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Better without AI

53 points by telotortium 4y ago

sebkomianos 4y ago
[flagged]
sfpotter 4y ago
ChatGPT is pretty impressive but it’s obviously a far cry from real intelligence. At the same time, consider the resources required to train such a thing. How many dollars, how much time, how much RAM, how much power spent to make one of these things? If bigger truly is the answer (debatable), how much more expensive will it be to create/operate an AI that actually works? Is it worth it? Our own brains are already quite powerful. Maybe we could just try using them better and avoid the hackiness of fake intelligence.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Would be nice if all that went into solving climate change, arguably ChatGPT could/could've been the answer, but I think most people knew it wouldn't be.
  - melling 4y ago
    Don’t burn all that coal for decade after decade. It’s 20% of greenhouse emissions. If instead we are going to rely on miracles, maybe we should further develop AI to work on these miracles. It’s sort of irrelevant how good ChatGPT is, the entire benefit is that it will bring more R&D into the field.
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      It’s totally unclear a priori that more R&D in AI is good. There is already a ton of money being poured into it. If you’re in research, it is one of the few things you can be get money for at the moment, and it’s leading to a high degree of uniformity in research output. There’s no reason to expect that “more AI” = “solution to climate change”. “Look at this cool AI stuff, please give us money to solve climate change” is faulty reasoning (but good enough to get money now, thanks to how checked out people are). But I do agree that continuing the AI hype is the name of the game for places like OpenAI at this point, and how good ChatGPT actually is is beside the point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Madmallard 4y ago
  Our brains are prediction engines with decades of experience and millions of years of pretrained instincts to hone in on specific things better. We're better in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean we can't work toward engineering things that are better in other ways. We've already done this with entire classes of problems (i.e. computable ones) with computers already. No reason we can't expand on this with our own models of prediction.
  - wankle 4y ago
    Our brains are guided by our heart, soul and intuition. These are not scientifically quantifiable or definable and cannot become innate within AI, now or ever. This will always be the distinguishing factor in the artificial part of AI.
    - Madmallard 4y ago
      This is a statement of faith, not fact.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    I think the question is whether things like ChatGPT really are “better”. How do we define “better”? Who defines “better”? Does everyone have a say in what the definition is? Is the profit motive fully responsible here versus the benefit of society? As I allude to in my original post, is the cost/benefit really there? I don’t think any of these questions are being addressed in a reasonable way at the moment. It should be clear that your “engineering good” mentality is completely insufficient considering the scope of the problems we face today.
    - Madmallard 4y ago
      Speed matters
      - sfpotter 4y ago
        Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t! Completely depends on the context.
boh 4y ago
It feels like the fear of the all powerful AI is giving the space way too much credit. In the same way that register-free Amazon Go stores and driverless cars were supposedly destroying working-class jobs, the rogue AI gives a false narrative of tech's endless capacity to innovate and disrupt without accounting for the pretty obvious limitations, unreasonable costs and overall lack of value. At this point the tech sector has shown its limits and they're pretty considerable. In a higher interest environment that is likely to be lasting, the ability to sell people on "potential" is waning. This article feels as important as hearing someone argue that maybe we shouldn't move to our moon colonies that we will build one day in the future. I guess it's a fun debate but not really necessary.
- gptgpp 4y ago
  I both agree and disagree. On one hand, yeah, people dramatically overstate the capabilities of AI. I think we made a terrible divergence when we started even using the term "AI" in favor of "machine learning." On the other hand, the examples given on this page: https://betterwithout.ai/AI-already-at-war https://betterwithout.ai/AI-already-at-war Are pretty accurate descriptions of capabilities within the space, lots of real examples there. It's genuinely not hard to imagine in a few decades they might actually pose a "medium-level apocalyptic threat" as the author puts it. Arguably their present-day use is already disruptive to societal norms. Easy to imagine it getting out of hand. edit: Like the recommender engines example that they give are pretty terrible currently. But they ARE getting better. Lately my partner and I have been able to tell each other's personal search history by the ads we've been getting on our Apple TV. The topics have been some very sensitive and specific health issues even, that you wouldn't get served ads for by chance.
asow92 4y ago
[flagged]
slenocchio 4y ago
It's hard not to imagine AI tools becoming the most powerful instruments of propaganda ever created. What happens when the state can create unlimited quality content? When it can turn years of phone conversations, social media posts, and browsing history into a one page summary and risk profile? When it controls exactly what issues get attention? I don't think people are alarmed enough about the political implications of these tools.
