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The Coming AI Invasion

2023-03-31 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook

Bracing for a coming wave of AI developments, Hank tells how mongooses brought to Hawaii to control rats devastated native species instead, and suggests AI may fill society with invasive 'counterfeit humans' controlled by anyone from a teenager to Vladimir Putin; ecology suggests isolated groups are most vulnerable and careful control can work, and rapid change is coming.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank expects 30 to 40 giant AI developments soon and is not ready

  • ★★ Hank says the current AI wave looks set to become 30 to 40 giant AI developments over the next three months to five years, and he is not ready. (hedged) — 00:00:00

00:00:12 — Mongooses brought to Hawaii to eat rats ate native species; invasive species and biological control

  • ★★ Hank says mongooses are native to India and are small weasel-like carnivores that eat anything small enough to bite. — 00:00:12
  • ★★ Hank says Europeans colonizing Hawaii brought rats, which were a problem for, among other things, the colonizers' sugar plantations. — 00:00:24
  • ★★★ Hank says someone brought mongooses to Hawaii to eat the rats; they did not control the rats well but ate many native species that had never met a mammalian carnivore. (playful) — 00:00:35
  • ★★ Hank defines an invasive species as an introduced species that takes root and changes an area's ecology, and biological control as introducing a species to control it, which has often gone very wrong. — 00:00:53

00:01:05 — Meta's Llama model leaked; a teenager in Orlando is surely running it

  • ★★ Hank reports that Meta's large language model Llama was leaked. — 00:01:05
  • ★ Hank says there is almost certainly a teenager in Orlando, Florida running the leaked model at home and teaching it to behave however they want. (playful, speculative) — 00:01:12
  • ★ Hank says he focuses on that teenager because he would have been that teenager if this had happened when he was young. (playful) — 00:01:30

00:01:38 — AI as invasive species in a complex society: fragile groups, careful control, people treating AI as inevitable

  • ★★ Hank says ecosystems are so complicated that the effects of a change are hard to know, and only a human society may be more complicated. — 00:01:38
  • ★★★ Admitting it is a leap, Hank suggests that a good way to imagine what is coming is that society is about to be full of invasive species. (hedged) — 00:01:51
  • ★ Hank says Hawaii has no native mammals except one very cute bat. — 00:02:00
  • ★★★ Hank says human history has never had 'counterfeit humans': entities that cannot do everything humans can but seem human, and can pursue goals in unpredictable ways. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ Hank asks what a society looks like with such entities roving in it, controlled by anyone from the Orlando teenager to Vladimir Putin, and says he does not know. (unsure) — 00:02:18
  • ★★ Hank says ecology offers lessons: more isolated, less diverse ecosystems are more fragile and at greater risk. — 00:02:27
  • ★★★ Hank says some demographics and groups may have fewer immunities to rapid change, so AI will not affect everybody equally. (hedged) — 00:02:35
  • ★★ Hank says biological control has improved, targeting specific species carefully, and many programs in the last 30 or 40 years succeeded unnoticed. — 00:02:45
  • ★ Hank recommends SciShow's video on successful biological control. — 00:03:00 · SciShow
  • ★★ Hank says many people in AI are working hard to think through its implications so as not to be the random guy who ruined Hawaii. — 00:03:05
  • ★★★ Hank says AI can be done in better or worse ways, but right now many people seem to think it is inevitable so it might as well be them. — 00:03:17

00:03:26 — Change comes in bursts; the next decades will be fast times; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says the one certainty in ecology and everything else is change, but change is not linear: there are calm periods and periods of rapid change. — 00:03:26
  • ★★★ Hank says it feels obvious that for society and ecology the next couple of decades will be fast times, and urges viewers to get ready. (hedged) — 00:03:37

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description says Hank has always loved looking at things through ecology, which he spent much of his education studying. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: artificial intelligence · biological pest control · Hawaii · invasive species · mongoose

Also: People: Vladimir Putin

Projects: SciShow

Organizations: Meta Platforms

Concepts: Biodiversity · colonialism · ecology · rat

Places: India · Orlando, Florida

Products: Llama (language model)

Also centred on artificial intelligence: Google in your Brain · Question Tuesday Except I'm an AI · Asking an AI Image Generator for Pizza Johns · AI tells me if AI will write novels. · Things are Changing Very Fast · After 12 hours in LA I'm a stand-up comic doing ASMR with a side gig as a music promoter

Also centred on invasive species: April 4, 2023

Later videos replying to this one

  • 2023-04-04 · April 4, 2023 (Hank) — continues — “I watched the video again and I didn't make the point well” (00:00:00)