Latest news with #Terminator3:RiseoftheMachines
Mint
4 days ago
- Mint
Dodgy aides: What can we do about AI models that defy humans?
Artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue has been the stuff of dystopic science fiction. Could fiction be giving way to fact, with several AI models reportedly disobeying explicit instructions to shut down when a third-party tester asked them to? On a recent test done by Palisade Research, the most glaring refusenik belonged to OpenAI, with some AI models of Google and Anthropic also showing a tendency to evade shutdown. It is not yet time to rewatch Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) for a vivid nightmare scenario of malign AI running amok, but it would be a good idea to adopt caution while integrating AI bots and modules into Enterprise Resource Planning systems. If something goes wrong, the system would likely need a reboot; and if its AI bits scuttle a shutdown, a digital hostage crisis could arise. Also Read: Rahul Matthan: Brace for a wave of AI-enabled criminal enterprise That's what users of AI have to worry about. Developers and regulators of AI, meanwhile, must accelerate efforts to address the challenges thrown open by the rise of AI that can defy human orders. Silicon Valley is used to privileging speed-to-market over full system integrity and safety. This urge is baked into the business model of multiple startups in pursuit of similar wonders, with venture capital breathing down executive necks to play the pioneer in a potentially winner-takes-all setting. Investors often need their hot ventures to prove their mettle double-quick so that they can either cash out or stem losses before moving on to other bets. 'Move fast and break things' is fine as a motto while developing apps to share videos, compare pet pranks or disrupt our online lives in other small ways. Also Read: When AI gets a manager, you know the game has changed But when it comes to AI, which is rapidly being given agency, nobody can afford to be cavalier about what may end up broken. If one thing snaps, multiple breakdowns could follow. AI is given to hallucination and training input biases. It can also learn the wrong thing if it is fed carelessly crafted synthetic data, for example, like broad estimates with low fidelity to actual numbers. This problem goes by the bland title of 'misalignment.' Today, what risks going askew is the course taken by AI from the path planned for AI development. Among the techniques used to keep alignment in check, there is one whose name harks back to war games of the Cold War era: Red Teaming. The Red Team represented the bad guys, of course, and the aim was to get into the head of the enemy and anticipate its conduct. Applied to AI, it would entail provoking it to expose its follies. If the AI models that dodged orders to shut down had been Red Teamed properly while under development, developers need to come up with better ways to exorcise their software of potential demons. If the makers of these tools fail to keep AI aligned with desirable outcomes, then regulation would be the only security we have against a big threat in the making. Also Read: Biases aren't useless: Let's cut AI some slack on these The EU's regulatory approach to AI invites criticism for being too stiff for innovation to thrive, but it is spot-on in its demand for safe, transparent, traceable, eco-friendly and non-discriminatory AI. Human oversight of AI systems, as the EU requires, should be universally adopted even if it slows down AI evolution. We must minimize risks by specifying limits and insisting on transparency. In all AI labs, developers and whistleblowers alike should know what lines must not be crossed. Rules are rarely perfect at the outset, but we all have a stake in this. Let's ensure that AI is here to serve and not subvert human welfare.
The Independent
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Mea Culpa: Hanging on to some intriguing etymology
I enjoyed our feature on the 29 worst movie mistakes, as I suppose it is just a different kind of pedantry. Muphry's Law ensured that it had a mistake of its own. (Muphry's Law holds: 'If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.' It often applies to this column.) In the item about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, we said: 'John Connor's Cessna plane numbers keep changing in the film. When he is in the hanger on the runway it is N3035C, but once it's flying, the numbers change to N3413F.' That was changed to 'hangar' when it was spotted by a colleague. A trivial error, because nobody could have been confused as to the meaning, and who really cares that two words that sound the same are spelt differently? Regular readers will be familiar with my response to that, which is that as long as some people recognise the departure from conventional spelling, it makes our writing seem less authoritative, so we should care. But also, the origins of the two words are fascinating. Hangar is French, an alteration of 14th-century French hanghart, shed. That in turn may be from Middle Dutch ham-gaerd, an enclosure near a house; or it may be from medieval Latin angarium, a shed in which horses are shod. It was first recorded meaning 'shed for aeroplanes' in English in 1902, the year before the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. Hanger, on the other hand, is from hang, of ancient Indo-European origin (the source of Gothic hahan, Hittite gang and Sanskrit sankate, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary). What I did not know is that 'hung' emerged as the past participle in northern English dialect in the 16th century, becoming the standard form, while 'hanged' endured in legal language, which is more conservative – and that is why 'hanged' remains the usual word for a judicial execution, while 'hung' is used for everything else. Murder mystery: We had this short headline on our front page on Thursday: 'Husband charged with murder of wife found dead in car boot.' I stumbled over it, because it was unclear whether it was the husband or the wife who had been found. Because English is so flexible, a verb can attach itself either to the first person mentioned or to the person nearest to the verb in the sentence. A simple rewrite could have solved it, and would have fitted in the space: 'Husband charged with murder of wife after body found in car boot.' O to be in Estonia: In our report of Prince William visiting British troops in Estonia, the sub-headline said: 'The prince meets with country's president Alar Karis before travelling to visit Nato forces guarding the Russian border.' The Independent 's style for articles aimed at readers outside North America is just 'meets', without the 'with'. Secondly, as Roger Thetford pointed out, 'the Russian border' suggests the border as seen from the Russian side – the border belonging to Russia, between it and other countries. 'The border with Russia' would have been clearer. Too much punctuation: In an article about a farmer who was struggling to make ends meet, we described him as 'the 39-year-old father-of-three'. That had too many hyphens, which were needed in '39-year-old', because that is an adjectival phrase – describing the noun, which is 'father of three', without hyphens.