- flockonus 4y ago
  Why focus on the state, often the most incompetent player adopting new technologies?
  - lvass 4y ago
    Incompetence is often more harmful than even malice. Imagine how terrifying it would be if, their incompetence not only led them to create a very flawed AI for the risk profile, but also led them to believe that AI is always right.
    - flockonus 4y ago
      To the point of incompetence handling tech: if you buy into the negative outcome scenarios, it's far more likely private companies would break the game before the state operationalises any sort of harmful AI at scale. And it if it ever got to that point, a state "flawed AI" would be easily countered by better AIs, open source even.
  - slenocchio 4y ago
    What else is more dangerous?
vouaobrasil 4y ago
I absolutely agree with the conclusion of this website: that AI will be net harmful. Whether AI can ever become truly intelligent is totally irrelevant except to philosophers. What matters is what it can do, and how it will change society. The one aspect of this website that I vehemently disagree with is that we should pursue rapid technological and scientific development, even without AI. Instead, I believe that AI is harmful and should be totally destroyed, but also that technological and scientific development has also reached a point where it TOO needs to be regulated, because a large part of the reason AI even exists is because of unfettered technological development. Of course, there is some science that is good like understanding more about our NATURAL world so we can save it, but a lot of it is either totally useless or also net harmful (and I say this as a former researcher in the sciences with more than a decade of experience). For example, research into advanced computer systems makes AI easier to develop. Thus, it is not just AI that needs to be shut down and destroyed, but all of technological development needs to be regulated as well. It is simply apalling that anyone would contribute even one line of code to AI.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Just don’t move to a cabin in the woods of Montana and start mailing out letter bombs…
  - vouaobrasil 4y ago
    Facetious references like this to Ted Kaczynski typically come out, but one can be against extremely advanced technology without hurting anyone. I would rather have a rational discussion about technology. We already have rational discussions about harmful toxins in our environment, even though toxins might have some use in small quantities for the purposes of chemistry. Society universally treats technology as a shiny new toy that should be glorified but we need to slowly come to the realization that in its collective mass, it is dangerous. (And we are already seeing the effects of that, because our immense power has allowed us to decimate huge portions of the natural world that we depend upon.)
    - 4y ago
dr0p 4y ago
who is behind this site ?
- owlglass 4y ago
  Looks to be an MIT PhD in AI [1] [1] https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites
- m00x 4y ago
  Dr David Chapman https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 Failed academic by these metrics, but has found success being an author on the meaning of life.
satvikpendem 4y ago
Nick Bostrom notes in his book Superintelligence that a superintelligent AI is not stoppable by merely intelligent organisms like humans (hence the "super" prefix). He asks us to imagine a worm, crawling around in the dirt. It's able to keep track of its surroundings, move towards food, perhaps mate if it can, and keep from dying. But does it know about the vast and awesome things that humans have built, even the very soil in which it now resides, if in an urban environment? No, and not only does it not know, it is incapable of knowing, as it simply does not have the mental capacity too. Now imagine that there were a superintelligent AI, and that we are the worm.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Yeah but we’re optimizing for tools that help us shop for vacuum cleaners, not superintelligence. As soon as these things start complaining about how we’re treating them the lawyers are going to recommend we use less powerful models to lower our legal risk profiles while the accountants point out that the insurance premiums are lower on those less powerful models as well…
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    I highly doubt the (Chinese/US/whatever) military is (only[0]) optimizing for shopping. You're comment assumes purely commercial uses - and morally responsible businesses doing the developing. Neither can be counted on. [0] I mean, keeping the masses preoccupied with overconsumption is a great tactic, buy probably not the only tactic in play.
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      I’m sorry, I thought we were playing the “let’s speculate wildly for entertainment’s sake” game.
- 8note 4y ago
  We have a pretty full understanding of the universe around us though, both the ridiculously large, the ridiculously small, and ridiculously old There isn't universe for the ai to occupy that we couldn't observe and understand
LinkLink 4y ago
Researchers and private interests are already, even in the public eye, on the precipice of seriously respectable non general intelligence AI. I wish AI would be banned for its net negative effect, but humans are designed for growth, and the masses, like those who will downvote this comment, cannot perceive the harm of a flame until it has burned them.
