One more thought since Friday.
People working on AI believe it is a powerful tool. If you believe a tool— any tool— is powerful— you will think it can do a lot of good and do a lot of bad. People working at the company would be clustered as the graph depicts. The x axis is belief of the probability AI does good, the y is does bad.
Naturally, there will be someone like the blue dot— who thinks AI will do a lot of bad. That person will be more likely to quit. The media only wants to cover that person and call them a “whistleblower” — but remember this is a very different use of the word than we are used to.
Whistleblowers are people who report that an organization is currently committing a crime. AI whistleblowers are people who believe that AI may someday soon— might possibly— do something really bad. I think we should call that “a warning” “prophecy” or “prediction” and not “whistleblowing”.
What am I to think that you can find two dozen people who work in AI over the last3 years who say it will kill us all? I guess that isn’t surprising.
But, what does the average employee believe?
And, what is the empirical truth?
What would the truth be without the reinforcing media narrative?
In many ways, it doesn’t surprise me that news stories saying AI will kill us all, and a media hell bent on selective reporting, will merely lead to more such stories.
I found it funny to listen to the daily this AM, and hear the Anthropic whistleblower isn’t worried about his career because he can always get a job in AI regulation or complance work.
Hey! I thought you said it was about to kill us all! Why are you on the job market? Shouldn’t you be on a beach in the tropics?
Irrespective of any other argument, if Trump is for AI progress, the Left and the media will always be against it. Same would hold for preventing religious lunatics from possessing nuclear weapons, or a cure for cancer—if Trump supports it, it’s bad.
I spoke to a dear friend who works heavily in AI and we were discussing the fear mongering media that needs basic human emotion (fear, anger) in order to keep itself fed. The hope for “credible” media is just as addicting as any drug imo, and it needs more and more to be a fix. By the way, my friend and I agreed that this latest “scare” is just rinse and repeat. Al will have to wait its turn for the asteroid, rising global temperature, world war 3, the next Covid variant and the upcoming Mayan calendar doomsday to kill us first though.
Cybernetics at its finest.
I think we need to worry about humans with Al first. Al has already and will continue to be used by humans to kill humans (drones, for example / used by both “sides” of the gov). As usual, the media is using the threat of what could happen to distract from what is currently happening.