I’m not an AI techie and I’m not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I’m having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I’ve heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can’t really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?
AI industry makes money from doomsday prophecy about it being so intelligent that it will create a point of no return: the [singularity]. It is a magaian claim, a claim that is so increadibly stupid that one does not know where to even begin; and if you do begin, you’ve already lost, because you have given attention to the claim. Lets not give these stupid fucks attention.
AI is not dangerous because of the [singularity]. It is dangerous because of its power consumption, automation of war, turning everybody to unthinking, surveillance automation, burning books, the economic instability it will cause due to the bubble bursting, water consumption, destroying the internet, it gaining responsibilities it is not qualified to take and so on.
But we can see how the story of the [singularity] and similar stories helps AI companies, because now, instead of criticizing real unwellnesses, we criticize a fictional unwellness that generates discussion regardless of our positions. It is a conversational black hole.
lets get back to the real world
Also, there’s the whole harry potter fanfic sex ai doomsday cult thing
Everytime I see an article about the dangers of AI, I’m thinking of some version of this comic every single time.
And the reason it is dangerous is generally because someone is convinced that Ai models are not as shown above.
i think ai is a problem because its stupid and trusted with everything
Yes.
AI isn’t a danger to humanity, per se. Humans abandoning their duties of being responsible stewards of systems is a genuine source of danger though.
We already have algorithmic abuse where people are subjugated by welfare and debt systems with little oversight or flexibility. Some organisations even breaking the law and going against their stated missions to achieve goals and maintain order.
Social murder is the concept that society can kill a person through stress, pressure, abandonment and indifference to the individuals struggles and needs. We’re seeing a lot of it today with the declining health of younger people being especially alarming.
AI can scale the two things I’ve mentioned beyond limits set by current bureaucratic systems, I.e. the slowness of people running a system. Systems which already kill and harm people without AI. The small erroneous tendencies of logic and algorithms in systems will be scaled up, further and faster. AI can enable algorithmic abuse and social murder on scales comparable to mass murder.
How will “AI kill us all”? I can see it creating harm and getting people out of jobs. But kill us??
How will “AI kill us all”? I can see it creating harm and getting people out of jobs. But kill us??
There are currently 120 dead Iranian schoolgirls as a result of AI targetting and it using 10 year old out of data data.
The IDF have been using AI for target selection in the Gaza war.
There’s been a story this week where AI was used by the US military in analysis of a Chinese cargo ship and concluded it was carrying nuclear weaponry components to Iran. The US military were planning on boarding the vessel which would be considered an act of war. Only a last minute analysis of the intelligence revealed it was false.
I’m also looking for that answer
Ignore word “AI” and worry about advanced autonomous computer tools with massive computing resources working towards a goal, with most of those resources controlled by power maximizing government and bond villain oligarchs, setting the goals. A shared goal among the 2 is neutralizing any popular opposition to AI, and massive wealth/power concentration from AI profits. Even without the pursuit of evil as a goal for AI, establishment/oligarchy will refuse to redistribute power through UBI/freedom dividends, and genociding the uppity classes is far preferred for them.
Mass murder as a result of of AI/tools is a fairly likely result of intentional evil goals that compute can assist with, and a total certainty as the indirect political preference of establishment power in response to a uselesss slave class.
its not like the movies
Developing new viruses and deadly diseases that spread too fast to be cured. By enabling low cost sensors to resolve messy data for low cost high precision weapons. By eroding the skillset of humanity so that we just fail in a few generations. By accelerating how we were already killing ourselves.
I was in machine learning for a bit, up until venture capitalists eviscerated research teams chasing ways to make money from it. While there’s definitely a degree of overhyping risks for investment, there are absolutely some real, tangible risks. But the dangers aren’t like skynet/terminator, its more of a slow decline in knowledge combined with an increase of predictive surveillance (https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10739 as an example of why predictive surveillance should worry everyone)
Every mistake and error in token generation is getting confounded with human text, and being fed back as part of the training loop. Combined with the sheer amount of botting of the modern internet, you get a feedback loop of error being used to train, followed by output of that error dominating the next training cycle as bots drown out voices of the knowledgable. For some basic things it’s easy to see the error, but in any expert domain the ratio of bots to experts is large enough that expert knowledge won’t stay within the training distribution.
If someone stands to benefit financially from the idea their AI is so powerful that is scary, they’re probably going to bullshit about how powerful it is
Which in turn has a prophetic effect of them getting more money, AI using more resources, and pushing everything worse.
The more shit that leaks out of anthropic the clearer it is that place has become a cult
So apparently we’re using up all our resources in order to create something that might kill us all.
Sounds like a fantastic idea.
I’m going to go cry now.
It’s what we do best after all
It’s good to see Doomsday Cults back in vogue. Too bad Robert Anton Wilson is not around.
Were definitely in the worse timeline of dominant reactions to this story.
First, you are completely right to mistrust the bond villains and politicians for all prescription/solutions to this problem.
The experts and their bond villain bosses warning of a danger is something you should believe is a danger. Those telling to invest $Ts because there is no danger are the bigger liars. Still, the bond villains continue training full speed, and have $Bs in budgets to do harm with models 1 year ahead of public releases, and their “freedom loving angel government” will pay them $Ts to help oppress Americans, and kill/oppress rest of world.
