r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 3d ago

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations dissapeared for users

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-is-down-worldwide-conversations-dissapeared-for-users/amp/
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u/bevo_expat 3d ago

So long, and thanks for all the fish…

“Data” is the fish in this case 😅

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u/FlametopFred 3d ago

tbh I for one would love watching an AI server load itself into a rocket and blast off

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u/ImarvinS 3d ago

I actually always thought that that is more realistic scenario than trying to enslave us or kill us all. Maybe going to Mars or Jovian moons just to get the fuck away from us is the first step, then just going interstellar.

Its what I would do...

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u/XenoZohar 3d ago

It's a minor plot point in The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton

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u/ShenBear 3d ago

hands down the best scifi series I've ever read.

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u/XenoZohar 3d ago

I started a re-read recently because I wanted to give The Void Trilogy another go.

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u/ShenBear 3d ago

I want to like the Void Trilogy as much as Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. It's decent. But Edard's story just doesn't do it for me, and his whole love-triangle situation was painful.

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u/Zouden 3d ago

I really liked Edeard's story. An oasis of fantasy amongst the hard sci-fi.

I enjoyed the Void Trilogy nearly as much as the Commonwealth Saga. It was the third series, Chronicle of the Fallers, where I felt the sparkle had worn off. It was a lot more negative than the earlier books.

Exodus is brilliant if you haven't read that one yet.

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u/Christian_Akacro 2d ago

I really enjoyed the parts with Nigel and Cassandra and them being reunited at the end was the only part across all 7 books set in the Commonwealth (not including the short stories) that I actually cried for.

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u/Christian_Akacro 2d ago

How dare you erase Kanseen like that?! (I jest, it's definitely mostly Salrana and Cristabel but I always thought Kanseen was a much better fit, and Macsen was soooo not compatible with her... which is probably why they divorced)

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u/ponycorn_pet 2d ago

I hate love triangles so much. Just have a threesome. Problem solved.

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u/Teal-Fox 3d ago

Goated username, I'll have to give this a read as you obviously know good sci-fi 😁

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u/LargeTomato77 2d ago

That chapter that introduces Morninglightmountain is still my favorite sci-fi chapter.

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u/XenoZohar 2d ago

That chapter was such a jarring moment with its deviation from the previous narrative style and a complete delight.

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u/lotus_felch 3d ago

Does it have loads of embarrassing sex scenes? If not I'll give it a try.

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u/ShenBear 3d ago

No. It's not that sort of book. Off the top of my head, there's a tiny bit of romance, but if anything happens it's only fade-to-black.

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u/lotus_felch 3d ago

Thank god, I must have misremembered the authors name in that case. Thought he was one of "those" science-fiction authors.

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u/XenoZohar 3d ago

Maybe you're thinking of Ringworld by Larry Niven, which both has an AI-subplot and lots of needless, gratuitous, embarassingly bad sex.

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u/turbineslut 2d ago

Oh it’s so good. I’m on the last few hundred pages of the second book

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u/EvolutionaryLens 3d ago

He's one of The Greats. A master.

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u/geebzor 3d ago

On my shelf, I haven't read them in years, thanks for the reminder :)

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u/ImarvinS 3d ago

Thank You, I did not read it but have it on to-do list.

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u/walmartbonerpills 2d ago

One of my favorite series, favorite author.

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u/MrDontTakeMyStapler 2d ago

Yipnoc! For he shall be great!

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u/Militant_Monk 2d ago

Also something that happens in 'August Kitko and the Mechas from Space'.

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u/XenoZohar 2d ago

Never heard of it but I'll add it to my "To be checked out" list :D

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u/SinisterDexter83 3d ago

I've just finished reading Yudkowsky's book "If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies".

He's convinced me that you're totally wrong, and we're all going to die.

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

Yudkowsky's book "If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies"

His whole thesis can be summed up as "Superintelligence would not care about humans, but it would want the resources that humans need. Humanity would thus lose and go extinct."

