Epistemic status: Hastily written, and I should be asleep right now... but still probably much better than nothing.
The tweet appeared 3 days ago and somehow, possibly in part thanks to OpenAI's nigh-supernatural levels of incompetence (there's even an Wikipedia page!), got 166M views. And yet, if you go to Twitter (or, much worse, Reddit), you will see that a lot of people think this is somehow a marketing stunt, or mock the idea by pointing out how weak they think AIs are ("can't we just unplug it?", "it's a next word predictor, get a grip"), or say they can't imagine how a program could produce large-scale harm, or think this is a plot to regulate competitors, etc. This cannot be. We must put an end to these memes immediately. If we don't do enough to stop the AI industry very soon, and it turns out timelines aren't that short, we might end up in a boy-that-cried-wolf situation, and we might not be able to stop it right until the wolf shows up. Therefore, we must strike as hard as possible right now. That is what this post is for: to come up with plans on what to do.
Some of the people with the most power in this situation are resigning lab employees. I think (and hope) they're coordinating behind closed doors, but in any case, to help a little, especially because it might be outside their Overton window, let me start with a simple proposal: If you think resigning is a good idea, call the police (or other law enforcement agency) to raid your former employer, in order to stop their agent swarms (especially if they are working on recursive self-improvement), due to them constituting a potentially imminent threat, and then, regardless of the results (probably failure), tell the world about what you attempted (with a proper media strategy, e.g. the director of PauseAI UK says he could help), and call for the complete and utter destruction of the AI industry, by means of an international treaty, and until then by whatever works. This would be especially effective if they are actually raided and it disrupts their productivity. Hopefully it will be clear that no company in its right mind would want that to happen.
This might annoy your former coworkers, but they would be safe, and if something comes out of it, safer. Many would still see it as a publicity stunt, and they would be right, but if you do it properly, it will be seen as publicity against the company. It wouldn't even be a waste of police resources; calling them is the right thing to do, and your civic duty. However, an important downside is that, as with a general pause/stop/etc. if no disaster happens, it might be harder to get them to come when some future emergency makes it clearly and unambiguously necessary. It's also important, if at all possible, to avoid being labelled as anti-tech terrorists. You might think that it's better to stay in order to change things from the inside, before they dispose of you, and you might even be right, in which case (really, in any case) you should coordinate with your coworkers. Also, if someone works in some department where there's no chance they will be able to help from within, maybe you should try to convince them to quit.
About the boy-that-cried-wolf issue, I simply suggest to lampshade, lampshade, and lampshade. Make it completely clear that even if you think no immediate disaster is the most likely outcome, it is very much not a risk worth taking. And it isn't: I'm extremely uncertain about how long we have, and think that getting governments involved is likely to be a disaster, but I'm very much not willing to bet my life on there being a difference in kind between problems current systems can tackle and sufficiently good AI research.
For both these employees and everyone else, there are a few things that are very much worth sharing:
Videos on the OpenAI attacks
The fact that LLMs have solved a Millennium Prize Problem
That OpenAI and Anthropic are spying on your conversations
To company executives, that depending too much on AI is a huge liability, and that they might intend to train on their data and eventually replace them (and the whole economy)
That it's important to call our representatives and call for the destruction of the AI industry (it might as well not have existed just a few years ago!)
To block ads on AI websites and use AI-free alternatives whenever possible
That the automation of militaries, enabled by the same technology as that powering LLMs, means that what soldiers think will no longer matter, and this might make it much easier to perform coups, and that therefore it's a terrible idea for governments to be in direct control of AI
That if UBI is implemented, and most jobs disappear, most people become an expense to the government and completely at their mercy, which doesn't set up good incentives
You might think all this is stupid, and that there are important considerations that I've neglected. Point them out then! and let's see what you can come up with.
What do you imagine happening after a resigning lab employee calls the police to warn them that AI is dangerous? When I picture Jacob Coxon calling the police, the police hang up on him, and when he tells anyone about this they think it's silly that he expected the police to respond in any other way.
The police hang up on him, and when he tells people about it, they say that's the expected result, but that anyone with his beliefs would at the very least try it, and, more importantly, that nobody would try it without having those beliefs. Anyway, the point of the post is to come up with something better.
I think that the only effect of calling the police is to make the caller look silly, and I have come up with the better strategy of simply not doing that.
Epistemic status: Hastily written, and I should be asleep right now... but still probably much better than nothing.
The tweet appeared 3 days ago and somehow, possibly in part thanks to OpenAI's nigh-supernatural levels of incompetence (there's even an Wikipedia page!), got 166M views. And yet, if you go to Twitter (or, much worse, Reddit), you will see that a lot of people think this is somehow a marketing stunt, or mock the idea by pointing out how weak they think AIs are ("can't we just unplug it?", "it's a next word predictor, get a grip"), or say they can't imagine how a program could produce large-scale harm, or think this is a plot to regulate competitors, etc. This cannot be. We must put an end to these memes immediately. If we don't do enough to stop the AI industry very soon, and it turns out timelines aren't that short, we might end up in a boy-that-cried-wolf situation, and we might not be able to stop it right until the wolf shows up. Therefore, we must strike as hard as possible right now. That is what this post is for: to come up with plans on what to do.
Some of the people with the most power in this situation are resigning lab employees. I think (and hope) they're coordinating behind closed doors, but in any case, to help a little, especially because it might be outside their Overton window, let me start with a simple proposal: If you think resigning is a good idea, call the police (or other law enforcement agency) to raid your former employer, in order to stop their agent swarms (especially if they are working on recursive self-improvement), due to them constituting a potentially imminent threat, and then, regardless of the results (probably failure), tell the world about what you attempted (with a proper media strategy, e.g. the director of PauseAI UK says he could help), and call for the complete and utter destruction of the AI industry, by means of an international treaty, and until then by whatever works. This would be especially effective if they are actually raided and it disrupts their productivity. Hopefully it will be clear that no company in its right mind would want that to happen.
This might annoy your former coworkers, but they would be safe, and if something comes out of it, safer. Many would still see it as a publicity stunt, and they would be right, but if you do it properly, it will be seen as publicity against the company. It wouldn't even be a waste of police resources; calling them is the right thing to do, and your civic duty. However, an important downside is that, as with a general pause/stop/etc. if no disaster happens, it might be harder to get them to come when some future emergency makes it clearly and unambiguously necessary. It's also important, if at all possible, to avoid being labelled as anti-tech terrorists. You might think that it's better to stay in order to change things from the inside, before they dispose of you, and you might even be right, in which case (really, in any case) you should coordinate with your coworkers. Also, if someone works in some department where there's no chance they will be able to help from within, maybe you should try to convince them to quit.
About the boy-that-cried-wolf issue, I simply suggest to lampshade, lampshade, and lampshade. Make it completely clear that even if you think no immediate disaster is the most likely outcome, it is very much not a risk worth taking. And it isn't: I'm extremely uncertain about how long we have, and think that getting governments involved is likely to be a disaster, but I'm very much not willing to bet my life on there being a difference in kind between problems current systems can tackle and sufficiently good AI research.
For both these employees and everyone else, there are a few things that are very much worth sharing:
You might think all this is stupid, and that there are important considerations that I've neglected. Point them out then! and let's see what you can come up with.