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It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its processing on board, without uploading recordings to the cloud. And you want your neighbour's doorbell to do the same. And frankly, nobody goes after Microsoft Word when someone writes Xi Jinping satire using it, or ICE buy it - because people know it's a tool rather than a platform. On the other hand, if you think ML technology is going to produce the next wave of fake amazon reviews and forum spam - you might be a lot less eager to see it in the hands of everyone. If you think society will be slow to adapt to things like deepfakes; and that cops and corporations will immediately start using things like facial recognition technology - well, then wider access to ML might seem to have a great many downsides.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, planning logistics that our modern life impose on us... Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary. Yes, that can make a huge different. Don't think about AI as the thing we have today. GPT the nokia 3310 of AI. Amazing, but very basic. Think that one day, somebody will come out with the iphone of AI.
- namaria 4y ago
  You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.
  - Nihilartikel 4y ago
    Exactly! Nobody should imagine and articulate any possibilities unless they are sure they will be correct. It's so embarrassing.
    - namaria 4y ago
      You just did the same thing with what I said to draw a ridiculous conclusion and attack that...
  - lkschubert8 4y ago
    Isn't flight autopilot an easier problem than ground vehicle autopilot?
    - namaria 4y ago
      In airliners that cruise for hours at 3 times the height of the highest mountains...
    - hardlianotion 4y ago
      Yes
    - nradov 4y ago
      Flight autopilot is easy if you only have to fly from one point to another. The hard part is dealing with emergencies. We are far from being able to build an autopilot that could react as well as the human crew did during US Airways flight 1549.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    I don't have to imagine anything since I'm already delegating part of the job I used to send to my own secretary to AI, such as: - reading boring documents and giving me the gist of it - classifying my emails - checking for typos and problems in my writing - writing the boiler plate of documents - translating doc - doing basic search on a topic, such as legal obligations that haven't change in the last 2 years It's cheaper than my secretary, faster, and has roughly the same error rate for those tasks. I have to double check her work anyway. With plugins, people are already making stuff like booking a plane, another thing my secretary does. It will expend.
- lambic2 4y ago
  |Amazing, but very basic. After playing around with ChatGPT for a few hours I have a hard time seeing how someone could objectively call it "basic".
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    The nokia 3310 was amazing. But compared to what we have today, it's very basic. Same for chatgpt.
    - lambic2 4y ago
      Right but by that definition every thing in the universe is and will always be basic. The word becomes meaningless.
      - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
        The temporality of evolution is what's important here. The washing machine has reached a tipping point, we hit diminishing returns from now on. The AI is in the nokia phase. It's at the primitive stage of development.
        jschveibinz 4y ago
        It is hard for people to comprehend the rate of change. Over the short term, it feels like we are on a gentle slope upward with respect to change. But the reality is the slope is near vertical. Even your analogy is a huge understatement. It will be more like Nokia today, and iPhone next week.
- corbulo 4y ago
  Washing machine but for office work is a great analogy. You lost me at iPhone for AI. I think I know what you mean but it can be expressed better.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    OP is saying GPT is the equivalent of an old Nokia feature phone. However cellphones really blew up once Apple figured out how to make smartphones broadly appealing with multi touch (prior to that you had things like Windows CE, Blackberry and Palm, but those were extremely more limited than what the iPhone delivered). In other words the jump ahead from GPT to broadly useful AI is akin to the jump from the old Nokia feature phone to iPhone. Don’t let the current limitations of GPT color what you think AI will be generally capable of within the next decade.
- jackvalentine 4y ago
  > Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary. I think something that was majorly lost in the past 60 years is the secretary. I agree with you that it’d be great if everyone had one - the working relationship between a secretary and the person they support can be amazingly productive.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  >The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world The biggest game changer was the fossil fuel that enabled that washing machine, and all the other modern devices we rely on. That same substance is used to as chemical feedstock for fertilizers and more than double yields, and more than double the amount of "arable" land. If we were to run out, half of humanity would likely starve.
TimPC 4y ago
The relevant distinction isn’t being a tool it’s how it is built. If you use a bunch of copyrighted material in the design of your tool and some of the material leaks into your answers that’s very different from building Microsoft Word.
- michaelt 4y ago
  The copyright question is of course an important one. But I was thinking of the tool-vs-platform distinction in the context of the censorship question raised by Midjourney blocking images of Xi Jinping. 'Platforms' like Facebook and Github often censor things like porn, terror recruitment, and political satire fearing reputational damage and loss of advertisers from having such content on their domain, next to their logo - whereas offline tools like MS Word aren't subject to the same fears. So people who think political satire is a particularly important form of speech might prefer an offline tool for their greater censorship resistance, irrespective of their opinion on issues of copyright.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, planning logistics that our modern life impose on us... Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary. Yes, that can make a huge different. Don't think about AI as the thing we have today. GPT the nokia 3310 of AI. Amazing, but very basic. Think that one day, somebody will come out with the iphone of AI.