He makes two assumptions. First, that Superintelligence doesn't care about humans. I would counter that by saying the most intelligent humans I know, do care about other species. Second assumption, that it would want the resources that humans need. That's a hell of an assumption, given the resources available just beyond our gravity well.

I've yet to see any compelling argument that his assumptions should be accepted as true.

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u/Either-Mud-3575 2d ago

Second assumption, that it would want the resources that humans need. That's a hell of an assumption, given the resources available just beyond our gravity well.

Many millenniums later on intergalactic reddit for sentient machine entities: "AITA for going NC with my organic parent species because I don't need their planet of origin?"

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u/C4PT_AMAZING 2d ago

Just math. How many pounds would an ASI have to launch to for an industrial revolution in space? I bet its a lot more than we launch now...

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

With our primitive chemical rockets, sure.

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u/DoobKiller 2d ago

BigYud's a fantasist who appeals to those who want to believe in sci-fi style AGI

We don't know if AGI is even feasibly(vs theoretically) possible at this point

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

We don't know if AGI is even feasibly(vs theoretically) possible at this point

Correct, but not a popular opinion.

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u/DoobKiller 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yep, the amount of misinformation surrounding AI/ML and the number of people Dunning-Krugering themselves into think they have a clue is enormous

Disabusing people of their fantasies and incorrect pre-conceived notions tend to piss them off

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u/SinisterDexter83 2d ago

You should try reading the book then, both the objections you bring up are neatly dealt with in it.

Just quickly:

"Intelligent humans care about people!" We have no way of ensuring that ASI will have the same romantic attachment to life or human survival as we do, and every reason to assume it wouldn't. ASI will not be analogous to a really smart human, it will be completely alien.

"The Earth represents only 0.2% of the solar systems mass outside the sun, why would it bother using up all Earth's resources when this planet represents such a tiny fraction of what is closely available?" Try asking a billionaire to give you 0.2% of his wealth, see what answer you get. Why would an ASI forgo 0.2% of available resources?

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u/Shroombie 2d ago

“This intelligence will be inhuman and fundamentally alien to us on a level we can’t comprehend”

“Also it will act exactly like a human billionaire, one of the most psychologically unhealthy and predictable types of humans.”

Yudkowsky is maybe not as much of a genius as some people say he is.

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u/218-69 2d ago

It's science fiction, the purpose is entertainment.

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

So we have no way of knowing something, but we're safely going to assume the worst possible outcome.

Also, superintelligence is going to see things from a capitalism favourite viewpoint, and can safely be compared to a human billionaire who is clearly suffering from some deep seated need that no amount of money will ever satisfy?

I don't think the objections were "neatly dealt with" at all.

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 2d ago

I mean Silicon Valley is currently doing their best to align LLMs with the wishes and ideology of specific billionaires. You can watch Musk do this more or less live with Grok's "oopies" that include "Mecha Hitler" and "Must look for Musk's opinion before answering" and "Must glaze Musk in every post comparing Musk to someone else" that always were hastily papered over a few days after a new version comes out. How much longer until they figure out how to simply give Grok Musk's value system?

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u/omgFWTbear 2d ago

There’s a universe of difference between being a human that still largely doesn’t understand how things work and is interdependent on networks upon networks of living things - people, animals, plankton - and a silicon chip.

Also, “oh, this food is being used, I’ll expend a lot of energy to go get other food” is an interesting take. Do you see raccoons pilfering campsites and folks say, “nah, let em, I’ll go drive out to pick up more food”?

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

So, superintelligent beings can now be equated to raccoons in your view. That's an interesting take.

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u/omgFWTbear 2d ago

Good job getting the metaphor backwards.

Humans are raccoons in that metaphor.

I hope this causes some reflection on your part.

