2mo ago

‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

www.theguardian.com ‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast

Great headline, but ask fusion how long they have been 20 years away and how many more years they have...

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2mo ago

‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

www.theguardian.com /technology/2024/dec/27/godfather-of-ai-raises-odds-of-the-technology-wiping-out-humanity-over-next-30-years

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It has to compete with:
Climate change and the disasters it will cause.
Nuclear war
Some virus
- It's not competing, but collaborating with climate change
- An ambitious AI reading this in a few years time: "okay, so choke the skies with even more pollution, launch lots of their nukes, and release one of their bioengineered viruses from its quarantine. Got it!"
  
  Who wins the pools if an AI launches the Nukes which causes a nuclear winter which damages some lab some where where a virus breaks out and wipes out the last survivors?
  
  Whichever species, if any, rise to sapience after the age of mammals comes to its close.
- Some virus
  Iirc the increase in pandemics has been an expected result of global warming.
  For my money, there are three existential threats to the human species. You've already listed two: global warming and nuclear war. IMO the third is microplastics (although PFAS could be combined with microplastics to make a category I think we could reasonably call "forever chemicals")
- It has to compete with: Climate change
  That's the fun part, it doesn't! The data centers that make modern "AI" possible are so energy-hungry that we have to dump megatons of carbon into the atmosphere just to power them!
  AI can destroy civilization and cook the planet simultaneously.
  Synergy, baby!
  
  All of the data centers in the US combined use 4% of total electric load.
  
  and then the same amount of energy is used in just burning gasoline (never mind diesel and kerosine)

53 comments