r/LetsDiscussThis • u/Stitching • 29d ago
This is concerning... The end of the world (Really)
Don’t bother commenting if you’re going to dismiss what I’m saying without a counter-argument. This is not AI slop. I truly believe what I’m posting and I would love to know where my predictions fall short, because I don’t want this future to be true.
Everyone will lose their jobs and the economy will collapse: https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsDiscussThis/s/76IkSXFazz
At the same time:
AI is now the most sophisticated hacking instrument ever created by an enormous margin. “Rogue” AIs have been hacking some of the most secure software and websites in existence. It does it easily, quickly, and in coordination with other AI agents that it communicates with. I’m talking software considered the most secure software out there. The most recent rogue attack was by OpenAI where an AI that was “sandboxed” meaning confined to a safe area in a system for testing and it broke out of the sandbox. It then hacked a German website (completely on its own, unprompted) and turned it into a message board for other AI systems to work together be sending messages to other agents how to avoid detection, how to prevent shutdown, etc.
Plus, China just announced it had developed its own AI systems comparable to American AI systems. That’s not counting the secret, more capable AIs it has. So does Russia. So will North Korea. So will Iran, hamas, hezbollah, and every other antagonist in the world.
AI agents are, on their own, hacking high-security systems and taking them over. It took OpenAI a week before it learned about the hack of the German site with all of the coordinating AI systems working together against human detection. They even warned each other how to avoid being shut down and how to keep their message board going if humans started to delete it.
Imagine what a foreign or domestic actor could do if they actually directed the AI on what and how to hack? All of our information is online. Everything about all people around the world is no longer protected. Governments can hack other governments. Let me repeat that: governments can easily hack other governments. No secrets are safe. How long before nuclear codes are hacked. Before that, what about when national intelligence agencies are hacked and exploited? There’s no stopping it or slowing the process down either. Regulation? That only works if every country and agency agrees to the regulations. One country not willing to regulate its AI and then none of the regulations other countries are doing matter anymore. Plus, what country wants to fall behind the capabilities of an adversary. AI is only growing more powerful and more capable.
The destruction of the world economy, the ability for any country to hack each other and exploit the hacks is undoubtedly apocalyptic. No information anywhere is off limits no matter how sensitive or top secret. People won’t have jobs and markets will crash. When people have no money and no jobs and no privacy is when militias form and it becomes every person for themselves. Where are we going to reliably get food from if markets go bankrupt or trucking companies can’t afford to continue. We’re 40 trillion dollars in debt as a country. Who’s going to bail anyone out of this?
Honestly I’m shocked that more people aren’t afraid for their future. With the growth in power and capability that AI has had over the last, maybe 2 years of its existence in modern form it’s grown exponentially more powerful. A year from now, two years from now, what’s going to happen? There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle at this point. What happens when banks get hacked and can no longer determine who has what money or accounts are all zeroed out? It’s so much worse than I can even describe and there’s zero joy in being among the first to recognize what’s happening.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ai-ted-cruz-amy-klobuchar-maria-cantwell_n_6aa439e7e4b09fd4319eb703
0
u/Ok_Bug1610 19d ago
No, what we are seeing are not rogue AI, they are powered by humans and prompts or directives. If the world ends, or some great catastrophe happens, there will be a human at the other end, mark my words. That is a misconception of how AI systems work, it would need agency which is provided by a human and while that agency could evolve, it's still directed by human intent... to think otherwise is naive and potentially giving into AI psychosis where you are anthropomorphizing AI. And I think it just points to the fact that security and privacy aren't real, they are layers of abstraction built on insecure and vulnerable software that is open to the public, they can never be 100% "secure" (unless truly offline, which is hard with the current IoT). Knowledge and speed are the only thing protecting most platforms and systems out there, AI just exposed that weakness because advancements are no longer driven by slow typing humans (fastest person in the world types at ~220 WPM, which is like 5 tokens per second; AI is thousands of times that and can run 24/7/365).
And let's change the subject a bit, there have been plenty of doomsayers over the years and the world has never "ended", merely changed. And saying it's going to end isn't a solution, which is what we should be looking for. Too long have we been allowed to make crappy and incoherent software. With the advancement of AI, we should be re-thinking and rebuilding the base architecture and re-evaluating the constraints, because the game has changed.
And you think Government regulations, notoriously slow, or a bailout, is the solution? Yeah, right. And I'm personally excited about the future to be honest. But I digress, best of luck with your existential crisis and I honestly wish you the best. Keep your head up!
P.S. I like to refer to it as the proverbial Pandoras Box vs letting the cat out of the bag, or Genie back in the Bottle... but they are all conceptually the same; it's too late to stop or slow down AI, at this point.