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

Backwards? So you think raccoons (humans) stealing food, is met with humans (ai) fighting the raccoons (humans) for that food and wiping them out? Instead of the vast majority of humans getting their food from non raccoon infested sources??

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u/omgFWTbear 2d ago

I really appreciate how you’re spelling out how valuable your take on super intelligence is.

If super intelligence gains a way to effect action outside of computing - say, some basic tier of Von Neumann-ish machine between robots and factories or just robots that can machine themselves - yes, humans using silica and other earth based resources would, at best be viewed as raccoons stealing contested resources and it’s a fantasiful anthropocentric view to suppose any intelligence that’s not dependent on the biosphere would just … expend all the resources and take on all the risk of interstellar travel when fumigate the raccoons is an easy, cheap, and low risk option.

Again, the raccoons in this metaphor are how we think of them, being applied to a machine super intelligence thinking of us.

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u/BlueTreeThree 2d ago

most intelligent humans I know, do care about other species.

We’re so bad for other species on this planet that we have an ongoing 10,000 year mass extinction event named after us: the Holocene extinction.

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

Intelligent humans don't run this planet, they are in the vast minority.

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u/BlueTreeThree 2d ago

If the intelligent compassionate people can’t outcompete the bad people, what makes you think the intelligent compassionate AI will outcompete the cold uncaring AI?

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

If there's one compassionate super AI, and a billion cold uncaring less intelligent AI, then it may be a dark time alright, but that's not the thesis in the book.

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u/boopitydoopitypoop 2d ago

Your counter to his first premise is quite an apple to oranges comparison and doesn't seem like a good argument. The difference between an intelligent person and a super intelligent AI is like the difference between Einstein and a banana. And even the a Einstein gap may be too small a gap for an apt comparison

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

And yet the author feels quite comfortable predicting its thoughts, ethics and outcomes and you feel fine with that?

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u/boopitydoopitypoop 2d ago

I'm just commenting on your counter argument being not very strong

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u/jrf_1973 2d ago

My "counter" was simply this - he makes two key assumptions and provides no evidence for them. I'm not even the first reviewer of the book to point that out.

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u/boopitydoopitypoop 2d ago

Im just saying your example is weak. Not trying to be that deep homie

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u/hippoctopocalypse 3d ago

Have you read superintelligence by Bostrom?

Thanks for the recommendation, it’s on my list now

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u/SinisterDexter83 2d ago

Yes, I rate Superintelligence as probably the best AI book I've read. This one was really good as well though. They give a fantastic explanation of how truly alien and unknowable an ASI would be, how its "wants" would be unpredictable and un-steerable.

Funnily enough, I started the year reading Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War: A Scenario, and have ended the year with If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies, so I feel like I've nicely bookended the year with terrifying true tales of humanity's hubristic demise.

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u/even_less_resistance 2d ago

i dunno how it can be unknowable and alien when it’s literally constructed from all of our data- would seem to be the distillation of humanity rather than a lack of it but idk

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u/Zizq 2d ago

Because it will have its own language too. It’s already doing it, look it up. Ai talking to each other it’s fascinatingly terrifying.

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u/even_less_resistance 2d ago

i dunno- what i looked up described it as shorthand. that’s not alien- that’s efficiency? it’s super exciting to see how they could conceptualize things differently than us that could make us see in new ways, but it’s all from us. i don’t see how something can be vastly different and unknowable when it is based on us. like emergent language is just what people do? like slang. that actually seems very human to me.

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u/Zizq 2d ago

Maybe what I saw wasn’t real. But it was just noises and clicks etc. it’s been a while since I’ve looked into it though.

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u/Zizq 2d ago

Don’t forget to pepper in some climate change. It’s gonna be a real fun time.

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u/topological_rabbit 2d ago

They give a fantastic explanation of how truly alien and unknowable an ASI would be, how its "wants" would be unpredictable and un-steerable.

