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AI that can do creative work is scary for its implications on humanity. Are we at best biological AI's ? I've played around with several of them. These artwork

AI that can do creative work is scary for its implications on humanity. Are we at best biological AI's ? I've played around with several of them. These artwork AI's are way more scary than GPT-3 et al because they seem to do something so creative with such good visible results. I don't think the genie goes back in the bottle. I think humanity has an existential crisis on its hands. Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? Do those things become relegated to some increasing unpopular niche ? I just have increasingly amounts of questions and fear.

mrshadowgoose 4y ago
> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? If doing something makes you happy, that can be reason enough for doing a thing. A huge portion of people already engage in "useless" hobbies with no meaningful external outputs. And in the vast portion of those situations, experts and/or machines already exist that can do far better than a hobbyist. Yet people still have hobbies, because hobbies are fun! Ultimately one's purpose in life can only really be defined by oneself. As human cognition/capability is increasingly shown to be wholly unremarkable, I expect more and more people to turn to lives of leisure, indulgence and self-fulfillment. This is all contingent on AI being harnessed for our collective benefit, instead of the egos of a select few. That's the facet of AI development that keeps me up at night. AI, AGI, and eventually ASI will be human-intent amplifiers of a magnitude barely conceivable by most. There is no steady-state where things remain as they are today. We are going to either end up with a utopia, or one of a myriad of possible dystopias.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  How do you know a huge portion of people engage in useless hobbies with no meaningful external outputs ? I really don't even know how one would go about figuring that out. I think I see the opposite in my part of the United States. A life without purpose leads to rampant drug use, malaise, and decay. I think an AI on demand that can out compete people in most of their hobbies would be absolute game changer, and doesn't currently exist. If that kind of automation reached the average consumer, I think the vast amount of people would give up those hobbies as well.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > How do you know a huge portion of people engage in useless hobbies with no meaningful external outputs? How many hobbyists' hobbies all meet the thread-relevant standard of usefulness with meaningful external outputs (e.g. producing creative work with comparable or greater value to people outside their social circle than hypothetical superb AI alternatives... or the abundance of writing and painting and recorded media and manufactured goods and software already out there available at little or no cost)? What proportion of the population would you say undertook literally no activities which could be described as hobbies? The difference between those two numbers is your portion of people who engage in "useless" hobbies with no meaningful output. People still play chess badly against human opponents even though computers can play it perfectly (or with dialled down difficulty); even using computers with perfectly adequate chess playing programs installed to seek out remote human opponents. People spend hours trying to play Stairway to Heaven borderline adequately despite the fact anyone can listen to Stairway to Heaven played by Jimmy Page on demand, and has been able to for very little outlay for half a century now. Even if fans could ever be persuaded that the music the AI was generating was superior to that created by Led Zeppelin, why would people interested in playing music cease to be interested in playing music? A hobby is something people choose to do primarily for enjoyment rather than profit; it's almost a tautology that [further] reducing the potential for profit by spamming the space with AI-generated outputs isn't going to greatly discourage people from doing it.
astrange 4y ago
> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? That's not how jobs work (comparative advantage). An AI won't replace you, simply because there's something better it could be doing than replacing you. And, no, it can't do everything at once - that would be a perpetual motion machine.
ben_w 4y ago
People run for fun, even though cars beat us for both range and speed before the end of the Ottoman Empire and the departure of Ireland from the United Kingdom. We'll do creative things for fun too, even if/when AI convincingly bests us in such endeavours by the margin it does in chess. I, for example, still sometimes make musical noises, even though my musical talent is so bad that I wrote a procedural generator better than me back in 2009 — https://youtu.be/depj8C21YHg https://youtu.be/depj8C21YHg and https://youtu.be/k7RM7GsGeUI https://youtu.be/k7RM7GsGeUI won't impress anyone, but me thinking I'm worse when I try to do it myself doesn't stop me having fun.
LeanderK 4y ago
> Are we at best biological AI's ? imho yes. But don't have an existential crisis just yet. It's a very narrow task where the AI systems do well in a way that we don't expected from computers. But it's well chosen, there are still only few tasks where significant progress was made. They really can't make "logical deductions" at all and we have no idea how. Everything you see is learned via a massive amount of labeled data, but imagine you are a tradesmen repairing machines. We have no idea how to build a system that you could explain some basics on how to repair a simple machine and the system understanding what's going on. We can't learn from explanations. It turns out "AI" is not a single skill we have to master, but orthogonal concepts where we managed to conquer a single one. This doesn't mean the next one is around the corner. I think it's a bit like the early mechanical age where people thought everything in the future will be mechanical (those fun retro-future posts). In my opinion we are in a similar situation. We are surprised by machines automating tasks that we thought are reserved for humans and just extrapolate, but it's not that simple. We have to find out exactly where to extrapolate to, but it currently very much looks like there are bounds to our current approach.
- htrp 4y ago
  > We have no idea how to build a system that you could explain some basics on how to repair a simple machine and the system understanding what's going on. 90% of biological humans probably couldn't assemble Ikea furniture from the instructions either . >I think it's a bit like the early mechanical age where people thought everything in the future will be mechanical (those fun retro-future posts). I like this, and I'm definitely quoting it.
- ben_w 4y ago
  > They really can't make "logical deductions" at all and we have no idea how. What exactly do you mean by this? Because this sounds like the exact opposite of the problem AI has — logic is the easy part, and has been working in machines since they were clockwork and punched cards and is the foundation for 100% of the functionality of modern computers, but natural language comprehension is only just starting to be possible now, and only at a fairly rudimentary level.
  - 4y ago
ilaksh 4y ago
We still have decades, maybe even a century or two, before humans become irrelevant. We should be happy we got our lives in right before. https://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species#:~:text=The%20Second%20Intelligent%20Species%20is,it%20is%20us%3A%20human%20beings https://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species#:~:text....
mr_toad 4y ago
> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? “countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing every single good than workers in other countries” “Widely regarded as one of the most powerful[7] yet counter-intuitive[8] insights in economics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
dqpb 4y ago
> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? Whats the point in doing things if someone else can do it better than you?

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? If doing something makes you happy, that can be reason enough for doing a thing. A huge portion of people already engage in "useless" hobbies with no meaningful external outputs. And in the vast portion of those situations, experts and/or machines already exist that can do far better than a hobbyist. Yet people still have hobbies, because hobbies are fun! Ultimately one's purpose in life can only really be defined by oneself. As human cognition/capability is increasingly shown to be wholly unremarkable, I expect more and more people to turn to lives of leisure, indulgence and self-fulfillment. This is all contingent on AI being harnessed for our collective benefit, instead of the egos of a select few. That's the facet of AI development that keeps me up at night. AI, AGI, and eventually ASI will be human-intent amplifiers of a magnitude barely conceivable by most. There is no steady-state where things remain as they are today. We are going to either end up with a utopia, or one of a myriad of possible dystopias.

stuckinhell 4y ago
How do you know a huge portion of people engage in useless hobbies with no meaningful external outputs ? I really don't even know how one would go about figuring that out. I think I see the opposite in my part of the United States. A life without purpose leads to rampant drug use, malaise, and decay. I think an AI on demand that can out compete people in most of their hobbies would be absolute game changer, and doesn't currently exist. If that kind of automation reached the average consumer, I think the vast amount of people would give up those hobbies as well.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > How do you know a huge portion of people engage in useless hobbies with no meaningful external outputs? How many hobbyists' hobbies all meet the thread-relevant standard of usefulness with meaningful external outputs (e.g. producing creative work with comparable or greater value to people outside their social circle than hypothetical superb AI alternatives... or the abundance of writing and painting and recorded media and manufactured goods and software already out there available at little or no cost)? What proportion of the population would you say undertook literally no activities which could be described as hobbies? The difference between those two numbers is your portion of people who engage in "useless" hobbies with no meaningful output. People still play chess badly against human opponents even though computers can play it perfectly (or with dialled down difficulty); even using computers with perfectly adequate chess playing programs installed to seek out remote human opponents. People spend hours trying to play Stairway to Heaven borderline adequately despite the fact anyone can listen to Stairway to Heaven played by Jimmy Page on demand, and has been able to for very little outlay for half a century now. Even if fans could ever be persuaded that the music the AI was generating was superior to that created by Led Zeppelin, why would people interested in playing music cease to be interested in playing music? A hobby is something people choose to do primarily for enjoyment rather than profit; it's almost a tautology that [further] reducing the potential for profit by spamming the space with AI-generated outputs isn't going to greatly discourage people from doing it.

