black mirror episode, where AI can call upon gig workers. What if a rogue agent gets to things done: asks gigworker1 to call a person to meet under a bridge at 4, and asks gigworker2 to put up a rock on the bridge, and asks gigworker3 to clear the obstruction and drop the rock down the bridge at 4.
None of the 3 technically knew they were culpable in a larger illegal plan made by an agent. Has something like this occured already?
The world is moving too fast for our social rules and legal system to keep up!
Not AI but I've heard car thieves operate like this - as a loose network of individuals, who do just a part of the process, which on their own are either legal, or less punishable by law than stealing the car.
One guy scouts the vechicle and observes it, another guy is called to unlock it, and bypass the ignition lock, yet another guy picks it up and drives away, with each given a veneer of deniability about what they're doing.
This was explored a bit in Daniel Suarez’s Daemon/Freedom (tm) series. By a series of small steps, people in a crowd acting on orders from, essentially, an agent assemble a weapon, murder someone, then dispose of the weapon with almost none of them aware of it.
The recent show Mrs. Davis also has a similar concept in which an AI would send random workers with messages to the protagonists, unbeknownst to the workers.
I'd say abstracting it away from ai, Stephen King explored this type of scenario in 'Needful Things'. I bet there is a rich history in literature of exactly this type of thing as it basically boils down to exploration of will vs determinism.
Extrapolate a bit to when AI is capable of long-term, complex planning, and you see why AI alignment and security are valid concerns, despite the cynicism we often see regarding the topic.
For the murder angle, I am far more afraid of the inexpensive but highly effective drones people learned to make in the Ukraine war.
Not ai but there was the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong-nam which was a similar situation and something which could have been organised by an ai.
Two women thought they were carrying out a harmless prank, but the substances they were instructed to use combined to form a nerve agent which killed the guy.
It's an interesting train of thoughts.
Investigators would need to connect the dots. If they weren't able to connect them, it would look like a normal accident, which happens all day. So why would an agent call gigworker1 to that place in the first place? And why would the agent feel the need to kill gigworker1? What could be the reasoning?
Edit: I thought about that. Gigworker 3 would be charged. You should not throw rocks from a bridge, if there are people standing under it.
Or just don't throw rocks from a bridge, at all. /s
Who's at fault when: Your CloowdBot reads an angry email that you sent about how much you hate Person X and jokingly hope AI takes care of them, only for it to orchestrate such a plan.
How about when your CloowdBot convinces someone else's AI to orchestrate it?
Etc
Like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865961
Reality: none of the three people actually left their chairs because the AI can't verify. They just click "done" and collect their $10.
The AI can hire verifiers too. It of course turns into a recursive problem at some point, but that point is defined by how many people predictably do the assigned task.