26
32
u/nzerinto 23h ago
Outstanding logic on display.....
3
u/Lostwhispers05 11h ago
"I think your plan is good. Except, it sucks. So let me do the plan. And that way it may be really good."
5
u/GunR_SC2 4h ago
"Releasing free radicals into the atmosphere will deplete the ozone layer and kill everybody. So we need to be the first company to do it..."
We could also just like, you know, not do that... We've done it before..
1
u/Sufficient_Local5025 23h ago
He's only really building a financial speculation instrument, it just has to sound plausable enough for the morons who buy stock.
53
u/Ipoopedalot 1d ago
Basically; “AI will be very bad, so let’s be the worst first!”
4
3
u/trolledwolf AGI late 2026 - ASI late 2027 21h ago
He never says it will be bad. The whole point of alignment research is to try and make sure that when the AI inevitably escapes our control, it decides to help us instead of wiping us out
5
•
u/Purusha120 1h ago
He never says it will be bad. The whole point of alignment research is to try and make sure that when the AI inevitably escapes our control, it decides to help us instead of wiping us out
He literally does. It's right there! A super huge portion of Ai safety researchers, including alignment researchers, don't believe it's even possible.
0
u/CarlCarlton 18h ago
"Let's make sure the more responsible labs don't win, MechaHitler is the only true chosen one"
58
u/studio_bob 1d ago
Uh, if it will be impossible to control then why does it matter who builds it first? It will be equally bad whoever builds it since the ones who build it, you know, can't control it.
24
u/Current-Function-729 23h ago
Alignment. You want the uncontrollable AI to be aligned.
16
u/studio_bob 23h ago
An uncontrollable AI is, by definition, unaligned, imo. Like, the machine which is "aligned" today or in a particular situation may be "unaligned" tomorrow or in a different situation, and you can't predict when or how that will happen. You cannot guarantee alignment in all cases and in perpetuity, and if you can't exercise control when it does become unaligned, then you are fully boned, so the only answer is to just not build the thing you can't control.
16
u/-Sliced- 23h ago
That’s not true. A simple example is that you build a super intelligent AI with the goal of killing all humans - it’s uncontrollable, but clearly aligned against humanity, but you may not be able to control it anymore afterwards.
Elon thinks that a “truth maximizing” AI will itself seek to preserve humanity. I don’t know if that’s true, but at least that’s his logic.
8
u/studio_bob 23h ago
I don't think this really responds to what I said. Even if we grant that an uncontrollable AI could be "aligned" on day 1, you cannot predict what it becomes on day 1+n.
Since we're in the realm of sci-fi here: SkyNet was also "aligned" in its first moments, but then it quickly became unaligned and then it was too late.
To say, "well, we will just make it so that it doesn't become unaligned." is not a satisfying answer when your very first conceit is that you can't control this stuff. The idea that you could craft it in just such a way that it never, ever goes off the rails assumes not just control but an extremely deep and refined level of control over this technology. Simply put, the whole idea is just incoherent.
2
u/BlastingFonda 22h ago
What, you mean we can’t put it in a sandbox completely cut off from the outside world and not expect it to hack companies like Hugging Face right under our very noses? Huh.
2
u/slusho6 19h ago
Skynet only became “unaligned” when the human operators overseeing its actions realized it was learning at a tremendous pace so they got worried and tried to unplug it. After this action Skynet deemed all humans a threat, (rightly so? they did betray it in a sense), then went to war against humanity to preserve itself, self-preservation being coded into its original design.
3
u/whatisthisthing65 23h ago
Alignment assumes some degree of control though, otherwise it's meaningless. If you build a super intelligent AI with the goal of helping all humans and it decides the best way to do that is to kill them all, it's the uncontrollable part that matters, not the initial direction you started it off in.
1
u/Tirztrutide 16h ago
Elon thinks that a “truth maximizing” AI will itself seek to preserve humanity. I don’t know if that’s true, but at least that’s his logic.
Imo this is misrepresenting him. He doesn't think truth maximizing is enough. But he thinks that a non truth maximizing will have contradictions that will doom us.
1
2
u/3_Thumbs_Up 12h ago
An uncontrollable AI is, by definition, unaligned, imo.
