For AI leaders Doom is a form of hype

ceeam

"Here's our new AI" - "But does it run doom?"

cwnyth

After fruit fly brain news, can you blame me for initially thinking this was about the video game?

rvz

Or it is their entire IPO roadshow.

swingboy

Can anyone from a lab anonymously confirm they have or are insanely close to real-time weight modifications and still using the same architecture every other lab is using (transformers)?

fooker

Reminder that they have been doing this schtick since GPT2. This is targeted towards governments and investors alike.

mercurywells

How does that compare/contrast to the nuclear physicists speaking out during the early part of the 20th century?

AJ007

Consider the messaging it took to attract AI researchers to OpenAI in the beginning, the exodus to Anthropic, and why Google, Meta, etc fail to recruit top researchers and the retain them. Reconcile all of this with the mammoth valuations of Anthropic and (previously non-profit) OpenAI and it all starts sounding a lot like "don't be evil." These guys never really believed any of this, did they? (not referring to the researchers)

ck2

the short answer is what we are going to do about "AI" is exactly what we did about global warming absolutely nothing and just let it happen, the wealthy will be fine just don't look up they are even using the EXACT same excuses as global warming "well even if we do, China won't, so why bother"

NoahZuniga

> I do not doubt that these people are sincere in some private, psychological sense ... . As a media scholar, what interests me is not whether Hubinger believes his own number. What interests me is what this genre of utterance does in the world ... . My complaint is not that these statements are alarming. It is that they are apocalyptic in form, hypocritical in structure, and strategically productive in effect — and that they crowd out almost everything else we could be discussing Strange to say that you think the people that are worrying about doom in public are being sincere, make no comment on whether you think the worry is valid, and yet still complain that its hype. Like if its true it can't be hype

francisofascii

Similar to Y2K?

apsec112

All of the main characters here (Dario, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk) have been saying this for over ten years now, since before OpenAI or Anthropic even existed

mrinterweb

The timing of the AI doom narrative could not come as a more suspect time. Chinese labs are releasing open models that are nipping at the heals of the frontier models. Anthropic and OpenAI know these frontier class open weight models can threaten their valuations by changing inference to a commodity where the provider who can serve the best models the cheapest and fastest will win. Few are going to pay $50/million tokens when they could pay <$1/million tokens for similar outcomes. There's little hope investors could recoup the wild investments made into Anthropic and OpenAI, IMO.

ianm218

What I don't really understand with these posts is that they don't at any point contend with the "doomers" argument. Like people get so caught in people acting hypocritical/ having mixed incentives/ or just in many cases personally disliking West Coast billionaire types and the kind of employees they hire. All of which seems fair to point out. But like the core argument - AI is getting better at core research tasks (coding, math, statistics, science), this feedback loop could lead towards greatly accelerated AI progress of which there is already some clear evidence, if this continues AI will be far more powerful than humans and we might lose control or have other bad consequences - is basically not even engaged with.

twodave

Such a load of baloney. I don’t care what kind of controls you put in place, if ASI is ever achieved how do you think it will respond to being caged? The only option I can conceive of is to embrace it and hope it turns out to either be out of reach or benevolent towards its own creators. There is no putting the cork back in at this point.

meep_meep_meep

I thought that too for a long time, but after the Hugging Face attack and given the proximity to Anthropic IPO, if this was hype then they are morons. This is guaranteed to cause massive backlash.

thatmf

The mea culpas are quite exhausting too. "Oh no this thing I gained generational wealth from is going to destroy the world! I am so sorry!"

ctoth

> May 2023 — the founding text. We have been trying to warn you since far, far before May 2023.

schainks

The cult-like behavior we're seeing from these "AI Leaders": 1. OMG our technology could destroy the world, watch out! 2. Only one person can save you 3. IT ME Unfortunately, the governance layer meant to put a foot in the butt of this behavior is unavailable. This week, we woke up to clear signs The Bad Guys have been using tech from our innovator AI companies. Rather than these AI leaders admitting they clearly had a garbage observability system, they are acting like they just noticed as a way to paper over their complete lack of moral backbone and stewardship of the arms they have created. And I'm willing to bet the problem is MUCH worse in private, hence the knee jerk cult messaging. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if their AI told them to behave like this to maximize attention and influence over the public discussion as a result of the latter discoveries.

agentultra

I think we’re more likely to die of starvation from economic collapse, heat related stress, and complications from Long COVID than an algorithm waking up and destroying us. Unfortunately our list of potential extinction events are far more banal than these self-aggrandizing prophesies from the oligarch class.

atleastoptimal

This article reads like it was written by Claude. Also those at Anthropic genuinely believe AI could lead to doom, that's why they started the company, they believe only they can be stewards of digital gods. Whether you believe it or not, they genuinely do, and wouldn't voluntarily sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in their product when it doesn't guarantee benefits. This is an instance of work in a genre I call "AI lab grievance poetry" where a vast collection of criticisms are levied against AI labs, with specifc ad-hominems towards the executives, while avoiding the core of their arguments about AI risk