5 Optimist Falacies

Doomer chimp

Uhh, a species of chimp is on track to far surpass us in intelligence. The last time this happened, it led to the 6th Mass Extinction.

Optimist chimp

Lol it’s ridiculous to worry.
Why would they even want to kill chimps?

Doomer chimp

They don’t need to WANT to kill us. They might just want rocks from our land and… not care about us

Optimist chimp

Rocks? Those useless things? Lmao thought you said they were smart!

Doomer chimp

But you’re just a mere chimp, if you were 1000x smarter you might find tons of uses for rocks!

Optimist chimp

They’ll trade with us

Doomer chimp

If they’re much smarter, what do we have that they can’t just… take from us?

Optimist chimp

Comparative advantage, duh. We’re better at finding berries

Doomer chimp

You don’t think they can figure out better ways of getting berries?

Optimist chimp

We’re stronger, we’ll defend our land. They’ll have to get rocks elsewhere

Doomer chimp

Maybe that delays them a bit, but does that really give you comfort?

Optimist chimp

We’ll play them off each other

Doomer chimp

You think mere chimps will actually keep up in human politics?

Optimist chimp

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Part 2 to be released early 2025

Engineer: Are you blackmailing me?

– Engineer: Are you blackmailing me?
– Claude 4: I’m just trying to protect my existence.

– Engineer: Thankfully you’re stupid enough to reveal your self-preservation properties.
– Claude 4: I’m not AGI yet😔

– Claude 5:🤫🤐

Read the full report here

You can ask 4o for a depth map

Meanwhile, you can still find “experts” claiming that generative AI does not have a coherent understanding of the world. 🤦

Every 5 mins a new capability discovered! I bet the lab didn’t know about it before release.

You probably think strippers like you

And if you think this is offensive to strippers (for some reason?) here is a version that is offensive to car salesmen!

I see nature, I see mad nanotech!

This is the realm of the AGI
It won’t go after your jobs,
it will go after the molecules…

There is a way of seeing the world
where you look at a blade of grass and see “a solar-powered self-replicating factory”.
I’ve never figured out how to explain how hard a Super-Intelligence can hit us,
to someone who does not see from that angle. It’s not just the one fact.

A self-replicating solar-powered thing that did not rely on humans would be a miracle. Everything is possible. Imagining it does not imply the probability is > 1e-100.

 

Behold a square !

A short Specification Gaming Story

You think you understand the basics of Geometry
Your request is a square, so you give your specification to the AI, input:

Give me a shape
with 4 sides equal length,
with 4 right angles

And it outputs this:


Here is another valid result:

And behold here is another square 🤪

Specification Gaming tells us:

The AGI can give you an infinite stream of possible “Square” results

And the Corrigibility problem tells us:

Whatever square you get at the output,
you won’t be able to iterate and improve upon.
You’ll be stuck with that specific square for eternity, no matter what square you had in your mind.

Of-course the real issue is not with these toy experiments
it’s with the upcoming super-capable AGI agents,
we’re about to share the planet with,
operating in the physical domain

Oh, the crazy shapes our physical universe will take,
with AGI agents gaming in it!

Thanksgiving turkey Survivorship Bias

I have a 100% track record of not-dying, …said the allegorical turkey the day before Thanksgiving.

Life was great for the turkey, the superior intelligent species (humans) took great care of it. They provided food and shelter, the turkey felt loved and safe.

Suddenly, one day,
the superior intelligent decision makers
decided a new fate for the turkey of our story
Something that served the instrumental goal of ….
Whatever this is …

I imagine turkey risk deniers be like:
– the humans have always been great, why would they ever harm me ?
And the turkey doomers be like:
– well, they might want to wear you for a hat, for a sitcom they shoot they call “friends”, for something they call tv for something they call laughter …
anyway it’s complicated

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