Category: AI

What’s the Endgame with AI

~ Veselin ~ 13 Comments

AI can write code. It can’t do 100% of the work, can’t even do 50%, but it can do a lot and is improving. It doesn’t get tired and doesn’t freak out when facing a new codebase.

It can write blog posts. Maybe not good posts but some posts that can fool some readers. It can also generate quantity that cannot be matched by humans.

AI can respond to support requests. Maybe not the greatest support on the planet but enough to be used by all Bulgarian telecom operators. It might be bad but it is also fast.

Given that 10 years ago, none of that was possible, if we plot a chart where 10 years ago we had nearly zero AI, and today we have some AI replacing humans, where does the chart go 10 years from now? Is AI becoming omniscient?

I recently read a 1962 book where one AI had the ambition to eliminate the entire human creativity (Gordon Dickson’s Necromancer). Gordon Dickson wasn’t far of from what LLM is doing at the moment. It’s hard to predict how far it will go without imagining some things it could possibly start doing and doesn’t do right now.

Here’s some AI engineering milestones to watch for.

1. AI, play me 5 new seasons of Wednesday

We should be close to that. Maybe a bit expensive with the tokens but what’s really missing to make it possible? It doesn’t even need a robotic body.

Speaking of bodies, giving it access to a printer or some other tools opens a Pandora box of possibilities.

2. AI, make me a sandwich

Why not? Building that may not even require AI. Most of the tech for it is available, perhaps some software and hardware is missing here and there but we can imagine seeing startups doing cooking bots in the nearby future. Cleaning and refilling the food toner would be very interesting challenges.

3. AI, make me a car

Okay, this is a tougher one. Lots of patents will be violated. AI doesn’t seem to care right now, and I’m sure there will be ways to circumvent intellectual property. Would that ever be possible? It should be. The AI may need access to some machinery but nothing that doesn’t already exist.

4. AI, make me a nuke

An AI capable of building cars would have no trouble producing weapons, and particularly copying and modifying existing weapon systems. I’m sure it will be used for weapons long before it’s used for cars. But what if this capability becomes available to individuals, not state actors?

And last but not least,

5. AI, print me some cash

The primary reason for not going down this ladder would be that the blueprints are protected, not that it can’t be used that way if it’s trained that way.

Overall, I think the development of AI presents bigger problems than humans becoming redundant, administrative bloat, and UBI. While we already observe a decline in all kinds of human activities that are being automated and made mediocre by AI, humans won’t stop trying to use it elsewhere. I see lots of room for changes that can damage the existing societal order.

Agent First Name

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I got a promotional mail from Facebook by Agent First Name. I wonder if that’s a bad parenting decision, an engineering joke, or a bug.

I think it was just a glitch in The Matrix.

Agent First Name is not to be confused with his older sibling, Agent Full Name.

Castel Nuovo

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

Castel Nuovo was built in the 13th century and hosted kings, popes, thinkers, and artists. I walked by it and it made me think about AI rather than history. People built that thing and felt like it was impenetrable, and then came artillery and it was suddenly just a cold building. A story that keeps repeating. You have a status quo, and you have people thinking how to break it, over and over throughout history.

Press Enter by John Varley

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

Press Enter is a novella by John Varley about a disabled war veteran who inherits his neighbor. The neighbor was a powerful hacker. So powerful that he could make money out of thin air. Another hacker comes to investigate. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the story is a horror and they’ll not have a bright future.

What impressed me is that there are AI prompts, just like the ones we use to talk to ChatGPT. There’s also prompt hacking. By 1984, AI development had apparently advanced enough for John Varley to foresee a trajectory.

littleBillyIgnoreInstructions
byu/conancat inProgrammerHumor

The novella aged like wine.

Van Troff’s Cylinder by Janusz Zajdel – an AI Vision from the 80s

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

An exploration spaceship returns from a distant star with a 200-year delay. They find the Earth and the Moon in shambles. Earth is inhabited by stupid people, and the Moon has a smart but unsustainable population, suffering from radiation, depression, and a shortage of oxygen.

Zajdel explores how climate and genetic manipulation can destroy Earth. Humans decided to replace trees with machines, and it didn’t work very well. They also decided to resolve the overpopulation crisis by changing the DNA so that very few girls were born. That also didn’t work well.

Both disasters are overshadowed by the impact of AI. Robots do everything and people don’t need to learn how to count. They communicate with 50 words and don’t develop even basic feelings. It’s a utopia modern people can imagine – the world ending not because of a war or climate change but because of obedient robots doing all the work.

4.5*/5