Vikas Prabhu

C-Level Technology Leader | Ex-Startup Co-Founder | Digital Transformation | AI | Product Engineering | Emerging Tech | Cybersecurity | Cloud

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

https://t.co/gmZRp6ykHG

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

Always an interesting and unbiased perspective!

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

The loudest voices stoking fears about AI dangers have made tremendous headway in the past two weeks. AI technology has not taken some unexpected, dangerous turn, but the hype around it — propelled by what appears to be a well orchestrated PR campaign — has drummed up considerable fear. I worry that it represents a setback for our field.

I have written frequently that fears of AI are overhyped. AI’s capabilities can be uncannily human-like and unpredictable, and it’s rational to worry when people who are directly involved express concerns. But I see the problems as a sign of the engineering work that ahead, rather than insurmountable barriers or the sky falling. AI technology continues to advance — which is a good thing! — but technical advances, poorly understood by the public, give those who seek to generate hype repeated opportunities to do so.

First, I don’t see any step up in the risk of human extinction from AI compared to a few months ago. The theories about this remain the same fantastical, science fiction scenarios as a few months ago. The biggest change in AI risk is its cybersecurity capabilities — a topic which we should take seriously — but this, too, will not lead to the end of the world.

The most notable recent event leading to increased fear was when an OpenAI team deployed an agent swarm that hacked into Hugging Face. Much of the popular press contained significant hype. For example, some publications reported that a swarm of 1,200 agents carried out the attack. While this was technically accurate, as I write this, I have about 1,300 processes running on my laptop. Yes, the ability to get large swarms of agents to work in parallel on a task is a significant technical advance, And, in computing, many processes run at the same time. So this shouldn’t be seen as some magical capability.

Additionally, OpenAI’s buggy sandboxing and monitoring processes were key to enabling this incident. Fixing these bugs and putting in place improved monitoring would be appropriate fixes, not pausing AI. There are many well known ways to attack software systems. The main advantage of AI agents is that they are relentless. They will tirelessly try many tactics — and have the patience to chain vulnerabilities together — that previously would have taken an infeasible amount of human effort. But in the long term, I believe the advantage will lie with defenders (because they have more information with which to identify bugs, which they can fix), but the cyber-threat landscape has changed significantly. There are still bottlenecks to identifying and exploiting a vulnerability. AI agents still have to try a lot of things to see what works, and taking these actions takes time and might be detected by defenders. This is why, even though it is now easy to obtain versions of leading open weight models that have had their guardrails removed or weakened, so they will not refuse to try to execute cyber attacks, the world has not ended.

I am also concerned about the anthropomorphization of AI in a lot of reporting, where LLMs and agents are unnecessarily treated as if they were people. If I wield a hammer, miss a nail, and accidentally dent the wall, it’s not the fault of the hammer. The problem lies in how I used the hammer. Similarly, if I prompt an agent and it hacks into someone else’s system, the responsibility lies with me, not the agent.

Of course, we want to build systems that are as safe and predictable as possible. (For example, an unsafe hammer would be one whose head randomly flies off under normal use.) Today’s agentic systems are not predictable, but I see no reason why, by applying sound engineering practices, we won’t be able to make them extremely safe to use. One new element in the forecasts of AI-enabled doom is AI companies disclaiming responsibility for their own products. “I didn’t do it; my out-of-control agent did!” There’s a balance to be struck between the responsibility of the tool maker and the tool user, but when something goes wrong, let’s hold the people building and/or using the hammer responsible, rather than the hammer. (By the way, if you’re worried about AI bioweapon risk, David Bellamy has a great post on why this, too, is overhyped. Briefly, the bottleneck in building a bioweapon is not intelligence, but lab work and manufacturing.)

Pausing AI progress will create much more harm than benefit. First, our adversaries will certainly not slow down. Second, engineering requires discovering problems empirically so we can fix them. If we pause AI by a decade, we will also delay finding and implementing safety engineering fixes by about the same duration.

Of course, the incentive to stoke fears — for regulatory capture, to garner attention, or to make one’s technology seem more powerful — remains the same as before. Disclaiming responsibility is a new one. Taking a hard technical look at the actual risks however, I see little factual basis for the degree of fear that’s been stoked up. We still have hard research and engineering work ahead to improve AI safety, but the beneficial applications continue to vastly outweigh the risks, and we should keep building.

[Original text (with links): https://t.co/jni2tWazAH ]

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

https://t.co/Es3S2GVGYL

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

https://t.co/BqR9ogE4KY

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@reachvaldo 48

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@tomcrawshaw01 Gemini

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp Looks like @amazonIN doesn’t want to solve the problem. After taking the yearly subscription fees, @amazonIN seems happy. Their money is in their account so they won’t bother to solve the problem but will send some BOT/SOP responses. Such a pathetic customer service

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@amazonIN I have been trying to restore my account which is locked by Amazon. I don’t have any means to reach out to the support team. Please guide me with the process. It’s been more than a month now. Such a pathetic customer service is not expected from Amazon.

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp I don’t think you have even bothered looking at the screenshots I have shared. You are just responding from your SOP like a BOT (which has no brains). What you are asking me to do is not working. @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp Your communication is wrong and not helping at all. And you are still telling me to follow the same? Height is incapability and illiteracy at the support desk looks like? @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp You really don't know how to solve this? Such a sorry stare of affairs at Amazon that the people at the support desk are incapable of helping the customers. Is BOT responding to my msg's? Because a human being, if responding to this cannot be so dump & incapable @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp @amazonIN I have sent the screenshot's of what I am getting from the link you shared... If you don't want to solve the problem or don't know how to solve the problem, don't repeat the text from your SOP. Please accept that Amazon has a pathetic social media support team @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp Where to followup on this? @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp How do I contact? Neither you are giving me any number nor email ID. Please give me one and I will reach out to them.... This responses are getting annoying now since the conversation is not leading to any solution. What kind of customer support team is this? @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp Which number? I am asking for number or email ID to follow up since I am not able find it anywhere on Amazon site. Please give me the number. @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp This isn't helping since the link is opening a FAQ page which I have tried already. Do let me know how can i reach the accounts specialist team via email or a phone call..... The FAQs listed on Amazon page are poorly written and not at all helpful. @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@AmazonHelp Hello. Thanks for your response. Unfortunately I haven’t received any information or emails from Amazon regarding this. You may please forward or resend the email. @amazonIN

[Vikas Prabhu @vikasprabhu]

@Swiggy Last night I ate at a restaurant in Ahmedabad. Was charged 219 Rs for something I ordered. Same thing I ordered today on Swiggy, the price is 269 Rs. Was pleasantly surprised to see the difference. Convenience of delivery & overcharging the customer at the same time 😅😅

[videos that boost your mental health @cheerfulclips]

“I want to win but not like that.”