4 ms·

While I'm in the more alarmist camp when it comes to AI, these arguments surprised me a bit. This time it isn't "will somebody think of the children" but rather

by tgv 4y ago

While I'm in the more alarmist camp when it comes to AI, these arguments surprised me a bit. This time it isn't "will somebody think of the children" but rather "won't someone think of the women who aren’t white". The argumentation then lays the blame at corporations (i.c. Google) for not preventing actual harm that happens today. While discrimination is undeniable, and it is an actual source of harm, the reasoning seems rather generic and can be applied to anything corporate and is more politically inspired than the other arguments against AI.

sp527 4y ago
AI is turning into a kind of Rorschach test for people's deepest misgivings about how the world works. Ted Chiang's New Yorker piece was executed similarly, though that at least had the benefit of being focused on the big picture near term economic repercussions. Almost all of us are going to suffer, irrespective of our gender or skin color.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Whittaker's point around minoritized groups is twofold. One, when non-white, non-men raised the alarm about LLMs previously, they got much less media coverage than Hinton, et al, are getting. Two, the harms of LLMs may fall broadly, but they will fall disproportionately on minoritized groups. That should be uncontroversial, because in our society that's how the harms generally fall. E.g., if you look at the stats from the the recent economic troubles. Or if you look at Covid death rates. (Although there the numbers are more even because of the pro-disease political fashion among right-wing whites.) There's a difference with a Rorschach test. That test is about investigating the unconscious through interpretation of random stimuli. But what's going on here isn't random at all. The preexisting pattern of societal bias not only means the harms will again fall on minoritized groups. But it also means the harms will be larger, because the first people sounding the alarm about these technologies weren't listened to because of their minoritized status. Whereas the people benefiting from the harms tend to be in more favored groups.
  - intimidated 4y ago
    > One, when non-white, non-men raised the alarm about LLMs previously, they got much less media coverage than Hinton, et al, are getting. Mainstream (e,g. CNN, BBC) and mainstream-adjacent (e.g. Vice, Vox) journalists have spent years pushing the "AI will harm POC" framing. AI companies are endlessly required to address this specific topic—both in their products and in their interaction with journalists alike. Dr. Hinton is getting a lot of coverage right now, but this is the exception, not the rule.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    > That should be uncontroversial, because in our society that's how the harms generally fall. This is just talking past the conclusion though. Have you considered that the reason people are freaking out is because this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work and not blue collar work? ChatGPT is much sooner going to wipe out a paralegal than a construction worker. > E.g., if you look at the stats from the the recent economic troubles Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans?
    - wpietri 4y ago
      > this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work That isn't true at all. IT has been displacing white-collar work since the 1960s. Perhaps the reason you missed it is that a lot of that white-collar work was seen as women's work? E.g., secretarial work, administrative work. > Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans? I think we both know I wasn't.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        Maybe "managerial" is a better criteria than "white collar" ? US culture has long preached that you are a stupid sucker if you perform direct work. The common sense recommendation for being successful is to seek out a meta position - directing poorly paid less skilled/educated/powerful people under yourself, and taking some of their production for yourself. With information technology as the substrate, the meta-managerial class has continued to grow in size as ever more meta-managerial layers have been created (real world software bloat), allowing this type of success to be seen as a viable path for all.* The meta-managerial positions and the upper class had a symbiotic relationship, with the upper class needing the meta-bureaucracy to keep everyone in line - some human-simulating-a-computer has to answer the phone to deny you health care. But LLMs simulating humans-simulating-computers would seem to be a direct replacement for many of these meta positions. * exclusions may apply.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  I just read that piece by Ted Chiang and I have to say it’s one of the more important articles I’ve read for a while. [1]. I’ll share this around. Thanks. All I can say is that I’m quite happy many many people are starting to see the same issues as each other. For me personally, I was told that “tech” and progress would make us all better off. That seemed true for a while but it has backfired recently. Inflation is up, food prices up, unemployment up, energy prices up, salaries stagnated. We can’t blame tech for this, but we’re fools as “tech people” if we can’t see the realities. Tech is the easy part, building a better world for all is hard. 1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intel...
localplume 4y ago
[dead]
stjohnswarts 4y ago
The woke crowd always tries to bend the answers to question back to their own issues rather than give an unslanted opinion that isn't warped through a woke lens. Same goes with the far right. It seems almost impossible to get a straight objective answer from people with huge egos and political agendas in everything. This is why I'm a strict egalitarian and libertarian; I see people as humans first and as men/women/black/white/l/g/b/t/q/etc as second order concerns. Everything else is line noise in the grand scheme of whether or not humans manage to survive for another 100 years without destroying the planet.