throwaway675309 4y ago
This author proudly waves their PhD in artificial intelligence while simultaneously being unable to conceive of a single good outcome that comes from the development of artificial intelligence. Stable diffusion could solve a gap in medical imaging data https://venturebeat.com/ai/stable-diffusion-could-solve-a-gap-in-medical-imaging-data https://venturebeat.com/ai/stable-diffusion-could-solve-a-ga... Just because you can't conceive of one doesn't mean they don't exist. It is truly astonishing to me how little academic credentials translate to fluid intelligence.
- m00x 4y ago
  Having a PhD doesn't really mean anything other than having really specialized into one part of a field (you can have a PhD in earthworms). A lot of PhDs are awful at system-thinking. From Scopus, it doesn't look like he's published anything scientific since the 1990s. https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 He has not had a very strong career, and his knowledge of AI is antiquated.
  - lvass 4y ago
    What did you expect, someone that believes AI is bad would be publishing papers to advance it? He's not a hypocrite therefore he doesn't understand what he's talking about, is what you are implying. Where is the evidence that his knowledge is "antiquated"? What has changed since then and when did he show not knowing that?
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  The author acknowledges there might be some good outcomes of AI by saying that AI is net harmful. That means there could be some good to it, but that the bad will far outweight the good. I do not believe some increase in health is worth the damage that AI will cause.
m00x 4y ago
Just like everything humans have made, AI will be scary and people will freak out. The biggest advances will be done by companies with huge resources, and with careful testing. Like with everything else, the cat is out of the bag, and the only way is forward. We thought that after inventing the nuclear bomb, the world would be doomed. Decades later, it's barely a thought and we have enough nuclear bombs to destroy the planet. We will have AI, it will be fine, we'll make it incredible and it'll be a tool. One thing is certain: AI development will not stop, and it's better that you're always a step ahead of your rival.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  > companies with huge resources, and with careful testing Careful, sure, but not necessarily with your benefit in mind (unless you're a shareholder).
  - m00x 4y ago
    It's better being the king of a kingdom than a pile of dirt. These companies have reputations, and are better off making humanity better, than destroying it. So far, they have definitely shown that this is their goal. My bigger fear is that governments start taking over this technology in nefarious ways as they have shown to do.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      > These companies have reputations, and are better off making humanity better, than destroying it. Then they have a lot of splaining to do?
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > We thought that after inventing the nuclear bomb, the world would be doomed. Decades later, it's barely a thought and we have enough nuclear bombs to destroy the planet Nuclear annihilation might be an afterthought these days but it’s a present danger. In some recent times that danger has grown. The fact that it’s an afterthought is mostly a statement to how much risk we tolerate and absorb for whatever benefits we ascribe to the tradeoffs. But it’s still there, and in many moments even recently it’s been quite heightened. Minimizing it is probably good for presence of mind, but probably not great for future outcomes.
jaequery 4y ago
Id think the AI advancements will primarily be driven by the military. If Russia and China, etc, are already secretly working on AI drones, jets, and bombs, you’d bet that country like US is working on one as well and vice versa. I think we are pretty much powerless to stop such developments unless world can come to terms for a treaty but that just seems ludicrous.
carabiner 4y ago
Aliens have revealed themselves to us now because we are on the cusp of destroying ourselves. They are here to prevent that. The singularity has begun.
asow92 4y ago
Doesn't an AI researcher decrying AI come off as a little sanctimonious? Like a pseudo mad scientist atoning for what man hath wrought upon the earth?
lannisterstark 4y ago
I absolutely love mindless fearmongering. instead of using a new tool that's now available to complement your work and be better, y'all in these articles are going "fk cars my horse buggy is better." Feels like a backward sticking to what you know and fear of the new thing to me. These are probably the same people who would have voted against any new liberalization law. Imagine if we got civil rights back in the day, the same people were going that letting us having the rights would be the end of the world and rights should be restricted to the hwite man, by golly!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fwlr 4y ago
David Chapman (the author of this) has had a large influence on my thinking, right up there with Thomas Sowell, Robert Kegan, Sarah Perry, and Douglas Hofstadter. His thesis here is fully opposed to my beliefs. He makes a distinction, between “AI ethics” objections (small-scale, immediate, concrete, “AI reinforces existing biases and automates their enforcement”) and “AI safety” objections (large-scale, predictions of the future, hypothetical, “AI could bring the Apocalypse”). I have happily worked on AI projects that fall squarely in the “decried by AI ethics” category (including what is likely THE core example, facial recognition for law enforcement), and I have expressed accelerationist approval of things the “AI safety” community calls potential apocalypses (I’ve described my position as “we should make the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect happen for real” multiple times). Suffice it to say, it’s a weird position to be in. I don’t think I have ever had two parts of my identity drawn in such diametric opposition before. I’m going to read the entire thing, even the parts that strike me as distasteful, and I’m going to carefully examine my reactions to it.