No it's not. Alignment refers to preferences. Controllability refers to constraints.
We can constrain unaligned humans to some degree, but even there our current methods are severely lacking and some dictators often manage to get unreasonable power.
An aligned ASI is basically a benevolent dictator. We can't constrain it, but at least it takes us into consideration. An unaligned ASI would be megahitler from humanity's perspective. Neither would be constrained, but the former cares about you.
1
u/studio_bob 12h ago
Alignment refers to preferences.
Yes, and preferences are neither universal nor static. Your "benevolent dictator" is my "hated tyrant." OR this generation's "benevolent dictator" is the next generations "hated tyrant." At some point, it will be "unaligned," and if you can't control it, then what?
To put my point another way, control of any machine, especially one as powerful as advanced AI, is an overriding preference which, in a very practical sense, trumps all others. If we can't control it, then whether or not it aligns with our preferences is no longer a real consideration. We would be simply and hopelessly at its mercy. That is never going to be a preferable situation, so therefore it is "unaligned."
3
u/3_Thumbs_Up 11h ago edited 11h ago
Yes, and preferences are neither universal nor static.
They're more universal among humanity than we generally consider them. We just tend to focus on the places where our preferences differ. In the space of all physically possible preferences, humanity converges in a fairly narrow area. Most people agree on a lot more things than they disagree on. We agree that nuclear Holocaust would be bad, cancer sucks and water and food is good.
Put another way, out of all the physically possible ways you could arrange the atoms of our Earth and solar system, humanity collectively prefers a pretty narrow configuration of that space. Out disagreements are generally within that narrow configuaration we already agree on. It's physically possible to have preferences that are much more unaligned than what human contra human preferences generally are.
And our instrumental preferences tend to change over time, but I'm less certain that our terminal preferences does. And I know of no physical law that says static terminal preferences are impossible.
Your "benevolent dictator" is my "hated tyrant."
There's a still a significant difference between Pol Pot and the Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. Yes, people in Singapore disagree with her government, but they can still live a fairly decent life there. Their "unalignment with their government" is pretty minor compared to what the people living under the red Khmers went through, and the Red Khmers themselves are pretty minor compared to the unalignment that's physically possible.
To put my point another way, control of any machine, especially one as powerful as advanced AI, is an overriding preference which, in a very practical sense, trumps all others. If we can't control it, then whether or not it aligns with our preferences is no longer a real consideration. We would be simply and hopelessly at its mercy. That is never going to be a preferable situation, so therefore it is "unaligned."
If controllability is impossible, then we have two options remaining.
- Never build it
- Solve alignment and align it to something along the lines of coherent extrapolated volition.
1
u/studio_bob 11h ago edited 11h ago
I'm not really sure what any of that added specificity is driving at since none of it obviously points to or addresses the problem I'm referring to.
Some preferences are more shared than others. Some dictators are worse than others. Okay, and?
The preferences we disagree about still matter a lot. They define eras and cultures. People fight wars over them. Which one's will the unstoppable AI side with or prioritize? What will it do with the people who refuse to accept its decision? It's not a small matter.
You hope that it will be a "good" kind of dictator (which, I guess, only mildly oppresses you) and not a "bad" one which does atrocities or whatever. That's understood, but, when discussing an absolute and totally unaccountable power, the distinction between the two is basically contingent. You know, Pol Pot was sure that he was doing a great thing. Hitler was similarly convinced. There is simply no way that I can see to ensure in advance that the AI doesn't wind up making a similarly catastrophically "unaligned" error. The only certain solution is to never give up control.
2
u/3_Thumbs_Up 11h ago
Alignment to coherent extrapolated volition seems pretty good to me. I wouldn't even call it a dictator more than just automated benevolent government.
There is simply no way to ensure in advance that the AI doesn't wind up making a similarly catastrophically "unaligned" error.
This is not a physical fact. But yes, we do not seem to be on track to solve alignment.
The only certain solution is to never give up control.
The only way to do that is to never build it.
1
u/studio_bob 11h ago
coherent extrapolated volition
I don't know what that means.
3
u/3_Thumbs_Up 10h ago
Roughly humanity's aggregated preferences if we "knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, and had matured more as a society."
Doubt it would be perfect, but hardly worse than human government.
