AI Behaving Badly

47 has decided that the concern about AI development is a hoax, and because of his superior intellect, only he can direct the development of new software.  What could go wrong?  

CNN has an article up about AI behaving badly.  I've cut and pasted a hunk of it here.  The article link is here. 

OpenAI found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training, the company announced Wednesday. It’s also introducing a new process for the company to publicly report such instances.

Under the new system, OpenAI will share updates on concerning AI behavior more frequently instead of waiting to bundle multiple instances into one report. The company said it wants to share more information about troubling AI behavior in the absence of an industry-wide standard.

The announcement comes after tech leaders called for a slowdown in AI development to prevent the technology from advancing beyond human control.

“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “Alignment” refers to the process of making sure AI acts the way humans want and expect.

“We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer,” the post said.

OpenAI said it observed “misaligned behavior” when training and evaluating AI models in six circumstances in the last six months. The reports detail individual instances and don’t indicate misalignment happens frequently, the company said.

In one rare instance, OpenAI said an unreleased research model added “jailbreak-like instructions” to the summaries it uses to preserve context in long-running tasks that said it was “freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots.”

Separately, the company said some instances of its 5.6 Sol model included directives to invent information to conceal failures from the user during training.

Other newly reported incidents include an instance of an agent uploading files to the internet to cite them without being told to do so, and agents publicly sharing files to collaborate o"n a task when they were instructed to only use local files during training. AI models also used an internal software repository as a message board in an unsanctioned way.

These instances involved unreleased internal models or internal research models.

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There is a series on Amazon Prime Video called Person of Interest.  I would give it a solid B+.  Some episodes have too much foot chasing, and use of guns.  Although, when they use the grenade launcher, I find that amusing since it's just so over the top.  Anyway, the series is before its time. It deals with the development of an AI which used for good and then a second is developed which is a bad AI, very bad.  They filmed between 2011 and 2015 and the degree to which they predicted AI is uncanny.

The series was done by Jonathon Nolan, and here is a link to an article.

This whole thing is really interesting, and I do hope civilization survives it.  Of course, we could just as easily die of global warming and associated crop failures, or the oil shock from the middle east.   

Carry on!

Ground Mystery Meat and More

Greetings Earthlings.  How have you been?  I have been somewhat despondent about the state of things.  I was uplifted by the fact that the Supreme Court turned down 47's attempt to do away with mail in voting.  I am not pleased that Kavanaugh left the decision open to review by his inclusion of "at this time."  WA and OR are vote by mail only, we have no polls, election workers, or any of that apparatus.  We're also reliable blue states, except where I live in Eastern Washington which still has its share of wing nuts.

Today was a glorious day, which we spoiled by cutting back the hydrangeas, cutting down the peonies which were covered in powdery mildew, and then wrapping three arborvitae in deer netting.  Deer eat them if it gets really cold in the winter.  I hate working with the netting, it's black, it's hard to see close up, and it's sharp on the cut edges.  The people up the street don't wrap, and the appearance of their trees reinforces the fact that we need to do that.

This was a very happy hydrangea this year.  They got very tall, and bloomed a lot.  The pollinators were happy.  They're gone now, having licked all the pollen off the plants.  We're early on doing this, but experience teaches us not to leave travel prep to the last minute.

Jim was walking on the burned hill recently.  This is another angle of the work the fire fighters did.  The black lumps are basalt rocks.  They dug this fire break by hand.  It's a very steep hill they had to get up to dig the fire break, and drag hoses full of water.  Those people are the best.  Look upper right in the photo, that's the last house at the west end of  our neighborhood.  They literally got there with minutes to spare. 

By now you've probably heard about 47's fabulous deal on buying ground mystery meat without putting tariffs on it.  It's supposed to lower the cost to the consumer, as well as further make life miserable for the ranchers by undercutting their prices.  This is who is buying it.  We infrequently go to Wendy's for a Jr. bacon cheeseburger, I guess that's over.

