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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 c

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.
    - qsort 4y ago
      I have nothing to reply except that as far as I'm concerned this is fanfiction.
      - zarzavat 4y ago
        It's a potential future. Nobody knows what will happen post-AGI. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it. I contend that people who think that it's going to be fine are probably extrapolating from their own recent past (i.e. their life has been relatively comfortable so far), rather than humanity's past, which is quite a bit darker.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > Do you have some sources where I can read about the wrong predictions of air power? The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy is a great and comprehensive start. Very approximately, air power appeared in WW1 where it was essentially tactical. In the UK, the Army's Royal Flying Corps was then re-established as a post-war separate, independent entity (the Royal Air Force) and in the intervening period convinced many that a strategic bomber force could defeat Germany largely on its own. This was supported on a general hysteria about the apocalyptic power of the bomber (itself based on early SF by people like HG Wells, in which cities and morale would be devastated by fleets of bombers) as well as the imperial experience, where the RAF was used to police provinces from the air (e.g. Somaliland and Afghanistan). However, when WW2 broke out, the effects of strategic bombing were initially negligible, with massive aircraft / crew losses for minimal strategic effect, and it took years for the bomber force to achieve the weight necessary to disrupt German manufacturing.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> answers that anyone comes up with for new technologies are completely worthless. No one knows how any technology will play out or its consequences. The "Experts. What do they know, huh?!" thing is a little dishonest. Wouldn't you rather give Einstein the benefit of the doubt; that someone who is smart enough to design an atomic bomb is maybe smart enough to understand what it will do? > the people most eager to answer such questions are the people like Postman, people who are Concerned as a hobby No. It's not like these are different groups of people, one virtuous and pure in their desire to "make the world a better place" and another band of unwashed neo-Luddite primitives who jeer and throw rocks. What you're doing is called "splitting" [1]. We desperately need more people like Postman (even better if they have CS degrees too) to relieve us of the delinquent fantasy that "no consequences can be seen". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

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.
  - qsort 4y ago
    I have nothing to reply except that as far as I'm concerned this is fanfiction.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      It's a potential future. Nobody knows what will happen post-AGI. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it. I contend that people who think that it's going to be fine are probably extrapolating from their own recent past (i.e. their life has been relatively comfortable so far), rather than humanity's past, which is quite a bit darker.
KineticLensman 4y ago
> Do you have some sources where I can read about the wrong predictions of air power? The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 by Richard Overy is a great and comprehensive start. Very approximately, air power appeared in WW1 where it was essentially tactical. In the UK, the Army's Royal Flying Corps was then re-established as a post-war separate, independent entity (the Royal Air Force) and in the intervening period convinced many that a strategic bomber force could defeat Germany largely on its own. This was supported on a general hysteria about the apocalyptic power of the bomber (itself based on early SF by people like HG Wells, in which cities and morale would be devastated by fleets of bombers) as well as the imperial experience, where the RAF was used to police provinces from the air (e.g. Somaliland and Afghanistan). However, when WW2 broke out, the effects of strategic bombing were initially negligible, with massive aircraft / crew losses for minimal strategic effect, and it took years for the bomber force to achieve the weight necessary to disrupt German manufacturing.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> answers that anyone comes up with for new technologies are completely worthless. No one knows how any technology will play out or its consequences. The "Experts. What do they know, huh?!" thing is a little dishonest. Wouldn't you rather give Einstein the benefit of the doubt; that someone who is smart enough to design an atomic bomb is maybe smart enough to understand what it will do? > the people most eager to answer such questions are the people like Postman, people who are Concerned as a hobby No. It's not like these are different groups of people, one virtuous and pure in their desire to "make the world a better place" and another band of unwashed neo-Luddite primitives who jeer and throw rocks. What you're doing is called "splitting" [1]. We desperately need more people like Postman (even better if they have CS degrees too) to relieve us of the delinquent fantasy that "no consequences can be seen". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)