3 ms·

> I think you are under estimating the bar for quality content. There is already an endless stream of content mass produced, whether by automated mechanisms or

by notamy 4y ago

> I think you are under estimating the bar for quality content. There is already an endless stream of content mass produced, whether by automated mechanisms or middling creators. You have to truly believe that epic, genre-defining works of art popular in mass media (not a generated static image but an entire movie or TV series) will be created by AI. My worry is more along the lines of TikTok, YouTube, etc. Look at how scarily good TikTok is at quickly pigeonholing you into your interests. "TikTok but AI-backed and always showing you exactly what you want to see" scares me. I'm not even necessarily worried about 5 or even 10 years down the road from now, but I can see it coming. People already use GPT models for writing papers, books, ... There's Midjourney etc. for image generation from nothing. I'm sure books have already been published this way, and the technology will only get better. What happens when your TikTok feed is always exactly what you want to see, even though the video itself was just generated a moment before? On its own it may not seem like such a bad thing, but there's also exploration of VR and AR, brain implants, ... Do we really want to live in a world where what we consume is primarily just ML-generated content, tailored specifically to the exact user, to the point where there may not even necessarily be shared experiences per se to bond over? Maybe I'm just fatalistic, but this technology has extremely high potential for abuse, and people seem to just ignore the ethics of it more often than not.

