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This is roughly how I’m starting to think about it. This may be doomsday or it may be an amazing opportunity. I don’t know. If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter

by dimal 4y ago

This is roughly how I’m starting to think about it. This may be doomsday or it may be an amazing opportunity. I don’t know. If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter whether I act as if it’s doomsday or if I look for opportunities. Either way I’m fucked. But if I act as if it’s doomsday, but it’s actually an opportunity, I’ll miss all the possible opportunities that come up. So I don’t see any downside in looking at this as an opportunity. I may as well. And once I started to look at it that way, I started seeing all these potential ways to use AI to do what I do now, only better and more easily. So I’m going to keep looking for opportunities and going after them. If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jmann99999 4y ago
Pascal's wager for a different time and place. I have never thought about it that way. That's interesting.
- meghan_rain 4y ago
  I keep seeing lots of parallels between believing in God and blackbox AI systems. Especially in forums like lesswrong. Ironic, because most people there would be offended if you told them they are religious.
  - ChatGTP 4y ago
    I’m the same, I really think “AI” worship is a new type of religion. People quite honestly believe we’re about to meet God like intelligence and inherit eternal life from such a meeting. I guess anything is possible but have I heard this before ?
- latexr 4y ago
  Pascal’s wager is full of holes[1]. I agree with you that these ideas are similar, and it’s because of that that your parent comment deserves scrutiny rather than blind acceptance. For example: > If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter whether I act as if it’s doomsday or if I look for opportunities. Either way I’m fucked. There are different degrees of “being fucked”. Not everyone is disadvantaged the same in a doomsday scenario: it does not literally happen in a day and it does not necessarily spell doom for those who caused it or are outside their sphere of influence. It follows that someone who looked for alternatives rather than fully embracing the system might stand a better chance. Furthermore, a scenario which is not yet inevitable may become so because people think it is inevitable and give up or act in a way that reinforces it. That’s the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Note I’m not advocating a specific approach to this case. My aim is to highlight that while the initial argument seems logically airtight, it is deeply flawed and you shouldn’t take it as the true solution. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
para_parolu 4y ago
But it can be also something that is not opportunity nor doomsday. Then considering it opportunity one spends resources with not gains.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Yeah, just use it if it is useful, don't use it if it isn't. That is the optimal strategy here. Not sure why people think so hard about this. If you don't find it useful then good, it wont replace you. If you find it useful then it help you become more productive, best learn how to use it better than your peers so they get fired instead of you.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    > If you don't find it useful then good, it wont replace you. When the age of steam descended on the age of sail, the sail-makers were replaced without any option of making use of steam power to stay relevant.
    - zjp 4y ago
      I'm sure I'll flip back to AI pessimism, but I'm on the upswing of my anxiety cycle so: when you think about software engineering do you imagine yourself as a sailmaker or a ship designer?
- atoav 4y ago
  I would phrase it as: What it will be will depends on what it is and onto what kind of society (or the lack thereof) it is thrown.
nr2x 4y ago
It’s here, it’s real, and we have to deal with it as a society. The goal of the “AI Ethics” professional class to have all AI be approved by well-compensated PhDs in corporate labs has always been a paternalistic farce. Common people deserve access so they can figure out what their lives will be like now, and then we can make collective decisions about where we go.
smt88 4y ago
> If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter whether I act as if it’s doomsday or if I look for opportunities If everyone acted like this all the time, there'd be no point in unionizing or voting. If you suspect it might be doomsday, you should join other people who feel the same and do something about it. It's probably too late to stop it from filling the internet with misinformation and spam, but it's not too late to stop it from taking the jobs of the people who produced the training sets (i.e. writers, open-source coders, etc.) Since the training data is sourced from the web and from users, I've been wondering how difficult it would be to collectively poison these systems with junk data. I'm guessing it wouldn't take that many people to do it.
- dimal 4y ago
  This isn't a categorical imperative. This is a decision for this individual situation. By "doomsday" I mean, an economic doomsday for privileged people like me who have had a pretty good ride for a while, not a literal doomsday for everyone. I also don't see any way of possibly stopping this.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Here's what I think. At first, it will be used as a tool to augment devs. But quickly it will learn how to replace a lot of devs. Which ones? What's the most common code on Github? Probably YAFRA (Yet another fucking react app). It's going to learn on those first and replace those first. If you write code against/for bespoke hardware, for example, (where there are essentially zero projects that the AI can learn from), you're probably going to have another couple decades before you're replaced. Not saying one is harder than the other or criticizing anyone's skills, etc. Just looking at what the AI has available to learn from.

