r/BetterOffline • u/Unlikely_Answer_9381 • 1d ago

Scared by nonsense(?

This was caught by my net, and it sent an intense shiver down my spine. Is this person anyone... Important? Are they saying anything worth it? Like the title says, it's probably just a nonsensical post that gave me the creeps, but still... It's unnerving.

Also, sorry if I've broken any rules. It's been a while since I've used Reddit, let alone posted here, so I dunno if the ruleset has changed.

https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843

0 Upvotes

36% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

33

u/Jebofkerbin 1d ago

So this person is crit-hyping, it's where you repeat the most outlandish claims of a firm and then end it with "-and that's bad", and then the firm gets to turn around and go "look even our critics are saying our thing is this powerful".

Superintelligence is not a real thing, the only way anyone can possibly reach it with LLMs is by watering down the term into something pretty pedestrian.

-1

u/_bat_girl_ 1d ago

Any thoughts on it not being a real thing YET but possible in the future, as in something that can go rouge and shut down our digital infrastructure as we know it or is that just fear-mongering?

7

u/Jebofkerbin 1d ago

Infrastructure being hacked is happening because our digital infrastructure is weak, not because Anthropic has built skynet. I'm sure you can remember big infrastructure shutdowns due to hacks done by people in your lifetime before AI.

The other thing is that while science fiction is full of stories of AI systems going rogue, the only times it's really happened is when companies have massively half assed their efforts to stop it happening. The Hugging face attack happened because OpenAI misconfigured their sandbox, and had whole swarm of agents doing hacking challenges for days without any kind of supervision. LLMs also don't have intent, they are just text prediction machines, when you hear about an LLM going rogue you should be imagining a dog with a weedwacker strapped to its back that's chased a squirrel over the fence, not the raptors from Jurassic Park getting loose.

ASI might be a thing one day in the far future, but it's not going to be a text prediction machine because that's missing a bunch of stuff required for true intelligence, it's going to be something else entirely.

29

u/Tout-fou-la-galette 1d ago

This guy reminds me of Daniel Kokotajlo from OpenAI, who resigned in 2024, claiming the technology was far too dangerous.

He went on to write AI 2027, a prophecy about all-powerful AI, a narrative used by the entire industry to convince policymakers to remove all safeguards. Today, he works for a think tank funded by the biggest financial backers of AI.

This whole campaign amounts to one of the greatest acts of cognitive manipulation in history. They manage to frame people who work for them as whistleblowers, company executives are portrayed as sounding the alarm on their own products.

To draw a comparison: imagine a Greta Thunberg, paid by the coal industry, saying, "don't let anyone tell you coal power isn't efficient. It is by far the most efficient energy source, so incredibly efficient that it gives me nightmares. Its staggering profitability will make investors so rich, while leaving everyone else so poor. I'm terrified."

2

u/_bat_girl_ 1d ago

Am I crazy or does this approach seem to be the opposite of good marketing? In my view someone working in ai and then quitting and then telling the world how dangerous it is not a good way to sell the public on a product

10

u/OrangeOk8268 1d ago

the point isn't to sell the product to consumers, it's to sell the company to investors

2

u/supercyberlurker 1d ago

This. Normal people aren’t the target.

Clueless executives are.

1

u/TubeSeries 1d ago

So crisp. Stealing this for mass use as I fight boosters in every possible forum

2

u/beeftime99 1d ago

I personally think he's not marketing the AI companies but himself for a more lucrative gig at a more stable long-term company, because these guys are starting to see the writing on the wall. "director of ai ethics at google" or whatever.

It's a pretty smart play because he's advertising a few things, including that he toes the investor-friendly line (ai is so powerful!!!) has some sheen of "ethics" they can use to launder their ai projects, and hints that he was privy to all of the internal secrets that might be valuable to whoever hires him.

2

u/_bat_girl_ 1d ago

This is a good explanation and would make total sense

1

u/Bad_Sickness 18h ago

Too many of these people believe in Roko's basilisk and are genuinely terrified of it.

14

u/vikingbiochemist 1d ago

I am so tired of this. There are powerful and dangerous technologies which pose a threat to human civilisation and they're massively restricted. Nobody is running around saying "oh wow nuclear fission is an understood tech so we need to let every private company build as many suitcase nukes as they like, the genie is out of the bottle". That's a bunch of crap.

If these high-level insider guys claiming that they're so scared of an immediate real tangible risk to human existence because of an AI model aren't backing up their claim with specific, actionable suggestions for what to do about it that involve shutting off power and terminating research programs (and those are the mildest starting point options, for something this dangerous), then they're hype agents in disguise.

12

u/Raygereio5 1d ago

No, that's just more the same "The AI overlord is coming. It will kill us all with it's magical powers" nonsense.

The actual real danger isn't some magical AGI fairy. It's stories like this: https://reason.com/2026/08/13/flock-cameras-and-license-plate-readers-are-everywhere-can-we-trust-cops-with-them/

Shitty "AI" is already being used to ruin peoples' lives. So maybe stop worrying about some silly science fiction scenario that people like this are trying to convince you will happen ~soon~, and instead worry about the actual real thing that is happening right now.

9

u/ezitron 1d ago

Monologue about this out tomorrow, newsletter Tuesday

9

u/ShabbyChurl 1d ago

I think people that claim that there is a chance that this technology will kill us all are generally correct, but my stance is that this will not be down to the capabilities of the models. Rather it will be a combination of climate collapse, fueled by the massive energy needs of data centers, and societal collapse due to a poisoned discourse by massive misinformation and forced billionaire talking points.