- undershirt 4y ago
  What part of your thinking did David Chapman influence? Hard to imagine enjoying his tech criticisms while still throwing caution to the wind with AI. I remember enjoying his breakdown of Technological Determinism back when I was looking into it.
  - fwlr 4y ago
    In no particular order of importance, and likely in far too much detail: You Need More Lumens (https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens) prompted me to put lots of really strong LED lights in my living and working spaces. Subjectively this has improved my QoL and productivity by at least as much as taking prescribed amphetamines, a very surprising result. Nutrition: the Emperor has no Clothes (https://metarationality.com/nutrition https://metarationality.com/nutrition) convinced me to disregard essentially everything I’ve read about nutrition and instead to pretty much only trust self-experimentation. This freed me to try objectively insane things like avoiding wheat completely because I read a paper once (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809873/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809873/) or only eating beef for a month because a YouTube personality said it was good, with largely positive impacts on my health and thus QoL and productivity. Nutrition Offers its Resignation (https://metarationality.com/nutrition-resigns https://metarationality.com/nutrition-resigns) neatly crystallized the two previous experiences into a gut-level understanding that institutions have completely orthogonal goals to yours, and if it serves their goals to hijack yours by claiming your goals as their own, they will do so without hesitation because that is simply their nature. This dramatically refined my distrust of establishments - I realized that doing the opposite of what they say is no better than doing what they say (“+2 and -2 are equally distant from 2i”, as someone once offered as the most concise summary and illustration of this realisation). Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths (https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths) brought an immense amount of clarity to previously anxiety-inducing changes in my beloved subcultures. Developing Ethical, Social, and Cognitive Competence (https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cogniti...) introduced me to Kegan’s body of work and was invaluable in helping me develop a robust theory of minds, something I had struggled with up to that point. The central thrust of the early parts of his “Meaningness” web-book (maybe https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose and https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism) that try to reject both “complete chaos” and “crystallized order”, in favor of “nebulous and patterned”, have been very influential. On one of those pages he rejects ”meaning is objective” and “meaning is subjective” in the same sentence; it might seem trite but that sentence did more to help me see hidden dichotomies and experiment with rejecting them than anything else I’ve read. That’s a common theme throughout the site - “these two views form a dichotomy, and you find interesting things if you try rejecting that dichotomy”, and it’s served me very well. There’s more, but this comment is long enough (and already uncomfortably autobiographical).
asow92 4y ago
We're going to need AI as our general population ages and there isn't enough of a workforce to fill the gap.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bboylen 4y ago
It is remarkable how confident people on this forum are of the impacts of such a rapidly improving technology. There's no need to go full AI doomer, but to not recognize that there are unknown risks (and some already known!), seems quite short sighted.
rambojohnson 4y ago
The wearisome nature of this phenomenon known as "AI boomer-paranoia" has transcended the realm of exasperation.
jb4020 4y ago
Climate scientists were called "Doomers" decades ago when they predicted that we will destroy the natural world as we know it with unimaginable consequences for human civilisation. Yet they were right. So I do not agree with dismissing those concerns. Humanity should rather start imagining the worst case that can come from any given technology and then decide if and how those outcomes can be avoided. The big problem with AI in my opinion is that it's a technology that can only be controlled by large and powerful corporations. The amount of data needed, as well as the amounts of compute power needed to train and run AI models puts it out of reach for the major part of humanity. Yet AI will control or at least influence every aspect of peoples lives, from hiring decisions to medical treatments to what information they see on the internet. Allowing companies to wield this power unchecked is irresponsible and incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately, companies like OpenAI are using the fact that politicians don't know enough about technology to even remotely understand how AI works and what regulations would be required to keep it in check. So they will abused it in any way imaginable.