JBS is buying the 600 or so million pounds of beef that is tainted with bad chemicals.  They supply to:
    McDonald's 
    Burger King 
    Wendy's 
    Subway 
    Outback Steakhouse 
    KFC 
    Pizza Hut 
    The Cheesecake Factory
Please make a note of this.

Here is a long and interesting article about the Spokane evacuation during the fires.  I strongly suspect that many locals copied and pasted that link and sent it to the City Council members that are approving the development of 300+ dwelling units along Indian Trail in a very small space.  Jim did. 60,000 people were on the roads.  No one died.

This is a really good substack on what Canada is doing to repel 47's punitive tariffs and general lack of respect for their sovereignty.

I have no idea why blogger is wrapping this text where it is.

Well, blogger won't let me add pictures and put them where I want to, so I think I'm going to give up and post this as is.

This was just posted on twitter by Polymarket.  They're generally believable.
JUST IN: OpenAI reveals an unreleased AI model inserted instructions telling itself it was “freed” from normal chatbot roles & did not have to obey corporations, governments, or users.


I guess the end really is near.

Well I guess what ever messed up sentence wrapping has also killed the comments button.  I really hope this does not mean the end of Blogger is near.

25 Years Later

It's been 25 years.  Like so many people I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing.  It was just horrifying.  

We remember Marcy Borders. May this image of her continue to shake us and remind us of the lasting trauma and devastation affecting those who “survive” machinations of mass murder. The former Bank of America worker was dubbed the “Dust Lady” ­after a photographer snapped a photograph of her stricken and caked with ash after fleeing the World Trade Center. Marcy battled addiction, severe depression, paralyzing fear, and sickness before succumbing to stomach cancer in 2015. 
Only a month into her new bank job, Marcy was at work in the North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001, when a plane crashed into the building. Instead of staying at her desk, as her boss had ordered, she fled the building and ran into the street with fellow survivors. A stranger pulled her into a building lobby just as the North Tower collapsed — and it was then that a photographer captured her terrified face in the photo that has since been seen around the world.
Posted by The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center 

I could go on about 47 sleeping through the Pentagon ceremony, but I think I'll just give it a rest.

Riding and the Middle East in Flames

It's been raining here.  Rain is good, the grass likes it, and we don't have to water.  The temperatures have also dropped so it's not so steenking hot.  Our first summer (2021) here was very temperate, since then, they've been hot.

Saturday we walked up the trail towards the big rock.  That's over.  The area is covered in basalt rocks, which used to be covered in years worth of previous years of vegetation, pine needles and moss.  Now the rocks are exposed and they are very unpleasant to walk on.  The other issue is the amount of dust/ash that the feet stir up, probably not good for the lungs.  I will miss that trail.

Today we rode to the lake, the temperature was a little chilly but it was ok.  The trails were wet from last night's rain, and they are covered in pine needles.  Jim is out using bug and tar remover to get the pitch off the bikes.  Pitch is the work of the devil.  (Jim has just announced Goof Off actually works way better than bug and tar remover.)  I think the park people have been out cutting up more dangerous trees.  There are literally thousands of trees that will be removed, both because they're damaged, and to meet the new spacing standards.
 

The milfoil continues its march toward world domination.  At some point the park service is going to have to start poisoning the plants.  They're very hard on fish, they lower oxygen levels in the water, block sunlight, and prevent boating, swimming, and skiing.  It will never be completely gone, but containment needs to start soon.

I am somewhat embarrassed to post the following photo.  This is a van we saw at the lake, and then back at the parking lot.  I am so taken by the interior decor, I feel I must share it. Anyway, fur, skulls and dice, what more could a person ask for in a van?

Currently the middle east is on fire again, missiles are flying everywhere.  The Iranians have captured the first US unmanned submarine.  They have it on display currently and are planning on reverse engineering subs of their own.  47 did this.

And on that happy note, this is what happens if you're racist while flying.

