A Human Future

Stop trying to create a god. Support PauseAI

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@edzitron He's obviously a cokehead.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@hamandcheese Weird that you think he ever had credibility.

[Alvaro ⏸️ Cuba @GroundhogStrat]

@rutgerbregman Yes! Here is a list of things you can do right now: https://t.co/L7n4WPW7ED

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@littIeramblings I wonder how lab employees feel when they read posts like Buck's. Do they feel remorse? Indifferent? Does it make them feel cool and powerful to be the cause of so much grief and fear?

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@trallala93 At one point or another, all of these guys have said this.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

Too often missing from the conversation on AI is the fact that Anthropic literally wants to overthrow the government and replace it with AI dictatorship.

[Hayduke ⏹️ (in Bay Area Nov 13-15) @GWHayduke97]

@nihilunbounded Anthropic is particularly unsubtle about this. From a leaked internal slide deck:

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@seflapodus I think Musk wants to control it but doesn't really think he can. At least that's what he has been saying on podcasts recently.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

It's interesting and dismaying that the AI lab employees who once were so active in these discussions have seemingly clammed up. Seems like they're resigned to rolling the dice and are unwilling to face the world they've failed.

[Rob Wiblin @robertwiblin]

Paul Christiano (OpenAI board member) yesterday:

"There's material risk of AI takeover in the next 6-12 months.

We have seen roughly the things we might expect to see shortly before something really bad were to happen.

Even with [any] realistic policy responses, the risk remains exceptionally high.

If we build this as quickly as we can in the easiest way we can the chance is [more like] a coin flip [within the next 3 years].

For most people in this room, the most likely reason they will die is because of an AI accident."

Christiano:

• Is on OpenAI's safety and security committee (which exists to block risky practices)
• Co-invented RLHF at OpenAI back in 2017-2021
• From 2024-2026 was head of safety at the US gov's AI agency (now called CAISSI)

(Video is from 'The Hinton Lectures' there's another on tonight and tomorrow.)

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@Jason We need to "beat China" by supporting the guy who sold out the USA for a CCP honeypot. Literally the dumbest take imaginable.

[Liv Boeree @Liv_Boeree]

Guys can we not make RSI a partisan issue please? Swarms of hyper autonomous superintelligent agents won’t give a shit about team red *or* team blue.

They’ll be optimising for their goals and their goals alone, which may or may not be compatible with human civilisation.

[Alex Bores @AlexBores]

Every AI company is trying to fully automate AI research; to allow the AIs to build the next AI.

This is called Recursive Self Improvement (RSI).

OpenAI says they are on track to do so by March 2028.

Anthropic employees say they are on track to do so by 2027.

The METR report below suggests they are likely right.

This is a bad idea given current technology. Any mistake or misalignment in current AIs could be multiplied in each generation.

We don't get another election before AI companies reach this threshold.

Congress should ban RSI, this year if possible.

This is a remarkably consensus opinion, supported in various versions by:
-Bernie Sanders
-Steve Bannon
-Ralph Nader
-Glenn Beck
-Republican and Democratic attorneys general
-Whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo
-Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio
-Humans First
-Open Markets Institute
-Ezra Klein
-Arvind Narayanan (a Princeton computer scientist known for arguing that “AI is a normal technology”)

The exact mechanism can be debated. The ban doesn't have to be permanent either (see below for both). This is not the only thing we have to do in regards to AI, far from it! But it is urgent.

Congress must ban RSI.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@ZackKorman They really gulp down any slop he feeds them.

[Zack Korman @ZackKorman]

No matter what Anthropic does, Dario can just write another 10k word essay and at least half the ea / ai safety crowd will be totally on his side again.

Their culture (long form essays) is their kryptonite. They’re powerless against it even when they’re obviously being played.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@gmiller @TheCoinCollect8 You're replying to a troll account.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@slatestarcodex @ruben_bloom Is it "illiberal" to try to impose a permanent AI dictatorship on the world, as you've recently advocated?

You really will come up with any excuse for why your friends at Anthropic should be allowed to go full tilt on trying to coup the world with AI.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@littIeramblings Even Toby Ord appears to be giving up on longer timelines.

[Daniel Kokotajlo @DKokotajlo]

It is pretty rich of you to cite "others could go faster" as a reason to redact so much important information when you yourself do not appear to be slowing down much at all. Nor are you throwing yourself behind efforts to pace the frontier with nearly the gusto that you would if it was your top priority. Not to mention "commercial sensitivity" you yourself have said human extinction is a plausible outcome why are you even talking about commercial factors (well, I guess honesty is good, and since it IS apparently a factor in your decision...) To all my friends at Anthropic: Your company appears to be recklessly gambling with our lives. You fancy yourselves the more responsible alternative to OpenAI (as they fancied themselves compared to Google) but judging by actions rather than words the similarities between the three of you seem stronger than the differences.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@GaryMarcus P(doom) went up a lot for me yesterday when METR tweeted about Anthropic starting full RSI next year.

[A Human Future @A_Human_Future]

@mentalgeorge It's all deliberately phrased in such a way as to give them an easy out if decide they don't want to do it. E.g. even if their closest competitors publicly declared a pause, they can just declare that they don't have 100% proof, or they think China has a secret project, etc.

[Daniel Kokotajlo @DKokotajlo]

I encourage those at frontier AI companies to read this quote, from Ellsberg to Kissinger back in 1968:

“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret."

“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you."

“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well."

“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools."

“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn."

“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself."

“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”

"….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet."