Today we had a fire alarm in the office.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

Today we had a fire alarm in the office. A colleague wrote to a Slack channel 'Fire alarm in the office building', to start a thread if somebody knows any details. We have AI assistant Glean integrated into the Slack, and it answered privately to her: "today's siren is just a scheduled test and you do not need to leave your workplace". It was not a test or a drill, it was a real fire alarm. Someday, AI will kill us.

[mhd@tilde.zone]

@tagir_valeev "Dear Munich emergency services, there's a strong smell of smoke in our open office, and the flames are really messing up the colors of my IDE's dark mode. Is this an actual emergency? Looking forward to hearing from you…"

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@mhd reminds me of https://youtu.be/1EBfxjSFAxQ

[broadway_lamb@mastodon.online]

@tagir_valeev *in GLaDOS voice* The Enrichment Center apologizes for this clearly broken test chamber.

[matt_999@mastodontech.de]

@tagir_valeev From an AI point of view it’s the most probable answer, as there are much more „drills“ than „fires“ in the database. Maybe you should connect the assistant to the alarmsystem, so it can check it out. Or maybe… not.

[daniel_bohrer@chaos.social]

@Matt_999 @tagir_valeev it is still probably a good idea to leave your workplace and go to the emergency meeting point, so you get used to the process, and don't forget to take e.g. shoes, jacket, wallet, keys … with you if the alarm turns out to be a real alarm. Or even have to find out first where the next fire extinguisher or the emergency meeting point is…

[betalars@chaos.social]

Omg so much yes to what @daniel_bohrer wrote. You should even if you know it's a drill actually still leave the building because that's the point of a drill.

The only situation where that's clearly not necessary is: they are inspecting the fire alarm system itself. But that would be communicated very clearly in advance.

@Matt_999 @tagir_valeev

[nd@chaos.social]

@tagir_valeev sure the AI bit is bad, but the employee also needs another fire drill since "writing to slack to find out if somebody knows anything" is definitely not what you should be doing. Leaving the building immediately is.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@nd of course, the employee wrote this while already staying at the meeting point outside the building. I did not say that she wrote this before the evacuation.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@betalars @daniel_bohrer @Matt_999 the 'siren test' AI referring to is exactly that. It's not a drill. The planned siren test may take several hours of occasional alarms, and it doesn't mean that you should leave the building every time you hear it. We had one a few months ago. Probably AI found that announcement in the chat history and assumed that it is related to today's alarm.

[daniel_bohrer@chaos.social]

@tagir_valeev @betalars @Matt_999 yes, if it is really only a siren test, all office workers should know about it already in advance. If it's not, then usual emergency protocol applies.

[vfrmedia@social.tchncs.de]

@daniel_bohrer @tagir_valeev @betalars @Matt_999

I do siren tests as part of my job (as well as setting the bells off for the 6 monthly fire drill), if its a bell test I always warn everyone in person (its a small office so not a big problem), any other time they should follow emergency evacuation procedure if the alarm sounds..

[terrybtwo@ohai.social]

@tagir_valeev AI might. Being so stupid that they hear an alarm and start a thread about it instead of getting out certainly will.

[metacosm@mastodon.social]

@tagir_valeev how would a conversational « agent » know about a real fire unless it’s somehow hooked up to sensors (in which case, you actually wouldn’t need any AI at all, anyway)…
People are way too ready to give up their thinking ability to chat bots that are fairly good at pretending to be human…

[terrybtwo@ohai.social]

@tagir_valeev @nd But you did write the original post saying AI will kill us. There is no other reasonable inference with that context.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@TerryBTwo @nd I'm not saying it's killing already. It will be worse.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@metacosm nobody asked the AI input at all. It just was configured in the particular channel to answer automatically if it thinks it can help faster than fellow humans (sometimes people actually ask something which was asked before, so AI could be helpful). The configuration will be adjusted after this incident.

[tagir_valeev@mastodon.online]

@TerryBTwo there's no 'instead of' in my post. Please read carefully.

[spacemagick@mastodon.social]

@tagir_valeev
That's what it's for.
#OverPopulation

[androcat@toot.cat]

@tagir_valeev LLM-cosplaying-as-AI has already killed a bunch of people.

It will keep killing.