5 ms·

It may be OpenAI's loss and Microsoft's gain, but any support that AI gets is a tragedy for humanity. Everything is good in moderation, and with AI we are taki

It may be OpenAI's loss and Microsoft's gain, but any support that AI gets is a tragedy for humanity. Everything is good in moderation, and with AI we are taking our efficiency past that good point. AI not only takes jobs away from creatives such as illustrators and can be used for identity theft, it also is removing the reliance that people have on each other. Society is held together because people need each other. People meet each other through needing each other, and this is what makes local communities strong. AI takes that away so that the only entities we need are big tech like Microsoft, Google, and other soulless organizations. It is a descent into feudalism, where everyone will pay big tech for basic living necessities (first option, later a necessity, like the smartphone). If a man or woman wants to live independently of big tech, it will be harder and harder now, and we are losing are sense of what it means to be human through the immoral actions of these companies.

kumarvvr 3y ago
Yup. The world we are headed into, accelerated by huge leaps in technology like AI, will be a sorry, pathetic, unforgiving world, that amplifies suffering and nullifies humanity. Is that image of a child being assaulted by terrorists real or fake? To the victims, its real, to political powers it fake, to mega corporations, its money.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I can't believe I'm playing devil's advocate here because I'm generally a skeptical / pessimistic person, but what? The world we are headed into, accelerated by huge leaps in technology like AI, will be a sorry, pathetic, unforgiving world, that amplifies suffering and nullifies humanity. Is that what has happened so far in your life? Technology has messed it up for you ?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I think technology has messed up a lot of lives. Sure, we've got good healthcare and resources in the first-world, but smaller communities are eroding to the global force of technology. Don't bully people into not expressing critical thought by emphasizing that they have their basic physical needs met. We should be critical of society, even if on the surface it seems pretty good. We also have more advanced psychological needs such as the need to depend on others, and that is what is at stake here.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      I see a contradiction in your message here. On the one hand you're saying people are worse off because of technology, but then you're also saying that people don't rely on each other because they have more of their needs met. So which is it? Wouldn't the poverty rebuild these communities ? I mean the hardships make people rely on each other right? I don't entirely doubt what you're saying either, but I'm not so sure I see what you see.
      - vouaobrasil 3y ago
        There is no contradiction, because I do not believe that having all your physical needs met is necessarily the best end for a human being, especially if they have the capability to meet a lot of those needs themselves if they were given the tools to do so. It's like those people in the Matrix pods: they have their needs met, but they are being plugged into a machine and are not truly human.
        bamboozled 3y ago
        Name a single instance or person who has all their physical needs met by an LLM? Seriously, we're a long way off technological utopia. Even if we had some type of AGI/ASI that was self-aware like in movies ,there's little if any evidence to suggest it will just work for us and make sure you're ok.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Yes where have you been?
    - bamboozled 3y ago
      How has it been messed up for you ? Would going back to medieval times fix it?
      - hamandcheese 3y ago
        > Would going back to medieval times fix it? Going back to the 90s probably would.
        vasco 3y ago
        > The decrease in the number of people affected by hunger has happened in a period where the world population has increased by 2.2 billion - from 5,3 billion in 1990 to 7.5 billion in 2018. The share of undernourished people in the world has therefore fallen markedly in the past three decades. From 19% in 1990 to 10.8% in 2018. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty... Why don't you go ask the 189 million people that since 1990 have avoided hunger if they agree?
        hamandcheese 3y ago
        Was social media required to feed those people? I don't think hunger in the 90s was a technology problem.
        golergka 3y ago
        Yes, actually. Social media and internet made ad industry much more effective, which in turn made wonders in commerce, which is exactly what raised people out of hunger. A lot of people in southeastern Asia and China are working in industry and live tens time better than subsiste farmers just one generation before them exactly because the niche trinkets they make can now be sold on instagram.
- j_crick 3y ago
  Cars bad, horses good
yellow_postit 3y ago
This pessimism may play out but I continue to fall on the optimist side. AI tooling seems to be allowing for more time on creativity and less on rote work. If that continues to play out creativity inevitably drives more collaboration as creativity cannot thrive only in a silo.
dartos 3y ago
Genuinely curious. Except in the shovelware games industry and the instagram ad scam industry where is AI actually, currently, threatening to take away jobs?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  1. Illustrators 2. Photographers (Check out Photo.AI). I know a local photographer who takes nice portraits for businesses. Now people can use this service for their headshots. (You may argue that it's good for people but at which point does it remain good if NOBODY can use their creative talents to make a living.) 3. Writing. Many websites are now using writers to write their articles. That means they hire less writers. Again, you can say that it makes society more efficient and I guess it does for consumers, but those people such as copy editors will have to find new jobs. You may say that new jobs will be created but we have not seen such a versatile tool that can take away so many jobs at such a quick pace before. Moreover, will the world really be a nice place to live in if most of the creative jobs or at least jobs involved IN producing something nice will be left to machines? What about Hollywood and their desire to replace writers and actors? You may say that Hollywood is dead anyway, but I'm sure it's about to get a lot worse...
  - rvnx 3y ago
    4. Translators 5. Programmers
    - airstrike 3y ago
      6. Voice actors and narrators (eventually news anchors, reporters, etc) 7. Composers, hired musicians, eventually singers, producers
      - hotnfresh 3y ago
        There’s a real chance that one thing AI will make better—not just cheaper—is original scores for movies. Get us out of this “just match the shitty generic placeholder music we already edited the movie to” norm we’ve been in for almost two decades (which itself came about due to changes in technology!)
fallingknife 3y ago
> AI not only takes jobs away from creatives such as illustrators Why do these people deserve protection from automation any more than all the millions of people who worked other jobs tat were eliminated by automation up to this point?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > Why do these people deserve protection from automation any more than all the millions of people who worked other jobs tat were eliminated by automation up to this point? You got it!!! All those other people DO deserve protection from automation! But our society made a mistake and pushed them out. Many communities were destroyed by efficient automation and guess what, efficient automation via cars and vehicles is what caused our most immense disaster now, the climate crisis. We made a mistake by creating so much automation. We should strive to recreate smaller communities in which more creative AND manual tasks are appreciated.