by tgv 4y ago

sp527 4y ago

AI is turning into a kind of Rorschach test for people's deepest misgivings about how the world works. Ted Chiang's New Yorker piece was executed similarly, though that at least had the benefit of being focused on the big picture near term economic repercussions. Almost all of us are going to suffer, irrespective of our gender or skin color.

wpietri 4y ago
Whittaker's point around minoritized groups is twofold. One, when non-white, non-men raised the alarm about LLMs previously, they got much less media coverage than Hinton, et al, are getting. Two, the harms of LLMs may fall broadly, but they will fall disproportionately on minoritized groups. That should be uncontroversial, because in our society that's how the harms generally fall. E.g., if you look at the stats from the the recent economic troubles. Or if you look at Covid death rates. (Although there the numbers are more even because of the pro-disease political fashion among right-wing whites.) There's a difference with a Rorschach test. That test is about investigating the unconscious through interpretation of random stimuli. But what's going on here isn't random at all. The preexisting pattern of societal bias not only means the harms will again fall on minoritized groups. But it also means the harms will be larger, because the first people sounding the alarm about these technologies weren't listened to because of their minoritized status. Whereas the people benefiting from the harms tend to be in more favored groups.
- intimidated 4y ago
  > One, when non-white, non-men raised the alarm about LLMs previously, they got much less media coverage than Hinton, et al, are getting. Mainstream (e,g. CNN, BBC) and mainstream-adjacent (e.g. Vice, Vox) journalists have spent years pushing the "AI will harm POC" framing. AI companies are endlessly required to address this specific topic—both in their products and in their interaction with journalists alike. Dr. Hinton is getting a lot of coverage right now, but this is the exception, not the rule.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > That should be uncontroversial, because in our society that's how the harms generally fall. This is just talking past the conclusion though. Have you considered that the reason people are freaking out is because this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work and not blue collar work? ChatGPT is much sooner going to wipe out a paralegal than a construction worker. > E.g., if you look at the stats from the the recent economic troubles Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans?
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > this is the first technology directly displacing a bunch of white collar work That isn't true at all. IT has been displacing white-collar work since the 1960s. Perhaps the reason you missed it is that a lot of that white-collar work was seen as women's work? E.g., secretarial work, administrative work. > Are you referring to the record low unemployment for African Americans? I think we both know I wasn't.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Maybe "managerial" is a better criteria than "white collar" ? US culture has long preached that you are a stupid sucker if you perform direct work. The common sense recommendation for being successful is to seek out a meta position - directing poorly paid less skilled/educated/powerful people under yourself, and taking some of their production for yourself. With information technology as the substrate, the meta-managerial class has continued to grow in size as ever more meta-managerial layers have been created (real world software bloat), allowing this type of success to be seen as a viable path for all.* The meta-managerial positions and the upper class had a symbiotic relationship, with the upper class needing the meta-bureaucracy to keep everyone in line - some human-simulating-a-computer has to answer the phone to deny you health care. But LLMs simulating humans-simulating-computers would seem to be a direct replacement for many of these meta positions. * exclusions may apply.
ChatGTP 4y ago
I just read that piece by Ted Chiang and I have to say it’s one of the more important articles I’ve read for a while. [1]. I’ll share this around. Thanks. All I can say is that I’m quite happy many many people are starting to see the same issues as each other. For me personally, I was told that “tech” and progress would make us all better off. That seemed true for a while but it has backfired recently. Inflation is up, food prices up, unemployment up, energy prices up, salaries stagnated. We can’t blame tech for this, but we’re fools as “tech people” if we can’t see the realities. Tech is the easy part, building a better world for all is hard. 1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intel...

localplume 4y ago

[dead]

stjohnswarts 4y ago

The woke crowd always tries to bend the answers to question back to their own issues rather than give an unslanted opinion that isn't warped through a woke lens. Same goes with the far right. It seems almost impossible to get a straight objective answer from people with huge egos and political agendas in everything. This is why I'm a strict egalitarian and libertarian; I see people as humans first and as men/women/black/white/l/g/b/t/q/etc as second order concerns. Everything else is line noise in the grand scheme of whether or not humans manage to survive for another 100 years without destroying the planet.