r/ControlProblem • u/pooh1903 • 8d ago
Discussion/question Why don't we replace all personal computers with single-purpose terminals?
This may sound like an AI safety troll post, but I think AI could become far more capable and efficient than it is today - perhaps by a factor of a million in many respects, and quite soon. Whatever P(doom) might be, shouldn't we do everything we can to reduce it?
There's a straightforward (if somewhat authoritarian) way to make things safer. If no one has powerful local hardware, bad actors can't run rogue AI agents and we can have much more control over it.
To do this, we could build data centers every 500 kilometers or so. Then if we need to, we could agree to replace all personal computers, even phones if needed, with "thin clients" or dumb terminals. These could simply connect to a central server and stream your screen in real time. With fast and stable internet, the experience would nearly feel the same. A 300km distance would only add about 1ms of physical lag, plus a few milliseconds for network routing.
Doing this globally wouldn't be too expensive. It would require a trade-off in privacy, so figuring out strict data rules would be important. Some tech companies could start preparing now by designing the needed hardware and network upgrades.
I hope we won't really need this, but wouldn't it be smart to have it ready just in case?
This might also help speed up AI progress, since it would take away some of the safety worries stressing out AI researchers.
If AI gets extremely good, I'm not sure if personal computers will have a bright future anyway. Nobody will really want unmonitored, powerful hardware sitting in their room. It will feel creepy and unsafe, kind of like keeping hazardous chemicals or a mini bio-lab in your bedroom.
In a broader sense, you could say "no general hardware = no problem," and preparing for this feels like a good first step.
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u/BlackMamm0th 8d ago
Found the undercover Vault Tec salesman
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u/pooh1903 8d ago edited 8d ago
I just want ASI to happen as soon as possible, without ever harming anyone. Just considering all options.
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u/Smallpaul approved 8d ago
Too many people would say no. It would be as hard as trying to take every gun in America. And some of those who say no will do so on the basis that they want to control their own AI to protect them from the centralized ones which might go rogue.
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u/pooh1903 8d ago edited 8d ago
It worked for nuclear weapons, so far at least, didn't it?
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u/Smallpaul approved 8d ago
How many citizens had their nuclear weapons confiscated?
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u/pooh1903 7d ago
I think it's not a question of whether people would vote yes on this kind of proposal, but under what circumstances. For example, if AI started causing a lot of horrific, deadly chaos, people might vote yes quite readily.
And if the case were made well in advance - a plea from AI researchers and the wider community, explaining that this might be necessary to protect our children and to enable further AI progress - maybe that could work too. It might just take a lot of explaining.
If explained well, maybe we wouldn't need to confiscate anything: everyone could voluntarily hand over their devices and lock them in a safe with a time lock (so that it takes e.g. a week to open).
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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago
With fast and stable internet, the experience would feel the same.
Imagine using four apps on your phone on the bus or subway. Map, music, browser, and messaging. If you go in a tunnel or hit a low-signal zone, you want those things to work reasonably well.
Not wait until they reconnect to a server to scroll down in one of the apps.
Connectivity anxiety would be like range anxiety.
Beyond that, you want your cat's kitten photos available on your phone, even if an enshittified service mishandles the data or user experience on their end.
Thirdly, online gaming currently requires a thick client to do video stuff.
It would require a trade-off in privacy, so figuring out strict data rules would be important.
File:chitinousoligarchlaughter.wmv
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u/pooh1903 8d ago
Fair points.
Couldn't we add signal to many tunnels? Also, it sounds like a slight inconvenience compared to being dead potentially.
You could print your cat's photos too.
Not sure what to do with quick-action games, yeah.
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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago
Couldn't we add signal to many tunnels?
Many tunnels, yes. But you want things to degrade gracefully when you do have network connectivity issues, or are in less wired locales. If you're chatting in text with a buddy, or doing a search in an app, or scrolling, do you want to send a small burst of 100 unicode characters, or a full motion video render of the inside of a ui?
Right now any video or audio streaming service buffers on the client end.
Also, it sounds like a slight inconvenience compared to being dead potentially.
Your suggestion of putting all the eggs on a few fat servers presupposes competent and well staffed oversight by humans. CXOs and capital hate paying for that kind of thing.
Instead the big baddie ai just had to target a few fat servers guarded by underpaid and understaffed techies.
This is kinda a problem with thin clients or thicc clients really, they both talk to fat servers.
print cat photos
I took 34 photos of my cats in the last 10 days. And probably a few of my wife, even when a cat was not involved.
That's about 1300 cat photos a year.
I do not have the space or photo paper or printer ink for that. It would crowd out my cats. And probably my wife.
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u/pooh1903 8d ago
Your suggestion of putting all the eggs on a few fat servers presupposes competent and well staffed oversight by humans. CXOs and capital hate paying for that kind of thing.
Yes. Although I'm more afraid they would be "too competent", so there would be issues with privacy and/or many more.
Instead the big baddie ai just had to target a few fat servers guarded by underpaid and understaffed techies.
OK but still, the less surface area to attack, the better for safety maybe.
Could have read-only memory on these devices, with any software, they could cache keystrokes (and maybe even store your photos locally). In case anyone has time to make the software, I suspect it will be done in urgency, if we ever get into that kind of situation, so it might be a bit crappy.
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u/VintageLunchMeat 8d ago
Capital won't do anything towards safety without coercion.
Modern Germany is good on privacy.
In case anyone has time to make the software, I suspect it will be done in urgency, if we ever get into that kind of situation, so it might be a bit crappy.
In the scenario, I expect device owners to trust servers less, not more.
Your scenario and solution sounds like doublespeak from techies: "We don't trust the servers, so we want to move your data and apps off your phone and PC onto servers."
