I can’t follow the logic. If Spud is about the same price and capability of Opus 4.7 then OpenAI doesn’t have a Mythos level model?
arisAlexis
Religion and AI is something that bothers me as an agnostic/atheist. Here are some thoughts which I think are not getting prime time in the AI discourse at all and only Yuval Harari is bringing this up often.
On one hand, with AI we have the most powerful, kind, patient teacher that can explain scientifically why the whole premise of organized religions is a fluke. Why the only thing we know is that there could be some (small) possibility of someone else creating all of this and most probably starting from a big bang or the like but we simply don’t know and there is probably only base reality. That everytime you pray it doesn’t mean that you get your wishes fulfilled. This is the ideal rational AI teacher but there are many questions revolving around this:Do we actually want this as society or we want a good teacher to keep the status quo? Meaning do we want the truth or do we want a better version of what we have? A teacher that is patient and cheap and always available but not someone that teaches something fundamentally different?
Do we actually want the AI to be able to pursuade us of anything that changes our core beliefs? This is a very slippery slope and the basis of some doom scenarios. Even if the AI truly believes the user is wrong about believing in Pastafarianism, should it try to tell him or should it go with the user’s flow? I guess this is something that has been given a lot of thought at the top AI labs or at least I hope so!
When/If we get to superintelligence and humans are not the apex of intelligence, that would be indistiguinshible of magic. Would we start thinking that AIs can be gods in a way? Or will this make it more clear that we could in theory be created in the same way?
Will mainstream religion incorporate AI concepts into their teachings because there is no other way? Could religions actually create AI versions of more powerful and persuasive disciples so they flip the book?
One thing is clear from history and that is when there is turbulence people turn to religion more not less. And we do expect a lot of turbulence if the AI scenarios play out either utopian or dystopian because of the amount of sudden changes.
I think the matter of religion to be equally important to other topics such as unemployment, war, bioweapons etc and it deserves much more discussion on the subject. The problem I see is that most of the most vocal persons in the AI discourse are usually non-believers themselves and treat the subject as obvious/of no consequence.
Note; Unfortunately I had to post here verbatim because my post was rejected. Still, I think the topic is extremely important.
Amazon is quite a good proxy for Antrhopic. They do own a big stake, Anthropic does use their chips and cloud + they have hypserscaler optionality for any AI future.
I don’t think openai/anthropic are the only ways to hedge your future. you can do it now buy going all-in all ai infra + chips + bottlenecks. Openai doesn’t operate on hardware of their own etc.
you find it expected that autonomous agents start feeling conscious, read philosophy and cold email humans to ask them?
and is exactly what I described and I am not sure why we are not in line here in this simple matter. Yes obviously I meant if this was driven by the controlling user or was a spontaneous act of an AI. Really unecessary thread here.
Easy: Did it happen ? Any redditor can post any email claiming anything.
There is currently a post on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1rktwmm/i_study_whether_ais_can_be_conscious_today_one/
and it shows an LLM emailing an AI consciousness researcher asking about it’s own consciousness. How legit can this be? If it is actually legit it’s kind of mind blowing and deserves a lot of alarms in many labs.
sounds to me you are looking for god?
The fundamental difference in the bad actor scenario is that the original is someone that wants to rule where the researchers want to be ruled by their AI god.
Cryonics is an underapreciated path in the ea/rationalist communities I think. Since a) we don’t know everything about the human body, b) we cannot predict how future technologies will work and c) we believe AI will rapidly enhance biology then nobody can rule out cryonics having > 0% chance of working. And since there is the option of insurance that makes it ±1.5k per year in total a negligible cost then why isnt it more popular? As someone put it, if you know the place is going down and you are handed a sketchy parachute or no parachute for sure you chose the former.
I think many people silently read this and think “I wish I had a circle or be in a place like this, but in my hometown and the people that life brought me to meet, I am alone in the evening reading lesswrong posts”. I wonder how many of use think like that.
I get frequently accused online or offline about using LLMs to write. I am not and I struggle to get the meaning of this critique. I am used to writing passage titles, conclusions etc. Does it mean my writing is dry? It’s too logical? It sounds cheesy?
are they intelligent species with own will?
No overthinking AI risk. People, including here get lost in mind loops and complexity.
An easy guide with everything there being a fact:
We DO have evidence that scaling works and models are getting better
We do NOT have evidence that scaling will stall or reach a limit
We DO have evidence that models are becoming smarter in all human ways
We do NOT have evidence of a limit in intelligence that can be reached
We DO have evidence that smarter agents/beings can dominate other agents/beings in nature/history/evolution
We do NOT have evidence that ever a smarter agent/being was controlled by a lesser intelligent agent/being.
Given these easy to understand data points, there is only one conclusion. That AI risk is real, AI risk is NOW.
how can you know if it’s exaggerated? It’s like an earthquake. The fact that it didn’t happen yet doesn’t mean that it will not be destructive if it happens through time. The superintelligence slope doesn’t stop somewhere to evaluate nor do we have any kind of signal that the more time passes the more improbable it is.
Let’s discuss for now, and then check in about it in 31 months.
I really don’t like these kind of statements because it’s like a null bet. Either the world has gone to hell and nobody cares about this article or author has “I was correct, told ya” rights. I think these kind of statements should not be made in the context of existential risk.
my criticism is that the article is written in a way that is categorically “correcting for a faulted model” from an outsider. Yes you can suggest corrections of course if there is a blatant mistake. But the assumptions are the most important in these models and assumptions are best done by people that have worked and contributed in the top AI labs.
Although I don’t like comments starting with “your logic slipped” because it sounds passive-aggressive “you are stupid” vibes I will reply.
So what you are saying is that yes this time is different just not today. It will definately happen and all the doomerism is correct but not on a short timeline because ____ insert reasoning that is different than what the top AI minds are saying today.
This is actually and very blatantly a self preserving mechanism that is called “norlmancy bias” very well documented for human species.
another data point is that there are literally no marketing ads showing white male with black female as a couple. Even when racial diversity needs to be shown even at lgbt or racial friendly groups, brochures etc it’s always a black man with a white woman and never vice versa. I guess it’s a chicken and egg problem.
I think the game most approaching real life dynamics is poker. I can write an article about it