monero-xmr 4y ago
Maybe I’m just unique but I dislike Tik Tok, and the art I consume is primarily movies and non-fiction books. People have wants and needs. They need food and shelter. They need medicine and healthcare. They want human companionship and community. They want to travel and see and experience new things. They want to get wasted and party the night away. Fall in love and have kids. Nothing I previously described is going to be radically changed by AI. Entertainment likely will be in fundamental ways, but AI isn’t going to replace flying to Italy and experiencing it for myself.
- notamy 4y ago
  > Maybe I’m just unique but I dislike Tik Tok, and the art I consume is primarily movies and non-fiction books. This is the trap I keep seeing people on this site fall into. You don't do it, but that's not the same as nobody does it. What about teenagers currently growing up with it? What about when they have kids who are primarily fed this content? ... > They need medicine and healthcare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319778 "Capabilities of GPT-4 on Medical Challenge Problems" It will only improve from here. > They want human companionship and community. [...] Fall in love [...] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-01/replika-users-fell-in-love-with-their-ai-chatbot-companion/102028196 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-01/replika-users... "Replika users fell in love with their AI chatbot companions. Then they lost them" > They want to travel and see and experience new things. [...] AI isn’t going to replace flying to Italy and experiencing it for myself. GPT and Midjourney and etc. may not do this on their own. But current, active research is ongoing for brain implants, there's all sorts of stuff around VR/AR lately, ... If there's a chip in my brain and a synthetic version being pushed in, what's the difference if it "actually happened," if the experience can be synthetically replicated? I just have to remember that it did. This may not be possible today, or in 5 years, or even in 10 years. But someone will eventually make it possible if ethics and legislation don't catch up first.
  - monero-xmr 4y ago
    I’m not worried about any of that. If healthcare can be more widespread, effective, and affordable that’s a great thing. And if someone wants to beam stuff into their mind that’s not radically different from watching a movie. I just don’t think the future is scary just because technology is developing.
    - notamy 4y ago
      > I’m not worried about any of that. If healthcare can be more widespread, effective, and affordable that’s a great thing. And if someone wants to beam stuff into their mind that’s not radically different from watching a movie. I mean this in the most respectful way possible, this is missing the forest for the trees. On their own none of these things looks bad. Putting them together, given what we already know about human psychology and how much it's been manipulated with technology, it's scary. Look at all the "fake news" commentary around certain American elections. Regardless of your political position, the scale at which that sort of thing was happening should give anyone pause. These tools in their current form already allow for that sort of manipulation on a scale we've never dealt with before. What happens when these tools are 10x or 100x better? What happens to the generation of kids and teens being raised to think all of this is completely fine, without any of the privacy / ethics / etc. concerns? What happens to their kids? I know this sounds like "but think of the children!!1" but we've already seen what happens to young kids with things like YouTube: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/youtube-is-causing-stress-and-sexualization-in-young-children.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/youtube-is-causing-stress-an... (2018) > Mental health experts warn that fear-inducing videos affect brain development in young children. https://www.vox.com/recode/22412232/youtube-kids-autoplay https://www.vox.com/recode/22412232/youtube-kids-autoplay (2021) > But child safety advocates and some members of Congress say there’s a problem with the app and corresponding website: an autoplay feature that keeps one video coming after another with no pause or interruption. When one video ends, another video selected by YouTube Kids’ recommendations algorithm automatically plays. Right now, autoplay is on by default, and there is no way to turn off autoplay, so YouTube Kids will continue to feed children algorithmically curated videos that run indefinitely unless someone happens to show up and intervene. Especially with that second case, a small-enough child won't know that it's bad for them. And as parents resort to these apps more and more, as the tools for generating content at absurd scale get more and more accessible, it starts to not look good. You can argue parental responsibility, but American society -- where a lot of this stuff takes root first -- is built around not making that easy, since so many households have both parents working, sometimes multiple jobs.
reidjs 4y ago
That’s true, but I can simply choose not to use TikTok and this isn’t relevant at all to me.
- notamy 4y ago
  You can, sure. But we're in the minority of being users of a fairly niche tech-centric forum. What about when you're a teenager, and all your friends are using <ai-powered app>, so you're left out of <some group experience>? What happens when you're a kid who's raised primarily on this sort of content? This alone could mess up large parts of the relevant generation, but it can get worse past that. A generation raised on this will happily put their kids in front of a screen of it, and the problem compounds. The AI/ML ethics problem isn't just a right-here-right-now problem, but one that'll have effects on all the coming generations.
xwdv 4y ago
People vastly overestimate how addictive ML content would be. First off, what if the content you want to see is simply real stuff that other people are doing? Luscious perfect breasts can likely be generated by ML easily, but a spicy bikini photo of a woman I happen to know personally would easily draw my attention more. Maybe you can fool me by generating such an image, but eventually I’ll only feel any stimulation if I know the image is actually real. I’ll give you a better example. Consider a movie where a persons head gets blown open, spilling brains all over the place. People might easily watch such a scene and think nothing of it. But now imagine you watch a snuff film of a person actually getting their brains blown out in real life. For a lot of people this hits differently even though visually it might look the same. Some people specifically seek out these videos because they are real, despite the existence of fake alternatives. Same goes for text, I don’t give a damn about some GPT generated essay but I will read something someone I know wrote with greater interest. Reading the opinion of an AI is a waste of time. So as long as people value content made by humans, ML won’t have much to offer besides shallow, empty stimulus. Like watching some random porn and jacking off into oblivion, most people would still rather have actual sex with someone.
- notamy 4y ago
  > First off, what if the content you want to see is simply real stuff that other people are doing? Luscious perfect breasts can likely be generated by ML easily, but a spicy bikini photo of a woman I happen to know personally would easily draw my attention more. Maybe you can fool me by generating such an image, but eventually I’ll only feel any stimulation if I know the image is actually real. If we've never met in the real world, how would you ever know "I" wasn't real? ML models will eventually be able to generate effectively-perfect images, video content, voices, etc. People are hooking LLMs up to all sorts of APIs, ML models have demonstrated capability to learn things like gameplay before, etc. We already saw how many people genuinely got attached to Replika and freaked out. What happens when it's effectively impossible to tell it apart from a real human short of meeting it? What happens if we go to the VR-heavy future where it doesn't matter? > Same goes for text, I don’t give a damn about some GPT generated essay but I will read something someone I know wrote with greater interest. What if you don't know the difference? If I effectively prompt an LLM with "write X in the style of one of HN user xwdv's friends" and send it to you saying it was written by them, and don't tell you it's from an LLM, then you implicitly trust me that it's real. You don't have to know that it's real, you just have to believe it's real. The same general context applies to snuff films etc.; they're shocking because you believe it's an actual, real human. > So as long as people value content made by humans, ML won’t have much to offer besides shallow, empty stimulus. Like watching some random porn and jacking off into oblivion, most people would still rather have actual sex with someone. Real human connection is important, I agree! But we keep building all this technology to minimise direct human-to-human contact and interaction and creativity, and then wonder why everyone's miserable.

