One late starry evening a few months ago I watched in fascinating horror as a not-so-advanced bot swarm filled my Twitter account and others with hundreds of “follows” from fake created accounts. We know this happens to many accounts and it is a service that can be bought. Fake accounts still plague my Twitter account and with almost every tweet I do there is an instant message under it that directs people toward a scam. This is nothing compared to what’s next.

Advanced AI Bot Swarms

Imagine the same scenario happening to millions of accounts only the bots are multiplied and equipped with Advanced Artificial Intelligence? It is critical to stop this but not easy. Elon Musk warned us of this on the evening of March 27th while AI continues the make unchecked rapid advances into daily life.

“Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations.

The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.

It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.

Voting in polls will require verification for same reason.

That said, it’s ok to have verified bot accounts if they follow terms of service & don’t impersonate a human.” Elon Musk

As a follow-up, Elon Musk added, “Forgot to mention that accounts you follow directly will also be in For You, since you have explicitly asked for them.”

When Future of Life Institute collaborated to create an Open Letter to protect humanity, Elon Musk joined other notable people in signing.

Elon Musk, tech leaders, and university professors sign Open Letter calling for an AI Summer with a pause on advanced AI systems

An Open Letter stating “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs.” was signed by tech leaders to raise awareness among the general population as to the huge risks of advanced artificial intelligence.

Here are a few of the highlights of the Open Letter and the recommendations:

• Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.
• Recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.
• Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.
• ACTION: We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
• Use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.
• AI research and development should be refocused on making today’s powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.
• Work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems.
• Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here. Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.

Read the OPEN LETTER on the Future of Life website.

Leading AGI developers will not heed this warning, but at least it was said

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 29, 2023

A Stressful Situation

The intense level of stress in running Twitter is evident when Elon Musk explained Twitter’s financial situation on March 25th (2023), tweeting, “Yeah, generally correct. Titter was trending to lose ~$3B/year (revenue drop of ~$1.5B + debt servicing of ~$1.5B) and had $1B in cash, so only 4 months of money. Extremely dire situation. Now that advertisers are returning, it looks like we will break even in Q2.”

Sometimes the simple sweetness of good food relieves stress and in the early afternoon of March 28th, Elon Musk tweeted that he eats a donut every morning. Although this was in response to a post from Peter Diamandis stating “Sugar is poison,” Elon makes a wonderful point! Sugar is not poison.

I may just have a sweet Austin, Texas donut and cup of coffee while I read through Matt Taibbi’s compilation of the Twitter Files!

Twitter Files

For an updated capsule summary of all Twitter Files threads to date, with links and an expanded glossary, Matt Taibbi created a nice compilation of one-paragraph summaries of all the Twitter File threads by every reporter with links and notes on key revelations.

To access this click the link here for Racket News.

My thoughts

Artificial Intelligence will attempt to take over the digital world and likely succeed. The innocent days of the internet are over and it will be hard if not impossible to distinguish between what is truly human and AI. Sadly there will be casualties along the way.

We can prevail and continue to persist in awareness, promote the principles we read in the Open Letter, “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter,” and be sure not to cancel the delight of sweet donuts!

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Twitter – March 30, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Twitter 2.0 and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization. I write these articles, I will not use AI of any form to write them, they are time-consuming and I appreciate the opportunity to do this.