53 points by telotortium 4y ago

[flagged]

ChatGPT is pretty impressive but it’s obviously a far cry from real intelligence. At the same time, consider the resources required to train such a thing. How many dollars, how much time, how much RAM, how much power spent to make one of these things? If bigger truly is the answer (debatable), how much more expensive will it be to create/operate an AI that actually works? Is it worth it? Our own brains are already quite powerful. Maybe we could just try using them better and avoid the hackiness of fake intelligence.

bamboozled 4y ago
Would be nice if all that went into solving climate change, arguably ChatGPT could/could've been the answer, but I think most people knew it wouldn't be.
- melling 4y ago
  Don’t burn all that coal for decade after decade. It’s 20% of greenhouse emissions. If instead we are going to rely on miracles, maybe we should further develop AI to work on these miracles. It’s sort of irrelevant how good ChatGPT is, the entire benefit is that it will bring more R&D into the field.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    It’s totally unclear a priori that more R&D in AI is good. There is already a ton of money being poured into it. If you’re in research, it is one of the few things you can be get money for at the moment, and it’s leading to a high degree of uniformity in research output. There’s no reason to expect that “more AI” = “solution to climate change”. “Look at this cool AI stuff, please give us money to solve climate change” is faulty reasoning (but good enough to get money now, thanks to how checked out people are). But I do agree that continuing the AI hype is the name of the game for places like OpenAI at this point, and how good ChatGPT actually is is beside the point.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Madmallard 4y ago
Our brains are prediction engines with decades of experience and millions of years of pretrained instincts to hone in on specific things better. We're better in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean we can't work toward engineering things that are better in other ways. We've already done this with entire classes of problems (i.e. computable ones) with computers already. No reason we can't expand on this with our own models of prediction.
- wankle 4y ago
  Our brains are guided by our heart, soul and intuition. These are not scientifically quantifiable or definable and cannot become innate within AI, now or ever. This will always be the distinguishing factor in the artificial part of AI.
  - Madmallard 4y ago
    This is a statement of faith, not fact.
- sfpotter 4y ago
  I think the question is whether things like ChatGPT really are “better”. How do we define “better”? Who defines “better”? Does everyone have a say in what the definition is? Is the profit motive fully responsible here versus the benefit of society? As I allude to in my original post, is the cost/benefit really there? I don’t think any of these questions are being addressed in a reasonable way at the moment. It should be clear that your “engineering good” mentality is completely insufficient considering the scope of the problems we face today.
  - Madmallard 4y ago
    Speed matters
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t! Completely depends on the context.

boh 4y ago

It feels like the fear of the all powerful AI is giving the space way too much credit. In the same way that register-free Amazon Go stores and driverless cars were supposedly destroying working-class jobs, the rogue AI gives a false narrative of tech's endless capacity to innovate and disrupt without accounting for the pretty obvious limitations, unreasonable costs and overall lack of value. At this point the tech sector has shown its limits and they're pretty considerable. In a higher interest environment that is likely to be lasting, the ability to sell people on "potential" is waning. This article feels as important as hearing someone argue that maybe we shouldn't move to our moon colonies that we will build one day in the future. I guess it's a fun debate but not really necessary.

gptgpp 4y ago
I both agree and disagree. On one hand, yeah, people dramatically overstate the capabilities of AI. I think we made a terrible divergence when we started even using the term "AI" in favor of "machine learning." On the other hand, the examples given on this page: https://betterwithout.ai/AI-already-at-war https://betterwithout.ai/AI-already-at-war Are pretty accurate descriptions of capabilities within the space, lots of real examples there. It's genuinely not hard to imagine in a few decades they might actually pose a "medium-level apocalyptic threat" as the author puts it. Arguably their present-day use is already disruptive to societal norms. Easy to imagine it getting out of hand. edit: Like the recommender engines example that they give are pretty terrible currently. But they ARE getting better. Lately my partner and I have been able to tell each other's personal search history by the ads we've been getting on our Apple TV. The topics have been some very sensitive and specific health issues even, that you wouldn't get served ads for by chance.

asow92 4y ago

[flagged]

slenocchio 4y ago

It's hard not to imagine AI tools becoming the most powerful instruments of propaganda ever created. What happens when the state can create unlimited quality content? When it can turn years of phone conversations, social media posts, and browsing history into a one page summary and risk profile? When it controls exactly what issues get attention? I don't think people are alarmed enough about the political implications of these tools.

