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Comment by figassis | Hacker News Reader

"He attributes the incidents to poor human oversight and system design, and says they’re “totally preventable" - I know people respect him, but this sounds like someone paid to say this. Aren't most extinction risks preventable with better human oversight and system design? I mean we can have an asteroid hit us, but outside of this, isn't the point of talking about a problem that we can prevent it, and failing to leads to that? What is he saying that I'm missing?

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He just says that the danger is not intrinsic to the technology but it remains on human error.

> extinction risks

If you fear that, blame it on the humans.

Every danger related to technology is about the use of that technology,aka Humans. Technology is mostly inert. Again, what is he saying? Is he saying that because humans fallible, not the tech, then there is no danger? He wakes up at 6am, and by 10am this is what he thinks is worth saying?

Agree with your take tbh. “Nuclear bombs do not pose an existential risk because the problem is human oversight”… Just sounds like a retreat to human oversight.

Of course there is the obvious point that even rocks are dangerous in the wrong hands, but the note is against the running sketchy idea that the risk would be inherent, instead of derived. People who are afraid of technologies but not of the state of humanity are inconsistent to the supposed awareness of said obvious...

A bernie sanders has seemingly proposed 20 years of jail to anyone who tries to implement Intelligence. You know - that Value of which there is scarcity and dire need.

We have to go on.

Even a stopped clock is right two times a day, LeCun can't even do that.

>the danger is not intrinsic to the technology

This is why you can't take anything he says any longer at face value. He failed to predict what LLMs can do and now takes the contrary position even when it flies in the face of evidence.

AI safety was a thing before AI even existed. Why, because the outcomes are easily predictable. Give an agent intelligence and bad things can happen in unpredictable manners. Give it even more intelligence and the bad things that can happen only grow worse. This is not some huge new insight. We realized this like, what 70 years ago now?

Now, when we have AI starting to tickle AGI and we're trying to overthrow 70 god damned years of reason and logic on the topic? What the hell.

> Give an agent intelligence and bad things can happen in unpredictable manners

You must mean the opposite, or something quite different from what you wrote.

Give something intelligence and you will have made a remarkable miracle and you will be thanked forever as the Great Benefactor.

Eh, no. I meant exactly what I said.

In our concepts "giving intelligence" and "creating a liability" are directly opposite. You must be attaching an odd idea to 'intelligence'.

Intelligent can be and is a liability.

Why do you think dictators get rid of anyone too smart around them?

Intelligence doesn't mean following what you want. Intelligence means having higher degrees of freedom.

Have you noticed that you put yourself in the rags and shoes of the dictator, of the yes-men-seeker etc. with your perspective?

Normal people say "Oh, finally, somebody intelligent" when the miracle of apparent intelligence happens.

What about an antidote: "Warren, you will agree with me, because you are intelligent and I am right" (Charlie Munger)?

You should be aware there's a larger context here, with people (including at anthropic/openAI) anthropomorphizing AI systems, implying they act on their own, completely independent of human interaction or oversight.

Those are 2 different conversations, of the same topic. One group saying one untruth thing does not make another untruth true.

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