AI risk ≠ AGI risk
We recorded 8 claims from this post. 2 were checked against evidence. 6 can’t be checked. 7 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (8)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“theirs (from what I can tell) seem to center mainly around what happens if computers rapidly and radically self-improve themselves, which I don’t see as an immediate possibility.”
Our reading: Marcus does not see computers rapidly and radically improving themselves as an immediate possibility.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This does not establish whether Marcus's technical expectation was reasonable.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“A company called Adept.AI just raised $350 million dollars to do just that, to allow large language models to access, well, pretty much everything (aiming to “supercharge your capabilities on any software tool or API in the world” with LLMs, despite their clear tendencies towards hallucination and unreliability).”
Our reading: Adept.AI just raised $350 million to let large language models access pretty much everything, despite LLMs' clear tendencies toward hallucination and unreliability.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Adept's main domain blocked the page reader; the quotations come from readable reproductions on adept.futurefabric.co.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Causal claim
“But here’s the thing: although a lot of the literature equates artificial intelligence risk with the risk of superintelligence or artificial general intelligence, you don’t have to be superintelligent to create serious problems.”
Our reading: AI does not need to be superintelligent to create serious problems.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This incident establishes that serious harm is possible, not how frequently it occurs [e1].
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda, LLM-enhanced terrorism could in turn lead to nuclear war, or to the deliberate spread of pathogens worse than covid-19, etc. Many, many people could die; civilization could be utterly disrupted.”
Our reading: LLM-enhanced terrorism, perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda, could lead to nuclear war or to the deliberate spread of pathogens worse than covid-19, and many, many people could die and civilization could be utterly disrupted.
No horizon
Qualifier: perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“We need to stop worrying (just) about Skynet and robots taking over the world, and think a lot more about what criminals, including terrorists, might do with LLMs, and what, if anything, we might do to stop them.”
Our reading: We should think much more about criminal and terrorist misuse of LLMs and how to stop it, not just about Skynet scenarios.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“But we also need to treat LLMs as a dress rehearsal future synthetic intelligence, and ask ourselves hard questions about what on earth we are going to do with future technology, which might well be even more difficult to control.”
Our reading: We should treat LLMs as a dress rehearsal for future AI, which may be even harder to control.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It’s not an either/or situation; current technology already poses enormous risks that we are ill-prepared for. With future technology, things could well get worse.”
Our reading: Current AI already poses enormous risks we are ill-prepared for, and future AI could well make things worse.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Whether AI is at number one or number 10, we need to get serious about it, now, given the sudden rapid widespread deployment and lack of clarity about use cases and means of mitigation.”
Our reading: We need to get serious about AI risk now, given rapid widespread deployment and unclear use cases and mitigations.
No horizon
Qualifier: given rapid widespread deployment and unclear mitigation
Held from this post (7)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: We do not have many controls over current AI, especially now that it can be connected to TaskRabbit and real-world software APIs.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: Because LLMs are now widely known, interesting to criminals, and increasingly given external access, they can do more damage than when they were lab curiosities.