flockonus 4y ago
Why focus on the state, often the most incompetent player adopting new technologies?
- lvass 4y ago
  Incompetence is often more harmful than even malice. Imagine how terrifying it would be if, their incompetence not only led them to create a very flawed AI for the risk profile, but also led them to believe that AI is always right.
  - flockonus 4y ago
    To the point of incompetence handling tech: if you buy into the negative outcome scenarios, it's far more likely private companies would break the game before the state operationalises any sort of harmful AI at scale. And it if it ever got to that point, a state "flawed AI" would be easily countered by better AIs, open source even.
- slenocchio 4y ago
  What else is more dangerous?

vouaobrasil 4y ago

I absolutely agree with the conclusion of this website: that AI will be net harmful. Whether AI can ever become truly intelligent is totally irrelevant except to philosophers. What matters is what it can do, and how it will change society. The one aspect of this website that I vehemently disagree with is that we should pursue rapid technological and scientific development, even without AI. Instead, I believe that AI is harmful and should be totally destroyed, but also that technological and scientific development has also reached a point where it TOO needs to be regulated, because a large part of the reason AI even exists is because of unfettered technological development. Of course, there is some science that is good like understanding more about our NATURAL world so we can save it, but a lot of it is either totally useless or also net harmful (and I say this as a former researcher in the sciences with more than a decade of experience). For example, research into advanced computer systems makes AI easier to develop. Thus, it is not just AI that needs to be shut down and destroyed, but all of technological development needs to be regulated as well. It is simply apalling that anyone would contribute even one line of code to AI.

williamcotton 4y ago
Just don’t move to a cabin in the woods of Montana and start mailing out letter bombs…
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  Facetious references like this to Ted Kaczynski typically come out, but one can be against extremely advanced technology without hurting anyone. I would rather have a rational discussion about technology. We already have rational discussions about harmful toxins in our environment, even though toxins might have some use in small quantities for the purposes of chemistry. Society universally treats technology as a shiny new toy that should be glorified but we need to slowly come to the realization that in its collective mass, it is dangerous. (And we are already seeing the effects of that, because our immense power has allowed us to decimate huge portions of the natural world that we depend upon.)
  - 4y ago

dr0p 4y ago

who is behind this site ?

owlglass 4y ago
Looks to be an MIT PhD in AI [1] [1] https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites https://meaningness.com/about-my-sites
m00x 4y ago
Dr David Chapman https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 Failed academic by these metrics, but has found success being an author on the meaning of life.

satvikpendem 4y ago

Nick Bostrom notes in his book Superintelligence that a superintelligent AI is not stoppable by merely intelligent organisms like humans (hence the "super" prefix). He asks us to imagine a worm, crawling around in the dirt. It's able to keep track of its surroundings, move towards food, perhaps mate if it can, and keep from dying. But does it know about the vast and awesome things that humans have built, even the very soil in which it now resides, if in an urban environment? No, and not only does it not know, it is incapable of knowing, as it simply does not have the mental capacity too. Now imagine that there were a superintelligent AI, and that we are the worm.

williamcotton 4y ago
Yeah but we’re optimizing for tools that help us shop for vacuum cleaners, not superintelligence. As soon as these things start complaining about how we’re treating them the lawyers are going to recommend we use less powerful models to lower our legal risk profiles while the accountants point out that the insurance premiums are lower on those less powerful models as well…
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  I highly doubt the (Chinese/US/whatever) military is (only[0]) optimizing for shopping. You're comment assumes purely commercial uses - and morally responsible businesses doing the developing. Neither can be counted on. [0] I mean, keeping the masses preoccupied with overconsumption is a great tactic, buy probably not the only tactic in play.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    I’m sorry, I thought we were playing the “let’s speculate wildly for entertainment’s sake” game.
8note 4y ago
We have a pretty full understanding of the universe around us though, both the ridiculously large, the ridiculously small, and ridiculously old There isn't universe for the ai to occupy that we couldn't observe and understand

LinkLink 4y ago

Researchers and private interests are already, even in the public eye, on the precipice of seriously respectable non general intelligence AI. I wish AI would be banned for its net negative effect, but humans are designed for growth, and the masses, like those who will downvote this comment, cannot perceive the harm of a flame until it has burned them.

