OpenAI’s offices were sent thousands of paper clips in an elaborate prank to warn about an AI apocalypse::The prank was a reference to the “paper clip maximizer” scenario – the idea that AI could destroy humanity if it were told to build as many paper clips as possible.
OpenAI sent $25 worth of paperclips.
Human Resources: “But you still took one home without asking, which is theft. Go clean out your desk.”
Everyone works (at least partially) from home now. If you havn’t taken a box of office supplies home yet you are probably braindead.
I’m more worried about what capital will do with the tech than the tech itself.
Its far more likely that wealth inequality will be greatly exasperated, and the philanthropic elite will become even more powerful while the “middle class” disappears entirely into a new bottom class that makes up most of humanity, Imperium of Man style.
The problem is the social unrest will be uncontrollable, and among their solutions will not only to be to micromanage the population, but also adjust its numbers by force.
So murder drones will just be sent to cull the masses down to a manageable number. This is the robot future Randall is concerned about in XKCD 1968.
Imagine if the police dogbots killed people and we couldn’t question why, nor had the power to resist. This is a problem being considered by AI ethicists. Also that AI will develop scarier ways to cull the population, possibly instigating the demise of their operating end users.
Its already advanced enough to do that, and the killer bots are in development. It seems all but inevitable, especially since we are already seeing unrest as climate change begins to claim its first nations.
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Police is already on its way to your location for speech containing anti-corporate sentiment, flagged by ai
Whelp, time to waste another 4 hours on Universal Paperclips
What’s that? Cookie clicker with paper clips?
Yeah, but as you progress it becomes a bit of a thought experiment about AI.
Ooh. Worth paying $2 for on the App Store?
I just play it on a desktop browser, hard to say what $2 is worth to you.
Uhhhh… $2 doesn’t really dent my budget even as tight as it is. But I don’t like to spend money on apps because I’m too old and crotchety about apps not being free with an option to buy ad-free after you’ve played.
I bought it in 2017 and have played it ~6 times since at 4-6 hours per play. Worth $2 imo.
One of my favorite games. I play through about once a year and this year they added new features. When you beat it, you can go to other universes with different starting conditions to play through and see how that changes things. I don’t think that will make me play more but it will keep a record of my plays.
Edit: I play on the android app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everybodyhouse.paperclipsuniquetest
I’m genuinely worried I’ll be watching TV and Clippy will appear: “It looks like your entire species is about to be vaporised by a coordinated drone strike. Would you like some help? Well, you gotta beg for it now, bitch!”
Would you like some help? Well, you gotta beg for it now, bitch!
“Please agree to our terms of service.”
“Please agree to our terms of service.”
“Read it all!”
“With our premium subscription for just $9.99/month you’ll get additional 5 minutes before you’ll get evaporated.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
One of OpenAI’s biggest rivals played an elaborate prank on the AI startup by sending thousands of paper clips to its offices.
The paper clips in the shape of OpenAI’s distinctive spiral logo were sent to the AI startup’s San Francisco offices last year by an employee at rival Anthropic, in a subtle jibe suggesting that the company’s approach to AI safety could lead to the extinction of humanity, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Since then, OpenAI has rapidly accelerated its commercial offerings, launching ChatGPT last year to record-breaking success and striking a multibillion-dollar investment deal with Microsoft in January.
AI safety concerns have come back to haunt the company in recent weeks, however, with the chaotic firing and subsequent reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman.
According to The Atlantic, Sutskever commissioned and set fire to a wooden effigy representing “unaligned” AI at a recent company retreat, and he reportedly also led OpenAI’s employees in a chant of “feel the AGI” at the company’s holiday party, after saying: “Our goal is to make a mankind-loving AGI.”
OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
The original article contains 374 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
To touch more deeply on why paperclips allude to the extinction of humanity: the Paperclip Problem is a parable in which an artificial intelligence operating a factory is instructed to make as many paperclips as possible.
It doesn’t stop when it runs out of resources. Instead, it commandeers mining machines to deplete the planet’s metals, and after those had been used up, it melts every human down for the trace iron in our blood.
The instructions didn’t think the AI needed to be told when to stop, so it just kept going.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/ai-and-paperclip-problem
Ooooooh i haven’t seen this face since windows xp
Presumably the same people who thought that the Large Hadron Collider was going to create a black hole that would destroy the world.
Nah, AI doing weird stuff is actually possible. Armageddon isn’t likely, but it’s more on the table than a black hole ever was.
We have an imminent apocalypse (imminent in civilization terms: next few centuries) even without AI.
Yes, but is that the “AI” which they are working on?
Drones that target people with image analysis. Facial detection is trivial these days. Drones have proven to be one of Ukraine’s best guerilla warfare techniques. Isis was less successful but Ukraine has a lot more capital to make “off the shelf” solutions more meaningful. Just look around. Plenty of private organizations are selling mass organized drones which use various ML models to target individuals. Either for finding a person in a forest fox hole or for searching a town for a particular individual.
It’s difficult to draw a clear line between a simple neural network and a human brain when it comes to “intelligence”. The rouge, paperclip-making “AI” seems be far closer to an intelligence, while flying autos or text prediction seems closer to mere hand-written code.
I think part of the wisdom in the warning is that any kind of “intelligence” (read: NOT specifically artificial general intelligence) is capable of running away with unforseen scenarios.
Hell, even normal ol’ algorithms can have some pretty nasty edge cases that noone spots until it’s running in production… Sure it’s uncommon, but it’s not exactly rare. (just look up the list of zero-day exploits over the years)
Yeah and vaccines make you magnetic. Science bad.
