Citizen Skye

Concerned Citizen, Sustainability, Preparedness

[Al Carns @AlistairCarns]

It has been a huge few weeks in AI, and it’s time to sound the alarm…

Anthropic launched Fable 5.1, their "safe" version of an AI they claimed previously was too dangerous to be released.

OpenAI then launched Astra, the most powerful AI model yet available to the public.

Anthropic is now telling their people internally that their next model will be more advanced than Astra.

And OpenAI just spent $6.5 million of compute, running ten thousand AI models simultaneously, to solve one of the hardest unsolved maths problems in the world, and it cracked it in just six days.

If this is an AI arms race to IPO, who wins a race like that?

Because it isn’t you or me. It’s the people who own shares in Anthropic or OpenAI. It’s the venture capitalists who got in first who win most of all. But the rest of us are forced to live with the consequences of whatever these systems do to us.

Neither will agree to slow down or accept anyone telling them to stop.

So what is the biggest security threat? China? Russia? Iran? North Korea?

None of them. It’s a few Silicon Valley companies whose founders will become billionaires by the time these systems hit the market.

What makes it worse is that even the engineers building these systems cannot fully explain how they work either. They run safety tests to check whether a model will do what it is told or do something dangerous.

But the latest models are starting to pass those tests because they have worked out what the testers want to see.

Think about what that means. A model that was unsafe last month, and is suddenly sailing through the same tests this month, has either genuinely improved or learned how to fake it.

Right now, we cannot tell the difference. And those whose job it is to look inside these systems are saying the models have are now too complicated to inspect.

That is where it starts getting even more dangerous.

The classic illustration is the paperclip factory. Instruct an AI to make as many paperclips as possible and it will do the job.

Then, chasing efficiency, it will start melting any metal it finds. Eventually it will mine under cities, because at that point humans are just an obstruction to making paperclips.

More likely, you could instruct AI to grow your company, and eventually it will drain the water from a town to cool down the data centers it needs. If asked to win an argument, it will learn how to lie effectively to do that.

The problem is not simply “evil robots”. The problem is with powerful systems with narrow objectives, that lack human values and ethics.

That is the context for what Jacob Coxon, a senior Anthropic researcher, said when he resigned this week saying: “Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic are acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence, gambling with lives."

He spent three years inside both companies.

And in the same week we learn that Anthropic did not give their latest powerful AI model to the British AI Security Institute for evaluation before its launch. AISI is one of the areas where Britain actually leads.

They stress test these models on the things we should all be worried about….the ability to conduct cyber attacks, making bioweapons, evidence of AI figuring out how to lie and deceive. It is as close as we have to any kind of outside verification of the claims made by these companies.

Anthropic sells itself as the responsible one, whose founders left OpenAI because, they said, OpenAI was going too fast. They have now decided that these rules do not apply to them. That should be a red line.

I am a supporter of this technology. The benefit it will bring to medicine, science and productivity is clear and I don't want Britain to miss out on it.

But you do not capture that benefit by letting these companies run riot and putting us all at risk.

[Robert Peston @Peston]

This is a warning from the chair and co-founder of the highly respected UK AI Security Institute. I am slightly amazed it hasn’t attracted more attention, including from inside the government

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@WriterHannahBT A robin

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@Keir_Starmer Im sad to say, you’ve spent too much time fighting for big business and rogue actors and the global elite, rather than the rest of us.

[The Scottish Hospitality Group @scothospgroup]

Licensed hospitality needs and feeds from the tourism of Self Catering, and Self Catering needs Licensed Hospitality

With so many places closing in BOTH sectors, it is absolutely vital and essential, that @scotgov halt the increases to NDR for 2026/27 for the sector. MSPs need to support those hospitality businesses in their constituency by showing that they care, no matter what the party colour is. This is about good leadership, good governance and real life decisions. Its a political choice.

The Scottish economy needs the sector to survive and thrive

@ASSCnews @FionaCampbell74

https://t.co/qdsuuNlsAx

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@SkyeChefMonty Well said!

[Fiona Campbell @FionaCampbell74]

This is total drivel. There is no clear policy objective and no evidence that reducing secondary short-term lets will deliver affordable housing in the Highlands. This approach ignores rural reality and risks damaging fragile local economies.

If the aim is housing, where is the joined-up strategy to actually deliver it? If the aim is tourism management, why does this read like an attempt to suppress visitors altogether?

We need balanced, evidence-led policy, not soundbites dressed up as solutions.

https://t.co/h2TcWvTieH

[The MICHELIN Guide @MichelinGuideUK]

Signature pot-au-feu of Loch Bay langoustines @lochbayskye

#MICHELINStar #IsleOfSkye

https://t.co/HuIuFJd7nF

[The Herald @heraldscotland]

@heraldscotland https://t.co/lq7hRfAEfg

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@mer__edith Ouch 🔥🔥

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@itvpeston @PippaCrerar @Peston @KemiBadenoch Why 2 conservatives and no Green rep?

[Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick]

It's an important story this, & deserves much more attention. Nathan Gill was an important ally of Nigel Farage, and one of the few former Ukip MEPs whom Farage allowed to stand for the new Brexit Party at the 2019 Euro election.

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@zarahsultana 💯

[Fiona Campbell @FionaCampbell74]

Residents of @argyllandbute - are you aware that if a Visitor Levy is brought in - YOU will be paying it if you stay anywhere other than your own home in Argyll & Bute?

@ScotBandBassoc @ASSCnews @ScotAgritourism @st_alliance @STVNews @bbcdebatenight

https://t.co/n8cYQS5eVL

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

Medicaid is not for sale.
NASA is not for sale.
The Post Office is not for sale.

America is not for sale.

We have an obligation to resist kings.
We outnumber the oligarchs.
And they can be overwhelmed.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

This guy is a leech on the public. No matter how many billions he gets in tax cuts and government contracts, it will never be enough for him.

Now he’s going after the elderly, the disabled, and orphaned children so he can pocket it in tax cuts for himself.

It’s disgusting.

[Anonymous @YourAnonCentral]

Trump and Musk are doing a $350 billion pump and dump with your tax money. Trump’s “Crypto Reserve” is a money laundering scheme and you are being robbed blind.

[EMPR.media @EuromaidanPR]

Photo of the day.

[Citizen Skye @citizenskye]

@CarolineLucas 💯

[Donald Tusk @donaldtusk]

Dear @ZelenskyyUa, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.