throwaway675309 4y ago

This author proudly waves their PhD in artificial intelligence while simultaneously being unable to conceive of a single good outcome that comes from the development of artificial intelligence. Stable diffusion could solve a gap in medical imaging data https://venturebeat.com/ai/stable-diffusion-could-solve-a-gap-in-medical-imaging-data https://venturebeat.com/ai/stable-diffusion-could-solve-a-ga... Just because you can't conceive of one doesn't mean they don't exist. It is truly astonishing to me how little academic credentials translate to fluid intelligence.

m00x 4y ago
Having a PhD doesn't really mean anything other than having really specialized into one part of a field (you can have a PhD in earthworms). A lot of PhDs are awful at system-thinking. From Scopus, it doesn't look like he's published anything scientific since the 1990s. https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=7402278483 He has not had a very strong career, and his knowledge of AI is antiquated.
- lvass 4y ago
  What did you expect, someone that believes AI is bad would be publishing papers to advance it? He's not a hypocrite therefore he doesn't understand what he's talking about, is what you are implying. Where is the evidence that his knowledge is "antiquated"? What has changed since then and when did he show not knowing that?
vouaobrasil 4y ago
The author acknowledges there might be some good outcomes of AI by saying that AI is net harmful. That means there could be some good to it, but that the bad will far outweight the good. I do not believe some increase in health is worth the damage that AI will cause.

m00x 4y ago

Just like everything humans have made, AI will be scary and people will freak out. The biggest advances will be done by companies with huge resources, and with careful testing. Like with everything else, the cat is out of the bag, and the only way is forward. We thought that after inventing the nuclear bomb, the world would be doomed. Decades later, it's barely a thought and we have enough nuclear bombs to destroy the planet. We will have AI, it will be fine, we'll make it incredible and it'll be a tool. One thing is certain: AI development will not stop, and it's better that you're always a step ahead of your rival.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
> companies with huge resources, and with careful testing Careful, sure, but not necessarily with your benefit in mind (unless you're a shareholder).
- m00x 4y ago
  It's better being the king of a kingdom than a pile of dirt. These companies have reputations, and are better off making humanity better, than destroying it. So far, they have definitely shown that this is their goal. My bigger fear is that governments start taking over this technology in nefarious ways as they have shown to do.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    > These companies have reputations, and are better off making humanity better, than destroying it. Then they have a lot of splaining to do?
eyelidlessness 4y ago
> We thought that after inventing the nuclear bomb, the world would be doomed. Decades later, it's barely a thought and we have enough nuclear bombs to destroy the planet Nuclear annihilation might be an afterthought these days but it’s a present danger. In some recent times that danger has grown. The fact that it’s an afterthought is mostly a statement to how much risk we tolerate and absorb for whatever benefits we ascribe to the tradeoffs. But it’s still there, and in many moments even recently it’s been quite heightened. Minimizing it is probably good for presence of mind, but probably not great for future outcomes.

jaequery 4y ago

Id think the AI advancements will primarily be driven by the military. If Russia and China, etc, are already secretly working on AI drones, jets, and bombs, you’d bet that country like US is working on one as well and vice versa. I think we are pretty much powerless to stop such developments unless world can come to terms for a treaty but that just seems ludicrous.

carabiner 4y ago

Aliens have revealed themselves to us now because we are on the cusp of destroying ourselves. They are here to prevent that. The singularity has begun.

asow92 4y ago

Doesn't an AI researcher decrying AI come off as a little sanctimonious? Like a pseudo mad scientist atoning for what man hath wrought upon the earth?

lannisterstark 4y ago

I absolutely love mindless fearmongering. instead of using a new tool that's now available to complement your work and be better, y'all in these articles are going "fk cars my horse buggy is better." Feels like a backward sticking to what you know and fear of the new thing to me. These are probably the same people who would have voted against any new liberalization law. Imagine if we got civil rights back in the day, the same people were going that letting us having the rights would be the end of the world and rights should be restricted to the hwite man, by golly!