by notamy 4y ago

monero-xmr 4y ago

Maybe I’m just unique but I dislike Tik Tok, and the art I consume is primarily movies and non-fiction books. People have wants and needs. They need food and shelter. They need medicine and healthcare. They want human companionship and community. They want to travel and see and experience new things. They want to get wasted and party the night away. Fall in love and have kids. Nothing I previously described is going to be radically changed by AI. Entertainment likely will be in fundamental ways, but AI isn’t going to replace flying to Italy and experiencing it for myself.

notamy 4y ago
> Maybe I’m just unique but I dislike Tik Tok, and the art I consume is primarily movies and non-fiction books. This is the trap I keep seeing people on this site fall into. You don't do it, but that's not the same as nobody does it. What about teenagers currently growing up with it? What about when they have kids who are primarily fed this content? ... > They need medicine and healthcare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35319778 "Capabilities of GPT-4 on Medical Challenge Problems" It will only improve from here. > They want human companionship and community. [...] Fall in love [...] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-01/replika-users-fell-in-love-with-their-ai-chatbot-companion/102028196 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-03-01/replika-users... "Replika users fell in love with their AI chatbot companions. Then they lost them" > They want to travel and see and experience new things. [...] AI isn’t going to replace flying to Italy and experiencing it for myself. GPT and Midjourney and etc. may not do this on their own. But current, active research is ongoing for brain implants, there's all sorts of stuff around VR/AR lately, ... If there's a chip in my brain and a synthetic version being pushed in, what's the difference if it "actually happened," if the experience can be synthetically replicated? I just have to remember that it did. This may not be possible today, or in 5 years, or even in 10 years. But someone will eventually make it possible if ethics and legislation don't catch up first.
- monero-xmr 4y ago
  I’m not worried about any of that. If healthcare can be more widespread, effective, and affordable that’s a great thing. And if someone wants to beam stuff into their mind that’s not radically different from watching a movie. I just don’t think the future is scary just because technology is developing.
  - notamy 4y ago
    > I’m not worried about any of that. If healthcare can be more widespread, effective, and affordable that’s a great thing. And if someone wants to beam stuff into their mind that’s not radically different from watching a movie. I mean this in the most respectful way possible, this is missing the forest for the trees. On their own none of these things looks bad. Putting them together, given what we already know about human psychology and how much it's been manipulated with technology, it's scary. Look at all the "fake news" commentary around certain American elections. Regardless of your political position, the scale at which that sort of thing was happening should give anyone pause. These tools in their current form already allow for that sort of manipulation on a scale we've never dealt with before. What happens when these tools are 10x or 100x better? What happens to the generation of kids and teens being raised to think all of this is completely fine, without any of the privacy / ethics / etc. concerns? What happens to their kids? I know this sounds like "but think of the children!!1" but we've already seen what happens to young kids with things like YouTube: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/youtube-is-causing-stress-and-sexualization-in-young-children.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/youtube-is-causing-stress-an... (2018) > Mental health experts warn that fear-inducing videos affect brain development in young children. https://www.vox.com/recode/22412232/youtube-kids-autoplay https://www.vox.com/recode/22412232/youtube-kids-autoplay (2021) > But child safety advocates and some members of Congress say there’s a problem with the app and corresponding website: an autoplay feature that keeps one video coming after another with no pause or interruption. When one video ends, another video selected by YouTube Kids’ recommendations algorithm automatically plays. Right now, autoplay is on by default, and there is no way to turn off autoplay, so YouTube Kids will continue to feed children algorithmically curated videos that run indefinitely unless someone happens to show up and intervene. Especially with that second case, a small-enough child won't know that it's bad for them. And as parents resort to these apps more and more, as the tools for generating content at absurd scale get more and more accessible, it starts to not look good. You can argue parental responsibility, but American society -- where a lot of this stuff takes root first -- is built around not making that easy, since so many households have both parents working, sometimes multiple jobs.

