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Except that lead's toxicity has been known for thousands of years.

jeremyjh 4y ago
Yes and the dangers of AI overlords have been known at least since the first Terminator movie /s. Seriously though, people tend to dismiss things they are know are bad if there is no immediate harm. Certainly they had no idea how incredibly pervasive the lead from gasoline would be, that it would be detectable at harmful levels in basically everyone. It is also hard to measure these harms. How much crime of the 70s and 80s could be attributable for example.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. General Motors,Standard Oil and DuPont knew for sure, they had industrial incidents and lied about them! US Surgeon General was bought, people with opposing opinions were sued. It was instantly obvious to anyone that using leaded gas esp. in agriculture would be deadly and toxic. The risk was ignored for profit, PR handled, underplayed. Even the chronic effects were known! We even had an early alternative of just adding more ethanol to the pettol. But no... It took 50 years of scientists trying to convince public how deadly this thing is, with varied success. And 30 more years for the bulk of the phaseout.
  - j16sdiz 4y ago
    > Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. Who are “we”? The same could be told about AI - content farms, generating spam that bypass spam filter, etc… Some people knew them, majority of the public don’t
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      The Public, which is not an entity, also knew enough about lead. But they were not told the gas contained lead for the longest time. Ethyl was marketed as an antiknock additive explicitly dropping lead from the name for this very reason. Then there was a big chunk of time taken out for WW2 where such considerations were pushed out. The issue returned later but then it was argued there was no alternative for years.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
    Thanks, longer piece on that: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353
AstralStorm 4y ago
Lead toxicity was limited due to it not being sprayed about with fumes out of the exhaust of every vehicle, and then number of those vehicles being low. It got quickly somewhat regulated away. (But not 100%.) AI toxicity... We don't even know the risks. There's potentially no limit to the damage. We have some examples (metrics making echo chambers, automated classifiers giving people wolf ticket for no reason, amplified evil biases in conversational AI, fake news and deepfake generation) and some guesses for now. We do not even know how to begin to regulate it. It's not even the same ballpark. Internet would be a closer comparison and it's still wild west.
- kalium-xyz 4y ago
  Same risk as hiring a troll farm now
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Troll farm is limited number of people with limited capability. These can be tracked down and shut down, their enployers as well. The effects of a troll farm are relatively predictable which is why they're used. It's somewhat rare that anything really unpredictable results from small scale social engineering of this kind.
    - Nasrudith 4y ago
      I must strongly disagree here about unpredictable results from social engineering. Vladmir Lenin was deliberately let through Germany because they figured he would just weaken the tsar. It is hard to get smaller than one person or more unpredictable in impact with many others.
dustymcp 4y ago
I would argue social media has at least 10 years of known toxicity, it is so addictive and harmful to young people i dont get why its not prohibited like gambling or smoking..
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Yes and the dangers of AI overlords have been known at least since the first Terminator movie /s. Seriously though, people tend to dismiss things they are know are bad if there is no immediate harm. Certainly they had no idea how incredibly pervasive the lead from gasoline would be, that it would be detectable at harmful levels in basically everyone. It is also hard to measure these harms. How much crime of the 70s and 80s could be attributable for example.

AstralStorm 4y ago
Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. General Motors,Standard Oil and DuPont knew for sure, they had industrial incidents and lied about them! US Surgeon General was bought, people with opposing opinions were sued. It was instantly obvious to anyone that using leaded gas esp. in agriculture would be deadly and toxic. The risk was ignored for profit, PR handled, underplayed. Even the chronic effects were known! We even had an early alternative of just adding more ethanol to the pettol. But no... It took 50 years of scientists trying to convince public how deadly this thing is, with varied success. And 30 more years for the bulk of the phaseout.
- j16sdiz 4y ago
  > Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. Who are “we”? The same could be told about AI - content farms, generating spam that bypass spam filter, etc… Some people knew them, majority of the public don’t
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    The Public, which is not an entity, also knew enough about lead. But they were not told the gas contained lead for the longest time. Ethyl was marketed as an antiknock additive explicitly dropping lead from the name for this very reason. Then there was a big chunk of time taken out for WW2 where such considerations were pushed out. The issue returned later but then it was argued there was no alternative for years.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  Thanks, longer piece on that: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353

AstralStorm 4y ago

Lead toxicity was limited due to it not being sprayed about with fumes out of the exhaust of every vehicle, and then number of those vehicles being low. It got quickly somewhat regulated away. (But not 100%.) AI toxicity... We don't even know the risks. There's potentially no limit to the damage. We have some examples (metrics making echo chambers, automated classifiers giving people wolf ticket for no reason, amplified evil biases in conversational AI, fake news and deepfake generation) and some guesses for now. We do not even know how to begin to regulate it. It's not even the same ballpark. Internet would be a closer comparison and it's still wild west.

kalium-xyz 4y ago
Same risk as hiring a troll farm now
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Troll farm is limited number of people with limited capability. These can be tracked down and shut down, their enployers as well. The effects of a troll farm are relatively predictable which is why they're used. It's somewhat rare that anything really unpredictable results from small scale social engineering of this kind.
  - Nasrudith 4y ago
    I must strongly disagree here about unpredictable results from social engineering. Vladmir Lenin was deliberately let through Germany because they figured he would just weaken the tsar. It is hard to get smaller than one person or more unpredictable in impact with many others.

dustymcp 4y ago

I would argue social media has at least 10 years of known toxicity, it is so addictive and harmful to young people i dont get why its not prohibited like gambling or smoking..

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]