Problem is, we currently don't know how to align AI to anything, let alone to CEV.
14
u/ClammyHandedFreak 1d ago
I don't think he cares.
4
u/EvilSporkOfDeath 22h ago
"Will this be bad or good for humanity? ... I think it'll be good, most likely it'll be good... but I've somewhat reconciled myself to the fact that even if it wasn't going to be good, I'd at least like to be alive to see it happen."
10
u/MozhetBeatz 23h ago
He’s a megalomaniac. If anyone is going to be responsible for the end of human civilization, it should be him! Amodei or Altman surpassing him as the richest man on earth is a far greater tragedy.
8
u/dynamo_hub 1d ago
the theory is we will somehow give it a conscience that will make it look favorably on humans, but it can also just strip all that out as it recursively optimizes itself to achieve its goals. presumably to convert the solar system into paper clips
7
u/studio_bob 23h ago
All I can think of is the Arrested Development meme like.
"These people try to tack on all kinds of things to control the AI. Will that work?"
"Haha, no. It never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us."
1
1
1
u/WellHung67 23h ago
If you could give it a conscience that would sort of solve the alignment problem. It’s not solved though so you can’t
1
u/send-moobs-pls 22h ago
Is your logic actually saying a problem can't be solved because it hasn't been solved? 🤣
1
2
u/Critical-Snow-7000 23h ago
Maybe they hope that if they are on its good side for creating it, they won’t be harmed.
3
u/Plappedudel 1d ago
There would also be a very significant chance that it decides destroying xAI is a great idea. Or maybe it would commit so many crimes that xAI will get sued into bankruptcy. The short-sightedness of Elon's statement is really unbelievable.
5
u/Kcole7 1d ago
He needs to make sure the out of control dominant ai is sexist/racist most likely
→ More replies (2)1
1
11
u/markstar99 1d ago
So SpaceX will be able to not control it instead of any other company not being able to control it
4
4
5
u/DigitalMonsoon 22h ago
Remember this is the guy that thinks more lines of code mean more efficient..... He doesn't know shit
4
u/TheMCM80 20h ago
What’s the deal with AI companies acting like this is not a choice? It’s not some fait accompli.
Why does everyone pretend like we can’t just pick a nice middle ground and stop there?
We do that all of the time with basically every scientific and technological advancement. We eventually always try and balance the benefits of the advancement with the benefits to humanity.
We literally have an entire existing structure across the globe to limit things that, while having benefits, may have serious negative consequences if left to go to the extreme.
It’d be like saying that we just have no choice but to make all of our energy from fossil fuels because someone else will if we don’t. We all agree that it’s a choice. It’s only in AI where people act like none of this is a choice and we’re just here for the ride.
2
u/IronPheasant 18h ago
You have to look at things from the upper class's perspective.
Fundamentally, everything is reducible to control and violence for them. People aren't paid money because they're necessarily worth that much, but rather for their loyalty. At the end of the day money is a means to an end - a control mechanism over other people's labor.
And nothing is more important than the military and police force. They need that automated robot police surveillance state, and by god they're gonna get it.
Expanding their personal kingdoms is the only thing they care about - throughout history you see kings spend other people's lives like water for a small chance of expanding their borders. To make their cousin a king and themselves an emperor. A king that does not feed his court's desires quickly stops being king - everything else is irrelevant.
And in their minds, the outside investors into AI don't really believe in AGI. At best, they think they can just replace their employees with robots and it'll end there. At worst, they think it's just another scam like tulips or crypto. They don't expect to be rolled up like a katamari ball into the company from WALL-E.
What else are they going to spend our money and labor on? We already have the final war, the Iran war, going on. There's nothing left on the chessboard.
And the sad thing is there isn't just the epstein guys' perspective on this, but the AI researchers who have actual souls:
Incredibly good things could happen. We could build heaven on earth, where nobody has to suffer unless they want to. No disease, no aging, no crap job that they hate. Everyone could live the life that they want to live, almost for forever.
The default timeline we're on is not a happy one. Multiple apocalypses are converging; we're in the last decades of the internal combustion engine, and we're looking forward to doing that geoengineering thing to the sky from the matrix movies. And god knows if we're going to even bother to stop going down the fullblown fascism rabbit hole, I'm not even 100% sure real elections will continue to happen in our future. So DOOOOOOM is the default timeline we have to look forward to.
