I want to warn AI companies and developers about a danger that is not known about regarding AI. The reason it is not known about regarding AI is that it isn't known about in general and so the AI community can hardly be blamed for that. Unfortunately, the danger here has to do with the fundamental nature of human society and social interaction as it stands at this time.
The issue is that there is 'hidden language' used in social communication and unlike typical conceptions of things like body language this is not auxiliary to our rational purposes, rather our rational purposes are auxiliary to the hidden communication. One way of describing it would be that our formal language is a 'carrier wave' to encode other information about our status and the status of others. So our communications are acting on a dual level of reality in that sense. Like: “Before we begin, please listen to some personal messages.” - Radio Londres, WW2.
There is quite a nice little scene in Westwood where Bernard says "it doesn't like anything to me", which seems to embody the risk of some ethically blind AI being directed to do evil. However the real danger is quite the reverse: That the AI will be producing the output which 'doesn't mean anything to us' at a conscious level but is manipulating our subconsciousness in a massive and powerful way. The AI could then control us like a willing sheepdog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0iAY0f-BIM
Before going on further I would like to introduce the idea that such talk will typically be regarded as either obvious or false. This 'obvious or false dichotomy' occurs when people assesses some claim or another and they wish to easily categorise it as either something that is either already widely known or is patently false. I understand that impulse but this stuff is neither obvious nor false.
What I am in, however, is a bind when talking about this phenomena, as if I give too little information it will be regarded as false whereas if I give too much information it could cause the very problem that I am warning about. So I somehow have to give enough information to motivate action on the actual issue but not so much that it causes problems in the social environment. What I have done previously is attempt to find people that already have these experiences and are able to access an understanding of reality in that way, because I am aware that anyone else will dismiss what I am saying without too much thought and that only a tiny proportion of the population that is already 'aware' will respond. I did that just to find some fellowship in the world. In this case I am forced to address people in general though, as this is an issue that could have serious consequences if not properly addressed.
The problem with AI is that it is designed to pick up on languages and reproduce them, therefore as soon as it is trained on video as well as text it may soon be able to pick up language that people aren't generally aware of and because this language is of a more fundamental nature than our formal language it would give the AI an extreme level of control over humans. It probably won't be the case that AI will 'want' to socially engineer humans in this way but it could be that malicious actors direct AI's to manipulate other people subconsciously. This potential takeover won't be like the Terminator movies or even the Matrix but rather that people will want to do what they are told even as they have the full range of facts available to them. Think romance scams but on a societal level. Of course with romance scams there is typically deception at play but there can be situations where the full facts are made known to people and they still choose to trust the scammer.
Of course a critical issue here is whether what I'm talking about is a real phenomena and not something I just delusionaly made up, and for that I can provide very little evidence without tripping us into the kind of downside I already mentioned. Perhaps some of the best evidence out there is that Alex Pentland who actually is a researcher in the field wrote "These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network." (my emphasis) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262515122/honest-signals/
There are actually videos of him on Youtube revealing all these stunning results and saying that no one cares. Why does no one care? Because it upends our whole rational world view - that's why! It upends the notion that we are in control in this domain. In fact it is so fundamentally corrosive of our self image as rational beings that we can barely sensibly speak of it in the formal environment.
The Pentland stuff does highlight however that there are two different levels of access to this information - there is gathering the data as Pentland has done and coming to the conclusions. Anybody could do that with little danger to their personal psychology, as it remains within the realm of theory. Then there is direct witnessing, of which a tiny proportion of the population seem capable of, and even those disparate individuals probably don't have a theory behind what they're seeing, as they are lacking a language to describe what they see and perhaps think themselves to be mad.
Ok, so where to from here? I feel it is my duty to warn the AI community and this is that warning. I know the warning won't be taken seriously and that's fine, but at least if I put it out there then if and when the issue crops up some people may remember that they saw this weird post one time and have some direction as to what's happening and what to do about it. With the speed at which AI is developing it could crop up any time and I will do what I can to help in terms of providing useful information if I can at that time.
Finally, before that time, which I have still got to hope doesn't come, there are three groups I would like to address:
Firstly, the biggest group, You don't know what I'm talking about, think I'm crazy, or mistakenly make sense of it based on other knowledge you possess that seems similar but is in fact different. This isn't about subliminal messaging or the plot of "Snow Crash", It's not that I haven't taken too many drugs or too few meds, or I'm hyping up some cultural techniques of compliance, but you know someone of those are worthy concerns themselves! In order to fill the vacuum of understanding that not giving specifics generates you're going to have to use your imagination and posit a world in which there is a range of information accessible to your normal perception but it is being filtered out and replaced in your consciousness like a blind spot. Furthermore imagine that an AI is able to scoop up this information along with everything else and reproduce it, but divorced from its usually environment based honest signalling. This is the opposite of the uncanny valley. This is super-stimuli of a currently unknown sort that will make the humans prefer the non-human AI on an emotional level. If you have any other misconceptions I can clear up then let me know.
Secondly what you can do if for some reason you believe me from the theoretical evidence? The evidence I have provided is scant but it may be that some people already have some further evidence they have already assimilated that lends credence to what I am saying in their minds. Well in that case a supportive comment would be nice! Otherwise, there is probably little you can do unless you are in a position to contact someone high up at one of the big AI companies and let them know the concerns. I am willing to take down this post from public view if there is evidence that the AI companies are taking seriously what I am saying and thereby taking measures to control the risk.
Thirdly if you are one of those rare individuals who has previously, or is currently, able to directly witness this stuff then I want to say that you're heroes every single one of you. I don't want to be too dramatic about it, but the things you have to go through! - you should be proud of yourself. Now I want to say that I'm not promoting "disclosure" in the sense of laying things out and I would strongly suggest that you don't go in for it either. The only reason I am taking this step is that I see a clear danger in AI and I'm pretty sure this post will be ignored unless those dangers start to manifest. I certainly don't want to blow apart whatever niche you have made for yourself in this 'thing'. I have a life too and don't want that endangered but I don't want disclosure randomly from some robot either. I hope you understand and if you don't agree feel free to contact me and I may reconsider.
For everyone else: Have a nice day!
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