4 ms·

I stumbled over this quote in a different context but I feel like it applies everywhere: the optimal amount of fraud is not zero [1]. Now that Pandora's box is

I stumbled over this quote in a different context but I feel like it applies everywhere: the optimal amount of fraud is not zero [1]. Now that Pandora's box is open, we will always have some AI-generated content. If we try to stamp it out we will exclude real voices, just like stamping out welfare-fraud makes it harder for 'legitimate' welfare recipients, of which there are way more than fraudsters. We need to be careful not to cut the nose off to spite the face. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
The problem isn't that AI fraud is hard to deal with when they're found. The problem is that there's so much of it that the AI fraud itself is acting to exclude real voices by drowning them.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Hmm. Restricting AI would restrict real voices. But unfettered AI also restricts real voices. There is no path that does not restrict real voices. The best we can do (analogous to the welfare fraud case) is maximize the real voices, which in practice is probably going to mean a brutal crackdown on AI content. (It's easier to do AI fraud in volume than it is to do welfare fraud in volume.) Some real, human voices, with valuable things to say, are going to get blocked, and that's bad. But more would be unheard without the crackdown, so we kind of have to do it.
  - wussboy 4y ago
    The solution is as obvious as it is effective: take our voices off of the internet. Only face to face can possibly matter or be trusted. Yes, it will slow down the pace at which we hurl ourselves into technological nihilism. But that’s a good thing.
    - a_bonobo 4y ago
      Isn't that the solution they came up with in Dune? The Butlerian Jihad?
      - ghkbrew 4y ago
        Yes, but it but humans have been afraid that machines would replace them since long before Frank Herbert wrote about it. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
        iskander 4y ago
        Luddites weren't afraid that they would be replaced by machines, they were skilled weavers who had already been replaced by programmable looms. Both their status/role in society and their income were significantly decreased as the available jobs switched from artisanal weaving to operating industrial looms in a factory.
    - kuhewa 4y ago
      It's a huge huge step back. That's like a before telegraph, before semaphore, before printing press step back.
    - onetokeoverthe 4y ago
      [dead]
    - yencabulator 4y ago
      Surely a scifi short story publisher personally knows and lives near enough good scifi authors that they can just ask their friends to write all the stories, right?
arp242 4y ago
Probably; but I do think you need to consider abuse in the early stage of many things, or respond to changes in circumstances (as is happening here). A naïve system design is often open to rampant abuse, and even a small number of abusers can seriously mess things up. How many people are actually sending out spam? Not all that many, on the internet scale of things. If you're not careful a very tiny minority – potentially even a single person – can completely destroy any good system that doesn't anticipate and respond to abuse. But like with many things, it's indeed a trade-off. Remember that Digital Ocean hacktober fest a few years ago that caused endless pointless spam to many repositories? The following year they instituted some fairly simple changes which mostly eliminated it. Sometimes even simple changes can be quite effective. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects are; perhaps once the novelty wears off things will settle down. I bet that at least some of these submissions are people trying to see how far they can get, just for "fun", like a kid with a new toy. Give a boy a hammer and he will discover that everything needs hammering. I have no idea if that's 1%, 10%, or 50%. Some others are "inspired" by those YouTube ... people ... similar to what happened with hacktoberfest, and that will die down too as those YouTube ... people ... tend to hook in to anything new as a way to sell their nonsense, and this will probably die down. I have no idea what exactly their effect is either. In short, it's probably too soon to panic just yet; let's check again in a year or so. Maybe things will be better, or maybe not and we'll be stuck with even more poo-poo flung our way by the internet monkeys.
canadianfella 4y ago
[dead]
throwawamba 4y ago
Welfare fraud is nullified by universal basic income. AI flood is nullified by (what completely sensible measure that vastly simplifies things but we're too much of 5 monkeys in a trenchcoat to see it?) Peter Watts has an interesting take in Rifters (a picture of our world going out with a well-insured corporate whimper), where the guy can't find a song he liked a few years back anymore because the world is not only undergoing an ecological catastrophe but also _running out of data storage space_ because the self-replicating digital "fauna" has taken over the Internet. It is time for us to... dare I say it... start _ignoring_ the voices, human or no? How do we stop the proliferation of meaningless content before the AI starts making unsolicited backups to our wetware - just like regular traditions do, without being considered "conscious" or "intelligent" even though they're also made of the collected traces of the intelligence of individuals?
Proven 4y ago
[dead]
aeternum 4y ago
This is a powerful way of looking at things. It explains a lot, even airport security. For example: the optimal number of evildoers to let through airport security is not zero, yet we've gone to extreme lengths to try to make it so. If you sum up the total human lifetimes spent in airport security lines, it almost certainly multiples of the lifetimes lost in attacks. We often strive for perfection when we're well-past optimal and far into the region of diminishing returns.
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago
  [dead]
- the_omegist 4y ago
  > We often strive for perfection when we're well-past optimal and far into the region of diminishing returns. Agree with all you've said but you're too generous putting all this under the noble quest for perfection. It is just that modern western societies freak out at the mention of death. If simple car accidents make the headlines for hours/days, it shows that what is really driving all this is not perfection but a paranoid fear of death.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    Do car accidents (other than Tesla :D) drive headlines though? Seems like we are extremely sensitive to certain classes of sudden death (terrorism), much less sensitive to others (car accidents), and completely dismissive of slow death even when it kills huge percentages of the population (obesity and heart disease).

