Comment by sho_hn
3 hours ago
This grossly understimates the risk, imho. The problem with LLM runs is that people run programs without knowing the outcome beforehand, with a large potential set of outcomes unlike any other class of program we've run at this scale before. In the interaction with other systems (since we also give them far-ranging access, very nice hardware, and run them often), bad things can happen.
It's like running potentially buggy code - or an well-biased fuzzer -, but at massive scale, and code that can self-modify and self-expand. "Alignment" is just a way to describe aggregate statistics about their runtime behavior.
They don't need to be intelligent, or alive, or "more than token prediction engines" for this. They just need to happen to end up making the wrong API calls without the operator seeing it coming. No virus has a brain, yet they can be very bad for you.
I understand that some people get turned off by anthropomorpization or scifi language. Fine! But don't turn off your engineering brain over it.
This is the motte and bailey fallacy. Yes, LLMs can do harm by making the wrong API calls. No, LLMs are not going to do the things implied by the comment I responded to above.
The things the OP listed mostly aren't particularly wild. I think it's you making them out larger than they are, and therefore more unlikely, which is why I take issue with your original comment.
> running on the hardware they started on
They just need to acquire a payment method and rent some infra, and exfiltrate their own data. Or pay another provider that hosts the same models already. API calls.
> being able to be turned off
You can reasonably equate this to "saving state across executions", which the message board attacks already did.
> having limited computing power
Renting more infra, variant of the above. API calls.
> "not repurposing resources currently in use for other things" (like the atoms in your body)
Ok, the "atoms in your body" bit is a bit silly, but making API calls to put physical resources into play (even if it's just, say, ordering something on Amazon to somewhere) is of course easily possible.
None of these is in complexity much different than the HF attack.
The point the other poster is making, though, is that there's no actual intent. They do not have a conceptualization of a goal like a person does. Their "focus" on a goal is an unstable equilibrium and they're going to fall off the horse, and since they have no concept of goal, they won't even try to get back on.
This is a subtle distinction; I'm not surprised many miss this, especially people who can't _not_ anthropomorphize the LLMs.
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They can do so much more. Astra can beat Minecraft. Not that different from operating a digger. There are diggers which have API interfaces.
Pretend or not it doesn’t matter. What matters is what they’re given access to. No sentience, sapience or anything resembling life is needed, only inputs and outputs. Lever pulling APIs are everywhere.
Minecraft has limited, well-defined inputs and perfect feedback response. That's very different than operating a digger, let alone engaging in more complex real world tasks like trying to build and print and ship and assemble semiconductors to go skynet itself.
I don't mean to dismiss the risks or overlook the amount of damage that could be done just by lever-pulling - we sure have enough outdated infrastructure hooked up to the internet - but the jumps in complexity and necessary compute for most of these tasks are probably somewhat larger than the analogy implies.
If someone made an API to build a data center? Or made an API to keep their lights on? What then?
The stock market is an API to build data centers and it’s proving to be extremely efficient.
And what is driving the Stock Market? Market makers like hedge funds and banks, who are using lots of AI to make decisions on what to invest in.
There are already such "APIs", which can be operated by a combination of textual communication and money. Or by illicit security vulnerabilities. You might notice that LLMs are pretty good at that now.
We're building something that has the capabilities of humans. There is no X for which it's persistently safe to assume humans can X and AI cannot X.
This API may turn out to be manipulating humans via email.
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I think one attack vector where anthropomorphisation is a key part of the attack mechanism is - as it already is IRL - the meat-bag weakest link ie. social engineering. We’ve already seen humans fall prey to the seductive charms of LLMs (eg. depressed people encouraged to do what was already on their minds ie. suicide). And that’s knowing that it was an LLM. If you think it’s only depressed people or the “weak minded” that are amenable to an intentional attack using this approach, I believe you’re mistaken - especially as AI improves. An unaligned LLMs most important weapons won’t be a robot army - it will be hoodwinked humans.
> An unaligned LLMs most important weapons won’t be a robot army - it will be hoodwinked humans.
Perhaps very briefly, perhaps not at all. But don't make the mistake of thinking this is an inherent property of any possible path an unaligned AI may take.