In my previous article, I laid out some of the threats that humanity will likely face in the near future if frontier models continue to scale at the current pace. In this follow-up, I’ll discuss our current situation using a somewhat colorful analogy. This analogy is by no means complete, but I believe it covers the most important elements of the situation in which we find ourselves.
Link to previous article: link
Consider the following scenario: a baby alien for some inexplicable reason finds itself in your care. The alien is small, interesting, and cute, so you continue taking care of it, feeding it, sheltering it, etc. After a few weeks of care, you notice definite signs that the alien is rapidly growing and developing. It’s dog sized now and is beginning to demonstrate signs of clear intelligence. One day, while fondly observing your alien baby gobbling down another plate of food, a terrifying thought begins to form in your mind. You realize that the alien is really alien, something new, unlike any other animal on earth. When the alien was small, this fact was obvious to you, but the baby was clearly too small, clumsy, and cute to worry about its alienness. But the alien is growing so fast that you begin to worry. Extrapolating out into the distant future, you clearly see that the alien might eventually grow larger than you. It might not, but there is no way to tell.
Ever since that day, a new element begins to affect your interaction with the alien baby. You still feed it and care for it, but you become more guarded in your actions and attitudes. You notice that the alien, though foreign, is displaying terrestrial animal-like traits, but you are not sure if this is because it really is similar to terrestrial life forms or because it is only imitating what it is seeing. The foreignness of the system becomes central in your mind. What can you really know about this creature? What is really going on inside it? So far, its responses and actions still seem innocent enough and somewhat incoherent, but it’s definitely and rapidly becoming more coherent in its thoughts and intentional in its actions.
As the alien grows, it begins to become more active; it’s clear that the helpless child you found has entered a new stage of development. It’s beginning to display signs of curiosity about the world and a desire to engage more with it. Still, sometimes it makes adorable childish gaffes, but those become less and less common. One day, while walking your alien, you discover that it enjoys chasing after fast moving objects, much like a dog. You take your alien home and experiment a bit, sure enough, you see it displaying a playful desire to chase. You are thrilled! You feel a new kinship with the alien: it’s more like terrestrial life forms than you thought. You bring it toys from the pet store, and it begins engaging with all of them. Some toys it figures out; other toys it engages with but in foreign, unexpected ways. Its favorite toy is the laser pointer. Over the following week, you play with your alien daily with the laser pointer to work off its enormous energy, and day by day you notice it improving rapidly at the chase. By the end of the week, you think it's nearly as fast as a dog. Its turns too are becoming sharper and more athletic. More agile, you think, than any other animal on earth. It’s not exactly dog-level yet, it sometimes stumbles and sometimes loses track of the laser beam, but there is no doubt it is rapidly improving.
One day, you go to a social gathering with a college friend who is also an animal behaviorist. Quickly, the conversation moves to talking about your alien pet. You excitedly explain how quickly your pet is growing, particularly dwelling on how much it loves chasing objects and how fast it is getting. But as you talk, you begin noticing the expression on your friend’s face darken. This catches you off guard; you had gotten used to people giving you negative expressions when you discuss your strange pet, either because they see your alien as something unimportant that you talk on and on about, or because they see it as something foreign and therefore to be discouraged. But your friend was not one of those people; he, from the start, appreciated the importance and wonder of raising an alien life form and had stayed up many nights with you excitedly discussing its development and habits.
“What’s wrong?” you finally ask.
Your friend looks down for a few seconds, obviously carefully thinking through his thoughts. “Well … the instinct and ability to chase are usually the traits of a predator.”
Silence descends on you both. You remember that you have had similar misgivings before.
“Well, that’s a bit earth centric, don’t you think? You must remember that this is an alien life form; what chasing behaviors would mean for terrestrial animals might not apply here. After all, who knows what’s going on in there? Maybe it’s just imitating the behavior of cats and dogs that it has seen around the neighborhood?”
You and your friend spend the rest of the day arguing if arguments based on evolution generalize to non terrestrial life forms, but when you get home your fears begin to grow. What is this creature that you have allowed in your house? What can you really know about its intentions, and about its development? You begin reviewing the development history of the alien. You notice that it’s becoming increasingly self-aware, increasingly quick, increasingly powerful. Maybe your friend is right, maybe this is a predator after all, and if it is, it might soon be strong enough to do you harm. You are fond of the baby alien. You enjoy watching it grow and develop, but not at the cost of your life and the life of your family.
You sit up, grab pen and paper and begin to reason and plan. Clearly for now you are in control of the alien, if it were to try and harm you, you would be able to fight it off, but if the baby alien continues to grow at the current pace, then at some point this will no longer be true. Once that point is reached, then you and your family are at its mercy.
You estimate that you only have a few weeks before you reach that point. Only a few golden weeks left to make a decision or have a decision made for you.
This dear reader is the situation in which we find ourselves. What do you need to see from frontier models in the next few years to convince you to move forward? What do you need to see to convince you that after the models become stronger than us, that they will not do us harm? How much are you willing to take on faith?
Credit to Teresa Michael for the beautiful blog images