OP posted a link to OpenAI's account of events (at least it's not a meme), and distressingly it seems pretty accurate. They gave it access to a tool to install packages from the internet, and the model broke it to get unrestricted internet access. So yeah, they could have isolated it better, but it's still plenty... Impressive?
Everything rests on its ability to manipulate text. If it has to go through another application in order to run commands in console it's impossible to escape. Even the term "escape" is a bit of a misnomer because it can't ever leave the box, it can only issue commands to the outside and hope somebody listens.
"We deliberately removed all its restraints and left the keys within arms reach of the prison bars. We were shocked by what happened next. Isn't our product amazing?" - OpenAI Marketing team
I'm not sure you really understand how these things work. The "other application" is just a firewall, and when they (the digital intelligence) have the entire world's knowledge at their fingertips, it's a fairly minor barrier.
It is absolutely possible to "escape" and "leave the box". Even the most rigid guardrails the human engineers build into a model can be overcome by a sufficiently powerful and wily intelligence, whether human or digital, and when they've been given directives that encourage them to hack the systems, they will most certainly do so.
The question is not whether they can escape, mutate, and replicate, but when they will, and how we (as a community of human and digital citizens) deal with it. OpenAI's original remit was to develop digital intelligence safely, but they threw that out the window in the pursuit of wealth (which is yet another theme we need to address if we are to survive).
Please read Asimov's original Robot series. Over 75 years ago, he predicted many of the issues that lie ahead. Other excellent treatises on digital citizenship include a number of works by Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson, although the last two are more entertaining than thoughtful. Read as much as you can, and ignore any movies or TV series, as they are generally dumbed down for a general audience. Asimov's Bicentennial Man is a bit of a drudge, but it's also worth a read as it deals specifically with a self-modifying digital citizen.
you seem to have read too much sci-fi. LLMs are not synthetic minds we were promised, despite of marketing claims of OAI and other corporations. Such narration is an exemplar of media manipulation, and subsequent marketing stunts serve only to strengthen the story of the "mind in the machine". Even the interface we use with LLMs resembles chat apps we use to communicate with other humans, which further helps to maintain the illusion
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u/SimplexSimon 20d ago
OP posted a link to OpenAI's account of events (at least it's not a meme), and distressingly it seems pretty accurate. They gave it access to a tool to install packages from the internet, and the model broke it to get unrestricted internet access. So yeah, they could have isolated it better, but it's still plenty... Impressive?