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The individual actors aren't the issue. As with any system, the issue is what kind of actors succeed in the system. AI is looking to be a vehicle for yet anoth

by vkou 3y ago

The individual actors aren't the issue. As with any system, the issue is what kind of actors succeed in the system. AI is looking to be a vehicle for yet another consolidation of wealth, and by proxy, power.

rqtwteye 3y ago
“AI is looking to be a vehicle for yet another consolidation of wealth, and by proxy, power.” Unfortunately that’s what I suspect too.
- pixl97 3y ago
  AI is both what you say, and it is something more. While wealth is busy stepping on you with its jackboots it is vying with other wealthy people for resources and power. Because AI is something that will increase the wealthy persons power, there is the counter risk that another persons AI will make them even more wealthy if they don't keep improving their AI. The wealthy really don't want to get in a very expensive AI war with each other if they can avoid it. They'll seek to regulate it enough they can gain power over most, but setup a regulatory system they feel gives them some form of control.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Right, exactly. As of relatively recently I've come to decide that the internet in general has become a net force multiplier for evil and bullshit more so than for good. Crypto, AI, no reason they'd work differently. Anonymity and obfuscation of crime are killers.
- sitkack 3y ago
  The danger is ever increasing levels of automation in the control of capital that amorally work to exploit edge cases in the satisfaction of a goal. AI/ML governed corporations, hedge funds and private equity will be able to be "Enron + Goldman Sachs + Nestle + Monsanto/Bayer + Purdue Pharma" on literal steroids. You might add AGI to mix to attempt to repair the system that was created by the most powerful sociopathic goal seeking super-toddler that the world has ever seen.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >Anonymity and obfuscation of crime are killers. I mean, they can be, unless someone already has total power and then they don't give a shit and do crime in the open. Then they demand the lack of anonymity from you and turn the world into a police state.
kmeisthax 3y ago
The irony of this is that the people writing open letters about how scary AI is should understand specifically that those harms are predicated upon specific systems and training incentives. Not just that AI is magic. The underlying harm is that AI doesn't come with human values built-in; models start from random and are optimized to produce a specific result. And optimization is known to crush anything underfoot that isn't explicitly in it's goals to optimize. How do we know this? Because we've had literal centuries worth of learned experience backing it! The exact reason why corporate capitalism is so brutally efficient is because there are lots of things we as humans value but don't have a suitable profit motive for. The way you work around this is to decentralize (make sure there are multiple companies competing with one another) and distribute (make sure everyone has some access to the means of production in order to create more competition). But that also runs counter to most AI safety proposals, which usually involve some kind of licensing system, which will ensure a handful of companies have the best and most direct access to the benefits of AI.
- consilient 3y ago
  > And optimization is known to crush anything underfoot that isn't explicitly in it's goals to optimize. Yes, that's exactly the problem, which is why this > The way you work around this is to decentralize (make sure there are multiple companies competing with one another) and distribute (make sure everyone has some access to the means of production in order to create more competition). is backwards. The reason competitive markets generally work out better for consumers than monopolistic ones is because they're stronger optimizers, more ruthless, more capable of crushing all competing values underfoot - and those of us lucky enough to benefit from an inefficient, low-crushing segment of the labor market get to collect some of the resulting surplus. Nothing about this is inevitable: it's just the way we happen to be positioned in one particular system at one particular moment in history. There's no reason to expect that we would remain safely un-crushed in a far more competitive environment.

by vkou 3y ago

rqtwteye 3y ago

“AI is looking to be a vehicle for yet another consolidation of wealth, and by proxy, power.” Unfortunately that’s what I suspect too.

pixl97 3y ago
AI is both what you say, and it is something more. While wealth is busy stepping on you with its jackboots it is vying with other wealthy people for resources and power. Because AI is something that will increase the wealthy persons power, there is the counter risk that another persons AI will make them even more wealthy if they don't keep improving their AI. The wealthy really don't want to get in a very expensive AI war with each other if they can avoid it. They'll seek to regulate it enough they can gain power over most, but setup a regulatory system they feel gives them some form of control.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

Right, exactly. As of relatively recently I've come to decide that the internet in general has become a net force multiplier for evil and bullshit more so than for good. Crypto, AI, no reason they'd work differently. Anonymity and obfuscation of crime are killers.

sitkack 3y ago
The danger is ever increasing levels of automation in the control of capital that amorally work to exploit edge cases in the satisfaction of a goal. AI/ML governed corporations, hedge funds and private equity will be able to be "Enron + Goldman Sachs + Nestle + Monsanto/Bayer + Purdue Pharma" on literal steroids. You might add AGI to mix to attempt to repair the system that was created by the most powerful sociopathic goal seeking super-toddler that the world has ever seen.
pixl97 3y ago
>Anonymity and obfuscation of crime are killers. I mean, they can be, unless someone already has total power and then they don't give a shit and do crime in the open. Then they demand the lack of anonymity from you and turn the world into a police state.

kmeisthax 3y ago

The irony of this is that the people writing open letters about how scary AI is should understand specifically that those harms are predicated upon specific systems and training incentives. Not just that AI is magic. The underlying harm is that AI doesn't come with human values built-in; models start from random and are optimized to produce a specific result. And optimization is known to crush anything underfoot that isn't explicitly in it's goals to optimize. How do we know this? Because we've had literal centuries worth of learned experience backing it! The exact reason why corporate capitalism is so brutally efficient is because there are lots of things we as humans value but don't have a suitable profit motive for. The way you work around this is to decentralize (make sure there are multiple companies competing with one another) and distribute (make sure everyone has some access to the means of production in order to create more competition). But that also runs counter to most AI safety proposals, which usually involve some kind of licensing system, which will ensure a handful of companies have the best and most direct access to the benefits of AI.

consilient 3y ago
> And optimization is known to crush anything underfoot that isn't explicitly in it's goals to optimize. Yes, that's exactly the problem, which is why this > The way you work around this is to decentralize (make sure there are multiple companies competing with one another) and distribute (make sure everyone has some access to the means of production in order to create more competition). is backwards. The reason competitive markets generally work out better for consumers than monopolistic ones is because they're stronger optimizers, more ruthless, more capable of crushing all competing values underfoot - and those of us lucky enough to benefit from an inefficient, low-crushing segment of the labor market get to collect some of the resulting surplus. Nothing about this is inevitable: it's just the way we happen to be positioned in one particular system at one particular moment in history. There's no reason to expect that we would remain safely un-crushed in a far more competitive environment.