• kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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    7 hours ago

    This is nice and everything, but this whole thing is just a huge marketing push by AI companies. AI is not going to kill us. At least not directly (see point 2).

    1. You need prohibitively expensive equipment to host AI. That equipment needs to be plugged in. If it were truly dangerous, you just need to unplug it.

    2. You need a lot of water to cool the equipment that can run a supposed super intelligence. If we pass regulations about how much of our environment these data centers can destroy, that would curb the abilities of this superintelligence.

    3. AI is fucking dumb. AI is a misnomer since it doesn’t actually have any intelligence. It is derivative and cannot perform any necessary tasks that actually drive intelligence. For example, it will be able to tell you every established law in any field of science because it has that information in its corpus, but it will never be able to establish a new law. Or discover anything new in any field.

    This whole thing is a push to get people to believe that AI is more capable than it really is so that these companies can draw more money from investors so that 'they’d be able to implement proper safeguards."

    • qqq@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      This is pretty naive. Distributing computing has existed since forever. It would run significantly more slowly, but there is nothing theoretically stopping the “LLM broke out of containment and moved itself elsewhere” boogie man from becoming a reality. The available exploitable compute from unsecured IoT devices is pretty substantial as things like the Mirai botnet have shown. While this isn’t the most easily distributed problem, there is no fundamental issue here. [Edit: it also wouldn’t need to “exfiltrate itself” to cause persistent harm. Could easily just install malware on infected hosts]

      AI isn’t “dumb” in a practical real world sense. LLMs have shown themselves capable of exploitation on the open Internet and of finding zero day vulnerabilities. Do you have any idea how much of our critical infrastructure can be reachable by some sort of network? LLMs have shown themselves capable of manipulating people via speech. None of this requires some sort of “super intelligence” and it doesn’t even require some sort of provable intelligence: it’s all quite possible as things currently stand right now.

      These may not be “the entire future is over” level issues, but there is significant risk here and it shouldn’t be ignored just because we think AI companies are horrible. Is an LLM going to make us all batteries or paper clips? No, but it could cause significant physical and/or economic harm temporarily.

      • richmondez@lemdro.id
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        48 minutes ago

        Except LLMs haven’t show themselves capable of that at all, they have no agency, they just generate output based on their input Ina somewhat chaotic manner.

        Tools have been built that basically chain LLM output into input and given some starting directions get the LLM to generate commands that can be ran on the local machine including commands to run commands on other machines. Because various conversations on exploits and hacking and sample code are in its training corpus it will generate commands to do these things. Not because the LLM or the agent program is smart in anyway but I fact because it’s dumb as bricks and has no concept of what it’s doing or the consequences might be.

        Ultimately a human has used it as a tool to achieve the hacking. It’s might not be the intended achievement but that is on the human running a process with chaotic output with sufficient privileges with no oversight.

      • chunes@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        you have a point about closed loop systems when it comes to consumer models. But a superintelligence quickly runs into the limits of physics and cooling becomes the bottleneck.

        Point 3, yeah, lemmy people are just ostriches with their heads stuck in the sand.

        • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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          5 hours ago

          Superintelligence may be more about pushing efficiency rather than what you’re saying, i’m sure they can rapidly iterate on making more efficient models.

      • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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        6 hours ago

        Data centers use evaporative cooling, not closed loop. You can’t really scale up in a closed loop system. Evaporative utilizes a ton of water.

        As for point 3, supercomputers have been assisting with scientific problems for decades now. This isn’t new, just new tech applied. Your article is actually the best way to use AI, imo. It will be better at finding patterns in data than humans will ever be.

        But my point is to say would it have been able to discover that those math problems existed in the first place?

        No. The answer is no.

        • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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          5 hours ago

          Yes you can obviously use a closed loop system and scale up? it’s even becoming the standard? https://datacentremagazine.com/news/how-closed-loop-cooling-is-reshaping-data-centre-design

          That is a massive goalpost shift. You went from can’t do anything useful to couldn’t have discovered the problems in one step?

          Why does it even matter if it can’t discover the problems if it can solve them, exactly? And why could it solve the problems and not discover new ones?

          • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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            5 hours ago

            Closed loop isn’t viable for data centers.

            Do me a favor and quote my original text where I said they can’t do anything useful. I’ll wait.

            • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 hours ago

              Closed loop isn’t cheaper for data centers.

              Ftfy. If it’s a penny more, which it is, corporations will do the less responsible “beholden to the shareholders” bullshit every time.

            • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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              5 hours ago

              It is derivative and cannot perform any necessary tasks that actually drive intelligence

              done.

              also, the closed loop point is just false read my article?

              • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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                4 hours ago

                How do you get “it isn’t useful” out of that? If you have to extract a wild interpretation out of what (I thought) were pretty clear words, your argument isn’t as strong as you think it is.

                And yes, I read the article. Aside from one data center in Europe, none of the existing data centers in America use closed loop, and there’s no incentive for them to spend the money to overhaul their systems.

    • IEatDaFeesh@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Accepting that you are right on all 3 points, the supercharged push of AI is destroying the country (and the world) by itself. Prices are sky high, AI is being prioritized with regards to water rather than actual humans, and the results are plateauing relative to the resources expended. We won’t get an obvious negative outcome, it’s more insidious and systemic which is just as dangerous as Skynet if left unaddressed. So AI is probably not going to kill us in the Terminator Skynet sense, it WILL kill us through economic and water related means.

      Having said that, I think Bernie is doing the superintelligence argument (even though it’s probably not the immediate threat) because the people are retarded. The thing that can bring us together are pieces of art like Terminator and so using that as a reference makes it relatable to all the retards rather than giving them a nuanced explanation.

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        100%. This is Bernie using their own words against them. They keep saying it’s super dangerous guys, incredibly powerful… And Bernie is turning around and using that narrative to help slow the AI bubble.

        Sounds good to me.

        Anyone who thinks Bernie ‘fell for it’ is missing the point.

      • Furbag@pawb.social
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        6 hours ago

        This is my feelings exactly. I don’t believe in the doomsday sky net horseshit that the AI companies/whistleblowers are peddling, but taking a strong stance against AI right now is incredibly based. Use the flimsy arguments of AI tech bros to hold them to account.