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Normally I finish Bruce's essays with a sense of clarity and having read a sharp analysis. Not saying there's anything technically amis with this one, it's all

Normally I finish Bruce's essays with a sense of clarity and having read a sharp analysis. Not saying there's anything technically amis with this one, it's all terrifyingly clear, but I think he bit off a little more that he could chew. The result is indigestible. I personally would have split this into several shorter pieces. When it's all put together this way though, I can't help think we've shot ourselves in the foot. As computer scientists and developers we've probably already lost control. We owe a debt of honesty to the world to say so now and stop pretending otherwise. Then we can, as a society, revisit Postman's Seven Questions: 1. What is the problem that this new technology solves? 2. Whose problem is it? 3. What new problems do we create by solving this problem? 4. Which people and institutions will be most impacted by a technological solution? 5. What changes in language occur as the result of technological change? 6. Which shifts in economic and political power might result when this technology is adopted? 7. What alternative (and unintended) uses might be made of this technology?

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Thanks, I had not seen these Seven Questions before. As a pragmatist (?), I suspect answering from 3) on down is near impossible* unless you actually release it into the world. People are clever in a way I don't think any of us can anticipate and put to use things in novel ways that often surprise their creators. * Well, at best it would devolve into arguing back and forth and neither side able to convince the other what problems would or would not be caused or are avoidable.
- privong 4y ago
  > As a pragmatist (?), I suspect answering from 3) on down is near impossible* unless you actually release it into the world. People are clever in a way I don't think any of us can anticipate and put to use things in novel ways that often surprise their creators. That is likely true in many cases, but, even if definitive answers cannot be provided, the questions should still be asked in advance and the answers pondered. Many people take that difficulty or impossibility of conclusive answers as justification for not asking those later questions.
- kurthr 4y ago
  Well, you can't "idiot proof" most things, because the "idiot"s are so ingenious. In this case though, I think it'll be the big guys who figure out how to fill the world with cheap almost humanly creative garbage. Whether it's spam, social engineering, or attention addiction they'll monetize it first and keep the little guys in mostly walled gardens of "creativity".
EGreg 4y ago
I feel HN has regarded blockchain and smart contracts with total derision as a solution in search of a problem. And yet with AI, it can actually harm the world but since it does impressive things, these questions are barely asked. Progressives have started to talk about how “tech bros” think technology can improve everything but it also creates massive problems they IGNORE.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  Blockchain has harmed the world. Ransomware, numerous scams, greenhouse gases... Before all of those harms, very few people had much to say about Blockchain outside of utopian visions. AI has yet to cause harm. If/when it does, I'm sure the conversation will, likewise, turn sour.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    It will be too late. These bots can be easily proliferated and attack in swarms, to infiltrate any forum shout down any group they don’t like, sow dissent, astroturf revolutions. People keep investigating how one bot will fare among a poker table of 8 players. No one seems to consider that these bots can very cheaply SURROUND all the humans 99999 to 1.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      It is the nature of technology that we rarely grasp how it will change things beforehand.
    - pbronez 4y ago
      But how novel is that really? Spam is already an issue. You solve it at the account level, not the message level. Trust graph forever.
      - EGreg 4y ago
        Spam doesn’t solve the Turing test interactively and fool millions of your fellow users at scale.
QuesnayJr 4y ago
The problem is that any answers that anyone comes up with for new technologies are completely worthless. No one knows how any technology will play out or its consequences. Read about the confident predictions people made for air power once the airplane was invented, and compare that with the reality: it's not that air power made no difference to warfare, but it made a much smaller difference than people imagined when it was first invented. Secondarily, the people most eager to answer such questions are the people like Postman, people who are Concerned as a hobby, the people most eager to tell us that we are "Doing it wrong", and only if we listened to them we would be happy.
- NhanH 4y ago
  Do you have some sources where I can read about the wrong predictions of air power? It is a bit hard to imagine predictions overstating the importance of air power in relation to their actual usefulness in modern warfare.
  - qsort 4y ago
    This is a good primer: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/ https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower... The parallel with AI GP is making is very interesting. People at the time thought air power would be transformative in ways that didn't pan out, while missing more subtle applications.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      AGI isn't comparable with any prior technology because we have spent the last ~million years being the most intelligent thing on this planet, and AGI seeks to upset that. If you have to make a comparison, the most apt would be the introduction of invasive species to existing ecosystems. Any one existing species may be OK after the introduction of an invasive species to its ecosystem, but it usually ends badly and introducing invasive species is generally something we try to avoid doing to other species. Of course AGI will not compete with us for food, but it will completely destroy our present economic system by creating vast unemployment. Conditions of severe economic change with an unemployed population and huge amount of technological power in the hands of a few, seems ripe for producing totalitarianism.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Thanks, I had not seen these Seven Questions before. As a pragmatist (?), I suspect answering from 3) on down is near impossible* unless you actually release it into the world. People are clever in a way I don't think any of us can anticipate and put to use things in novel ways that often surprise their creators. * Well, at best it would devolve into arguing back and forth and neither side able to convince the other what problems would or would not be caused or are avoidable.

