OpenAI boss ‘heartened’ by talks with world leaders over will to contain AI risk

By way of analogy, the climate crisis is arguably suffering from the same kinds of thinking. We’ve never witnessed the kinds of climate catastrophe that we know is around the corner, but that doesn’t stop people who understand the dynamics from taking it seriously. It also hasn’t stopped a very vocal and powerful opposition who won’t be convinced until we experience real catastrophe.

To me, the argument that we’re nowhere close is unconvincing, and I’d argue irrelevant. Even if the real risk is decades away, we’re now living in the moment where we can mitigate risks before they become pressingly real. Anything else is kicking the can down the road.

> There is a further argument that even with actual AI, which people have written volumes of sci-fi tier essays about how it will kill us all, that there has been no demonstrated risk

How would you define “demonstrated risk”? We’re at a stage where all we can do is speculate and predict based on our models of the world as they currently exist. That says nothing about the actual intrinsic risks that we are or are not speculating about.

And again, the climate crisis seems like a useful parallel to consider.

> "The current generation of work is not AI. [THEREFORE?] The risks it poses are minimal. You cannot hurt me with an LLM."

and again suggested by this remark:

> "we are no where close to artificial intelligence (current generation is content generation, no logic, no truth) and [THEREFORE?] it poses no risk."

You seems to be claiming that LLMs aren't dangerous because they aren't AI. Does the set of dangerous things belong to the set of AI? Pipe bombs and pit vipers aren't AI, so does that mean they aren't dangerous? They are, therefore the set of all dangerous things does not belong to the set of AI. Why then is "The current generation of work is not AI" thought to support the assertion that LLMs cannot be dangerous?

I think it could be reasonable for you to assert that LLMs have not yet been demonstrated to be dangerous enough to warrant regulation. But that's not what was asserted above; you asserted that LLMs cannot hurt people, and the supporting argument seems to be 'because they aren't real AI'. That is simply illogical. Whether or not LLMs are sci-fi tier AI is irrelevant; it has absolutely no bearing on whether or not LLMs are dangerous.

tl;dr: Rattlesnakes aren't AI, therefore rattlesnakes can't hurt me.

On the other hand, people who say that AI is an as-of-yet unobtained far-future technology are saying that AI is intrinsically very sophisticated and useful; so much so that nobody has succeeded in creating one yet. These people think that AI is intrinsically important. They think the term AI is so important that it must not be applied to systems with limited mundane usefulness.

https://www.thespruce.com/do-pine-needles-acidify-soil-14031...:

> When a myth dies hard, you can bet that it is either because people want to believe it (for example, when it makes their lives easier) or because there is a kernel of truth in it just big enough to make it convincing. The long-lived gardening myth that pine needles lower soil pH falls into the latter category. It is a twofold myth, erroneously claiming that pine needles should be used as a mulch only around acid-loving plants, and that they will acidify compost if added to a compost bin....

> Perhaps lending further credibility to the myth is that gardeners often observe that it is difficult to grow most plants under large pine trees. They attach an assumption to this observation: It must be that the pine needles shed by the tree cause the soil there to become acidic. However, this is a case of drawing an incorrect conclusion from the facts. The reasons most plants perform poorly when grown under large pine trees are that the trees cast too much shade, or the root system of the trees blankets the soil surface, forming a barrier and sucking up most of the available water and nutrients.

A better example would be Black Walnut:

https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/ilriverhort/2018-08-06-...:

> Black walnuts (Juglans nigra) are one of the best known allelopathic plants. Black walnut trees naturally contain a chemical called juglone which can inhibit the growth of some plants. Walnut buds, nut hulls, and roots contain the largest amount of juglone. However, even walnut leaves and stems contain a small concentration of juglone.

Your example is an instance of the fallacy of the inverse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent).

But that is not the type of reasoning I was doing. Following your example, you also cannot prove that spaghetti monsters do exist. Since neither side can offer definitive proof of their stance, the only way to settle the debate is to have less stringent requirements than proofs, such as, for example, circumstantial evidence.

Nobody has ever seen spaghetti monsters, therefore it seems unlikely that they exist. Not a definitive proof, but it does allow a certain degree of certainty. The point is to reach probabilistic conclusions in light of the available evidence, rather than seeking definitive proofs, which are impossible for most real-world questions.

> The burden of proof is on the AI fanfic crowd to prove that terminator and AGI is just around the corner.

No, this is an argument from ignorance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance). Each side of the debate is supposed to provide proof, evidence, or reasons for their perspective, otherwise they do not have much clout, besides prejudice.

Since there are plenty of examples of risks and harmful consequences of AI applications (see my other replies in this thread), it is quite reasonable to assume that new AI technologies pose new risks and that we should at least consider what those risks may be. Now the burden is yours to argue that no, despite all these past failures, we're still totally safe.