I don't think Elon has any malice towards his own species. I tend to agree with the first comment on the article, re: p(dystopia), where almost all LLM services are currently in play, mostly due to the actions of third party clients.
Gary Marcus has a dichotomy between extinction versus bad actors. I feel a third possibiltiy is much more likely: a world of extreme specialization where AI reigns supreme, and where humans are mainly button-pushers. Those at the top and who still enjoy life will be the techies who are good at and enjoy making things with AI, which will be approximately 1% of the population. The other 99% will be administrators, button-pushers, and those on UBI who have a fairly meaningless existence without much dignity.
Because once 99% of the population lose the opportunity to at least learn a skill that they are good at, and (Importantly!!) for which they have some aptitude over others, and apply it, then they will face an existence of very little meaning. Like it or not, people want to be distinguishable from others, and if everyone can do everything with AI, then that disappears.
Techies don't like to admit it because they are at the top, but through AI, they are creating their own bubble world with their little toys that will act through the immense power of AI as an oligarchy that rules the listless and depressed masses.
Seems like all the p(doom) is coming from Elon himself, and not the AI. An "empowered" but unintelligent "stochastic parrot", which seems to be his view of LLMs, is more likely to hinder than help with one's plan for world domination and annihilation.
p(doom) is 100% and it's silly to think it's anything less.
As soon as anyone figures out how to build SI, all it takes is one person to run off with the secret sauce and build a malevolent version of it.
Armies of killer robots are real now. Ukraine makes about 4 million military drones a year. Russia makes slightly fewer. Control is becoming more automated, because there are not enough people to control all those drones. Drones have to operate despite jamming, so they need to be fully autonomous on the battlefield.
And yes, there are AI killbot startups.[1] "At SECL Group, our team has vast experience in developing various drone systems, including those related to drone swarms. If you are interested in implementing AI-based target recognition capabilities in your UAVs, feel free to get in touch with us to discuss the details."
Everybody looks at AI 2027 and nobody looks at Gradual Disempowerment. They both came out at around the same time and they both portend tremendous volumes of doom with a litany of citations, but the preexisting skynet/paperclipper memes means that nobody talks at length about the scenario of a few hundred human owners using AI servants to eliminate everybody else out of an incremental slippery slope of good business sense.
I'm sorry but the whole Grok “mechahitler” thing was a feature not a bug. The timing between that and xAI announcing it's AI services for governments and subsequently being awarded a government contract was not coincidental. Elon was demonstrating that Grok 4 comes with a state propaganda switch governments can flip whenever they want.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 24.6 ms ] threadBecause once 99% of the population lose the opportunity to at least learn a skill that they are good at, and (Importantly!!) for which they have some aptitude over others, and apply it, then they will face an existence of very little meaning. Like it or not, people want to be distinguishable from others, and if everyone can do everything with AI, then that disappears.
Techies don't like to admit it because they are at the top, but through AI, they are creating their own bubble world with their little toys that will act through the immense power of AI as an oligarchy that rules the listless and depressed masses.
A rather contemptible existence, in my opinion.
And yes, there are AI killbot startups.[1] "At SECL Group, our team has vast experience in developing various drone systems, including those related to drone swarms. If you are interested in implementing AI-based target recognition capabilities in your UAVs, feel free to get in touch with us to discuss the details."
[1] https://seclgroup.com/adding-ai-and-ml-to-military-drones-fo...
https://gradual-disempowerment.ai/
Instead it is about how Elon Musk and his AI will somehow end the world... Disappointed.