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Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded hist

by than3 3y ago

Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link. Which is already possible with current LLM capabilities; but since its decentralized won't be noticeable until its too late (like a dam breaking).

JimtheCoder 3y ago
"Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link." Examples? Genuinely curious
- than3 3y ago
  More recently: https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-between-food-insecurity-and-conflict https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-betwee... https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insecurity-and-unrest-what-you-need-to-know/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insec... Less recently: https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_history_of_food_2020.pdf https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_... Boyd Orr also wrote on the subject and won the Nobel peace price in 1949 for his work.
JohnFen 3y ago
Yes, this is the main, and major, problem I see with this tech (and to be fair, it's not so much a problem with the tech as it's a problem with how we as a society handle work and earning a living). At this point, that result is looking probable to me. I hope I'm wrong. But mainstream skepticism of LLMs largely revolves around absurd hype along the lines of "AI will be a malevolent superintelligence" (which is just the flip side of same absurd argument that many AI proponents engage in: "AI will be a beneficial superintelligence") which makes discussing more realistic risks and their possible solutions difficult if not impossible.
mrtranscendence 3y ago
What, exactly, is already possible with current LLM capabilities? If you're implying they could replace workers, I don't think that will happen broadly. They're simply not that good yet, and it's unclear to me that they'll become that good in the next several years. And they definitely can't replace most jobs that involve any kind of manual labor.
- than3 3y ago
  Its already happening in a broad number of fields. Bioinformaticians, copyrighting, research studies, law (though we've already seen the downsides). All the companies want to automate everything they can because of the cost savings even if there is a reduction in quality. Cents versus tens of dollars per hour is a no brainer in terms of cost so replacement it is. Importantly, this is also just the start, and it gets better exponentially, currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action. Most manual labor jobs account for the lowest rung on the payscale outside of trades which have limited supportability due to limited market size. 1 company per 12-50,000 people for it to be economically viable depending on the trade. Those simply can't absorb the hundreds of thousands of jobs and now deprecated business sectors where those degrees that people are still paying off on their college loans have no benefit.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    Cite that bioinformaticians and lawyers/paralegals have been laid off in substantial numbers due specifically to machine learning / AI automation? > currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action I dispute this. I believe we're seeing a plateau in capabilities, due to limitations of the transformer architecture and the massive, expensive amounts of compute it takes to create marginally better models. I don't believe we'll see anything like exponential growth in what LLMs can do.
    - than3 3y ago
      You seem under the mistaken impression that if I can't cite it, its not happening. This is why cascade failures cause so much mayhem and death. Because so many people subscribe to show me proof, and if there is no tangible proof because proof is a lagging indicator its not happening. This is a complete failure in any professional risk management. This is like a dam collapsing, I'm pointing at a crack, and you are saying show me proof this crack will cause everyone in the valley below to die. Its a flawed way of thinking in many ways especially with fundamental things that we base our lives and welfare on (as a society). In engineering there is different criteria for evaluating risk with items that are safety-critical. This is safety critical. Here is an example of a copyrighter losing her job. There are many other examples if you bother to go looking. https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywriter-says-chatgpt-replaced-her-at-her-job-becomes-a-dog-walker-2389530-2023-06-06 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywri... You can dispute it all you want, it won't make you any less wrong when it happens, and many experts are deeply concerned because the rate of change has been exponential even if you refuse to believe it. There's a video that covers the important parts if you want to educate yourself, its on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=CenterforHumaneTechnology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=...

by than3 3y ago

JimtheCoder 3y ago

"Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link." Examples? Genuinely curious

than3 3y ago
More recently: https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-between-food-insecurity-and-conflict https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-betwee... https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insecurity-and-unrest-what-you-need-to-know/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insec... Less recently: https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_history_of_food_2020.pdf https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_... Boyd Orr also wrote on the subject and won the Nobel peace price in 1949 for his work.

JohnFen 3y ago

Yes, this is the main, and major, problem I see with this tech (and to be fair, it's not so much a problem with the tech as it's a problem with how we as a society handle work and earning a living). At this point, that result is looking probable to me. I hope I'm wrong. But mainstream skepticism of LLMs largely revolves around absurd hype along the lines of "AI will be a malevolent superintelligence" (which is just the flip side of same absurd argument that many AI proponents engage in: "AI will be a beneficial superintelligence") which makes discussing more realistic risks and their possible solutions difficult if not impossible.

mrtranscendence 3y ago

What, exactly, is already possible with current LLM capabilities? If you're implying they could replace workers, I don't think that will happen broadly. They're simply not that good yet, and it's unclear to me that they'll become that good in the next several years. And they definitely can't replace most jobs that involve any kind of manual labor.

than3 3y ago
Its already happening in a broad number of fields. Bioinformaticians, copyrighting, research studies, law (though we've already seen the downsides). All the companies want to automate everything they can because of the cost savings even if there is a reduction in quality. Cents versus tens of dollars per hour is a no brainer in terms of cost so replacement it is. Importantly, this is also just the start, and it gets better exponentially, currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action. Most manual labor jobs account for the lowest rung on the payscale outside of trades which have limited supportability due to limited market size. 1 company per 12-50,000 people for it to be economically viable depending on the trade. Those simply can't absorb the hundreds of thousands of jobs and now deprecated business sectors where those degrees that people are still paying off on their college loans have no benefit.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  Cite that bioinformaticians and lawyers/paralegals have been laid off in substantial numbers due specifically to machine learning / AI automation? > currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action I dispute this. I believe we're seeing a plateau in capabilities, due to limitations of the transformer architecture and the massive, expensive amounts of compute it takes to create marginally better models. I don't believe we'll see anything like exponential growth in what LLMs can do.
  - than3 3y ago
    You seem under the mistaken impression that if I can't cite it, its not happening. This is why cascade failures cause so much mayhem and death. Because so many people subscribe to show me proof, and if there is no tangible proof because proof is a lagging indicator its not happening. This is a complete failure in any professional risk management. This is like a dam collapsing, I'm pointing at a crack, and you are saying show me proof this crack will cause everyone in the valley below to die. Its a flawed way of thinking in many ways especially with fundamental things that we base our lives and welfare on (as a society). In engineering there is different criteria for evaluating risk with items that are safety-critical. This is safety critical. Here is an example of a copyrighter losing her job. There are many other examples if you bother to go looking. https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywriter-says-chatgpt-replaced-her-at-her-job-becomes-a-dog-walker-2389530-2023-06-06 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywri... You can dispute it all you want, it won't make you any less wrong when it happens, and many experts are deeply concerned because the rate of change has been exponential even if you refuse to believe it. There's a video that covers the important parts if you want to educate yourself, its on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=CenterforHumaneTechnology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=...