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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Even better, this is the sort of AI duplicity that will be even easier to detect and counter with weaker/non-AI mechanisms. While I don't necessarily go as far as 'all cases need analog filings', that would be a pretty basic mechanism to catching spoofed case-ID numbers. It's not even something that 'well, the AI could hack the record system' can address, because it's relatively trivial to have duplicate record systems in reserve, including analog, to compare/contrast/detect record-manipulation efforts.

This is one of those dynamics where the AI power fantasies of 'well, the AI will cheat the system and fabricate whatever clearance it needs' meets reality to show itself as a power fantasy. When a basic analog-trap would expose you, your ability to accrue unlimited power through the master of the interwebs is, ahem, short lived.

I don't think anybody was expecting ChatGPT to cheat the system like that. GPT-3 and GPT-4 aren't interesting because they're superintelligences, they're interesting because they seem to represent critical progress on the path to one.

This isn't a point dependent on ChatGPT, or any other specific example that might be put in italics. It's a point that authentication systems exist, and exist in such various forms that 'the AI singularity will hack everything to get it's way' was never a serious proposition, because authentication systems can, are often already, and can continue to be devised in such ways that 'hacking everything' is not a sufficient, let alone plausible, course to domination.

Being intelligent- even superintelligent- is not a magic wand, even before you get into the dynamics of competition between (super)intelligent functions.