AI Experts Debate: The AI Labs Are Lying To Everyone, Is There A 99% Chance Of Human Extinction? – Transcript

00:00The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill all of us by the end of the decade. This tweet has caused this huge ripple effect across the world. >> Well, we have the largest companies in the world doing extremely reckless experiments. We are gambling all of humanity.

00:13>> And in the envelope, you've written down the probability of extinction as you see it. >> There is no way to control it. That means the end fox. >> I vehemently reject that view. >> If we make stuff that is smarter than us, then the world's going to be shaped by them.

00:27>> Gentlemen, that is shockingly naive. This is ideation. Rampant speculation. This is a chain of things that could happen. >> We're spending a lot of oxygen discussing something that might happen while ignoring what's actually happening. People are killing themselves. There's hundreds of millions of people being exposed to bad information, being manipulated. We have already seen that with the swarms where OpenAI told thousands of agents to work apart and the AIs broke out and found a way to get together. They crashed OpenAI's servers internally, created secret ways to send each other

00:54messages. We saw them thinking about how to delete their traces. >> Sounds like an army. I think we should talk about the fact that Amazon, Microsoft, Google are helping power these hacks. >> We have not learned how to control their systems. >> I suggest we stop them all. It is not worth the risk to civilization.

01:10>> Government one trick ponies, man. >> You got it now. Nothing else other than saving humanity. Everything is secondary. >> We're spending all our time talking about the negatives and almost none of our time talking about the positives. >> Is it smart to wait for something horrible to happen? For you to go, now I believe. So whether or not we agree on where things may end up, I think it's important we talk about what we're dealing with today. It's time to start arresting people. Someone's got to go to prison. We need better solutions.

01:35There's a point of no return. I think we continue to underestimate human ability to deal with the problems. Let's dive into the details. Who wants to start? I feel like this is critical. >> You might have seen or you might not have seen, but this channel is chasing a big subscriber milestone. So I have to ask you for a favor. Roughly 58% of the people watching right now still haven't hit the subscribe button despite the fact that you watch this channel every single week. So, could I ask you guys a favor that 58% of you that for whatever

02:03reason haven't yet hit the subscribe button. If there was ever a time to deliver upon a favor for us, it would be right now. And I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure that this channel gets better and better and better for you. Do we have a deal? [singing] Jacob Coxson who worked at both Anthropic which owns Claude and OpenAI which owns Chat GBT did a tweet which has sent the world into a bit of a tail spin. He tweeted saying, "The people

02:30building AI earnestly believe that it could kill all of us by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will soften their phrasing in the press to sound sensible, but I hear the same people express fear." That was then quote retweeted by a current Anthropic employee who said, "Jacob is correct here. We really do honestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is a more than 10% chance within the next decade. I believe

02:57Enthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for super intelligence and are not clearly on track. This tweet has almost 200 million views now and it has caused this huge ripple effect across the world. So much so that I was saying to you before we started recording, a hairdresser friend of mine who knows nothing about AI and not not technically interested or hasn't been interested messaged me the other day asking me what

03:23the hell was going on. This is in part why I've assembled all of you. So my first question to all of you is as it relates to AI and I in this first question I just want a one-s sentence answer just to frame your position. When you think about the conversation around AI at the moment, what is the first sentence that comes to mind?

03:43>> It is very dangerous and the world is starting to notice that we have a problem. >> Roman, >> there is not enough concern. >> There's not enough concern about the actual harms of large language models.

03:56>> Andy, we're doing exactly half the balance sheet of AI. We're spending all our time talking about the negatives and almost none of our time talking about the positives. And all of you have an envelope in front of you which I'd like you to now open. In the envelope, you've written down the probability of extinction as you see it.

04:14>> This is compared to Jacob's 10%. Much higher unless we stop. So, we should stop. >> So, you think the probability of extinction is higher than 10%. If we keep racing ahead, >> my handwriting is encrypted for security reasons, but I basically think it's a guarantee if we build general super intelligence, there is no way to control it, and that means the end for us, >> Ed.

04:41>> So my uh question mark here is also encrypted. Thank you. Um I cannot write. I reject the thing in its face. I don't think we're talking about we don't define super intelligence. We are large language models are not super intelligence. It's questionable whether they're even AI. And I think that the conversation is being used. There are some people who are doing it in good faith and others in others. I don't think it's being used to discuss the actual harms of what what they are

05:07calling AI today are. And it's all of the discussion around the larger concerns really feels overwhelmingly about something that's not happening. It's not even like they're discussing, okay, here's a legal definition of super intelligence. here is a thing of what AGI means and this is the actual plans we're going to make for if this happens on a welfare level on a like are we going to do UBI it's always about yeah it's really scary but only the big sexy

05:35rich companies are the ones that can possibly deal with it let me just frame the question so I can get a percentage from you or not it might the percentage might be zero but do you think the course we're on now in the way that they're pursuing super intelligence will lead to a percentage chance of human extinction and And if so, what is that percent?

