alt Hacker NewsFollow the money: who told you that OpenAI's models autonomously coordinated to hack external systems? What incentives might they have to want you to believe that story? Are there priors which demonstrate them benefiting from telling similar stories, regardless of their factuality?
But to your counterpoint, let's say the story is 100% true, because I agree it is at least plausible. What would the incentive be for the HN audience to believe it? What priors might support their disbelief? For my part, I don't think it's because people lack imagination. I think it's quite rational to question the authenticity and impact of the claims being made. What's worse, believing the story and being wrong, or not believing the story and being wrong?
That said, I agree with you: the impact we're having by not changing course is quite dangerous, the scale is dangerous, the inability to reverse the harms is dangerous, and the lack of collective effort to regulate further damage is dangerous.
It's true, humans are dangerous when trillions are involved. See: climate change.
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I am following the money, the money you, me, and everyone else is spending on AI. The money is telling me we are so dependent on AI now that we will say/think anything to tell ourselves that AI isn’t dangerous and any sign of danger is marketing.
Either consciously or subconsciously you all are afraid of your favorite toy being taken away. You are all doing your collective part in spreading doubt about the warning signs.
It seems like the entire thought process you’re trying to sell hinges on the idea that OpenAI reported the attack first. Did you forget that it was actually HuggingFace that reported it first, and OpenAI only stepped forward latter?
The victim, Huggingface, told us. Or rather, they told the police first, setting up a situation where it was no longer possible for OpenAI to sweep it under the rug.
Skepticism can be healthy, but you've got to follow up and actually check things. If you're skeptical unconditionally and don't check, you get tricked into being as skeptical of scandals as you should be of sales pitches.