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Previously the world was material & it was extremely hard to make something good & useful & leverage it well while denying access to it, while keeping it secret

Previously the world was material & it was extremely hard to make something good & useful & leverage it well while denying access to it, while keeping it secret & unobservable. But this virtual construct does not actually live in the real world. No one can poke or prod the systems, no one can see the models it was trained on. These are dark by default, are so immaterial as to be unlike anything else mankind has experienced. And their impact & use, how they change the world is almost unlimited; global connectivity gives them unlimited access & breadth, from within the iron mountain security of their corporate keeps. Even if the superhuman corporate bodies did decide they want to share, theres such unusual barriers to discocery & learning here. Assuming the petabytes of training models are made available, who is there that can accurately review them? Who can train their own systems? How can we experiment with other trainings, other systems? This is a megaproject, one that produces unique distinct gems. Watson's quip come back again, in a different form, "I think there is a world market that can maybe afford five AI." The ratio of how leveragable it is versus what the world can see or ape has gone quickly towards infinity. Nothing like this exists, this is unprecedented entirely.

glitchc 4y ago
Oh I don't buy this "dark and immaterial" argument. There are many physical processes that seem magical to those unaware, and having access to the final product may reveal nothing about the processes used to make them. As an example consider gunpowder. Having the finished product doesn't provide any insights into how it was made. It requires, what is now basic, but what was once, a pretty strong grasp of chemistry. Another example is antibiotics. These life-saving drugs are almost exclusively created by for-profit corporations, yet despite over a hundred years since their invention, they remain easily accessible and some would argue too plentiful. > Nothing like this exists, this is unprecedented entirely. The above examples illustrate that life-changing inventions are par for course in human history and represent the cornerstones of the betterment of our species.
- rurp 4y ago
  The early groups that had gunpowder used that power to inflict a lot of harm on groups who didn't. Same with many other technologies, and I expect AI will be the same. Except that unlike gunpowder, which was often controlled at the nation-state level, successful AI will largely be controlled by a handful of billionaires.
  - glitchc 4y ago
    Exactly my point. I was trying to illustrate for the OP's benefit that this is not the first time in human history that game-changing tech was invented. Gunpowder was controlled by kings for the longest time. No different from modern billionaires or oligarchs, heck monarchs had greater control and inflicted extensive misery. But despite all that, despite the control, the misery and the harm, do you seriously consider that we should not have invented gunpowder?
- rektide 4y ago
  Gunpowder is an interesting case to suggest. It was already well known around 0AD that saltpeter emitted a dangerous poisonous smoke, already was clearly an interesting element anyone could go mine & put to use hurting people with. It's already overtly a mineral that, like, doesn't conflagrate, but does pretty weird interesting shit when on fire, and lots of folks figured that out. It seems like by the time 13th century medeival Christiandom rolled around there were two main sources, Aragon & Montpellier. The limited supply indeed did probably greatly slow down the understanding & use. And indeed, you can make saltpeter... by collecting & refining excrement. Queen Elizabeth paid 300 pounds of gold to the Germans after going to war with Spain & thereby losing access to Spain's natural extract. The Chinese developing actual black powder is another interesting case. Known for centuries, it wasn't until 904 we had the first recorded use of it for combat. By the 11th century the Song dynasty started greatly controlling access & trade. In general I think there's probably a ton of primitive chemistry/discover even much earlier ages could have done with access. The actual material being somewhat not easy to scare up is definitely an issue here. I think the situations you're talking about don't apply very well to the moderm world. The Enlightenment project of building instruments & understanding natural science have built up, and today it would not be hard to figure out how to reproduce black powder. There is definitely more murkiness still with biology, with figuring out how to concot some chemical compounds, or even in material science with figuring out what conditions a certain combination of elements were brought together in. But these historical challenges rely primarily on a darker time in human history to contain the not-so-secret. Enlightenment observation won, it brought us out of that age, it gave us tools to figure things out with. Im interested in being challenged more, but holy heck AI still feels enormously forbodingly dark & immaterial. Yes, bring able to observe a thing counts. Trying to persuade me that having zero access is OK or normal in the world doesn't sit with me well at all.

glitchc 4y ago

Oh I don't buy this "dark and immaterial" argument. There are many physical processes that seem magical to those unaware, and having access to the final product may reveal nothing about the processes used to make them. As an example consider gunpowder. Having the finished product doesn't provide any insights into how it was made. It requires, what is now basic, but what was once, a pretty strong grasp of chemistry. Another example is antibiotics. These life-saving drugs are almost exclusively created by for-profit corporations, yet despite over a hundred years since their invention, they remain easily accessible and some would argue too plentiful. > Nothing like this exists, this is unprecedented entirely. The above examples illustrate that life-changing inventions are par for course in human history and represent the cornerstones of the betterment of our species.

rurp 4y ago
The early groups that had gunpowder used that power to inflict a lot of harm on groups who didn't. Same with many other technologies, and I expect AI will be the same. Except that unlike gunpowder, which was often controlled at the nation-state level, successful AI will largely be controlled by a handful of billionaires.
- glitchc 4y ago
  Exactly my point. I was trying to illustrate for the OP's benefit that this is not the first time in human history that game-changing tech was invented. Gunpowder was controlled by kings for the longest time. No different from modern billionaires or oligarchs, heck monarchs had greater control and inflicted extensive misery. But despite all that, despite the control, the misery and the harm, do you seriously consider that we should not have invented gunpowder?
rektide 4y ago
Gunpowder is an interesting case to suggest. It was already well known around 0AD that saltpeter emitted a dangerous poisonous smoke, already was clearly an interesting element anyone could go mine & put to use hurting people with. It's already overtly a mineral that, like, doesn't conflagrate, but does pretty weird interesting shit when on fire, and lots of folks figured that out. It seems like by the time 13th century medeival Christiandom rolled around there were two main sources, Aragon & Montpellier. The limited supply indeed did probably greatly slow down the understanding & use. And indeed, you can make saltpeter... by collecting & refining excrement. Queen Elizabeth paid 300 pounds of gold to the Germans after going to war with Spain & thereby losing access to Spain's natural extract. The Chinese developing actual black powder is another interesting case. Known for centuries, it wasn't until 904 we had the first recorded use of it for combat. By the 11th century the Song dynasty started greatly controlling access & trade. In general I think there's probably a ton of primitive chemistry/discover even much earlier ages could have done with access. The actual material being somewhat not easy to scare up is definitely an issue here. I think the situations you're talking about don't apply very well to the moderm world. The Enlightenment project of building instruments & understanding natural science have built up, and today it would not be hard to figure out how to reproduce black powder. There is definitely more murkiness still with biology, with figuring out how to concot some chemical compounds, or even in material science with figuring out what conditions a certain combination of elements were brought together in. But these historical challenges rely primarily on a darker time in human history to contain the not-so-secret. Enlightenment observation won, it brought us out of that age, it gave us tools to figure things out with. Im interested in being challenged more, but holy heck AI still feels enormously forbodingly dark & immaterial. Yes, bring able to observe a thing counts. Trying to persuade me that having zero access is OK or normal in the world doesn't sit with me well at all.