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I don't like this breathless articles that complain about next evolution of technology like it has sprung from nothingness yesterday. Computing science has bee

I don't like this breathless articles that complain about next evolution of technology like it has sprung from nothingness yesterday. Computing science has been working on this technology for decades and it's that, only now, has it achieved some level of usefulness. This is the pattern of all technologies. It feels like the claim is that this was just developed by industry giants to mess with people. > Once again, a handful of competitive but ideologically aligned leaders are telling us that large-scale, general-purpose AI implementations are the only way forward. The only way forward to what? What we have is just the continued evolution of hardware and software. Hardware keeps getting more powerful and software continues to get more powerful to match it. We are doing with that hardware exactly what we want to do: make things easy that were once difficult and make things possible that were once impossible.

mecsred 3y ago
I feel like you took an extremely uncharitable reading of the article and missed the point. It's not a manifesto against technological progress, it's a reminder to consider the downsides of these technologies as well as the benefits. The main thrust of the article is that there will be both positive and negative consequences. There will be a big push by many players to extol the positives while suppressing information on the negatives to profit as much as they can. Then they can stop suppressing the negative consequences as they make their exit and leave everyone else to deal with them. This is such a standard playbook for business at this point it should not be a revelation to anyone. Remember, you don't have to wait until Google develops a customer service AI that arbitrarily locks you out of your digital platforms because of a hallucination. You can in fact push back and request baseline levels of accountability!
- wvenable 3y ago
  Your comment provided more (and different) substance than that entire article did. Certainly your comment is less hyperbolic. Where you say "negative consequences" the article says "tech titans are busy designing our collective future, presenting their societal vision, and specific beliefs about our humanity" > Remember, you don't have to wait until Google develops a customer service AI that arbitrarily locks you out of your digital platforms because of a hallucination. You can in fact push back and request baseline levels of accountability! AI changes nothing here there. People already get locked out of their accounts because of a bunch of If-statements. If anything I think AI is merely exacerbating issues that already exist and would exist without it. Focusing on AI as the problem is missing the forest for the trees. Google being unaccountable to people relying on their service has nothing to do with AI. Misinformation and propaganda being easier and cheaper to spread than legitimate information is not just an AI problem. Perhaps many of the problems caused by people, if-statements, and AI can also be solved with AI. But for that we need to focus on solving those problems explicitly and not on the technologies involved.

mecsred 3y ago

I feel like you took an extremely uncharitable reading of the article and missed the point. It's not a manifesto against technological progress, it's a reminder to consider the downsides of these technologies as well as the benefits. The main thrust of the article is that there will be both positive and negative consequences. There will be a big push by many players to extol the positives while suppressing information on the negatives to profit as much as they can. Then they can stop suppressing the negative consequences as they make their exit and leave everyone else to deal with them. This is such a standard playbook for business at this point it should not be a revelation to anyone. Remember, you don't have to wait until Google develops a customer service AI that arbitrarily locks you out of your digital platforms because of a hallucination. You can in fact push back and request baseline levels of accountability!

wvenable 3y ago
Your comment provided more (and different) substance than that entire article did. Certainly your comment is less hyperbolic. Where you say "negative consequences" the article says "tech titans are busy designing our collective future, presenting their societal vision, and specific beliefs about our humanity" > Remember, you don't have to wait until Google develops a customer service AI that arbitrarily locks you out of your digital platforms because of a hallucination. You can in fact push back and request baseline levels of accountability! AI changes nothing here there. People already get locked out of their accounts because of a bunch of If-statements. If anything I think AI is merely exacerbating issues that already exist and would exist without it. Focusing on AI as the problem is missing the forest for the trees. Google being unaccountable to people relying on their service has nothing to do with AI. Misinformation and propaganda being easier and cheaper to spread than legitimate information is not just an AI problem. Perhaps many of the problems caused by people, if-statements, and AI can also be solved with AI. But for that we need to focus on solving those problems explicitly and not on the technologies involved.