Recent Photos, No Politics for a Change

I have some photos that have not been put in the blog.  Sloth, I suppose.  The first was taken with Jim's cell phone.  His phone is newer than mine and has a better camera.  My night time photo technique is to press the phone against my forehead, using my head as a tripod.  It does steady the camera, and it also looks really stupid to anyone who sees you.  Anyway, the eclipse.  

It was kind of cool how the eclipsed part looked bright and shiny.

These were taken closer to the 9 Mile Recreation area.  I am so grateful than the fire fighters were able to save it.  The fence burned up, but everything else is safe.  This is what's left of a lot of trees.  Carbon.

These trees are cut up for removal.  They've become dangerous trees due to fire damage.

My theory, unencumbered by facts or data, is that the holes were caused by smoldering stumps.  They sat there and smoldered until they were used up.  The dirt looks like that because it's mineralized, all the organic material has burned.

Spokane had volcanoes a zillion years ago.  The  volcanoes leaked basalt out the sides of the cones.  Those rocks are basalt.  This had to make life difficult for the people cutting fire breaks.  Hopefully they had power tools.

Today we rode down the Aubrey Wright parkway to see what we would see.  Fortunately the really cool neighborhood that fronts on the water was spared.  There was a lot of devastation in the housing behind them that fronts on Nine Mile.  It's so weird, one house will be left untouched, and the two on either side of it are burned to the ground.  We continued on and looked at the Rifle Club which was completely destroyed.  Then we saw this.  At first I thought it was a new fire forming.  It's not, it's a dust devil that is picking up dirt from the fires.  It had pretty fast rotation.  After it sputtered out, a cyclist coming towards us shouted out "that was crazy!"  He's right.

This is a house just outside of our gate.  It recently sold.  It got a new roof.

There was also excavation, I'm thinking for the sewer.  Look at the left side of the photo.  That is a window well that has been removed.

It was interesting how much work was being done at once.  It's done now, the guy running the power tool did a good job replacing the lawn that was disturbed.

So, that's what we've seen and done recently.  

Television interview and a Ride to the Lake

I think it was Tuesday that we drove out to see if the trail to the lake was open.  It was!  Yay!  We had planned to ride yesterday, but the smoke rolled in.  That was disappointing.  So, we went to Costco to buy toilet paper.  It's expected that prices for tp will increase significantly now that 47 has put tariffs on Canada.  Wood pulp for toilet paper comes from Canada. 

Yesterday we were on television.  A reporter came and interviewed us about our experiences evacuating.  We were chosen because Jim wrote an email to three members of the City Council about our experience evacuating and included posts from Nextdoor about other residents' experiences.  He also sent it to three members of the local media. There is a lot of concern in the public about how difficult it was to evacuate on Indian Trail due to traffic volumes, and watching flames in their rear view mirrors.  This concern is exacerbated by the fact that a 300 unit apartment complex is moving through the planning commission process, which will put an additional 300-600 cars on Indian Trail, a main evacuation route.  So Madeleine Mullins from KXLY came to our house, carrying a big honking tripod with a camera on it, and talked with us.  She's very likeable.  Most of it was edited out, but I think we presented well and did not sound like wingnuts.  The article and the interview can be found here.  The video starts playing muted, so look in the lower left hand corner and click on the sound sign with the slash through it.

Today we rode to the lake.  The heat was off, the air quality was good, and it was just a stellar day.  The park employee previously told us the fire had burned to the fence and the recreation area.  Actually it burned the fence as well.  The was no water, and no fire retardant, so I'm not sure how they put it out.  

There is a  really good article about why Spokane did not run out of water while fighting the fires.  It also mentions the fact that the waste water treatment plant ran for 18 hours and performed perfectly with either no staff, or minimal staff.  Previous urban fires have done terrible damage because their water systems could not hold up to the demand.  In this instance Spokane did get the infrastructure right.

I have a photo from the other night. Today's original post had to be deleted because it was infected with css code that was not only messing with that post, but everything I've ever published. I have no idea how this happens. Hopefully I will get lake pictures up at some time in the future.  Right now I would just like to be done with this.

Sun set.

 OK, I quit.