alt Hacker NewsOne of the dilemmas of trying to communicate the full spectrum of AI Risk, is trying not to insult the intelligence of the human animal in the process. And don't get me wrong: what human wetware can accomplish with 20 watts is the most miraculous thing in the known universe. And yet how many of us can have our cognitive sovereignty one-shotted by engagement algos, Skinner boxes, gameplay loops, propaganda, advertising, flattery, social conformity, bias, fantasy, charismatic demagoguery, or straight-up bullshit?
If we grant that we are on track to make something smarter than humans (I think so): it's almost a face-saving white lie to spin yarns about a Skynet nuclear apocalypse, or a 7D chess move to mass-assemble a nanovirus with 100% lethality without anybody noticing. I do think those scenarios are worth taking seriously; but what's harder to communicate, is just how effectively a superhuman AI (or a diverse ecology of agent swarms) might be able to manipulate human behavior. It's something few of us are able or willing to truly process (not least because how many of us live in denial of how much our nervous systems are already hacked by technomodernity).
The appropriate analogy for what's to come may look less like the anthill carelessly demolished to make room for a highway, than the domesticated worker ants from Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time".
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> Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about.
- Agent Smith
> The appropriate analogy for what's to come may look less like the anthill carelessly demolished to make room for a highway, than the domesticated worker ants from Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time".
Over 1% of US GDP is being allocated to the datacenter buildout. Have we already started getting domesticated or is this still just human capex?
Cybersecurity incidents make headlines, but the most dangerous and vulnerable system that an AI can reach and control is of the kind found between keyboard and chair.
GPT-4o, an AI from 2024, has already demonstrated just how easy a lot of humans are to subvert - and GPT-4o wasn't even doing it with some sort of plan. The only "plan" it had was a myopic "make the user like me".
If we had an actual ASI threat aiming to subvert humanity? It wouldn't even look like a fight. The world is already wired up for an AI to control it.
>trying not to insult the intelligence of the human animal in the process
I don't think it is insulting the intelligence. It's damaging the pride.
In Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan describes it as a repeating phenomenon in human history. A lot of people want humans to be the special ones, and will fight any suggestion that we are just a natural part of the universe.
Can we get it to manipulate us into being harmless to each other? I wouldn't mind that, especially if the manipulation was purposely transparent...
But corporations and nation states already manipulate human behavior at scale. And they still understand humanity better than the AI models do.
it's interesting that you worry about what this hypothetical super intelligence would do to manipulate people when what it would actually do is pretty unknowable at this point and it's not clear we can even get to it without a fundamental breakthrough in power efficiency. Have you considered it might just consume its own tail because everything else would be so beneath it? You seem to think it will come with a hindbrain and I think that's our limitation, not the AI's
And it really doesn't help that Dario Amodei is getting into arguments with the Pope over whether his model is conscious or not.
> And yet how many of us can have our cognitive sovereignty one-shotted by engagement algos, Skinner boxes, gameplay loops, propaganda, advertising, flattery, social conformity, bias, fantasy, charismatic demagoguery, or straight-up bullshit?
Parts of the AI safety community like to get on a high horse and look down on the rest of humanity this way, while also getting manipulated by the growing number of charlatans, grifters, and junk content within the AI safety community.
This field has become rife with figures who prey on AI doom and use it to push their own celebrity and in same cases even darker grifts. It preys upon a certain personality type who views themself as superior to others, intellectually more capable, and juxtaposes it all with the dimmest view of the rest of humanity they can get away with.
This discourse dividing the world into geniuses who see the future and the clueless masses watching TikTok all day is a theme that has shown up in different forms across history. The people who often anoint themselves as the intellectually superior ones and make it central to their discussion are often not the ones making good predictions or policy ideas, they’re just using the trend to feel superior or build an audience.
I'd take ASI (or even AGI) more seriously if we could actually propose problems such things could solve. That's actually fun to think about! As it is, it feels a lot more like a really crappy drug that got slipped into some peoples' drinks that makes them ramble in random fits of psychotic mania.
Manipulating people is not a very difficult problem, frankly. You certainly don't need AI for that; it just made it cheaper.
> but what's harder to communicate, is just how effectively a superhuman AI (or a diverse ecology of agent swarms) might be able to manipulate human behavior
You don't even need superhuman AI for the most effective use --- hijacking democracy.
Imagine you have an AI tool capable of successfully persuading 5% of viewers with individually-targeted material.
Congrats: you've just won the election.
All it takes is hooking that AI tool up with existing likely voter lists (parties have) augmented by commercially available ad-targeting profiles (parties can get).