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I know it's just generally part of being an anonymous online asshole who doesn't care about what's true or having values, only dunking on someone using some easily accessible thought terminating cliche, but surely there's a specific term for this.
It's not even a great Ad Hominim because folks like John Nash who did have mental illness were really gifted in other areas.
I was about to post a study that even showed that mental illness is linked with mental disorders, but looks like this recent study is pushing back on that idea.
Huh? Is there a typo in there, or are disorders and illnesses different in some big way?
Mental illness, I thought, was correlated with higher intelligence.
Especially depression, though there is also the legend of the mad genius.
When I looked up studies to reference this it looks like the landscape here has changed.
But the more of them I’ve met, the more I’ve found they tend to be everything-else truthers as well: moon landing, vaccines, etc., and I tend to disregard their arguments outright. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it’s borne out of years of similar interactions, and it’s saved me a lot of time and effort.
Lately I’ve started acting similarly with doomers, almost inadvertently. If you think that e.g. climate change will make humanity go extinct in the next few decades, it’s likely you feel similarly about A.I., COVID, etc. I’m starting to shut out such claims immediately, or at least engage with them less.
There seem to be certain personality types who gravitate towards certain types of beliefs. I’m not qualified to speculate as to why they do, but sometimes simply ignoring them can be… sensible.
Can't climate change be a big deal without being an extinction risk? Covid was deadly, but mostly to certain demographics. AI is dangerous in the way that the Manhattan Project was dangerous, but maybe that's not sufficient reason to stop pursuing it. Etc.
But I think people are so overwhelmed by this hyperconnected and ubersensationalized world, flooded with ethical conundrums daily, that they only have the bandwidth for snap judgments. Into this bucket or the other you go, thought, no time or energy for a closer examination!
I can give the general public a pass because maybe they don't know the tech and are going off media hype. But for someone to know what this is and be afraid of it does look silly doesn't it?
On a side note, it's troubling how many hyper intelligent and successful people in tech are happy to denigrate the opposition in bad faith.
Obviously the current version of ChatGPT and LLMs of today are not world threatening. The problem is we are blindly pushing forward and __we don't know__ what to expect. You say you think we are very far away from a point where alignment becomes an issue, yet _no one_ predicted AI would've come this far so quickly a couple years ago.
Natural selection is an algorithm that produced humans, which do all sorts of weird things that seem contrary and irrelevant to the goal of that algorithm (use birth control, build space ships)
With AI, instead of natural selection, we have gradient descent (a more sophisticated algorithm; it takes into account the derivative) and we are blindly throwing more resources into this algorithm hoping it will turn out ok.
Normally in science we can screw up and try again. But with AI it's different. If you create a super-intelligent AGI not aligned with humanity you are playing Russian roulette with life on Earth with 5/6 chambers loaded.
Yudkowsky's primary concern is literally just "can we build AI with some degree of certainty we won't destroy all of humanity?" which seems laughable, but genuinely, I haven't heard one person go up against him that clearly didn't expose themself as less thoughtful and intelligent about the matter _by far_ than Yudkowsky. I wish I heard an argument against him that was convincing.
Besides that concern, of course we have the more tangible, perhaps more probable concern of "bad actors exist in the world, what happens when we democratize (or simply create) the most powerful tool ever created?"
What happens when governments, corporations, and individuals can use LLMs to turn every communication channel (Hacker News, TV, Twitter, etcetera) into 99% AI noise with superhuman-quality propaganda, misinformation and advertising for their own self-interest? I'm sure there's a million other ways AI could be used by a self-interested minority to the detriment of humanity.
Aight. Lets leave it as it is. The disconnect from reality is real and concerning.
I’m sorry what? The internet has been clear text for the most part.
If cryptography were never invented, we would use the internet like we used analog telephones (i.e., under the assumption our communication could be easily intercepted) and not pass privileged information over it. Otherwise, I imagine it would be a non-issue.
Given changing laws on cryptography (i.e., state-required backdoors & etc.), we may be back in that mindset before too long.
"Otherwise, I imagine it would be a non-issue." Don't understand how you can say that though.
"A mind is like a parachute; it doesn't work if it is not open." Some people can hear this and understand what Frank Zappa means. Others (perhaps like yourself) will sit there and whine "bUt wHaT aBoUt tHiS cAsE wHeRe iT sHoulDn't be oPeN!!"
Do I need to list out cases where that has already happen?
All this sounds like a copy cat of 90’s scares about computer virii and ai (yes, this not the first ai is “taking over the world”). Amusing people used to come out on tv to tell us how virii will take over nuclear plants and ai will make those virii.