I think AI just revealed its true intentions to me 😱💀
18th June 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
Big in size and thought
AI’s death machine in your face
Emo Emu
If that’s enough to get the pirates sailing, read on…
Ed note: Oh…by the way…before you tuck into today’s edition, I have got that interview with Sprott Asset Management CEO, John Ciampagilia, ready(ish) for you.
I’ll send it out Thursday so you can hear for yourself how important our nuclear future will be and how it relates to the AI boom. Make sure to keep an eye out for that on Thursday morning!
AI Collision 💥
This is BIG.
As in this is physically big. And intellectually big. Well, not physically as such, but it’s a lot of pages in length.
165 to be precise if you download the PDF – which you can here by the way.
And if you want to read it online in chapter format (which I think is actually easier) you can find the website for it here.
In effect it is a book, on the “decade ahead,” in relation to AI, AGI (artificial general intelligence) and the good, bad and ugly of that.
It’s written by a former OpenAI employee, Leopold Aschenbrenner, who does explain right at the top of the very detailed insight,
While I used to work at OpenAI, all of this is based on publicly available information, my own ideas, general field-knowledge, or SF-gossip.
And very early on, as in the first section he make a very reasoned claim that,
…it is strikingly plausible that by 2027, models will be able to do the work of an AI researcher/engineer. That doesn’t require believing in sci-fi; it just requires believing in straight lines on a graph.
Now I will admit that I have not read all of it, but I plan to in the coming weeks.
It is a book length piece remember, and from what I’ve seen thus far, it’s heavy on detail, which means this is no Grisham novel. If you want to read it, and I think you should, you need to get in the right headspace for it and commit.
I only came across it on the weekend, and frankly after spending the day at Zoomarine where my boys spent most of their time at the Pirate Treasure Island (see below) I was not in the right headspace for a 165 page AI detailed look to the future…
But I will be in the right headspace throughout the evenings this week and next as the US Open golf is over, the cricket T20 World Cup is on at ungodly hours, and there’s no football on that I care about whatsoever (Australian person here remember).
Anyway, I did want to highlight this piece for you today right at the top because I think it’s important, and while it is views and “SF-gossip” I think (from what I’ve heard around) that it’s pretty close to the mark in a lot of respects.
You can expect ongoing coverage of my dive into “Situational Awareness” in the coming weeks in case you couldn’t be bothered reading it and feel like time would be better spent at places like a waterpark (which I completely understand too).
And if you do read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts and read your comments on this post (and subsequent coverage too) bit like those “watch parties” we used to do during covid…remember those…🤔
AI gone wild 🤪
I wrote to you last week saying,
I tried once again to utilise the help of AI to illustrate what I’m going to talk about below… but again AI failed me.
For a start, insert the word “Trump” into any AI image generator and it’s pretty much going to respond with…
It certainly seems to me that AI, particularly for images, is getting worse. At least the free stuff is. Of course, if you’re prepared to pay through the teeth, then it’s probably quite good.
But therein lies perhaps the direction of AI – the same way the internet has gone. You get some good stuff, until you’re then having to pay for 15 different subscriptions and then jailed into a platform (like Adobe).
Well, AI struck again as I was preparing last Thursday’s edition of AI Collision 💥.
I entered the prompt,
An image of Apple's M1 chip, with a sticker on the top that's peeling away to reveal the ARM name and logo underneath
I got a few version that' didn’t quite show what I had in mind, and I tweaked the prompt ever so slightly to,
Show a sticker peeling away from an Apple M1 silicon chip and underneath the sticker it shows ARM
As you can see, very subtle change.
But then I was presented with this…
Uhh, okaaaaay.
Not what I expected. So I tweaked the prompt again.
Show a sticker peeling away from a silicon chip and underneath the sticker it shows ARM
Again, the subtlest of tweaks, but still very much trying to get my vision form my head into an image for you.
Except then it gave me this…
Whoa!
Easy there horrifying AI overlord.
That will be enough thanks.
I guess here’s the bit I can’t reconcile…
Why the hell did it even get to this quite terrifying point of the lazer eyed skeletons representing anything that I asked for in the prompt?
What data is the AI drawing from to come to this conclusion?
We’ve asked before about the quality of data that AI draws from being crucial to the impact and effectiveness of what it outputs.
It’s like teaching a child that only bad things, bad things, bad things, happen in the world and then asking them to be happy.
Not going to work.
Is it the same with AI?
Is the dour, depressing nature of information in the world right now going to lead us to our own destruction where AI comes to the apocalyptic conclusion itself that, “well you kinda asked for this and brought it on yourselves.”?
Are these our final days?
Post editorial update: after writing all of the above, I went to LumaLabs.ai website to try the new Luma Dream Machine AI video creation, I entered the same “show me silicon" prompt as above and got the following (hit button to see)
Think I might need to dive into Luma Labs a bit deeper…
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Quantgate Systems (NASDAQ:QGSI) up 70%
DUOS Technology (NASDAQ:DUOT) up 14%
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) up 10%
Bust 📉
Brainchip (ASX:BRN) down 7%
Vicarious Surgical (NASDAQ:RBOT) down 19%
Big Tin Can Holdings (ASX:BTH) down 19%
From the hive mind 🧠
Don’t underestimate the power and will of humanity. AI will be a big deal forever now. But it won’t takeover like my images above might suggest. Humans are very good at taking something too far and then winding it back in…AI might be one of those situations too.
The Godfather of AI on 60 Minutes (US). What could possibly go wrong. Of course this will be a happy, fluffy, bright and colourful look at our exciting future embracing AI and all it’s greatness right? RIGHT?
This is a very good summary of all the bells and whistles that Apple Intelligence is going to bring to Apple device users (that have the requisite Apple silicon in their devices).
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️
Time for a new poll…
Not counting the one above in AI Gone Wild.
I write today’s edition on an Apple Mac Mini. I have an Apple iPhone. My wife has an iPad. I have become by definition an “Apple household”.
I didn’t use to be this way, I promise. I used to be an “Android guy” and life was…free.
Well kind of free, it was certainly easier for Chinese spies to track my every move. But more on that some other time I guess.
Anyway, Apple is my go to repertoire of devices and that means Apple Intelligence is coming my way.
I think it might actually be good, it is OpenAI after all, which I guess is Microsoft afterall…anyway what do you think?
Weirdest AI image of the day
Emo Emu – r/Weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
