Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by girlfreddy@sh.itjust.works to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Artificial intelligence is already advancing at a worrying pace. What if we don’t slam on the brakes? Experts explain what keeps them up at night

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[-] orclev@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And monkeys could fly out of my ass. Before we start hand wringing about AI someone would probably need to actually invent one. We're probably closer to actual room temperature fusion at this point than we are an actual general purpose AI.

Instead of wasting time worrying about a thing that doesn't even exist and probably won't in any of our lifetimes, we should probably do something about the things actually killing us like global warming and unchecked corporate greed.

[-] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 year ago

Exactly. There was an article floating around just a couple of days ago that from what I recall was saying that billionaires were funding these AI-scare studies in top universities, I presume to distract the public from the very real and near scare of climate disaster, economic inequality, etc. Here, unfortunately paywalled: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/05/ai-apocalypse-college-students/

[-] Vittelius@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is this concept called "crityhype". It's a type of marketing mascarading as criticism. "Careful, AI might become too powerful" is exactly that

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

A lot of the folks worried about AI x-risk are also worried about climate, and pandemics, and lots of other things too. It's not like there's only one threat.

[-] Dreyns@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It's all about risks, if you worry about being runover ok it's reasonable, but if you worry about shark attacks when you live in the forest it is ludicrous and a waste of time.

[-] roq@noc.social 0 points 1 year ago

@fubo @xapr I don’t doubt that, but that begs the question whether the unrealistic concerns raised for by those folks outweigh the realistic ones that need more actual and funding. For example, how much money are the billionaires and top elites putting in to solve climate change, past/future pandemics compared to studying AI-driven doom? I don’t know the answer, and I welcome you to find out.

[-] xapr@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Right, the attention being paid to AI risk just seems vastly disproportionate compared to other much more serious imminent threats.

[-] roq@noc.social 1 points 1 year ago

@xapr @orclev here’s an archive link for the article for those who want it https://archive.is/K1TUL

[-] mrnotoriousman@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

I absolutely hate this craze. Most of the questions I get about AI are just facepalming because everyone is feeding off each other with these absurd things that could hypothetically happen. Clearly because actually explaining it doesn't generate clicks and controversy