It is outright suicidal to dismiss the power of these tools by comparing it to an AGI stawman status, and suicidal to think any publicly discussed solutions have any tangential relationship to diminishing the real dangers. Guardrails/killswitches on public released models is security theater relative to the real threats to us all.
Making the world a better place to live by making your nation a better place to live, that creates an arm race of prosperity and better governance is the only path to saving humanity, because LLMs/AI/automation are out of the bag and will continue their improvement. Governments that pursue geopolitical supremacy by throwing all of your money at them is them purposefully harming you. https://naturalfinance.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-global-prosperity-manifesto.html
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Who let in the crazy?
The people claiming it’s humanity ending are all directly involved in the AI companies. One take is that they are the ones that know the most about it.
My take is they are financially incentivized in making sure their investments grow in value.
A third take is that they are unhinged cult members who are high on their own supply. Although I expect it’s a mix of both types (maybe within the same people).
That or this is an elaborate form of advertisement. “Oh wooow guys our product is soo powerful it’s dangerous!”
Cory Doctorow also thinks that it is a coalition of true believers high on their own supply, and cynical grifters collaborating with them. https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/17/porque-no-los-dos/#fascist-incoherence
I figured out recently that Thor Ragnarok is a perfect analogy for what is happening, and this is also why I think everyone’s pdoom should be very little, because they just evolve into new asgard
I was thinking about it in terms of a Vikings analogy.
It could be like Ivar the Boneless, or Bjorn Ironside.
But I guess either ways, you end up fucked.
The biggest risk I see is Idiocracy. Like, the movie.
Business workers become afraid to do or propose anything without AI signoff. Retail & service workers are told to do what the AI says, the way the AI says to do it, or get fired.
Technology innovator Marshall Brain (RIP) wrote a book in the early 2000s about an AI called “Manna” designed to replace fast food managers:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201204080050/https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The AI just talks in your ear all day: “Empty one bag of fries into the fryer. You have 6.5 minutes, switch to the sandwich station. Make one Big Burger: grab one patty from the 1/4 pound bin and place it on the griddle… … The fries are ready, turn around and lift them into the drain hopper…”
All day, every day, exactly 8 hours plus mandatory breaks, employees on autopilot listening on ear buds.
All day, every day, exactly 8 hours plus mandatory breaks, employees on autopilot listening on ear buds.
Living under a bridge in a box sounds like a better life.
Read the story. That’s essentially what happens, as the economy contracts and only the fittest and quickest can survive doing labor, everybody else gets moved into basic income slums.
It’s not a long read, and Brain’s foresight around what happens to displaced workers is proving to be incredibly accurate.
Yeah, they took care of that too in the book.
Living under a bridge in a box sounds like a better life.
It’s the Gypsy lifestyle of the new world. Gypsies prefer their life to the alternatives.
I believe you mean Romani. Your choice of word is a slur
Apologies. In Westpondia nobody knows what Romani means…
Ahhh one of my favorites. The Iron Cage of Bureaucracy
I saw a funny video of an example. But I cannot remember the name for it. I tried searching for it once but failed. The conficlt was about some dude that exploded.
How topical, I wager I could use AI to find the video. 😏
You may be thinking of the first episode of the US version of Max Headroom?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
“The only people that inactive are pensioners, the sick, or the unemployed. I mean, come on. Who really cares?”
No that wasnt it.
The video took place in an office. 2 people were in the office. I feel like the main person looked like or was Zack Gilifanakis.
Every minute the clock would announce the new time. He ended up talk to the other lady in the room about how some person on the floor above exploded or blew up or something?
I was a short skit. Only a few minutes long.
This is a boss’s wet dream. However a kitchen is the type of chaotic real world situation that AIs are unlikely to ever do well.
Fast food restaurants don’t really have kitchens any more, though. Just “stations” where frozen components are toasted or broiled, then shifted right into a wrapper.
It was more of managing all tasks at a McDonald’s. Where the kitchen part has been engineered to almost run itself anyway.
The manna was there to make sure the employees were constantly cleaning the bathrooms, managing restocking, emptying the trash as needed. All ahead of it being a problem.
It’s a good read, though it’s been a very long time since I read it. I wish I could buy my son stock in Australia (or probably Norway or Switzerland or something in reality).
I knew a guy in high school that told girls they shouldn’t date him because his dick was so big it would hurt them. You can wax philosophical on his motives if you’d like, but spoiler alert - his dick wasn’t big.
That’s exactly what I think is happening. Remember a few months ago anthropic saying mythos is too dangerous to release until the government as the idiots they are starting believing them and banned them from exporting it, therefore losing them money. Very quickly they came up with fable (ironic name isn’t it) a week or two later saying it’s got the proper safeguards now. Now they’re all trying this marketing strategy asking the gov to regulate them, seemingly because they’re dangerous and not because they’re getting diminishing returns and feel threatened by the chinese competition
Did it work?
What’s funny about this comment is that I have you tagged as “doesn’t like mini game boys” because of a post you made some time ago (referencing those portable retro gaming handhelds that have become so popular lately).