privong 4y ago
> As a pragmatist (?), I suspect answering from 3) on down is near impossible* unless you actually release it into the world. People are clever in a way I don't think any of us can anticipate and put to use things in novel ways that often surprise their creators. That is likely true in many cases, but, even if definitive answers cannot be provided, the questions should still be asked in advance and the answers pondered. Many people take that difficulty or impossibility of conclusive answers as justification for not asking those later questions.
kurthr 4y ago
Well, you can't "idiot proof" most things, because the "idiot"s are so ingenious. In this case though, I think it'll be the big guys who figure out how to fill the world with cheap almost humanly creative garbage. Whether it's spam, social engineering, or attention addiction they'll monetize it first and keep the little guys in mostly walled gardens of "creativity".

EGreg 4y ago

I feel HN has regarded blockchain and smart contracts with total derision as a solution in search of a problem. And yet with AI, it can actually harm the world but since it does impressive things, these questions are barely asked. Progressives have started to talk about how “tech bros” think technology can improve everything but it also creates massive problems they IGNORE.

BobbyJo 4y ago
Blockchain has harmed the world. Ransomware, numerous scams, greenhouse gases... Before all of those harms, very few people had much to say about Blockchain outside of utopian visions. AI has yet to cause harm. If/when it does, I'm sure the conversation will, likewise, turn sour.
- EGreg 4y ago
  It will be too late. These bots can be easily proliferated and attack in swarms, to infiltrate any forum shout down any group they don’t like, sow dissent, astroturf revolutions. People keep investigating how one bot will fare among a poker table of 8 players. No one seems to consider that these bots can very cheaply SURROUND all the humans 99999 to 1.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    It is the nature of technology that we rarely grasp how it will change things beforehand.
  - pbronez 4y ago
    But how novel is that really? Spam is already an issue. You solve it at the account level, not the message level. Trust graph forever.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      Spam doesn’t solve the Turing test interactively and fool millions of your fellow users at scale.

QuesnayJr 4y ago

The problem is that any answers that anyone comes up with for new technologies are completely worthless. No one knows how any technology will play out or its consequences. Read about the confident predictions people made for air power once the airplane was invented, and compare that with the reality: it's not that air power made no difference to warfare, but it made a much smaller difference than people imagined when it was first invented. Secondarily, the people most eager to answer such questions are the people like Postman, people who are Concerned as a hobby, the people most eager to tell us that we are "Doing it wrong", and only if we listened to them we would be happy.

NhanH 4y ago
Do you have some sources where I can read about the wrong predictions of air power? It is a bit hard to imagine predictions overstating the importance of air power in relation to their actual usefulness in modern warfare.
- qsort 4y ago
  This is a good primer: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/ https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower... The parallel with AI GP is making is very interesting. People at the time thought air power would be transformative in ways that didn't pan out, while missing more subtle applications.
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    AGI isn't comparable with any prior technology because we have spent the last ~million years being the most intelligent thing on this planet, and AGI seeks to upset that. If you have to make a comparison, the most apt would be the introduction of invasive species to existing ecosystems. Any one existing species may be OK after the introduction of an invasive species to its ecosystem, but it usually ends badly and introducing invasive species is generally something we try to avoid doing to other species. Of course AGI will not compete with us for food, but it will completely destroy our present economic system by creating vast unemployment. Conditions of severe economic change with an unemployed population and huge amount of technological power in the hands of a few, seems ripe for producing totalitarianism.