CHAMBERSBURG – Artificial Intelligence is clearly the wave of the future. It’s becoming more and more a part of daily life and living.
But what happens when, as the movie (and a lot of sci-fi shows) suggested, it starts thinking for itself?
Anthropic, the world’s largest AI lab, said the technology is quickly on its way to what is called recursive self improvement, essentially meaning it would think for itself.
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Recursive self improvement – I’ve never heard that term. I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot of this term over the next few months. This recursive self improvement is when AI systems can improve on their own without any human intervention.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, AI insiders have seen that threshold, recursive self-improvement, as a potential marker of danger and enormous societal upheaval.
Barkdoll said, “What Anthropic is saying to the world, they think these AI developers, they need to put a pause on how quickly this AI is developing. They think they’re getting dangerously close to this recursive self-improvement, where the AI platforms, the bots, just keep developing on their own without any human intervention, so we’ll want to keep watching that we’ve been hearing these warnings time after time. This warning from Anthropic yesterday, I think, is sort of the most chilling one to date.”
Anthropic is going out for an Initial Public Offering on the stock market this fall – that could be a serious issue.
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM pointed out, “When these tech companies go public like that, the level of involvement and the communication between, like, developers and the big brainiacs, that stuff gets parked because they’re trying for more profit.”
Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM said, “That’s the worst timing, no norms, no ethics, no standards, morality down the drain, and then a bunch of guys that are very narcissistic and egoistic and godlike in the way they see themselves, they’re not going to stop. I don’t know how you stop them.”
Barkdoll said, “When you see in this reporting that AI insiders see this threshold as creating enormous societal upheavals, that’s a very serious statement that I think people need to be aware of.”
Ryan asked, “Where are the launch codes, and what about some sort of chaos being sown that is not from the actual people itself, and you can’t unplug the damn thing.”
Jansen suggested, “It’s got too many tentacles out there in so many places, and we see they’ve already proved it does have a self-preservative attitude about it.”
Barkdoll said, “Part of this post yesterday, Anthropic is saying that this recursive self-improvement, it hasn’t happened yet, and it isn’t inevitable, but it’s coming sooner than most institutions are prepared for, and again, they’re saying without some kind of a regulation or a formal pause put in place, this is quickly getting out of hand.”