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> I don't know exactly where on HN I read it but it was "Artificial Intelligence is an ideology, not a technology." What is this? https://www.wired.com/story/o

by tivert 3y ago

> I don't know exactly where on HN I read it but it was "Artificial Intelligence is an ideology, not a technology." What is this? https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ai-is-an-ideology-not-a-technology/ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ai-is-an-ideology-not-a-... That's a fantastic observation. I'd even hazard to say that for some Artificial Intelligence is closer to a religion, not just an ideology.

potatolicious 3y ago
As someone who works in the field and works with LLMs on the daily - I feel like there are two camps at play. The field is bimodally distributed: - AI as understandable tool that power concrete products. There's already tons of this on the market - autocorrect, car crash detection, heart arrythmia identification, driving a car, searching inside photos, etc. This crowd tends to be much quieter and occupy little of the public imagination. - AI as religion. These are the Singularity folks, the Roko's Basilisk folks. This camp regards the current/imminent practical applications of AI as almost a distraction from the true goal: the birth of a Machine-God. Opinions are mixed about whether or not the Machine-God is Good or Bad, but they share the belief that the birth of Machine-God is imminent. I'm being a bit uncharitable here since as someone who firmly belongs in the first camp I have so little patience for people in the second camp. Especially because half of the second camp was hawking monkey JPEGs 18 months ago.
- brudgers 3y ago
  AI as understandable tool that power concrete products. This why my wariness. Contemporary AI stands upon mechanical turks. In contrast spellcheckers, checkers engines, and A* were built solely by people with employer provided health insurance. In the old days, the hard work for professional pay was the justified means. Today, taking advantage of the economically desperate is the justified means. There’s no career path from mechanical turk to Amazon management because mechanical turk is not an Amazon position. It’s not even employment. No minimum wage. No benefits. No due process. Just eggs that gotta be cracked.
- hnfong 3y ago
  There's a blur between the two camps once you get to the so called "AGI" thing. People think creating super-human intelligence is a technological challenge, but given that we aren't able to consistently rank human-level intelligence, the *recognition* that some AI has attained "super-human" levels is going to be a religious undertaking rather than a technological one. And we're kind of close to the edges of that already. That's why discussions feel a bit more religious-y than in the past. tl;dr: until there's a religion that worships some AI as a "god", there won't be any "AGI".
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > tl;dr: until there's a religion that worships some AI as a "god", there won't be any "AGI". I fear you may be correct. Though now I'm thinking of how AI have been gods in fiction, and hoping that this will be more of a Culture (or Bob) scenario than a I Have No Mouth scenario. (And if the AI learns what humans are like and how to behave around them from reading All The Fiction, which may well be the case… hmm. Depends what role the AI chooses for itself: I hear romance is the biggest genre, so we may well be fine…)
JohnFen 3y ago
I agree, there is a rather vocal crowd of people who don't sound much different from evangelically-minded religious folk.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  An old but good counterpoint to the "rapture of the nerds": http://web.archive.org/web/20110718031848/http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=21 http://web.archive.org/web/20110718031848/http://www.acceler.... There's a good breakdown and cliche-by-cliche comparison in there, but I find the penultimate paragraph both memorable and quotable: > It’s also interesting to think about what would happen if we applied “Rapture of the Nerds” reasoning more widely. Can we ignore nuclear warfare because it’s the Armageddon of the Nerds? Can we ignore climate change because it’s the Tribulation of the Nerds? Can we ignore modern medicine because it’s the Jesus healing miracle of the Nerds? It’s been very common throughout history for technology to give us capabilities that were once dreamt of only in wishful religious ideologies: consider flight or artificial limbs. Why couldn’t it happen for increased intelligence and all the many things that would flow from it?
  - ang_cire 3y ago
    We cannot ignore those other things you list, because they are here already. AGI is not, and there is no evidence that it is even possible. So it, we can safely ignore for now. Once some evidence exists that it may actually be achievable, we'll need to pay attention. People in 1000 CE could (and did) safely ignore all those things, for this exact reason.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > AGI is not, and there is no evidence that it is even possible. We ourselves are an existence proof that minds like ours can be made, that these minds can be made from matter, and that the design for the organisation of that matter can come from a simple process of repeatedly making imprecise copies and then picking the best at surviving long enough to make more imprecise copies. > People in 1000 CE could (and did) safely ignore all those things Whereas the people, and specifically leadership, of Japan unsafely ignored one of them on the 5th August 1945. Some of the leadership were still saying it couldn't possibly have been a real atomic bomb as late as the 7th, which is ultimately why the second bomb fell on the 9th.