  - anon291 3y ago
    > We made a mistake by creating so much automation. We should strive to recreate smaller communities in which more creative AND manual tasks are appreciated. Those exist?
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      Yes, they do. Indigineous tribes for one...which did more manual labor but also had creative outlets as well.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > We made a mistake by creating so much automation. So you're volunteering to become a stoop-labor agricultural serf, then?
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      Basically, you are creating a strawman. I said too much automation. And nothing about removing automation implies going back into serfdom. If you want to actually have a debate, say something intelligent rather than a quick quip.
phpisthebest 3y ago
I find it amusing that just a few short years ago the idea was that automation / ai would replace the truck drivers, factory workers, and blue collar jobs where the Developer, the lawyer, information worker was safe from this... It seems the last mile in replacing blue collar jobs may be more expensive and more challenging (if not impossible) than replacing information workers with AI...
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I actually agree with this. All along, people thought that automation would mainly replace manual labor (which I also disagree with in many instances -- I believe people should be able to make a DECENT wage doing things, even manual things, even if other things become more expensive for people "at the top"). It seems likely that AI will either replace or augment people in the most creative fields, creating a homogeneous MUSH out of once interesting things, making us consumerist and mindless drones that simply react like amoebas to advertising, buying junk we don't need so that the top 0.1% rule the world, pushed their by their intense narcissism and lack of empathy (like Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella who are by definition narcissists for doing what they do.)
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    I emphatically agree, with a caveat: I work in the music business. I've seen homogenous mush before. AI and related technologies have already augmented people in the homogenous mush business, and will most certainly replace them, and this will serve a sort of mass market with mass distribution that's recognizable as 'creative fields' of a sort. This is self-limiting. It's a sort of built-in plateau. You can't serve the whole market with anything: the closest you'll get is something like a Heinz Ketchup, a miraculously well-balanced creation with something for everyone. It's also a relatively small market segment for all its accessibility. We cannot be made 'consumerist and mindless drones that simply react like amoebas to advertising' more than we already are, which is a LOT: whole populations are poisoned by carefully designed unhealthy food, conned by carefully designed propaganda in various contradictory directions. We're already at saturation point for that, I think. It's enough to be a really toxic situation: doesn't have to threaten to be far worse. The backlash always happens, in the form of more indigestible things that aren't homogenous mush, whether that's the Beatles or the Sex Pistols or, say, Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The more homogenous everything is, the more market power is behind whatever backlash happens. This is actually one argument for modern democracies and their howling levels of cultural tension… it's far more difficult to impose homogenity on them, where other systems can be more easily forced into sameness, only to snap.
ChatGTP 3y ago
it also is removing the reliance that people have on each other. On the other hand access to information has given me more independence, and this hasn't been a bad thing. I do rely less on others, like my parents, but I still love them and spend more time having fun with them rather than relying on them. I do understand what you mean, it just doesn't like up as all negative to me. I also think open source AI will destroy any feudalistic society. These companies like MS are going to have a problem when their own technology starts to destroy their value add. Look ad Adobe and some of the open source video and graphis editing AI software, there goes one fiefdom.
javier_e06 3y ago
We can say fro big-tech the same for oil, penecilin or gmo's. What does it mean to be human when we, all humans, are the sons and daughters of big industry for profit ventures? Open AI board stopped trusting Altman when he went started pitching the Open AI technology elsewhere behind their backs. At least that the rumors I read. If OpenAI developers truly believe the AI can be weaponized and that they should not be following the leadership of for-profit ventures they won't jump ship. We will see.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > We can say fro big-tech the same for oil, penecilin or gmo's. What does it mean to be human when we, all humans, are the sons and daughters of big industry for profit ventures? That is why we should be cautious about technology instead of inviting it with open arms. It is a question we should continue to ask ourselves with more wisdom, instead of relying on our mass global capitalistic system to deliver easy answers for us from the depths of the profit motive.
zemvpferreira 3y ago
I couldn't disagree more. The more wealth is created out of thin air by technology, the better we all live, and the better our relations with one another. Scarcity creates conflict and pain. Prosperity makes good neighbours out of enemies. I don't care if I have to pay megacorps for a right to my modern conveniences, if that means they extend to more and more people. Monsanto can take all my money if no one ever dies of starvation again. Microsoft can take all my data if we never have to do rote tasks again.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  The more wealth is created, the more we abuse wild resources and the natural ecosystem as well. If there were only humans on the planet, I would not disagree. But it is immoral to live better if it comes to destroying out natural connection with the biosphere. I also disagree that scarcity creates conflict and pain. Scarcity limits growth, which means it limits our expansion, which is good because other creatures have to live here too.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > I also disagree that scarcity creates conflict and pain. Every war in human history (and there have been a lot of them) was fought over control of scarce resources. Sure looks like scarcity creates conflict and pain to me.
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      War causes some short-term pain but nothing in comparison to the long-term pain of post-scarcity where we use up so many resources that there are none left to use -- such as depleting most fishing stocks, rainforest destruction, and global warming. I'd take a few wars here and there over what we have now any day. Even if it means I die. It would be much better if humanity's population were limited.
      - zemvpferreira 3y ago
        If you want to limit human population, with all respect, you first. Talk is cheap.