astrange 4y ago

> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? That's not how jobs work (comparative advantage). An AI won't replace you, simply because there's something better it could be doing than replacing you. And, no, it can't do everything at once - that would be a perpetual motion machine.

ben_w 4y ago

People run for fun, even though cars beat us for both range and speed before the end of the Ottoman Empire and the departure of Ireland from the United Kingdom. We'll do creative things for fun too, even if/when AI convincingly bests us in such endeavours by the margin it does in chess. I, for example, still sometimes make musical noises, even though my musical talent is so bad that I wrote a procedural generator better than me back in 2009 — https://youtu.be/depj8C21YHg https://youtu.be/depj8C21YHg and https://youtu.be/k7RM7GsGeUI https://youtu.be/k7RM7GsGeUI won't impress anyone, but me thinking I'm worse when I try to do it myself doesn't stop me having fun.

LeanderK 4y ago

> Are we at best biological AI's ? imho yes. But don't have an existential crisis just yet. It's a very narrow task where the AI systems do well in a way that we don't expected from computers. But it's well chosen, there are still only few tasks where significant progress was made. They really can't make "logical deductions" at all and we have no idea how. Everything you see is learned via a massive amount of labeled data, but imagine you are a tradesmen repairing machines. We have no idea how to build a system that you could explain some basics on how to repair a simple machine and the system understanding what's going on. We can't learn from explanations. It turns out "AI" is not a single skill we have to master, but orthogonal concepts where we managed to conquer a single one. This doesn't mean the next one is around the corner. I think it's a bit like the early mechanical age where people thought everything in the future will be mechanical (those fun retro-future posts). In my opinion we are in a similar situation. We are surprised by machines automating tasks that we thought are reserved for humans and just extrapolate, but it's not that simple. We have to find out exactly where to extrapolate to, but it currently very much looks like there are bounds to our current approach.

htrp 4y ago
> We have no idea how to build a system that you could explain some basics on how to repair a simple machine and the system understanding what's going on. 90% of biological humans probably couldn't assemble Ikea furniture from the instructions either . >I think it's a bit like the early mechanical age where people thought everything in the future will be mechanical (those fun retro-future posts). I like this, and I'm definitely quoting it.
ben_w 4y ago
> They really can't make "logical deductions" at all and we have no idea how. What exactly do you mean by this? Because this sounds like the exact opposite of the problem AI has — logic is the easy part, and has been working in machines since they were clockwork and punched cards and is the foundation for 100% of the functionality of modern computers, but natural language comprehension is only just starting to be possible now, and only at a fairly rudimentary level.
- 4y ago

ilaksh 4y ago

We still have decades, maybe even a century or two, before humans become irrelevant. We should be happy we got our lives in right before. https://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species#:~:text=The%20Second%20Intelligent%20Species%20is,it%20is%20us%3A%20human%20beings https://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species#:~:text....

mr_toad 4y ago

> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? “countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing every single good than workers in other countries” “Widely regarded as one of the most powerful[7] yet counter-intuitive[8] insights in economics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

dqpb 4y ago

> Whats the point in doing things if the AI can do it better than you ? Whats the point in doing things if someone else can do it better than you?