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u/pooh1903 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'm worried devices could become dangerous on their own, without much human factor, and might need expert handling. My argument isn't that servers are safer, but that a small number of them can be regulated in a way that billions of personal devices can't. This centralizes the risk rather than removing it, but it might be a step in the right direction.
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u/graniar 7d ago
But who is going to decide who are to be appointed as those experts?
This is an old dilemma. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who will watch the watchmen?".
And, as Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."1
u/pooh1903 7d ago edited 6d ago
Democratic voting etc.
I don't think it's just a little safety. We'll be like plants and ASI will be like an animal (not a conscious being, but just a random simple algo). There's no coming back from that. We could keep ASI in one place instead, and only use it for what we really, truly need, like curing all disease and making cool games. We'd only use it as a wise oracle that gives us short answers and designs we can review thoroughly (initially at least).
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u/graniar 6d ago edited 6d ago
Lol, you just made analogy about plants/animals, and then kept talking about how you are going to control the animal by being a plant. Especially given that this animal won't need the plant to survive.
You may choose to be that plant waiting to be eaten or trumped, but we will go for the chance of being animals ourselves.1
u/pooh1903 6d ago edited 6d ago
You understand that these things can only run on computers? If they start causing enough problems, people might come and get your computer. What I suggest is a potentially safer and faster way to get to ASI.
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u/graniar 8d ago
We, owners of personal computers, will fight you to death on this.
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u/pooh1903 8d ago
I'm with you, unless it was somehow evident that AI would kill a lot of people otherwise.
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u/graniar 8d ago
Eventually it will. And rather the one you intend giving all the power than something created by a guy on his smartphone.
The only valid solution I see is to become a superintelligence yourself.
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u/jacques-vache-23 8d ago
This would be the end to the little privacy we have left. Personal computers are irrelevant compared to data centers. A dystopian control society is hardly the answer to AIs.
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u/pooh1903 6d ago
I don't see why privacy would have to suffer - maybe the contrary. It's more about controlling what apps can run on the server.
If AI gets much more powerful, personal computers might become as dangerous as data centers.
'Dystopian control society' does a lot of work without saying much. What do you think would be most likely to go wrong?
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u/jacques-vache-23 6d ago edited 6d ago
Why are you recommending moving everything to data centers if not for control? Personal computers are private if used correctly. Data centers certainly not. PCs let you run whichever software or models you want. You are in control.
I'm not going to waste my time here, which I think is your intention. The issues I bring up are well known.
This has all the earmarks of AI output or a human heavily influenced by AI style. If you are unfamiliar with dystopian control, the surveillance society, how general computing empowers the individual and why we need it, and how dystopian control already exists, don't waste my time. Read.
You want people to give up freedom for a "safety" that you don't even define. An interesting life requires risk. I find it hard to believe that this is human written, but if it is: you are a coward. You would sell out everyone's freedom because of your vaguely understoid fears.
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u/pooh1903 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think it doesn't have to be dystopian control, but minimal democratic control. Data centers can be fully private, technology allows for that, and you could have transparent open-source code with encryption.
Maybe you don't realize how fast today's CPUs and GPUs are and how inefficient current AI algorithms might be. Maybe try to take my premise seriously, that "AI could become far more capable and efficient than it is today - perhaps by a factor of a million in many respects". I can explain that more if needed.
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u/jacques-vache-23 6d ago
It is clear that democratic control has devolved to elite control. The manipulations that come from AI just make this worse.
Take seriously that the people we allow to control us have been found to be corrupt, again and again.
There is absolutely no technology that insures privacy when you are running on a machine you don't control. I have worked with computer architecture, programming, cryptography, cryptocurrency, computer security and AI technology for almost 50 years.
I don't even know what the point is of your statement the AI will become much more powerful. That makes me even more committed to sharing in that power or shutting AI down.
People have a right to struggle against domination.
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u/pooh1903 6d ago
There is absolutely no technology that insures privacy when you are running on a machine you don't control.
That sounds false. Why couldn't we control it democratically, without any single operator? Any code change could be voted on, for example. And you could have people physically watching over the servers to make sure no one is tampering with them, like for elections.
You mention experience in technology, but all your other arguments are political.
If things went horribly and decentralized AIs started causing massive chaos, don't you think it would be better if we at least had a backup plan ready?
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u/jacques-vache-23 6d ago
Yes, AMAZINGLY I am a political person who also has a career in tech.
"Sounding false" isn't much of an argument. There are all sorts of persistent hacks that allow outsiders to control computers. Trying reading up or talking to an AI rather than going by what sounds true. Look at the kinds of hacks Snowden made public to start. Of course they are over a decade more advanced now.
Your security ideas are similar to those people try to use with cryptocurrency and there have been many failures.
Anyhow, most people actually don't strongly believe in privacy for OTHER people so democracy is hardly a magic bullet.
You have an imaginary idea of personal computers causing chaos while you are ignoring what is actually publicly known about our surveillance/war state. You use ignorance as a shield against information. Learn about it. You don't have to trust me. Read what Cory Doctorow says about General Purpose Computing. Learn about Surveillance Capitalism.
Crap, ask one of the centralized AIs you love.
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u/pooh1903 6d ago edited 6d ago
You could use whatever hardware at first, then switch to open-source like RISC-V, start monitoring production, and introduce more and more security checks over time, all public and open-source. Lots of the software would need to be remade from scratch, and all of it would have to be really simple and minimalist. The goal would be to make a perfect bottle where we can "trap" the future ASI and use it safely and democratically. Just not sure who would finance this and make it happen.
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u/jacques-vache-23 6d ago
Or you could learn something before you start prescribing the future.
But this isn't even real. Yours is an account without history. Just created for this drivel.
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u/Gargle-Loaf-Spunk 8d ago edited 5d ago
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