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- Corporate-owned proprietary AIs? Check. - Monitoring of power consumption for illegal computer usage? Check. - Superintelligent AIs under tight supervision?

- Corporate-owned proprietary AIs? Check. - Monitoring of power consumption for illegal computer usage? Check. - Superintelligent AIs under tight supervision? Check. - Bootlegged neural nets passed around on torrenting networks? Check. - Poverty and homelessness running rampant? Check. Folks, we're officially living in a cyberpunk dystopia.

EGreg 3y ago
Yup. I have been warning about this for years. And things are going to get much more weird soon. “But Web3 sucks” Hold. The beer.
- __loam 3y ago
  Web3 sucks regardless of how this shakes out.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Web3 is positive but close to zero sum game for society, say. While AI can be massively negative sum game for the world.
    - __loam 3y ago
      Web3 is provably negative sum actually.
schaefer 3y ago
> - Poverty and homelessness running rampant? Check. Compared to what, exactly? because over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic improvements[1]. [1]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-evolution-of-global-poverty-1990-2030/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-evolution-of-global-p... It's true - there's room to do better. So, so much better. But discarding the progress of the last 50 years is so unbelievably counter-productive.
- dilap 3y ago
  You know the line, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. San Francisco is ground-zero for the coming cyberpunk dystopia.
  - woah 3y ago
    If the cyberpunk dystopia involves aged hippies yelling about neighborhood character and historical parking lots in zoning board meetings
    - dilap 3y ago
      luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside...
      - woah 3y ago
        There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner.
        tivert 3y ago
        >> luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside... > There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner. On the contrary, "good old fashioned bad governance" is an important feature of cyberpunk
        dilap 3y ago
        Sure but SF isn't just another run-down city, it's also the center of the tech universe! So you've got the driverless cars, geeks on one-wheels, the salesforce tower's continually animating digital display, &c. That's what makes it feel cyberpunk to me: The latest tech rubbing shoulders with grimy urban decay.
ch4s3 3y ago
The current poverty rate in the US is around 11% today vs ~24% in 1960, and the poverty rate for children has dropped even further. There's also been about a 6% decrease in homelessness in the US in the past decade[1]. [1] https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/ https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/
- mxkopy 3y ago
  It's cliche but metrics aren't the truth. Being in perpetual debt and living a hollow life is a much smaller improvement over being homeless than these percentages imply IMO. I'd be more interested in historical data wrt to overall well being rather than employment/arbitrarily defined poverty lines EDIT: To those who are illiterate, notice that I said 'small improvement' rather than 'downright worse'
  - jb12 3y ago
    With the rapid rise of fentanyl and closure of asylums, I would argue a bit of debt and having shelter is a significant improvement over homelessness.
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      I am shocked that someone is arguing that homelessness is better than working and being in debt while housed.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - stavros 3y ago
        You don't need to be shocked, because nobody said this.
        ch4s3 3y ago
        The OP edited their comment to make it less… unusual in its perspective.
low_tech_punk 3y ago
"High-tech, low-life" would be the hallmark of Cyberpunk. The "low-life" part might require some extra work by OpenAI.
startupsfail 3y ago
The vision that OpenAI founders are proposing looks more like humanity flourishing, rather than a dystopia. It’s just that there is this uncomfortable moment that you can accidentally get turned into a paper-clip, if you get that one-off error or a sign wrong. But otherwise it doesn’t look like a bad future. Particularly, if it is compared to an alternative where, well, you just die in one boring way or another.
namaria 3y ago
We've done steampunk (British Empire), dieselpunk (American Empire) and entering now cyberpunk territory. History keeps getting curioser and curioser. The runaway monkeys are creating runaway supercomputers.
Buttons840 3y ago
This is a bit flippant and a bit humorous, but I think the underlying point is true. If anything like AGI is coming, the powers that be will absolutely try to maintain complete control of it, and all the worst outcomes involve forbidding individuals from using AI for their own benefit.

EGreg 3y ago

Yup. I have been warning about this for years. And things are going to get much more weird soon. “But Web3 sucks” Hold. The beer.

__loam 3y ago
Web3 sucks regardless of how this shakes out.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Web3 is positive but close to zero sum game for society, say. While AI can be massively negative sum game for the world.
  - __loam 3y ago
    Web3 is provably negative sum actually.

schaefer 3y ago

> - Poverty and homelessness running rampant? Check. Compared to what, exactly? because over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic improvements[1]. [1]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-evolution-of-global-poverty-1990-2030/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-evolution-of-global-p... It's true - there's room to do better. So, so much better. But discarding the progress of the last 50 years is so unbelievably counter-productive.

dilap 3y ago
You know the line, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. San Francisco is ground-zero for the coming cyberpunk dystopia.
- woah 3y ago
  If the cyberpunk dystopia involves aged hippies yelling about neighborhood character and historical parking lots in zoning board meetings
  - dilap 3y ago
    luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside...
    - woah 3y ago
      There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner.
      - tivert 3y ago
        >> luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside... > There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner. On the contrary, "good old fashioned bad governance" is an important feature of cyberpunk
      - dilap 3y ago
        Sure but SF isn't just another run-down city, it's also the center of the tech universe! So you've got the driverless cars, geeks on one-wheels, the salesforce tower's continually animating digital display, &c. That's what makes it feel cyberpunk to me: The latest tech rubbing shoulders with grimy urban decay.

ch4s3 3y ago

The current poverty rate in the US is around 11% today vs ~24% in 1960, and the poverty rate for children has dropped even further. There's also been about a 6% decrease in homelessness in the US in the past decade[1]. [1] https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/ https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/

mxkopy 3y ago
It's cliche but metrics aren't the truth. Being in perpetual debt and living a hollow life is a much smaller improvement over being homeless than these percentages imply IMO. I'd be more interested in historical data wrt to overall well being rather than employment/arbitrarily defined poverty lines EDIT: To those who are illiterate, notice that I said 'small improvement' rather than 'downright worse'
- jb12 3y ago
  With the rapid rise of fentanyl and closure of asylums, I would argue a bit of debt and having shelter is a significant improvement over homelessness.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    I am shocked that someone is arguing that homelessness is better than working and being in debt while housed.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - stavros 3y ago
      You don't need to be shocked, because nobody said this.
      - ch4s3 3y ago
        The OP edited their comment to make it less… unusual in its perspective.

low_tech_punk 3y ago

"High-tech, low-life" would be the hallmark of Cyberpunk. The "low-life" part might require some extra work by OpenAI.

startupsfail 3y ago

The vision that OpenAI founders are proposing looks more like humanity flourishing, rather than a dystopia. It’s just that there is this uncomfortable moment that you can accidentally get turned into a paper-clip, if you get that one-off error or a sign wrong. But otherwise it doesn’t look like a bad future. Particularly, if it is compared to an alternative where, well, you just die in one boring way or another.

namaria 3y ago

We've done steampunk (British Empire), dieselpunk (American Empire) and entering now cyberpunk territory. History keeps getting curioser and curioser. The runaway monkeys are creating runaway supercomputers.

Buttons840 3y ago

This is a bit flippant and a bit humorous, but I think the underlying point is true. If anything like AGI is coming, the powers that be will absolutely try to maintain complete control of it, and all the worst outcomes involve forbidding individuals from using AI for their own benefit.