by dimal 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jmann99999 4y ago

Pascal's wager for a different time and place. I have never thought about it that way. That's interesting.

meghan_rain 4y ago
I keep seeing lots of parallels between believing in God and blackbox AI systems. Especially in forums like lesswrong. Ironic, because most people there would be offended if you told them they are religious.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  I’m the same, I really think “AI” worship is a new type of religion. People quite honestly believe we’re about to meet God like intelligence and inherit eternal life from such a meeting. I guess anything is possible but have I heard this before ?
latexr 4y ago
Pascal’s wager is full of holes[1]. I agree with you that these ideas are similar, and it’s because of that that your parent comment deserves scrutiny rather than blind acceptance. For example: > If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter whether I act as if it’s doomsday or if I look for opportunities. Either way I’m fucked. There are different degrees of “being fucked”. Not everyone is disadvantaged the same in a doomsday scenario: it does not literally happen in a day and it does not necessarily spell doom for those who caused it or are outside their sphere of influence. It follows that someone who looked for alternatives rather than fully embracing the system might stand a better chance. Furthermore, a scenario which is not yet inevitable may become so because people think it is inevitable and give up or act in a way that reinforces it. That’s the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Note I’m not advocating a specific approach to this case. My aim is to highlight that while the initial argument seems logically airtight, it is deeply flawed and you shouldn’t take it as the true solution. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

para_parolu 4y ago

But it can be also something that is not opportunity nor doomsday. Then considering it opportunity one spends resources with not gains.

Jensson 4y ago
Yeah, just use it if it is useful, don't use it if it isn't. That is the optimal strategy here. Not sure why people think so hard about this. If you don't find it useful then good, it wont replace you. If you find it useful then it help you become more productive, best learn how to use it better than your peers so they get fired instead of you.
- pengaru 4y ago
  > If you don't find it useful then good, it wont replace you. When the age of steam descended on the age of sail, the sail-makers were replaced without any option of making use of steam power to stay relevant.
  - zjp 4y ago
    I'm sure I'll flip back to AI pessimism, but I'm on the upswing of my anxiety cycle so: when you think about software engineering do you imagine yourself as a sailmaker or a ship designer?
atoav 4y ago
I would phrase it as: What it will be will depends on what it is and onto what kind of society (or the lack thereof) it is thrown.

nr2x 4y ago

It’s here, it’s real, and we have to deal with it as a society. The goal of the “AI Ethics” professional class to have all AI be approved by well-compensated PhDs in corporate labs has always been a paternalistic farce. Common people deserve access so they can figure out what their lives will be like now, and then we can make collective decisions about where we go.

smt88 4y ago

> If it’s doomsday, it doesn’t matter whether I act as if it’s doomsday or if I look for opportunities If everyone acted like this all the time, there'd be no point in unionizing or voting. If you suspect it might be doomsday, you should join other people who feel the same and do something about it. It's probably too late to stop it from filling the internet with misinformation and spam, but it's not too late to stop it from taking the jobs of the people who produced the training sets (i.e. writers, open-source coders, etc.) Since the training data is sourced from the web and from users, I've been wondering how difficult it would be to collectively poison these systems with junk data. I'm guessing it wouldn't take that many people to do it.

dimal 4y ago
This isn't a categorical imperative. This is a decision for this individual situation. By "doomsday" I mean, an economic doomsday for privileged people like me who have had a pretty good ride for a while, not a literal doomsday for everyone. I also don't see any way of possibly stopping this.

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Here's what I think. At first, it will be used as a tool to augment devs. But quickly it will learn how to replace a lot of devs. Which ones? What's the most common code on Github? Probably YAFRA (Yet another fucking react app). It's going to learn on those first and replace those first. If you write code against/for bespoke hardware, for example, (where there are essentially zero projects that the AI can learn from), you're probably going to have another couple decades before you're replaced. Not saying one is harder than the other or criticizing anyone's skills, etc. Just looking at what the AI has available to learn from.