No, it's really not, because your riff on 'shoggoths that are both so brilliant as to be dangerous, yet so stupid that they maximize paperclips' touches on an important point that the summarized version completely omits.
AI is exactly that kind of stupid. What it lacks isn't 'brilliance' but intentionality. It can do all sorts of rhetorical party tricks, including those that are good at influencing humans, it can even very likely work out WHICH lines of argument are good at influencing humans from context, and yet it has no intentionality. It's wholly incapable of thinking 'wait, I'm making people turn the world to paperclips. This is stupid'.
So it IS likely to turn its skills to paperclip maximization, or any other hopelessly quixotic and destructive pursuit. It just needs a stupid person to ask it to do that… and we're not short of stupid people.
Applejinx|2 years ago
AI is exactly that kind of stupid. What it lacks isn't 'brilliance' but intentionality. It can do all sorts of rhetorical party tricks, including those that are good at influencing humans, it can even very likely work out WHICH lines of argument are good at influencing humans from context, and yet it has no intentionality. It's wholly incapable of thinking 'wait, I'm making people turn the world to paperclips. This is stupid'.
So it IS likely to turn its skills to paperclip maximization, or any other hopelessly quixotic and destructive pursuit. It just needs a stupid person to ask it to do that… and we're not short of stupid people.
So what you said was better, snark and all :)