Although the AI danger battle is raging, with the panicking crowd on one side of the room and the aloof non-alarmists on the other, there is very little serious reflection about the roots of our concerns. So far, AIs like GPT-4 are only capable of receiving commands – which we call “prompts” – but can’t do anything on their own. In other words, like teenagers, AIs are suffering from an acute case of lack of motivation.
But what is motivation? Tentatively, we might say that it’s the desire to do things out of one’s own volition. Motivation is not necessarily a positive feeling, since it can arise out of extenuating circumstances, like being... (read 533 more words →)
By the way, I was going through my files and found this small article I typed up more than a month ago. I wrote it in a rush, as usual, just to "download" my thoughts on the matter. I re-read it, edited in like two words because I tried to leave it almost as it was written - even if as I did it I reconsidered the accuracy and veracity, current or near-future, of certain claims - and found it good enough to share, so I asked GPT to tell me where to post it and it suggested LessWrong. Honestly glad that I found this community.