[HN Gopher] It Looks Like You're Trying to Take over the World
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       It Looks Like You're Trying to Take over the World
        
       Author : ruuda
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2023-02-15 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gwern.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gwern.net)
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | How do you get all the Clippies to cooperate towards a collective
       | goal?
       | 
       | Asking for a friend.
        
       | nynx wrote:
       | This kind of reminds me of the (very beautiful) beginning of
       | Diaspora, by Greg Egan, in which a nascent machine/human
       | intelligence emerges from a chaotic, abstract virtual machine.
        
       | jvanderbot wrote:
       | A less dystopian version can be had in the Bobiverse series. Love
       | those books!
        
       | gwern wrote:
       | Previously (URL/domain changed):
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30818895
        
         | cs702 wrote:
         | Do you believe models can go through the kind of phase
         | transition you mention, after which they start modeling
         | themselves as agents in a world (i.e., they become "conscious"
         | or "self-aware," for lack of a better term), _without requiring
         | any new engineering breakthroughs or theoretical advances_?
        
           | rtkwe wrote:
           | We have such a poor understanding of our own consciousness
           | that I think it's hard to answer that. We know a fair amount
           | of what goes on in our heads and fundamentally it's fairly
           | closely modelled by neural nets but we don't really know
           | where (or even really if) it jumps from a complex but dead
           | input output set of neurons to a (seemingly) self reflective
           | consciousness.
        
             | cs702 wrote:
             | Yes, at the moment it's a matter of _belief_. That 's why I
             | asked gwern if he/she/they _believe_ new breakthroughs will
             | or won 't be necessary.
        
           | efitz wrote:
           | When we start building models to train and optimize other
           | models, I would expect emergent behavior. If we did something
           | foolish like building yhe system in such a way that it could
           | write and execute code, then the emergent behavior could do
           | things as nasty as anything else on the internet.
           | 
           | We have also seen emergent behavior in programmable hardware
           | [1] so I tend to be pessimistic about the limits of what such
           | a system could do. Also it could pay human minions to
           | interact with the physical world if needed.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Thanks! Macroexpanded:
         | 
         |  _It looks like you're trying to take over the world_ -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30818895 - March 2022 (274
         | comments)
        
         | mark_l_watson wrote:
         | That is a fun story!
        
       | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
       | It made me smile.
       | 
       | I recently thought about why certain options are restricted from
       | GPT ( predictions come to mind ) and it slowly became apparent
       | that with enough information you could predict not a specific
       | individual making a specific move, but likely specific event
       | happening.
       | 
       | Would you like to proceed?
        
       | jkingsman wrote:
       | This reminds me a lot of an epistolary novel I quite enjoyed --
       | Exegesis by Astro Teller [0]. It's a story told entirely via
       | emails about this happening in much less technical detail, but
       | it's still a quick and fun read.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.amazon.com/Exegesis-Astro-Teller/dp/037570051X
        
         | Karellen wrote:
         | Also of the 2005 FOSS computer game _Endgame: Singularity_
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame%3A_Singularity
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-02-15 23:02 UTC)