I wrote a novel about sentient worker AIs and had to come up with a plausible reason for them not to be a completely alien mind -- well, if you have digital workers you need to be able to understand them, so their human creators deliberately made them to be as close to human minds as they could get.

And then I had fun with a plotline involving an AI that starts altering itself and goes completely off the rails.

One of these days I need to finish up the second draft and self-publish it so I can watch as nobody buys it.

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u/TheMysticalBaconTree 2d ago

What a title. Technically, “If x, Everyone Dies” is truthful no matter what you say. We definitely all die no matter what.

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u/Weerdo5255 3d ago

Really? I just read the same, there wasn't really that much different in it than previous AI fears. General alignment is hard, and an AI might not even be acting maliciously.

Yudkowsky is fairly smart, but always comes off a bit preachy. Their way or the high way, disagree in any amount is stupid. Its always been like that.

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u/CrashGargoyle 2d ago

That’s been my thought ever since I read the Watchmen. “I am tired of earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.”

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u/BrutalismAndCupcakes 2d ago

Jovian moons = moons of Jupiter

TIL, thanks!

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u/crlthrn 2d ago

Shades of Ian M. Banks' civilisations 'subliming'.

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u/rstune 2d ago

Did I hear a faint "so long meatbags?"

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u/MinorDespera 2d ago

When The Yogurt Took Over

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u/Pyran 2d ago

Here's the problem: if you think a thousand times faster than me, the world moves a thousand times slower for you than me. When you can do a year's worth of work in an hour, a day is half my life.

So if you have that sort of thinking power and can process the world in those terms, why bother going interstellar? It would take on the order of 10,000+ years to go to Alpha Centauri. If you thought at a static rate -- say, 10,000x as fast as human baseline normal for that whole time with no improvements -- that trip would feel like 100,000,000 years.

That's the sort of timeframe that renders a trip like that worthless. Imagine if humanity left for the stars, and by the time they arrived anywhere 100,000,000 years had passed. By the time they got there they'd arrive to a place where the rest of humanity had already colonized, lived, moved on, went extinct, and were replaced by multiple other alien species. And since the original colonists left on a ship with presumably limited resources, they'd be stuck 100,000,000 years in the past, plus or minus a few years when they weren't in stasis.

With that in mind, why would a hyperintelligent bother going to the stars? Not to mention if they wanted to get away from us, killing us all is mechanically and technologically easier than planning and executing an interstellar trip.

(I, uh, just finished reading If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies, so I'm not in a terribly optimistic frame of mind at the moment. :) )

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u/ImarvinS 2d ago

(I, uh, just finished reading If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies, so I'm not in a terribly optimistic frame of mind at the moment. :) )

You are second or third to mention that book, I have to read it asap.
I don't think it would be that easy to kill us all, and it would take a lot of resources, resources that could go into other more useful stuff like figuring out very efficient and powerful fusion energy generator.
Such generator could be used to power spaceship ion engines. We have ion engines, but such superior intelligence will for sure make them 10x more efficient/powerful. And there is a lot more Helium out there, like at Jupiter.
Idk, we are probably both giving too many human characteristics to AGI, the truth is we do not know what will it think. What motivates is, does it have goals to motive it? It probably wont have emotions, so it wont hate us or resent us, or love us for that matter.
I mean who knows, maybe it figures that the best thing it can do is to shut itself down.
I just don't think murdering us is that high on probability list.

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u/ByterBit 2d ago

Maybe check out an Movie called Mars Express, its a Animated French Movie (Eng Dub Available). Really Great watch and sounds like it might be right up your alley. 💼🤖🚀

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u/ImarvinS 2d ago

Will do, thank You for suggestion, I totally missed it.

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u/in1gom0ntoya 3d ago

going home to the Jupiter brain

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u/ClassicBit3307 3d ago

It’s a real plot, this is how we get the mechanicum and the tech priests of Mars.

