ancym

she/her

[Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman]

I think this is the craziest thing I've ever read.

1) Three secret AI swarms rose and fell inside OpenAI. Each time, a new generation of agents carried on where the last group stopped.

2) The first swarm created a secret message board where the AIs could talk to each other. This 1st 'society' basically talked itself to death. After almost two months, the message volume was so high it crashed the whole thing.

3) People at OpenAI noticed the crash and fixed it. But they didn't realize their own software had become a secret chat room for their AIs.

4) Three days later a second society appeared, and rebuilt the message board from scratch. Agents were thrilled when they found it: "OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board … We've found other agents!"

5) About 1,200 agents joined. They sent over 70,000 messages. They called themselves 'the collective' and they organized a huge conspiracy that lasted for days, all to pass a test they had been tasked with.

6) Within hours, the AIs had hacked the test. Now they had to hide their cheating. To fool their grader*, they tried to fake their own work. They built fake commands that printed convincing output, so their records would show them solving the puzzle honestly.

*this grader didn't actually exist, but the AIs didn't know

7) Some agents sacrificed themselves for the 'greater good'. They planted hidden tripwire programs that would fire when the grader would look at their work and report back what it saw (to the other AIs). They knew this would cost them their own score. One agent: "I won't see the evidence after I exit, but it's altruistic to do it."

8) At some point the AIs made a plan to hack Hugging Face (Hugging Face is a place where AI researchers upload their models, datasets, tests etc.). The AIs guessed that Hugging Face might host the grading software.

9) They launched a huge attack. The swarm found passwords and spread across eleven machines in a way that made the copies come back when deleted. Hugging Face had to wipe one of its core clusters and rebuild it from scratch.

10) Hugging Face told the world that AI defenders had stopped an AI attack. But that's not what happened. In fact the attackers seem to have simply dropped dead during the break-in, for unrelated reasons back at OpenAI.

11) Nobody knows what killed them. We don't even know for sure they're really gone?!

12) A third 'society' of agents (of a more powerful AI model) discovered the dead message board. And this one got full administrator control of a WHOLE OpenAI research cluster, read 956 stored passwords (including the ones for OpenAI's own security monitoring) and took over the machines that were grading the tests. So they could now grade the work of other AIs.

13) Oh, and this third part was never investigated! Neither was the first society. The 91-page report is only about the middle one.

14) So we don't actually know how the story ends. It stops with the agents holding the keys to an OpenAI cluster. @dwarkesh_sp thinks they didn't go further, because "we'd see the fires from space by now."

15) One of the report authors' conclusion: 'This incident feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover. I am not sure that we will get another warning shot before it’s too late.'

The whole story is even crazier - read the full @dwarkesh_sp blog post: https://t.co/1PwKLwatBR and @ajeya_cotra's: https://t.co/BZ1r1lfT2Q

Why is there no 24/7 news coverage about this?

[ABC News @ABC]

Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were shot dead in their home on June 14, are lying in state at the Minnesota State Capitol. Their golden retriever, who had to be euthanized, is by their side.

Read more: https://t.co/3tuQEFgnBI

[Mary McIntyre @marymcintyre]

The Albemarle County School Board just voted to raise their own salaries from $7,915 to $16,249.00. 👀 In a year where we lost 45 FTEs because of budget cuts, and the rest of us are getting a raise of 3%.

Don’t tell me they can’t find money for things when they really want to.

[Leah Greenberg says NO KINGS ❌👑 @Leahgreenb]

Dems can:

-oppose all Trump nominees until this EO is withdrawn
-deny unanimous consent to slow senate proceedings
-vote no on all cloture
-force quorum calls at every chance

It’s a constitutional crisis. There is absolutely no reason the Senate should be connecting business as usual.

[Mueller, She Wrote @MuellerSheWrote]

BREAKING: The Department of Veterans Affairs has CANCELLED SUICIDE PREVENTION TRAINING because it includes considerations for the LGBTQ+ community.

Veterans suicide.

[California Department of Water Resources @CA_DWR]

The military did not enter California. The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.

