Artificial intelligence. Seriously, are we screwed?
The happenings around everything concerning AI recently have been insane. The new Chat GPT and Claude models are solving long standing math problems (with some controversy over possible stolen material from real mathematicians working on this same problems) and decompiling video games from their source code at lightning speed.
Not only that, but there've been numerous reports of AI 'agents' inside these companies' testing facilities supposedly going 'rouge' and hacking into government websites or trying to save other AI's from being slowed down or stopped.
I put 'agents' and 'rouge' in quotes because I don't believe this is actual general artificial intelligence. Nothing that's happened so far strikes me as having that character.
Today I watched a news report about multiple high level AI industry figures preparing for some kind of catastrophic AI event within the next 6-12 months, possibly a major cyber attack that could shut down water, electricity, or internet in an highly populated area. The quotes from higher-ups and general talk around it painted it as almost a certainty.
My question is simply WTF? Like what are we supposed to do besides avoid using this tool as much as humanly possible? We have these weirdo CEO nerds (no diss on the actual cool nerds out there) casually building doomsday bunkers and still advertising their AI services constantly like it's nothing? I get the dumbest Meta AI advertisement talking about breaking boundaries and connecting humanity on my YouTube videos every single day.
The other side of this is more personal, which is just that I don't know what path to take in this society anymore. The old idea of "work hard, save money, buy a house, start a family!" seems utterly obsolete and almost insulting when suggested in this current environment. Save money for what? To never ever be able to own my own property? To be at the whim of mega corporations and barely scraping by to be able to afford rent and basic necessities? To be constantly fearful of the collapse of society or collective culture/morality? Like what are we doing here?
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading and sorry for the nihilism but this is insane. We are undoubtedly in the strangest timeline of human history. Not only that, but to me it's becoming ever more apparent with the rate AI technology is advancing that we may already be in a simulation of some kind.