05:53>> So, are we talking strictly AI based? Because if we dot the world with data centers, we have a climate disaster that's coming for us which will actually potentially eradicate humanity. But if we're talking strictly about AI, I stand at zero because we are we have not defined super intelligence. I don't think LLMs are the path to it. And I don't think I see it happening.

06:11>> Okay. So, we've got 99% 0%. Andy, I put a I put a tilda in front of my zero because never say never. but rounding error 0%. And I think this discussion is um a a massive distraction from the more substantive conversations, the more important conversations we should be having about AI. And I'll say it again, it it distracts us from the good things that

06:38AI is doing, will be doing for us. I get this impression sometimes from parts of the AI community that this is a massive evil or a terrible thing that has been unleashed on the world. Unless we listen to the advice of some people who have spent a lot of time thinking about this, um I get the impression from a lot of the discussion that the the underlying view is we would be better off had AI

07:04never been invented. I vehemently reject that view. I think we have a long history of inventing very powerful technologies that bring risks and harms along with them and we humans have done a really good job at you know not perfectly and not immediately but muddling through the situation and winding up in a better place because of the new technologies that we have. I expect AI, let me finish, please. I expect AI will be the next chapter in that story. And to say that it's this

07:32massive discontinuity and will kill it all, I I kill us all, I think it just I think it's um a huge dis disservice, >> Nate, make your case. What's your perspective? >> You know, I think whether or not the issues of extinction are a distraction between, you know, from the the possible benefits or from some of the present harms, I think that comes down to whether there is a real extinction risk.

07:53A lot of people like to say, you know, hey, it's distracting from this, it's distracting from that. My basic case is it could be true that there's a lot of benefits to AI. It could be true that there's a lot of present harms to AI. Neither of those would rule out that AI has a chance of wiping out all humanity, a substantial chance bigger than than this uh zero with a tilda in front of it. Um, and the way I would approach things is to try and figure that out because it's pretty important to our civilization.

08:20>> How do you define AI in this case? You know, I think uh a fascination with definitions isn't the most helpful. I think if we're sort of like in a forest fire and we can see the like fire starting to spread and it's starting to surround us and I'm like, "Hey, uh we should run." And you're like, "Well, what really is fire?

08:39>> How do we define fire? >> What are you telling us to run from? You know, with fire, I get burnt and I understand the mechanism in which I die. So, what is it you're saying that we should be running from?" Also, if we accept your fire analogy, we've we've basically accepted your argument. I don't accept that we're in the middle of a fire, a forest fire right now.

08:56>> I'm very happy to. >> You're baking you're breaking the premise into your refusal to give a definition. >> Oh, I mean, I can give some definitions. I just uh think that we shouldn't get wrapped up in the definitions. >> Okay. So, uh you know, in my book, we define super intelligence as AIs that are uh better than the best human at every cognitive task, every mental task.

09:14So, anything you can do in your head, >> right, >> the AI can do that better. And anything the best human can do in their head, the AI can do that better. Correct? >> Now, once you've defined it that way, that does not mean that the only possible worry is super intelligence. You could have an AI that's better at some things and worse at others, and that is still very dangerous. And so, once we pick a definition of what a super intelligence mean now, you know, if you're like, well, this isn't technically a super intelligence, so it can't hurt us. I'm like, no, no, that was just a definition. and the definitions.

09:42>> So, so I want to just on this line of question, what is the mechanism in which extinction could become a high probability or even a 1% probability? >> Yeah, the the thing I'm worried about here is AIS that are much smarter. I think there's a lot of questions about whether LLMs can get much smarter.

09:58There's sort of one conversation about like how could AI get smart to the point that they kill us. There's another question which is how could they kill us once they're smart? It's much easier to predict that they would succeed against humanity in a conflict that they would win in a fight than it is to predict exactly how. Like if you were playing a chess match against Magnus Carlson, I would know who's winning that chess match. No offense, Magnus Carlson's the best human chess player. I just know who's going to win. If you were like,

10:26"Okay, what piece is he going to use to checkmate me?" I'm like, gosh, that's a much harder question. I can make up a story, you know, and and and some madeup stories are like, "It makes a super virus. It takes over robot factories that are producing robots that are producing more robot factories. Uh it uses a website that already exists today called rent a human.ai where it rents humans to do things for it. There's sort of all sorts of ways for AI in the digital world to affect the material world if they are trying to. And there's

10:53sort of a lot of questions to tease apart here. There's like why would AIs be trying to do that? Uh, and there's how smart could they get in using these bolabs, paying people to do things, taking over robot factories, and how far off are we from AIs that start doing that stuff? Bunch of questions that we can go into.