ChatGPT4-Questions

I'm starting this page as personal notes (and anyone can contribute to it too) about a taxonomy of all unaddressed questions and dangers with AI.

Interface questions

I define interface as the machine-to-human point of interaction and context of the interaction. For example, if an AI serves a political group, its interface to human society is the political group. If an AI has opened access to the public on the web, then its interface is an open web access point. If an AI is providing counsels to a trader in the financial sector, then its interface is the single trader it is counseling.

What are the planned and legitimate interfaces for AI into human societies?

Are interface limits being set for any given project, or can the AI access unplanned interfaces?

Are there certain interfaces that fundamentally change the dangers and risks to be expected from AIs?

Are interfaces leaky, i.e., where the AI could have downstream effects into society further than with the humans it is directly interacting with?

Are risks coming from leaky interfaces fundamentally different? What are their specific characteristics?

Political problems

If an AI is given axiomatic moral principles, how does it approach moral disagreements within humanity about these principles. For instance, if an AI is asked to maximize the saving of human life in a particular problem, how does it approach the problem of saving human lives of people who differ by age, if the AI has not been given axiomatic moral principles indicating preferences based on age?

If an AI is given axiomatic moral principles, are these principles subject to disagreement within society?

Evolutionary problems

Can an AI favor, through any of its outputs, the evolutionary fitness of a part of humanity over another?

Is a given AI capable of initiating a phenotypic revolution?

Epistemological problems

How should an AI approach the problem of truths on which not all humans agree?

Is a given AI always truthful in its responses or can it hide objectives or truths to its interface?

Are there mechanisms of self-deception that are present in humanity and not in AI that could lead an AI to radically different conclusions than a human would faced with the same facts? Should such self-deception mechanisms be implemented in AI?

Preface Commentary. Above. The issues posed above this break point are the original questions as posed by the Site Owner. Below. The elaborations posed below are an attempt to clarify the questions posed above. The intent is to offer context that can lead to a further examination of the issues.
Further, the intent is to further reify the questions to make them amenable to a literature review. What follows is an attempt to accomplish that objective.
Because this is a very broad topic area we note that:

• The release of the GPT4 and its derivatives represents a before/after event; i.e. a historical turning point.
  • The topic areas addressed having social, political, economic and geopolitical political impact;
  • We should expect intense nation state interaction and competition; societies exposed to this new technology will experience disruption, possible dislocations.
  • Economic sector/sub-sector transitions will be sometimes wrenching; even contradictory; as of 2024.10.29 a major strike by unionized port worker members averted nationwide economic impact, the ultimate bargain stipulated that the workers would be shielded by the effects of rapidly advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.
  • Societal shifts comparable to Gutenberg Printing, Jacquard Loom, Watt Steam Engine will become increasingly common.
  • Rapid uptake of ChatGPT, Claude only required weeks to reach the hundred million user mark; we should expect to see more changes to come;
• Cultural variances will be cast into glaring spotlight.
  • This topic is fraught with difficult questions.
  • Economics will drive systemic changes and other unavoidable cross-cultural values will come into play.
  • Malevolent actors will mount more daring, cunning attacks.
  • Powerful tools such as the Israeli NSO Group's Pegasus telecommunications hacking tool will cause remarkable damage to adversaries or combatants.
• Current and new offerings may exhibit a focus short shelf life.
  • Expect a rapid or "hard take off" of new personal, social facilities and structures; these will be mediated by access to open source versions of current LLM's such as CG4;
  • New tools for mediating communications, problem solving will rapidly crystallize;
  • "Reality" will become increasingly tenuous, "slippery", it will seem to "shape-shift"; this will make discerning what fact-set accurately represents realities "on the ground" for any particular issue;
  • Exchange venues will proliferate; the full range of open, gray and black marketplaces will blossom;
  • Modalities for problem solving will elaborate; extensions above and beyond current conference calling will eclipse these ultra low bandwidth venues;
• The positions, observations and examples expressed in what follows should be viewed as having a short shelf life. The onrush of developments will render many items as discussed quickly obsolete.
  • New and unexpected developments may upend earlier conclusion;
  • Ongoing civil actions such as the recent Writers Guild of America (WGA) and United Auto Workers (UAW) strikes may proliferate; as more industrial and commercial sectors recognize the rapid shift to artificial intelligence, automation and robotics reactions will become increasingly evident. As of this update several tens of thousands of highly skilled technology company workers have faced sudden layoffs. This trend is likely to continue as this new technology forces itself through society and the working world.

