AI Worriers, Play Some Bing Crosby Music
February 24, 2025
This blog post is the work of a real-live dinobaby. No smart software involved.
The Guardian newspaper ran an interesting write up about smart software and the inevitability of complaining to stop it in its tracks. “I Met the Godfathers of AI in Paris – Here’s What They Told Me to Really Worry About.” I am not sure what’s being taught in British schools, but the headline features the author, a split infinitive, and the infamous “ending a sentence with a preposition” fillip. Very sporty.
The write up includes quotes from the godfathers:
“It’s not today’s AI we need to worry about, it’s next year’s,” Tegmark told me. “It’s like if you were interviewing me in 1942, and you asked me: ‘Why aren’t people worried about a nuclear arms race?’ Except they think they are in an arms race, but it’s actually a suicide race.”
I am not sure what psychologists call worrying about the future. Bing Crosby took a different approach. He sang, “Don’t worry about tomorrow” and offered:
Why should we cling to some old faded thing
That used to be
Bing looked beyond the present but did not seem unduly worried. The Guardian is a bit more up tight.
The write up says:
The idea that we, on Earth, might lose control of an AGI that then turns on us sounds like science fiction – but is it really so far-fetched considering the exponential growth of AI development? As Bengio [an AI godfather, according to the Guardian] pointed out, some of the most advanced AI models have already attempted to deceive human programmers during testing, both in pursuit of their designated objectives and to escape being deleted or replaced with an update.
I circled this passage:
It seems as if we have a shrinking opportunity to lay down the incentives for companies to create the kind of AI that actually benefits our individual and collective lives: sustainable, inclusive, democracy-compatible, controlled. And beyond regulation, “to make sure there is a culture of participation embedded in AI development in general”, as Eloïse Gabadou, a consultant to the OECD on technology and democracy, put it.
Okay, so what’s the fix? Who implements the fix? Will the fix stop British universities in Manchester, Cambridge, and Oxford among others from teaching about AI or stop researchers from fiddling with snappier methods? Will the Mayor of London shut down the DeepMind outfit?
Nope. I am delighted that some people are talking about smart software. However, in the high tech world in which we love, I want to remind the Guardian, the last train for Chippenham has left the station. Too late, old chap. Learn to play Bing’s song. Chill.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2025
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