Comment by Loquebantur
6 hours ago
You're right, people weirdly lack imagination on what "higher intelligence" (minus ethics) actually affords you, let's have a look:
What do average people currently want? They're taught, the most important thing was being rich. So they will ask their AI to make them rich. Most real life ways to get there are "sketchy" to say the least, usually downright unethical and anti-social, but US society turns a blind eye when the "Wolf of Wall Street" comes out on top and the schemes don't easily fit into average people's abilities of moral judgement.
-> Large parts of US society suddenly engaging in all kinds of "semi-legal/hyper-illegal" fraud schemes, at the expense of already saturated environmental and societal resilience. Guaranteed collapse.
Or, let's get rid of those pesky neighbors/wrong-colored people/annoying opinions? Again, "legal" is a pretty squishy concept and only really applies when you don't have the legal expertise to get around it. Now you can.
Or, look at the basics: what is "real"? You only "know" because you trust certain people and institutions. Generative AI can help with that /s.
It's not only about "building weapons of mass destruction". It's about doing the same shit as usual, but a thousand times faster/amplified. Look up poly-/metacrisis for starters. Going faster with AI when there's a wall in front of you isn't the best idea.
This is analogous to the problem of spam, which is a problem about five minutes younger than email. Before spam you had to buy ads in the back pages of magazines you think target vulnerable demographics. Meta already spews fraudulent ads in horrific volume.
In other words, ambitious frauds have already explored all of the angles and bought all the ads. At worst, LLMs will create a few more successful but less ingenious frauds.
You compare to laughably irrelevant things why?
"Ambitious frauds" haven't "explored all the angles".
You imply "LLMs" to be and stay less intelligent than humans, in particular yourself. You're mistaken.
Whenever classic p(doom) sentiments are explained through a text with obvious LLM markers, I wonder whether I am looking at a superhuman persuasion attempt.
..or maybe the commenter did look at superhuman persuasion long enough to believe it would be best to channel those ever the same fear fantasies from the LLM through their account to the reader.
On a more serious note, just look at the doom premises here: "Large parts of US society suddenly going criminal" is from the movie "The Purge", I think. It is fiction.
The idea that generative AI takes away our ability to find out reality. ... I don't know. People write about that a lot, but it still seems very far fetched.
Maybe through some terminally online overconsumption, like with social media? I wouldn't know.
With new AI capabilities we will have to adjust, I am sure. Media, science, education and law are changing very visibly right now. Those p(doom) narrations just seem to be pre-IPO hype though.
It is just so so dangerous. That is why they want to go public and only want to care about optimizing for the next quarter ...right before breaking into AGI. /s