namaria 4y ago
You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.
- Nihilartikel 4y ago
  Exactly! Nobody should imagine and articulate any possibilities unless they are sure they will be correct. It's so embarrassing.
  - namaria 4y ago
    You just did the same thing with what I said to draw a ridiculous conclusion and attack that...
- lkschubert8 4y ago
  Isn't flight autopilot an easier problem than ground vehicle autopilot?
  - namaria 4y ago
    In airliners that cruise for hours at 3 times the height of the highest mountains...
  - hardlianotion 4y ago
    Yes
  - nradov 4y ago
    Flight autopilot is easy if you only have to fly from one point to another. The hard part is dealing with emergencies. We are far from being able to build an autopilot that could react as well as the human crew did during US Airways flight 1549.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  I don't have to imagine anything since I'm already delegating part of the job I used to send to my own secretary to AI, such as: - reading boring documents and giving me the gist of it - classifying my emails - checking for typos and problems in my writing - writing the boiler plate of documents - translating doc - doing basic search on a topic, such as legal obligations that haven't change in the last 2 years It's cheaper than my secretary, faster, and has roughly the same error rate for those tasks. I have to double check her work anyway. With plugins, people are already making stuff like booking a plane, another thing my secretary does. It will expend.
lambic2 4y ago
|Amazing, but very basic. After playing around with ChatGPT for a few hours I have a hard time seeing how someone could objectively call it "basic".
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  The nokia 3310 was amazing. But compared to what we have today, it's very basic. Same for chatgpt.
  - lambic2 4y ago
    Right but by that definition every thing in the universe is and will always be basic. The word becomes meaningless.
    - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      The temporality of evolution is what's important here. The washing machine has reached a tipping point, we hit diminishing returns from now on. The AI is in the nokia phase. It's at the primitive stage of development.
      - jschveibinz 4y ago
        It is hard for people to comprehend the rate of change. Over the short term, it feels like we are on a gentle slope upward with respect to change. But the reality is the slope is near vertical. Even your analogy is a huge understatement. It will be more like Nokia today, and iPhone next week.
corbulo 4y ago
Washing machine but for office work is a great analogy. You lost me at iPhone for AI. I think I know what you mean but it can be expressed better.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  OP is saying GPT is the equivalent of an old Nokia feature phone. However cellphones really blew up once Apple figured out how to make smartphones broadly appealing with multi touch (prior to that you had things like Windows CE, Blackberry and Palm, but those were extremely more limited than what the iPhone delivered). In other words the jump ahead from GPT to broadly useful AI is akin to the jump from the old Nokia feature phone to iPhone. Don’t let the current limitations of GPT color what you think AI will be generally capable of within the next decade.
jackvalentine 4y ago
> Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary. I think something that was majorly lost in the past 60 years is the secretary. I agree with you that it’d be great if everyone had one - the working relationship between a secretary and the person they support can be amazingly productive.
mikewarot 4y ago
>The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world The biggest game changer was the fossil fuel that enabled that washing machine, and all the other modern devices we rely on. That same substance is used to as chemical feedstock for fertilizers and more than double yields, and more than double the amount of "arable" land. If we were to run out, half of humanity would likely starve.

TimPC 4y ago

The relevant distinction isn’t being a tool it’s how it is built. If you use a bunch of copyrighted material in the design of your tool and some of the material leaks into your answers that’s very different from building Microsoft Word.

michaelt 4y ago
The copyright question is of course an important one. But I was thinking of the tool-vs-platform distinction in the context of the censorship question raised by Midjourney blocking images of Xi Jinping. 'Platforms' like Facebook and Github often censor things like porn, terror recruitment, and political satire fearing reputational damage and loss of advertisers from having such content on their domain, next to their logo - whereas offline tools like MS Word aren't subject to the same fears. So people who think political satire is a particularly important form of speech might prefer an offline tool for their greater censorship resistance, irrespective of their opinion on issues of copyright.