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

The problem isn't that AI fraud is hard to deal with when they're found. The problem is that there's so much of it that the AI fraud itself is acting to exclude real voices by drowning them.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Hmm. Restricting AI would restrict real voices. But unfettered AI also restricts real voices. There is no path that does not restrict real voices. The best we can do (analogous to the welfare fraud case) is maximize the real voices, which in practice is probably going to mean a brutal crackdown on AI content. (It's easier to do AI fraud in volume than it is to do welfare fraud in volume.) Some real, human voices, with valuable things to say, are going to get blocked, and that's bad. But more would be unheard without the crackdown, so we kind of have to do it.
- wussboy 4y ago
  The solution is as obvious as it is effective: take our voices off of the internet. Only face to face can possibly matter or be trusted. Yes, it will slow down the pace at which we hurl ourselves into technological nihilism. But that’s a good thing.
  - a_bonobo 4y ago
    Isn't that the solution they came up with in Dune? The Butlerian Jihad?
    - ghkbrew 4y ago
      Yes, but it but humans have been afraid that machines would replace them since long before Frank Herbert wrote about it. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
      - iskander 4y ago
        Luddites weren't afraid that they would be replaced by machines, they were skilled weavers who had already been replaced by programmable looms. Both their status/role in society and their income were significantly decreased as the available jobs switched from artisanal weaving to operating industrial looms in a factory.
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    It's a huge huge step back. That's like a before telegraph, before semaphore, before printing press step back.
  - onetokeoverthe 4y ago
    [dead]
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    Surely a scifi short story publisher personally knows and lives near enough good scifi authors that they can just ask their friends to write all the stories, right?

arp242 4y ago

Probably; but I do think you need to consider abuse in the early stage of many things, or respond to changes in circumstances (as is happening here). A naïve system design is often open to rampant abuse, and even a small number of abusers can seriously mess things up. How many people are actually sending out spam? Not all that many, on the internet scale of things. If you're not careful a very tiny minority – potentially even a single person – can completely destroy any good system that doesn't anticipate and respond to abuse. But like with many things, it's indeed a trade-off. Remember that Digital Ocean hacktober fest a few years ago that caused endless pointless spam to many repositories? The following year they instituted some fairly simple changes which mostly eliminated it. Sometimes even simple changes can be quite effective. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects are; perhaps once the novelty wears off things will settle down. I bet that at least some of these submissions are people trying to see how far they can get, just for "fun", like a kid with a new toy. Give a boy a hammer and he will discover that everything needs hammering. I have no idea if that's 1%, 10%, or 50%. Some others are "inspired" by those YouTube ... people ... similar to what happened with hacktoberfest, and that will die down too as those YouTube ... people ... tend to hook in to anything new as a way to sell their nonsense, and this will probably die down. I have no idea what exactly their effect is either. In short, it's probably too soon to panic just yet; let's check again in a year or so. Maybe things will be better, or maybe not and we'll be stuck with even more poo-poo flung our way by the internet monkeys.

canadianfella 4y ago

[dead]

throwawamba 4y ago

Welfare fraud is nullified by universal basic income. AI flood is nullified by (what completely sensible measure that vastly simplifies things but we're too much of 5 monkeys in a trenchcoat to see it?) Peter Watts has an interesting take in Rifters (a picture of our world going out with a well-insured corporate whimper), where the guy can't find a song he liked a few years back anymore because the world is not only undergoing an ecological catastrophe but also _running out of data storage space_ because the self-replicating digital "fauna" has taken over the Internet. It is time for us to... dare I say it... start _ignoring_ the voices, human or no? How do we stop the proliferation of meaningless content before the AI starts making unsolicited backups to our wetware - just like regular traditions do, without being considered "conscious" or "intelligent" even though they're also made of the collected traces of the intelligence of individuals?

Proven 4y ago

[dead]

aeternum 4y ago

This is a powerful way of looking at things. It explains a lot, even airport security. For example: the optimal number of evildoers to let through airport security is not zero, yet we've gone to extreme lengths to try to make it so. If you sum up the total human lifetimes spent in airport security lines, it almost certainly multiples of the lifetimes lost in attacks. We often strive for perfection when we're well-past optimal and far into the region of diminishing returns.

onetokeoverthe 4y ago
[dead]
the_omegist 4y ago
> We often strive for perfection when we're well-past optimal and far into the region of diminishing returns. Agree with all you've said but you're too generous putting all this under the noble quest for perfection. It is just that modern western societies freak out at the mention of death. If simple car accidents make the headlines for hours/days, it shows that what is really driving all this is not perfection but a paranoid fear of death.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Do car accidents (other than Tesla :D) drive headlines though? Seems like we are extremely sensitive to certain classes of sudden death (terrorism), much less sensitive to others (car accidents), and completely dismissive of slow death even when it kills huge percentages of the population (obesity and heart disease).