Article about point of "singularity" as AI develops

[Craig234]

They're calling it singularity, because it's a point at which it can't be controlled, and it's unclear, they feel, what will happen because of it.

Humanity May Reach Singularity Within Just 5 Years, Trend Shows

By one major metric, artificial general intelligence is much closer than you think.

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[Gozaburo]

They're calling it singularity, because it's a point at which it can't be controlled, and it's unclear, they feel, what will happen because of it.

Humanity May Reach Singularity Within Just 5 Years, Trend Shows

By one major metric, artificial general intelligence is much closer than you think.

www.popularmechanics.com

Generally speaking, this justification scares me more because of how the narrative will be used, not because AI is truly capable (at least any time soon) of becoming a sentient super intelligence. AI, much like any powerful computer, lacks the will to power which is necessary for intentionality.

The true danger comes from how AI will be wielded by humans. The whole "sentient AI" bit to me seems more like the start of massaging the idea into the public consciousness so that when the technocratic state is achieved, we're already prepared for the culture shock. Dark stuff.

 

[ataraxia]

Generally speaking, this justification scares me more because of how the narrative will be used, not because AI is truly capable (at least any time soon) of becoming a sentient super intelligence. AI, much like any powerful computer, lacks the will to power which is necessary for intentionality.

The true danger comes from how AI will be wielded by humans. The whole "sentient AI" bit to me seems more like the start of massaging the idea into the public consciousness so that when the technocratic state is achieved, we're already prepared for the culture shock. Dark stuff.

Not sure why sentience has anything to do with anything. The ideas that kind of intelligence capable of setting its own agenda is enough.

I suspect sentience has nothing to do with, or is at best only peripheral to, intelligence. A rabbit probably has some kind of sentience. Doesn’t mean it’s all that intelligent. The AI systems we already have now are probably much more intelligent than the rabbit- and yet they don’t have any sentience yet.

… or at least I don’t think so.

 

[lwf]

Generally speaking, this justification scares me more because of how the narrative will be used, not because AI is truly capable (at least any time soon) of becoming a sentient super intelligence. AI, much like any powerful computer, lacks the will to power which is necessary for intentionality.

The true danger comes from how AI will be wielded by humans. The whole "sentient AI" bit to me seems more like the start of massaging the idea into the public consciousness so that when the technocratic state is achieved, we're already prepared for the culture shock. Dark stuff.

Agreed. AI will also, in spite of what the engineers will tell you, result in a net loss of employment. Currently, the narrative that we are telling ourselves and that AI engineers will parrot when asked is that AI won't replace jobs: It is a tool that will simply help employed people do their jobs more efficiently. Not unlike a computer, calculator, or smart phone.

But, while that is where it is right now, and AI engineers are in extremely high demand, I believe AI is a different beast entirely with no historical analogue to anything we have yet encountered as a species. I can't think of anything even remotely comparable, since AI in its infancy has blown the Turing Test out of the water, and can already communicate coherently with perfect clarity in any language. In terms of agentic AI tasked with doing work, it can follow instructions, accurately intuit meaning from even the most poorly-worded instructions, adapt on the fly, has a perfect memory, and, while not mistake-free, an AI agent that is 5 minutes old makes fewer mistakes than most college graduates in their first year on the job, and AI only requires a single mistake to learn from and will never make that mistake again. Once the hallucination problem is resolved, there won't be a need for a human to do anything other than manual labor, and even blue-collar work could eventually be replaced by AI-designed robotics. Because why would anyone pay a bunch of yearly salaries plus benefits and healthcare for something they can do almost for free with a suite of AIs?

I think humanity will survive the AI Age. I'm not so sure about free market capitalism, however. I can't see how a capitalist economy can function in the age of AI. I think it will be a gold mine for a while for the most enterprising of us, and then eventually market economics will cease to function. I think the best-case scenario is the AI age will culminate in a post-scarcity economy, where resources are effectively infinite and there is no longer any need for money. I'd rather not think about the worst-case scenarios.

 

[Gozaburo]

Not sure why sentience has anything to do with anything. The ideas that kind of intelligence capable of setting its own agenda is enough.

I suspect sentience has nothing to do with, or is at best only peripheral to, intelligence. A rabbit probably has some kind of sentience. Doesn’t mean it’s all that intelligent. The AI systems we already have now are probably much more intelligent than the rabbit- and yet they don’t have any sentience yet.

… or at least I don’t think so.

Which is why I’m more skeptical of the possibility of Will to power and intentionality. Sentience is more nebulous and likely not relevant.

 

[joluoto]

We need to get to General AI first, we aren't there, and the more we play with Generative AI the further from there we get.

Will we get some kind of superintelligent thingy that is smarter than us, I mean probably, not in my lifetime though, and not for quite a while after.

But if you are really worried about the Singilarity thing I guess you could get into one of those rationalist cults that obsesses over Roko's basilisk. Don't murder anyone though. Not nice.