“He told everyone his shlong was huge.” “Did it work?” “Naw, his schlong was actually small.” “Damn, I hate mini-game boys.”
Strong doubt.
High school girls don’t want that. They don’t want big dicks, or to talk to guys who brag about their dicks, or show their dicks, or send pictures of their dicks. Gooner graduated a virgin.
I’m going to take a guess that it prob worked once, then word got around he was exaggerating.
Once is a win…
I mean there are people eating up this Anthropic crap.
Your username with that conclusion paints a very funny picture.
Same thought. Pretty clear indication of how they knew it was a lie. :D
That is… Certainly a strategy of all time
Ed Zitron’s podcast “Better Offline” recently talked about this. There is a small tech community called the Rationalists who believe AI super intelligence is inevitable and it will either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species. These rationalists are actually a very prominent faction within tech and the AI industry. Apparently the language used within top AI firms is largely about the immense danger posed by AI super intelligence if any other group or company were to achieve it first. This creates an echo chamber that makes the people in the industry kind of lose their mind and misinterpret the capability of LLMs.
Everyone outside that faction recognizes that LLMs are just unreliable cloud software with limited use cases and that there’s no evidence LLMs could actually lead to any kind of intelligence.
Edit: Please, someone stop me from commenting on an AI post next time I’m tempted. I’m so tired of people replying, arguing with opinions I don’t have, based entirely around a hypothetical technology that doesn’t exist yet. LLMs make slop. Thats it. They hacked a company after weeks of 100s of instances being run, using old exploits published online. San Francisco will be underwater from climate change before LLMs can do anything more.
My Problem is: Even if your take on AI is true, we give an unreliable piece of software access to the internet and more and more systems and infrastructure. Even if it is not a malicious AI, it can be so unreliable, it might kill us by incompetence. a Sme can be said about some presidents…
It won’t kill us as a species, but its use may lead to disasters that were unintended and didn’t need to happen. Much of the regulation in other industries is due to that kind of thing happening. Worse, the companies making them are trying to get regulation to curtail other parties development for economic advantage rather than regulation on use which will steer the entire industry.
disasters that were unintended and didn’t need to happen.
As you say, every “scientifically based” industrial innovation / breakthrough has had the potential to cause new kinds of mayhem, and most of them did to some degree or another. Burning rivers and CO2 overload in the atmosphere spring to mind, but industrial “accidents” are part and parcel of industrial activity, always have been.
LLMs are not intelligent. They lack morals, knowledge, and intent. The only remote risk of extermination is if a company with absolute impunity and endless resources told an LLM to hack the nuclear weapons and if knowledge of how to do that was already published online and processed as training data.
LLMs cannot do anything new, they can only regurgitate information thats already been stolen.
The only remote risk of extermination is if a company with absolute impunity and endless resources told an LLM to hack the nuclear weapons
Absolutely a huge risk.
and if knowledge of how to do that was already published online and processed as training data.
extremely naive to not understand existing capabilities of 100s of probings and planning based on probings, and multiple strategies, in a swarm working towards a goal.
Still to your first point, the organizations with the budget and impunity, seeking the most powerful tools, are then the ones who will use them for evil, at expense of others, power maximization.
You’re confusing morals, knowledge, intent, and intelligence with capability. An atomic bomb has no will of its own either.
idk, every atom bomb I’ve met has one purpose…
An atom bomb has no will of its own either.
That is simply counter-factual. LLMs can absolutely do things that have not been published before, and they can access knowledge that is not in their training data through RAG. Intelligence is debatable, but reasoning models can reliably imitate “thinking” to a degree, and recursive self-improvement might lead to an autonomous advancement of intelligence. That LLMs allegedly “only regurgitate information” is simply wrong.
Or if the military put an LLM in charge of nuclear weapons. But surely nobody would be stupid enough to do that!
"And that’s why today I’m signing into law the Trump Nuclear Act. Some say it’s the greatest law of all time. Very smart people, even smarter AI. Elon tells me this will save billions, and I’m going to increase my dividend, let’s call it the ‘Nucular Peace Dividend’ to honor Bush, I don’t remember which one used to say ‘Nucular’, but I always liked that guy, and it made me think up how to say Chayyyyna.
CNN get out!"
can be so unreliable, it might kill us by incompetence.
Same can be said of Homer Simpson manning the console at a nuclear power plant.
AI is a tool, irresponsible use of a tool is… irresponsible. Just like people puttting “not-self-driving” cars into “supervised driving assistance mode” and taking a nap at the wheel at 80mph.
Aren’t they called TESCREALists or something? It’s like a mish-mash of pop culture and pseudo intellectual BS
@FRYD @Return_of_Chippy i love that the logic and reason guys’ next evolution is even less tethered to either
either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species
Arguably those are two ways of describing the same event.
@FRYD @Return_of_Chippy there are also some exelent behind the bastarda aboit them too
any kind of intelligence
A photocell that turns on a streetlamp after sundown, or when a dark cloud passes over the sun, is a kind of intelligence.
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Got it. So plants are intelligent.
You’re starting to catch on…
