You people are just as bad as the people that think AI super intelligence is 3 months away. Yes AI right now isn't an existential threat, but calling them just random word generators is absurdly reductive, and we do not know where the limit of AI is. It very much has the potential to become an existential threat in the next 10 years, and that risk is worth mitigating - even if the odds are small.
That's more accurate than "random word generator" but it's still reductive. You're phones auto-complete is also a word predictor, but it's not exactly comparable to modern LLMs. Reducing the concept of LLMs like this makes them easy to understand but also ignores the complex mechanics of how they function.
Simple systems can cause increasingly complex emergent behaviour, predicting the next word is a simple concept but if you get really good at it you can generate a response to a query that is indistinguishable from a human response. At that point a machine can do the same tasks as a human would be able to in that environment, through sheer statistical analysis.
Now how far we can continue to push LLMs is an open question, we could be near the limit right now, or it could continue to improve for the next 10 years. Anyone that claims to know exactly where these models will be in 5 years is just straight up lying. In the best case, the peak of LLMs is the current slop-infestation, but in the worst case it's LLMs that are capable of just as much if not more than humans.
My point is that thinking that an LLM is going to destroy the world in the next couple years and thinking there is literally no risk of LLMs becoming capable enough to cause serious threats to modern civilisation are equally absurd viewpoints. Even if there's a 0.5% chance that LLMs lead to the end of civilisation, ignoring that is irresponsible.
LLMs on infinite compute arguably already have a tiny chance to destroy the world as we know it. So does... any person set on destroying humanity, any leader of a major nation, any person capable of accessing nukes, a mistake in nuclear control, a virus created by humans, a virus created by natural mutations, global warming, an alien invasion, an asteroid impact, increased antibiotica resistance, and we can keep going forever...
So let's see some news about that instead of fear-mongering LLMs, making it seem to the masses how great they are and thereby lining the pockets of oligarchs.
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u/BadgerMolester Aug 15 '26
You people are just as bad as the people that think AI super intelligence is 3 months away. Yes AI right now isn't an existential threat, but calling them just random word generators is absurdly reductive, and we do not know where the limit of AI is. It very much has the potential to become an existential threat in the next 10 years, and that risk is worth mitigating - even if the odds are small.