Transcript
Explain it to me like I’m 80
Mom: What’s with these AIs escaping and hacking people? That sounds scary.
Me: You park your car at the top of a hill. You leave a note on the dashboard that says “please be good” and then you pull the parking brake. The car careens down the hill, smashes everything up, and you put out a press release saying “My car ignored my instructions! It hallucinated! It went rogue!” Your insurance company not only believes you, but invests a hundred million dollars in your company.
Mom: Jesus Fucking Christ
The news media completely failed on this, again. There was nothing rogue about these hacks. The companies prompted these systems, provided ample resources and just let them rip. Only to claim they went “rogue” afterwards. And by and large everyone just accepts that, it’s driving me insane. I feel like Mugatu every day when it comes to AI reporting.
This just predictive text trying every single kown exploit until it’s in. Simple as that
DemocracyNow has really dropped the ball on this. I expect to hear this stupid shit from mainstream media, but they’re doing the same shit and just uncritically reporting this garbage.
It was most obvious with the Google one. You can tell they had questions like “so, has yours hacked anything yet?” So they had to set up a house of cards for it to topple, just so they could say “us too, it did the thing.” But their heart clearly wasn’t in it.
Failed, or promoted the narrative?
Hard to tell, but I’d guess the news outlets, mostly owned by billionaires, said what they were told to.
Even before AI tech reporting was mostly a complete shit-show, almost all mainstream journalists lack the required understanding. AI just boosted it to and even more idiotic level, since attributing character to LLMs makes for very scary an compelling stories. There’s no real need for direct industry control, just providing easily consumable fodder for lazy writers is enough.
The YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder and some others reportedly were offered money to go with the end of the world narrative.
I have even so many colleagues in IT (very technical) that cannot differentiate between “this model is capable of doing such a hack if you let it/prompt it/… and it will move fast” and “this thing is conscious and out for blood! It will kill us all, the end is nigh!”