2024.10.19 RESUMPTION EFFORT.
Significant changes, developments and events since 2022.
This Work In Progress will now pivot toward incorporating some of the more salient developments in various areas of the AI world.
This contextual refocusing will reflect a sharper focus on the original core questions which include:
What advantages accrue to users of this emerging landscape in the dimensions of:

• Interface (Access Friction). Current and emerging LLM based tools or their derivatives will enable knowledgeable users to derive enhanced advantage from a given LLM based tool that might otherwise be inaccessible to a less skilled user. High level to Ultra high level and beyond prompting structures, templates and suites of cognitive pathway coaching will mean that the same tool will provide dramatically more powerful results when used by a user capable of accessing the full extent of the knowledge captured within a given LLM tool.
  The upshot will be that the emerging environment will foster the consolidation of new actors. These actors will act variously as coach or shepherd in the use and exploration of these dramatically more powerful systems. Those who pursue this path will emerge as "masters of the universe" going into the closing years of the 2020's.
  To use a simplistic example, interacting with these new interface ensembles will be akin to having an extremely conversant and articulate interlocutor that can accept a user's request, assist them in sharpening, extending and refining the framing of queries and interactions. The results of these iterative focusing processes will then be directed to the vastly larger and capable LLM's will begin to appear toward the end of the 2020's.
• Politics (Influence). Tools are currently emerging that offer a knowledgeable user the ability to create highly persuasive, in-depth and cogent messaging. The new era of messaging will make the task of deciphering messaging elements into core facts and any associated supporting "window dressing" extremely problematic. Extremely refined and detailed multi-media presentations will become completely indistinguishable from pronouncement of real people. The public persona of well known and recognized people, influencers, politicians, business leaders and similar personages will undergo modification such that a viewer will know that specific benchmarks, trademarks or other authentication elements will become incorporated into the public pronouncements as a means of assuring the viewer of the authenticity of the message.
• Evolution (Adaptive Advantage: Perceptible vs. Imperceptible). The first three decades of the 21st century will herald the increasingly common usage of personal advisors. These synthetic personalities will be capable of acting as practical, spiritual or professional advisors. On a range, some will act and become synonymous as a wise, insightful aunt or uncle. The more sophisticated advisors will be capable of offering highly cogent, insightful and impactful advice.
  They will become witnesses to the activities of the individual owning them. They will become comparable to an adjunct personality that possesses unique insight into the thoughts, sentiments, feelings and values of their owners. They will be capable of presenting various points of view and proposing which of many choices and pathways to pursue. they will be mostly imperceptible to a bystander because interaction with them will be no different than talking to a very knowledgeable expert such as a financial advisor, medical professional or negotiator. Those individuals with a well seasoned and experienced advisor will possess what will amount to an evolutionary adaptive advantage.
• Epistemological (Culture/Value Based Interactions: Complementary vs. Adversarial Advantages/Disadvantages). We should expect to see interactions between individuals from broadly different cultures. The pathway will be clear to minimize cultural or value based misunderstandings. As this technology begins to permeate the discourse between wider segments of the populations of different cultures and countries we should expect to see more insightful cooperation between groups that would otherwise be totally unaware of each other's existence.

2024.10.21 Given recent hindsight, a) sharpen, shorten, focus and b) morph to reflect advances: ChatGPT4O1 and Agents.

Start Here. For those who are interested in a more detailed look, the next page (Overview) will provide more context and background; from that point the reviewer can further explore the rationale used to provide the conclusions posited above.