5 ms·

Depends on how you measure the bigness of the deal. AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. We'll basically only be tasked with keeping ourse

Depends on how you measure the bigness of the deal. AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. We'll basically only be tasked with keeping ourselves entertained. Agriculture, if you disconnect it from the industrial revolution, really only allowed us to stay in on place while mostly not starving to death. Although, when the weather went bad, we did still starve to death.

apwell23 3y ago
> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless Doesn't AI depend on humans feeding it data. how can it be self sustainable.
- Ma8ee 3y ago
  It will feed itself data, more or less in the same way as we do it.
  - apwell23 3y ago
    i have hard time accepting that our brains are just generating new stuff based on probabilities. AI feeding on its own BS sounds awful.
    - Ma8ee 3y ago
      I meant by interacting with the world.
      - apwell23 3y ago
        The world with humans in it?
        Ma8ee 3y ago
        Yes. Humans and birds and rocks and stars.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  No? AI already generates data via interacting with the world. Right now that experience happens mainly by proxy through humans, but, even now, that isn't strictly necessary.
  - apwell23 3y ago
    > that isn't strictly necessary i guess i don't follow what this means.
    - Vampiero 3y ago
      it means that AI isn't limited to ChatGPT on the web interface. AI can also be a robot with sensors (like a camera) and an internal model that processes sensory information and turns it into knowledge. Humans would only be needed to bootstrap such a robot, at which point it would be autonomous. Give it the ability to replicate and you've just made humans obsolete.
      - apwell23 3y ago
        > Give it the ability to replicate and you've just made humans obsolete. What will they be replicating once humans are obsolete?
throwaway290 3y ago
> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. This statement is nonsensical. Unless you consider the end goal to be something other than humanity, which is obviously silly if you give it 5 minutes of thinking, various applications of ML can be either helpful or harmful but it cant make humans useless any more than a electricity and its application as washing machine can make clothing wearers useless.
- piva00 3y ago
  I understood from the comment, given the remark of "over the long term", the meaning over decades/centuries/millennia. Which isn't that nonsensical, if an AGI is created and follows similar processes as humans to acquire knowledge, skills, etc. it is a quite logical conclusion that it will be able to render humans useless: a very advanced AGI can imagine and develop technologies just like we do, it can direct resources and machinery to build whatever it creates, including self-replication, given access to resources it can potentially render humans useless. That's at least what I interpreted from the comment.
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    No technology can render humans useless, since technology is the “how” whereas humans are the “why”. Technology can be seen as good/bad/neutral to humans in some ways, but rationally speaking—religious views aside—humans cannot logically be qualified in those terms with respect to technology. One could say some future technology might be so good that humans need to do almost nothing in order to survive. Perhaps that’d pose some challenges in terms of mental health, but that is a very different issue, assuming it would be a issue at all (and assuming such technology is even possible in theory). One could say some advanced technology could go out of control, or magically acquire self-awareness and agency (same thing in a philosophically dubious wrapper), or (more prosaically) be (intentionally or not) misused by humans so that it harms humans, but that just puts it into the bad category.
    - piva00 3y ago
      I think where we diverge is that you are assuming we will be in control of such technology. I'm in the camp which doesn't think we would be really in control of a superhuman intelligence.
huijzer 3y ago
> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. An extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence. If you use the word "may", then I agree. But I don’t think it’s a certainty at this point.
- naveen99 3y ago
  Yeah, why not a mix of carbon and silicon ?

apwell23 3y ago

> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless Doesn't AI depend on humans feeding it data. how can it be self sustainable.

Ma8ee 3y ago
It will feed itself data, more or less in the same way as we do it.
- apwell23 3y ago
  i have hard time accepting that our brains are just generating new stuff based on probabilities. AI feeding on its own BS sounds awful.
  - Ma8ee 3y ago
    I meant by interacting with the world.
    - apwell23 3y ago
      The world with humans in it?
      - Ma8ee 3y ago
        Yes. Humans and birds and rocks and stars.
BobbyJo 3y ago
No? AI already generates data via interacting with the world. Right now that experience happens mainly by proxy through humans, but, even now, that isn't strictly necessary.
- apwell23 3y ago
  > that isn't strictly necessary i guess i don't follow what this means.
  - Vampiero 3y ago
    it means that AI isn't limited to ChatGPT on the web interface. AI can also be a robot with sensors (like a camera) and an internal model that processes sensory information and turns it into knowledge. Humans would only be needed to bootstrap such a robot, at which point it would be autonomous. Give it the ability to replicate and you've just made humans obsolete.
    - apwell23 3y ago
      > Give it the ability to replicate and you've just made humans obsolete. What will they be replicating once humans are obsolete?

throwaway290 3y ago

> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. This statement is nonsensical. Unless you consider the end goal to be something other than humanity, which is obviously silly if you give it 5 minutes of thinking, various applications of ML can be either helpful or harmful but it cant make humans useless any more than a electricity and its application as washing machine can make clothing wearers useless.

piva00 3y ago
I understood from the comment, given the remark of "over the long term", the meaning over decades/centuries/millennia. Which isn't that nonsensical, if an AGI is created and follows similar processes as humans to acquire knowledge, skills, etc. it is a quite logical conclusion that it will be able to render humans useless: a very advanced AGI can imagine and develop technologies just like we do, it can direct resources and machinery to build whatever it creates, including self-replication, given access to resources it can potentially render humans useless. That's at least what I interpreted from the comment.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  No technology can render humans useless, since technology is the “how” whereas humans are the “why”. Technology can be seen as good/bad/neutral to humans in some ways, but rationally speaking—religious views aside—humans cannot logically be qualified in those terms with respect to technology. One could say some future technology might be so good that humans need to do almost nothing in order to survive. Perhaps that’d pose some challenges in terms of mental health, but that is a very different issue, assuming it would be a issue at all (and assuming such technology is even possible in theory). One could say some advanced technology could go out of control, or magically acquire self-awareness and agency (same thing in a philosophically dubious wrapper), or (more prosaically) be (intentionally or not) misused by humans so that it harms humans, but that just puts it into the bad category.
  - piva00 3y ago
    I think where we diverge is that you are assuming we will be in control of such technology. I'm in the camp which doesn't think we would be really in control of a superhuman intelligence.

huijzer 3y ago

> AI, over the long term, will render humans mostly useless. An extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence. If you use the word "may", then I agree. But I don’t think it’s a certainty at this point.

naveen99 3y ago
Yeah, why not a mix of carbon and silicon ?