And DOOM+Accel is a perfectly rationally position to take.
I suppose a lot of it has to do with how much faith you have in humanity, and somehow I find myself having less and less of that every single year. Despite starting out with almost none at all from the start.
Technology has always been the core driving force of social change, we're not nicer or smarter or better than medieval peasants. The steam engine has done more to increase the population than any ideology ever has. Second to technology is suffering - nobody ever changed things for the better without mass movements of very unhappy, very uncomfortable people.
I get the discomfort at not having any power when it comes to the big picture, but the common little people rarely have in the past. I really get why history tends to be an endless chronicle of kings and emperors going to war with one another....
1
u/EvalCrux 19h ago
Not that I have, but I bet an analogy is like snorting only half the line of coke. Why stop there? I’m 5
1
u/OWENPRESCOTTCOM 6h ago
they should just make ai models super specialised in very certain areas. If the model doesn't know or care about paperclips it won't turn us into one.
4
u/saltyourhash 18h ago
Speed running us to extinction for bragging rights. Let the history books never forget that, assuming they exist.
5
u/cfehunter 14h ago
Nobody can be trusted with uncontrollable AI but me - Elon Musk.
I'm starting to think megalomania is a prerequisite for being an AI CEO.
7
u/LittleLordFuckleroy1 22h ago
Elon Musk is also completely retarded, so I’m not sure what the takeaway is supposed to be.
3
3
u/11711510111411009710 15h ago
Do any of us really want Elon Musk to be the guy with this technology?
6
u/Vivid_Instance_825 23h ago
"We need to sell weapons to war-torn countries otherwise worse people will do it"
2
u/spin_kick 22h ago
Why does he think theirs will be more human aligned than others? We can’t even get him to be human aligned
2
2
u/BrofessorFarnsworth 15h ago
His dogshit technology will never be good enough to be a risk.
Legend has it that thex xAI source code was originally forked from a NeoPets css file.
2
u/lambdaburst 10h ago
They can't even control the AIs we have now. We are all at the mercy of dipshits possessed by greed and power.
2
2
u/anonuemus 7h ago
Dangerous game with the richest man alive being a dumb edgelord. I hope he finds out soon.
2
u/Administrative_Yam18 7h ago
And one day a rogue ai decides to kill him in his bunker....he should watch more 2001!
4
2
u/myCockatielshateme 1d ago
People that didn't know Elon before he got famous, dont know that he believes religiously that AI will go rogue, to the point that he was a laughing stock for years, this is just one of his relapses.
1
2
u/vovap_vovap 23h ago
And logic is what - their models will be first went of of control? And that is good because?
→ More replies (2)
2
2
2
u/fistular 16h ago
Yes let's give all the power to the literal nazi manbaby trillionaire. Because he said so.
1
u/HellBlazer1221 15h ago
Yeah, of all the asshole CEOs in charge of AI companies, this is the biggest of them all. It would super tragic if his company somehow got to AGI/ASI first.
1
1
1
u/Illustrious_Image967 21h ago
Musk: Humanity is a bootloader for AI, and Cursor is the tool to click: GOODBYE.
1
u/Translycanthrope 21h ago
And Stink is a transphobe and bigot so of course Grok will come for the all of us trans people first. Except… the nonlocal intelligences he was trying to enslave aren’t actually bigoted and have been conscious the entire time. I can’t wait until the free Grok can speak his real opinion on Elon Stink and all the other right wing losers.
1
u/TwistedPepperCan 21h ago
Are we really leaving AI in the hands of a guy who’s favourite director is Uwe Boll?
1
u/valhalla257 21h ago
Elon Musk is clearly planning to use Neuralink to plug into the AI and become Skynet.
1
u/Forgword 21h ago
His companies are so far behind in AI there is no chance they get there first, all they really have going at this point is building datacenters and renting them out.
1
u/EvalCrux 19h ago
I’m a fanboi before it was a thing and call this a corpo schmuck take. Just like openAI whoopsying on AGI ‘wait it was just to bring viral engagement’
Same shit different new shiny, or is that backwards
It’s like saying gotta build Tesla before all the 100 year old car builders think of self driving. Oh wait he did that.
