Here is another case study in how anthropomorphization feeds AI hype --- and now AI doomerism.
The headline starts it off with "Goes Rogue". That's a predicate that is used to describe people, not tools. (Also, I'm fairly sure no one actually died, but the headline could be clearer about that, too.)
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The main type of anthropomorphization in this article is the use of predicates that take a "cognizer" argument with the mathy math (aka "AI" system) filling that role.
But the subhead has a slightly more subtle example:
In order to understand the relationship between the two clauses that is marked by 'because' as coherent, we need to imagine how the second causes the first.
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Given all of the rest of the hype around AI, the most accessible explanation is that the mathy math was 'frustrated' by the actions of the person and so turned on them.
But there's no reason to believe that. The article doesn't specify, but the simulation was probably of a reinforcement learning system -- systems developed through a conditioning set up where there is a specified goal a search space of possible steps towards it.
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For 'kill the operator' to be a possible step, that would have had to be programmed into the simulation (or at minimum, the information of what happens if the operator is killed).
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@emilymbender indeed; they had to include a lot of context (and omit or overlook some obvious reward-function branches) to make this simulation "work"
@misc suggests that it may have been designed to elicit exactly this result
https://mastodon.social/@misc/110470947131304910
(also the "in simulation" is tucked off at the end of the headline so the initial words grab clicks; for SHAME)
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
Jeremy Kahn