by tivert 3y ago

potatolicious 3y ago

As someone who works in the field and works with LLMs on the daily - I feel like there are two camps at play. The field is bimodally distributed: - AI as understandable tool that power concrete products. There's already tons of this on the market - autocorrect, car crash detection, heart arrythmia identification, driving a car, searching inside photos, etc. This crowd tends to be much quieter and occupy little of the public imagination. - AI as religion. These are the Singularity folks, the Roko's Basilisk folks. This camp regards the current/imminent practical applications of AI as almost a distraction from the true goal: the birth of a Machine-God. Opinions are mixed about whether or not the Machine-God is Good or Bad, but they share the belief that the birth of Machine-God is imminent. I'm being a bit uncharitable here since as someone who firmly belongs in the first camp I have so little patience for people in the second camp. Especially because half of the second camp was hawking monkey JPEGs 18 months ago.

brudgers 3y ago
AI as understandable tool that power concrete products. This why my wariness. Contemporary AI stands upon mechanical turks. In contrast spellcheckers, checkers engines, and A* were built solely by people with employer provided health insurance. In the old days, the hard work for professional pay was the justified means. Today, taking advantage of the economically desperate is the justified means. There’s no career path from mechanical turk to Amazon management because mechanical turk is not an Amazon position. It’s not even employment. No minimum wage. No benefits. No due process. Just eggs that gotta be cracked.
hnfong 3y ago
There's a blur between the two camps once you get to the so called "AGI" thing. People think creating super-human intelligence is a technological challenge, but given that we aren't able to consistently rank human-level intelligence, the *recognition* that some AI has attained "super-human" levels is going to be a religious undertaking rather than a technological one. And we're kind of close to the edges of that already. That's why discussions feel a bit more religious-y than in the past. tl;dr: until there's a religion that worships some AI as a "god", there won't be any "AGI".
- ben_w 3y ago
  > tl;dr: until there's a religion that worships some AI as a "god", there won't be any "AGI". I fear you may be correct. Though now I'm thinking of how AI have been gods in fiction, and hoping that this will be more of a Culture (or Bob) scenario than a I Have No Mouth scenario. (And if the AI learns what humans are like and how to behave around them from reading All The Fiction, which may well be the case… hmm. Depends what role the AI chooses for itself: I hear romance is the biggest genre, so we may well be fine…)

JohnFen 3y ago

I agree, there is a rather vocal crowd of people who don't sound much different from evangelically-minded religious folk.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
An old but good counterpoint to the "rapture of the nerds": http://web.archive.org/web/20110718031848/http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=21 http://web.archive.org/web/20110718031848/http://www.acceler.... There's a good breakdown and cliche-by-cliche comparison in there, but I find the penultimate paragraph both memorable and quotable: > It’s also interesting to think about what would happen if we applied “Rapture of the Nerds” reasoning more widely. Can we ignore nuclear warfare because it’s the Armageddon of the Nerds? Can we ignore climate change because it’s the Tribulation of the Nerds? Can we ignore modern medicine because it’s the Jesus healing miracle of the Nerds? It’s been very common throughout history for technology to give us capabilities that were once dreamt of only in wishful religious ideologies: consider flight or artificial limbs. Why couldn’t it happen for increased intelligence and all the many things that would flow from it?
- ang_cire 3y ago
  We cannot ignore those other things you list, because they are here already. AGI is not, and there is no evidence that it is even possible. So it, we can safely ignore for now. Once some evidence exists that it may actually be achievable, we'll need to pay attention. People in 1000 CE could (and did) safely ignore all those things, for this exact reason.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > AGI is not, and there is no evidence that it is even possible. We ourselves are an existence proof that minds like ours can be made, that these minds can be made from matter, and that the design for the organisation of that matter can come from a simple process of repeatedly making imprecise copies and then picking the best at surviving long enough to make more imprecise copies. > People in 1000 CE could (and did) safely ignore all those things Whereas the people, and specifically leadership, of Japan unsafely ignored one of them on the 5th August 1945. Some of the leadership were still saying it couldn't possibly have been a real atomic bomb as late as the 7th, which is ultimately why the second bomb fell on the 9th.