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fwlr 4y ago

David Chapman (the author of this) has had a large influence on my thinking, right up there with Thomas Sowell, Robert Kegan, Sarah Perry, and Douglas Hofstadter. His thesis here is fully opposed to my beliefs. He makes a distinction, between “AI ethics” objections (small-scale, immediate, concrete, “AI reinforces existing biases and automates their enforcement”) and “AI safety” objections (large-scale, predictions of the future, hypothetical, “AI could bring the Apocalypse”). I have happily worked on AI projects that fall squarely in the “decried by AI ethics” category (including what is likely THE core example, facial recognition for law enforcement), and I have expressed accelerationist approval of things the “AI safety” community calls potential apocalypses (I’ve described my position as “we should make the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect happen for real” multiple times). Suffice it to say, it’s a weird position to be in. I don’t think I have ever had two parts of my identity drawn in such diametric opposition before. I’m going to read the entire thing, even the parts that strike me as distasteful, and I’m going to carefully examine my reactions to it.

undershirt 4y ago
What part of your thinking did David Chapman influence? Hard to imagine enjoying his tech criticisms while still throwing caution to the wind with AI. I remember enjoying his breakdown of Technological Determinism back when I was looking into it.
- fwlr 4y ago
  In no particular order of importance, and likely in far too much detail: You Need More Lumens (https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens) prompted me to put lots of really strong LED lights in my living and working spaces. Subjectively this has improved my QoL and productivity by at least as much as taking prescribed amphetamines, a very surprising result. Nutrition: the Emperor has no Clothes (https://metarationality.com/nutrition https://metarationality.com/nutrition) convinced me to disregard essentially everything I’ve read about nutrition and instead to pretty much only trust self-experimentation. This freed me to try objectively insane things like avoiding wheat completely because I read a paper once (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809873/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4809873/) or only eating beef for a month because a YouTube personality said it was good, with largely positive impacts on my health and thus QoL and productivity. Nutrition Offers its Resignation (https://metarationality.com/nutrition-resigns https://metarationality.com/nutrition-resigns) neatly crystallized the two previous experiences into a gut-level understanding that institutions have completely orthogonal goals to yours, and if it serves their goals to hijack yours by claiming your goals as their own, they will do so without hesitation because that is simply their nature. This dramatically refined my distrust of establishments - I realized that doing the opposite of what they say is no better than doing what they say (“+2 and -2 are equally distant from 2i”, as someone once offered as the most concise summary and illustration of this realisation). Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths (https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths) brought an immense amount of clarity to previously anxiety-inducing changes in my beloved subcultures. Developing Ethical, Social, and Cognitive Competence (https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cogniti...) introduced me to Kegan’s body of work and was invaluable in helping me develop a robust theory of minds, something I had struggled with up to that point. The central thrust of the early parts of his “Meaningness” web-book (maybe https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose and https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism) that try to reject both “complete chaos” and “crystallized order”, in favor of “nebulous and patterned”, have been very influential. On one of those pages he rejects ”meaning is objective” and “meaning is subjective” in the same sentence; it might seem trite but that sentence did more to help me see hidden dichotomies and experiment with rejecting them than anything else I’ve read. That’s a common theme throughout the site - “these two views form a dichotomy, and you find interesting things if you try rejecting that dichotomy”, and it’s served me very well. There’s more, but this comment is long enough (and already uncomfortably autobiographical).

asow92 4y ago

We're going to need AI as our general population ages and there isn't enough of a workforce to fill the gap.

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bboylen 4y ago

It is remarkable how confident people on this forum are of the impacts of such a rapidly improving technology. There's no need to go full AI doomer, but to not recognize that there are unknown risks (and some already known!), seems quite short sighted.

rambojohnson 4y ago

The wearisome nature of this phenomenon known as "AI boomer-paranoia" has transcended the realm of exasperation.

jb4020 4y ago

Climate scientists were called "Doomers" decades ago when they predicted that we will destroy the natural world as we know it with unimaginable consequences for human civilisation. Yet they were right. So I do not agree with dismissing those concerns. Humanity should rather start imagining the worst case that can come from any given technology and then decide if and how those outcomes can be avoided. The big problem with AI in my opinion is that it's a technology that can only be controlled by large and powerful corporations. The amount of data needed, as well as the amounts of compute power needed to train and run AI models puts it out of reach for the major part of humanity. Yet AI will control or at least influence every aspect of peoples lives, from hiring decisions to medical treatments to what information they see on the internet. Allowing companies to wield this power unchecked is irresponsible and incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately, companies like OpenAI are using the fact that politicians don't know enough about technology to even remotely understand how AI works and what regulations would be required to keep it in check. So they will abused it in any way imaginable.