reidjs 4y ago

That’s true, but I can simply choose not to use TikTok and this isn’t relevant at all to me.

notamy 4y ago
You can, sure. But we're in the minority of being users of a fairly niche tech-centric forum. What about when you're a teenager, and all your friends are using <ai-powered app>, so you're left out of <some group experience>? What happens when you're a kid who's raised primarily on this sort of content? This alone could mess up large parts of the relevant generation, but it can get worse past that. A generation raised on this will happily put their kids in front of a screen of it, and the problem compounds. The AI/ML ethics problem isn't just a right-here-right-now problem, but one that'll have effects on all the coming generations.

xwdv 4y ago

People vastly overestimate how addictive ML content would be. First off, what if the content you want to see is simply real stuff that other people are doing? Luscious perfect breasts can likely be generated by ML easily, but a spicy bikini photo of a woman I happen to know personally would easily draw my attention more. Maybe you can fool me by generating such an image, but eventually I’ll only feel any stimulation if I know the image is actually real. I’ll give you a better example. Consider a movie where a persons head gets blown open, spilling brains all over the place. People might easily watch such a scene and think nothing of it. But now imagine you watch a snuff film of a person actually getting their brains blown out in real life. For a lot of people this hits differently even though visually it might look the same. Some people specifically seek out these videos because they are real, despite the existence of fake alternatives. Same goes for text, I don’t give a damn about some GPT generated essay but I will read something someone I know wrote with greater interest. Reading the opinion of an AI is a waste of time. So as long as people value content made by humans, ML won’t have much to offer besides shallow, empty stimulus. Like watching some random porn and jacking off into oblivion, most people would still rather have actual sex with someone.

notamy 4y ago
> First off, what if the content you want to see is simply real stuff that other people are doing? Luscious perfect breasts can likely be generated by ML easily, but a spicy bikini photo of a woman I happen to know personally would easily draw my attention more. Maybe you can fool me by generating such an image, but eventually I’ll only feel any stimulation if I know the image is actually real. If we've never met in the real world, how would you ever know "I" wasn't real? ML models will eventually be able to generate effectively-perfect images, video content, voices, etc. People are hooking LLMs up to all sorts of APIs, ML models have demonstrated capability to learn things like gameplay before, etc. We already saw how many people genuinely got attached to Replika and freaked out. What happens when it's effectively impossible to tell it apart from a real human short of meeting it? What happens if we go to the VR-heavy future where it doesn't matter? > Same goes for text, I don’t give a damn about some GPT generated essay but I will read something someone I know wrote with greater interest. What if you don't know the difference? If I effectively prompt an LLM with "write X in the style of one of HN user xwdv's friends" and send it to you saying it was written by them, and don't tell you it's from an LLM, then you implicitly trust me that it's real. You don't have to know that it's real, you just have to believe it's real. The same general context applies to snuff films etc.; they're shocking because you believe it's an actual, real human. > So as long as people value content made by humans, ML won’t have much to offer besides shallow, empty stimulus. Like watching some random porn and jacking off into oblivion, most people would still rather have actual sex with someone. Real human connection is important, I agree! But we keep building all this technology to minimise direct human-to-human contact and interaction and creativity, and then wonder why everyone's miserable.