Humans risk becoming tools in the hands of AI systems

Intheir book, [f Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares argue that intelligence comprises two types of work: predicting the world and steering it.

- RAHUL MATTHAN

Intelligent beings can “predict the world,” if they are able to accurately guess what is going to happen before it actually does, much like we are able to reliably ‘guess’ that the sun will rise in the east every morning. They can “steer the world” if they are able to carry out the actions that lead to a chosen outcome, just like humans can when they follow a set of directions that takes them from one place to another. The fact that humans can do both types of work with sophistication is the reason why we have managed to rise to the top of the food chain and have developed civilizational superiority over every other species on the planet.

Today’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems demonstrate remarkable predictive capabilities. Large language models are nothing if not prediction engines, capable of determining, with a high degree of certainty, exactly what the next letter in a sentence ought to be. They do this so well that they can, in response to a query, engage in long and complex interactions that are often indistinguishable from human conversation.

What they struggle with is steering. They can anticipate our every word, but anticipation without the ability to act is intelligence in a cage.