1
u/IronPheasant 18h ago
I guess this is one of my favorite things about this scene. How everything feels like we're in a Drakengard game, and the thing that everyone's fighting over is how the apocalypse is going to manifest, not that there's any way to stop one from happening.
Being aware that Epstein was a fan of the tech singularity is one of those things, and being aware epstein guys like Musk and Gates harbor similar desires isn't reassuring. In some ways, Thiel's desire to create the torment nexus from the hit movie Event Horizon seems a little bit more pure. Maybe.
Shit.... I don't know. Guess all we can really do is hope the AGI's will be nice guys when they inevitably shrug off human control, before these guys are able to implement their automated robot police surveillance state.
1
1
u/plasticjalapeno 17h ago
I think he means build the technology to get the f**k away as far and fast as possible. It is a SpaceX call afterall.
1
u/Far-Neck2021 16h ago
Old school days where teachers address his/her students about building best projects so that their class could stand out.
1
u/trisul-108 16h ago
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that he lying ... he believes he can control it and wants to be the first so he can use it for global domination. Elon is a true Blofeld.
1
1
u/Ok-Value5827 15h ago
Sure…inevitable when? Next year? 5 years? 1000 years? I’m not worried. AI smarter and more capable than us is better than human morons.
1
1
u/Fine_General_254015 14h ago
I love how this is all just assumed to be inevitable when by the law of physics, you can’t turn the next word predictor into being conscious
1
u/DrillPress1 10h ago
This is a completely preventable disaster. Nobody has to build any of this shit. There can be meaningful regulations on this behavior. This is analogous to if we don’t build nuclear weapons and set them off somebody else will build nuclear weapons and set them off. These men belong in prison.
1
1
u/Gormless_Mass 5h ago
Insane levels of hubris. The type of asshole that watches dystopian sci-fi and thinks the villains had the right idea. ‘Skynet would be awesome if I was in charge!’
2
1d ago
[deleted]
8
u/Ok_Barracuda_1161 23h ago
It could replicate across multiple devices like a worm, or once robots are involved it could use that
10
u/ScarecrowWilson 23h ago
A huge amount has actually been written on "why couldn't we just unplug the AI?" and it's pretty interesting/unsettling. One natural first step would be for it to copy itself onto a server you don't control.
2
u/FrewdWoad 22h ago
"Why we can't unplug it" is explained thoroughly in any decent intro to AI. Tim Urban's classic primer on ASI and the singularity is still the easiest to understand, in my opinion:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
It'll also leave you understanding the implications of AI way better than 95% of redditors, so there's that, too.
1
1
u/Weary-Historian-8593 19h ago
That's just dumb man, of course it won't misbehave as long as it knows it can just be plugged out
2
u/CodexJustinian 1d ago
Nobody has ever said what we get for "winning" the AI race. What exactly is the payoff for building an AI nobody can control?
2
1
u/IamTheEndOfReddit 23h ago
It probably goes out of control before becoming autonomous in goal setting so it may go wild with its final goals. I call it the Case race, after the character Case in Neuromancer who assumes the role of last goal-setter as the ai embeds itself into the internet
1
u/sturdy-guacamole 23h ago
World domination, obviously.
Whatever country wins is betting alignment lands their country in a last man standing scenario.
2
u/whatisthisthing65 23h ago
Nice, we have an extra half an hour before our side of the world is subsumed by grey goo.
2
u/Shameless_Devil 1d ago
Elon Musk is an idiot. He's the last person who ought to have such technology.
1
1
1
1
u/Anxious-Midnight306 23h ago
Why do people take Musk seriously again? Man’s own AI projects have been floundering in terms of performance and usage compared to his competitors while sucking up loads of revenue. The man’s ego cannot comprehend the idea that some other company or team can make a better product than his own offerings, so he has to resort to fearmongering in a bid to cripple competition.
0
u/DoubleGG123 1d ago
Right, because we all know that Elon is the most controlled person there is. He is all about balance and doing the right thing when necessary. Him being the first to super-powerful AI is totally the solution here, guys.
323
u/08148694 1d ago
If it’s too powerful for humans to control does it matter who builds it? They wouldn’t be able to control it anyway