Aren’t semiautonomous drones already killing soldiers in Ukraine? Can you not imagine a future with more conflict and automated killing? Maybe that’s not seen as AI risk per se?
That's not "AI risk" because they're still tools that lack independent volition. Somebody's building them and setting them loose. They're not building themselves and setting themselves loose, and it's far from clear how to get there from here.
Dumb bombs kill people just as easily. One 80-year old nuke is, at least potentially, more effective than the entirety of the world's drones.
The analogy is with stock market flash-crashes, but those can be undone if everyone agrees "it was just a bug".
Software operates faster than human reaction times, so there's always pressure to fully automate aspects of military equipment, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
Unfortunately, a flash-war from a bad algorithm, from a hallucination, from failing to specify that the moon isn't expected to respond to IFF pings even when it comes up over the horizon from exactly the direction you've been worried about finding a Soviet bomber wing… those are harder to undo.
"AI Safety" in that particular context is easy: Keep humans in the loop and don't give AIs access to sensitive systems. With certain small antipersonnel drones excepted, this is already the policy of all serious militaries.
Besides, that's simply not what the LW crowd is talking about. They're talking about, e.g., hypercompetent AIs developing novel undetectable biological weapons that kill all humans on purpose. (This is the "AI 2027" scenario.)
Yet, as far as I'm aware, there's not a single important discovery or invention made by AI. No new drugs, no new solar panel materials, no new polymers, etc. And not for want of trying!
They know what humans know. They're no more competent than any human; they're as competent as low-level expert humans, just with superhuman speed and memory. It's not clear that they'll ever be able to move beyond what humans know and develop hypercompetence.
> With certain small antipersonnel drones excepted
And mines, and the CIWS I linked to and several like it (I think SeaRAM is similar autonomy to engage), and the Samsung SGR-A1 whose autonomy led to people arguing that we really ought to keep humans in the loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_autonomous_weapon
The problem is, the more your adversaries automate, the more you need to automate to keep up. Right now we can even have the argument about the SGR-A1 because it's likely to target humans who operate at human speeds and therefore a human in the loop isn't a major risk to operational success. Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar systems already need to be autonomous because human eyes can't realistically track a mortar in mid-flight.
There were a few times in the cold war where it was luck that the lack of technology that forced us to rely on humans in the loop, humans who said "no".
People are protesting against fully autonomous weapons because they're obviously useful enough to be militarily interesting, not just because they're obviously threatening.
> Besides, that's simply not what the LW crowd is talking about.
LW talks about every possible risk. I got the flash-war idea from them.
> Yet, as far as I'm aware, there's not a single important discovery or invention made by AI. No new drugs, no new solar panel materials, no new polymers, etc. And not for want of trying!
For about a decade after Word Lens showed the world that it was possible to run real time augmented reality translations on a smartphone, I've been surprising people — even fellow expat software developers — that this exists and is possible.
Today, I guess I have to surprise you with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Given my experience with Word Lens, I fully expect to keep on surprising people with this for another decade.
> They know what humans know. They're no more competent than any human; they're as competent as low-level expert humans, just with superhuman speed and memory. It's not clear that they'll ever be able to move beyond what humans know and develop hypercompetence.
The LessWrong-style AI risk is "AI becomes so superhuman that it is indistinguishable from God and decides to destroy all humans and we are completely powerless against its quasi-divine capabilities."
With the side-note that, historically, humans have found themselves unable to distinguish a lot of things from God, e.g. thunderclouds — and, more recently, toast.
Swing voters are always underestimated. But can the left run moderate candidates that appeal to the Bill Ackman types? I wish they could but I suspect they can’t and won’t. Their recent track record is how we’re here.
I don't know. I hold out hope that the Democrats are capable of thinking and learning, but their actions after the 2024 election haven't given much evidence of that...
> But can the left run moderate candidates that appeal to the Bill Ackman types?
What type is that, billionaire hedge fund managers voting in a solid blue state? Who cares? The voters who matter are in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.
In general, swing voters are nonpartisan, not "moderate". Trump is certainly not moderate, yet they voted for him anyway. Indeed, polls show that independents prefer Bernie Sanders over any Democrat.
Partisans want to define all politics on ideological lines, but that's not the way nonpartisans think and behave.
The billionaires probably backed Trump because they loved the tax cuts of his first administration and were expecting basically more of the same. Tax cuts and deregulation, the standard agenda of that type. (A Biden and/or Harris administration was likely to result in higher taxes for them and more regulation.) They failed to anticipate what Trump would be like unrestrained, emboldened by a popular vote win, unburdened by reelection concerns, surviving impeachment and felony conviction, surviving an assassination attempt, and having purged all dissenters from his party and now from the federal government. Trump is probably feeling like king of the world at this moment, as if every other country will bow down to him (and many will).
Perhaps safer there than being put into American prisons. American prisons are run by the inmates. Inmate rape, gang related violence and murder are normalized and tolerated by the states and corporations that operate the prison system. Salvadoran prisons seem tightly controlled and well staffed. Perhaps they have economies of scale though?
What to know about CECOT, El Salvador's mega-prison for [alleged] gang members
CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.
The prison's dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards.
[ the human rights organization ] Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador's prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited cases of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.
.. the government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.
i can only conclude that you're either from US, Canada or Western Europe and somehow don't know, even in this age of global information, what a prison outside of the Western world is. And if you add that in case like El Salvador they intentionally make it "tough". There is a reason another "tough" guy - Duterte - has recently been delivered to ICC for the crimes against humanity. Because that is what "tough" means in those places.