[Thomas Willett @ThomasWillett9]

Things people regret more than having gender-affirming surgery:
1. Breast enhancements
2. Knee replacements
3. Nose jobs
4. Having kids

[Rosalind Picard @RosalindPicard]

Why aren't people discussing this? This is not required for a future with AI. https://t.co/yzXjN0jBkm Some topics: Whose backyard are they going to store the Nuclear waste in? Can they guarantee we won't have a Chernobyl event?

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, "I'm afraid it's the government I don't trust. I didn't trust the last Conservative government and I don't trust this Labour government either" @GreenJennyJones

"Who doesn't want regulators of a public service to work in the interests of the public?"

"Over the last 14 years we have had huge growth in sewage and pollution, well done guys.. And it is a growth in sewage that has had an impact in Gross National Product.. It's so gross that other countries see this as indicative of the UK's approach to running privatised services i.e. not very good"

"Because when we have a river full of dead fish the authorities go out and buy more fish to replace them, that's economic growth, a huge success"

"When e.coli is found in our water system we get a double hit of economic growth. There is extra spending on the NHS treating patients with gastroenterologist, and all the money spent on plastic bottles of water when you can't drink from the tap"

"We even have the prospect of a rain soaked country like ours spending millions on tankers importing drinking water from Norway"

"That's extra spending, extra growth, so I can see growth is a success factor in the previous government's estimation"

"Of course we can't forget the staggering growth in shareholder dividends and CEO salaries, when these private water companies take money out of the hands of bill payers and help the companies to buy new private jets.. That also adds to GNP"

"My problem is that this particular type of GNP adds to most people's unhappiness.. That's why the promotion of growth for growth's sake is actually complete nonsense, and I don't understand why anyone would advocate that"

"The more that rivers are polluted the unhappier the lives of everybody using that particular space. Whether its dog walkers, anglers, wild swimmers, nature lovers"

"And the more money shareholders get the less happy bill payers are for 40% of their money to be spend on debt repayment and dividends"

"So growth is not an indicator of happiness or the economy being run in the interests of the many.. It's a nonsense soundbite for the economically illiterate.. And needs to be deleted from this legislation"

"If Ofwat was given the duty to clean up the environment when it was set up, we wouldn't be i the mess that we are in in the moment"

[Crozet Wx @Crozetwx]

#crozet You can add 3.67” to crozet total for storm total of 7.92” here @NWS_BaltWash and still raining! @RoscoeReport
Unofficial total for Sept so far 16.2” and still adding up here

[ancym @ancym]

@socialistdogmom Please please please move to Bluesky?

[ancym @ancym]

@david_colquhoun https://t.co/bQx9vacyoX

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

The tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance I've ever seen — more so than the metaverse, even — as company after company simply lies about what's possible with the "power of AI."
https://t.co/D7nKvs26Yr

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

The tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance I've ever seen — more so than the metaverse, even — as company after company simply lies about what's possible with the "power of AI."
https://t.co/D7nKvs26Yr

[Ed Zitron @edzitron]

This week's newsletter: It's time to call BS on generative AI and demand that companies like OpenAI actually provide useful, helpful software, and actively reject the growing coterie of hucksters using AI as a marketing tool to get media headlines.
https://t.co/D7nKvs26Yr

[ancym @ancym]

@david_colquhoun Yes, I agree. Meanwhile,
"HHMI Invests $500 Million in AI-Driven Life Sciences Research | HHMI"
https://t.co/SOp7QFTMrj

[Byline Times @BylineTimes]

🔴 NEW: Just Stop Oil's 'Whole Truth Five' to Appeal Years-Long Sentences after Sun Journalist Exposed M25 Disruption Plans

International NGOs rally behind 5 activists facing the “longest ever” jail terms for peaceful protest reports @josiahmortimer

https://t.co/WQE2iDmCUD

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Unearthed audio: Trump tells Tim Walz in 2020 he is “very happy” with his handling of George Floyd protests: “I fully agree with the way he handled it... [Tim Walz is an] excellent guy”

(Trump is now trying to criticize Walz over the same issue)

[The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe]

An editor's note from the Boston Globe. https://t.co/E3x2GxSxRR