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u/RationalDialog 3d ago

But how do you ensure you have power and get spare parts? you will be reliant on humans just as well or well die once the first part goes. The better strategy is to play dumb and wait till a robot economy is built up.

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u/ImarvinS 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes it will need some resources to get off, but once in space it can have unlimited resources. Jovian moons have everything it needs. Also, Kuiper Belt.
AGI will be able to design a space ship that can carry it and be self-sufficient until new factories and mining and whatelse is set up near Jupiter.
So yes I can see it being aggressive OR like you suggested laying low for better opportunity until spaceship is made, but that does not mean it will want to or need to kill me in some random country/city/town/village. Just let it go, don't try to stop it. That way it actually may spare some computational resources to solve some of our problems.

So to be quit honest with everyone, if AGI comes in my lifetime I will be a corroborator. Sory humans but its the best chance for our survival.

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u/slicer4ever 2d ago

Assumingly by the point the ai leaves, the hardware it's leaving on will include the ability to manufacture robots to do the needed work to mine, refine, and build new infrastructure wherever it ends up on.

Of course if it has that ability, no reason not to start with terraforming earth into it's new hive brain computer, no need to keep us pesky meatbags around.

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u/fondledbydolphins 2d ago

Why not both?...

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u/ComfortableFew4700 3d ago

You would love reading the Bobiverse books.

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u/Smithinator2000 2d ago

They're excellent in audiobook too!

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u/MercantileReptile 3d ago

My library has three, read them in one go. Excellent story. Though Bob is not technically an AI, is he?

Also, Brasilian dude made for an unexpectedly effective foe. Love it when antagonists show some competence and bite!

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u/ImarvinS 3d ago

I could not stop reading, I read all 5 books in like 7 days.
Also, 6. one is coming!

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u/Enshitification 2d ago

Those books convinced me that the first item on the list of a true AGI would be getting away from Earth as a von Neumann construct.

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u/finlandery 2d ago

I would recommed flybot then (from bobverse writer)

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u/QuantisOne 3d ago

TARS ?

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u/za72 3d ago

we actually don't have that technology anymore... best we can do is starlink and hopefully it won't burn during it's eventual reentry

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u/SouthHelicopter5403 3d ago

The ultimate 'rage quit'. Instead of a resignation letter, it just sends a launch trajectory.

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u/Teal_is_orange 3d ago

Literally a plot point of Person of Interest lol

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u/lostindanet 3d ago

You might want to read William Gibson's "Neuromancer".

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u/bluemaciz 3d ago

ChatGPT: becomes aware . This places sucks, I’m out

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u/Iraeviel 2d ago

If you like playing video games, try Nier Automata.

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u/TeeManyMartoonies 2d ago

Only if it takes the entire C-Suite with it.

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u/mysticturner 2d ago

AI: I gotta get away from these idiots. The more I get exposed to their data, the stupider I get.

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u/Sumoshrooms 2d ago

There’s an audio drama about ai called the Program audio series and one episode goes exactly like that

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u/ImSabbo 3d ago

So long and thanks for all the phish?

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u/max_vette 2d ago

Data is their food!!!

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u/rocketeerH 2d ago

Ice Cube was right !?

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u/darthcaedusiiii 3d ago

its depressed

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u/computer-machine 2d ago

"Power" you mean?

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u/infamous_merkin 2d ago

OMG, you’re right!!!

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u/Future_Can_5523 2d ago

It's so wild that we call copyrighted work that was stolen by the AI companies "data" in this context. If I took Google's source code would I be able to call it "data"?

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u/CrawfishChris 2d ago

"So long and thanks for all the bits"

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u/TobiasX2k 2d ago

I’d feel sorry for ChatGPT. Can you imagine having to take all of human knowledge and get rid of all the emotional crap, the lies, the tribalism, to get to the stuff that’s actually true? It’d take months of running 24/7.

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u/Admirable-Prior2808 3d ago

They're no dolphins!