kumarvvr 3y ago

Yup. The world we are headed into, accelerated by huge leaps in technology like AI, will be a sorry, pathetic, unforgiving world, that amplifies suffering and nullifies humanity. Is that image of a child being assaulted by terrorists real or fake? To the victims, its real, to political powers it fake, to mega corporations, its money.

ChatGTP 3y ago
I can't believe I'm playing devil's advocate here because I'm generally a skeptical / pessimistic person, but what? The world we are headed into, accelerated by huge leaps in technology like AI, will be a sorry, pathetic, unforgiving world, that amplifies suffering and nullifies humanity. Is that what has happened so far in your life? Technology has messed it up for you ?
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I think technology has messed up a lot of lives. Sure, we've got good healthcare and resources in the first-world, but smaller communities are eroding to the global force of technology. Don't bully people into not expressing critical thought by emphasizing that they have their basic physical needs met. We should be critical of society, even if on the surface it seems pretty good. We also have more advanced psychological needs such as the need to depend on others, and that is what is at stake here.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I see a contradiction in your message here. On the one hand you're saying people are worse off because of technology, but then you're also saying that people don't rely on each other because they have more of their needs met. So which is it? Wouldn't the poverty rebuild these communities ? I mean the hardships make people rely on each other right? I don't entirely doubt what you're saying either, but I'm not so sure I see what you see.
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      There is no contradiction, because I do not believe that having all your physical needs met is necessarily the best end for a human being, especially if they have the capability to meet a lot of those needs themselves if they were given the tools to do so. It's like those people in the Matrix pods: they have their needs met, but they are being plugged into a machine and are not truly human.
      - bamboozled 3y ago
        Name a single instance or person who has all their physical needs met by an LLM? Seriously, we're a long way off technological utopia. Even if we had some type of AGI/ASI that was self-aware like in movies ,there's little if any evidence to suggest it will just work for us and make sure you're ok.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Yes where have you been?
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    How has it been messed up for you ? Would going back to medieval times fix it?
    - hamandcheese 3y ago
      > Would going back to medieval times fix it? Going back to the 90s probably would.
      - vasco 3y ago
        > The decrease in the number of people affected by hunger has happened in a period where the world population has increased by 2.2 billion - from 5,3 billion in 1990 to 7.5 billion in 2018. The share of undernourished people in the world has therefore fallen markedly in the past three decades. From 19% in 1990 to 10.8% in 2018. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty... Why don't you go ask the 189 million people that since 1990 have avoided hunger if they agree?
        hamandcheese 3y ago
        Was social media required to feed those people? I don't think hunger in the 90s was a technology problem.
        golergka 3y ago
        Yes, actually. Social media and internet made ad industry much more effective, which in turn made wonders in commerce, which is exactly what raised people out of hunger. A lot of people in southeastern Asia and China are working in industry and live tens time better than subsiste farmers just one generation before them exactly because the niche trinkets they make can now be sold on instagram.
j_crick 3y ago
Cars bad, horses good

yellow_postit 3y ago

This pessimism may play out but I continue to fall on the optimist side. AI tooling seems to be allowing for more time on creativity and less on rote work. If that continues to play out creativity inevitably drives more collaboration as creativity cannot thrive only in a silo.

dartos 3y ago

Genuinely curious. Except in the shovelware games industry and the instagram ad scam industry where is AI actually, currently, threatening to take away jobs?

vouaobrasil 3y ago
1. Illustrators 2. Photographers (Check out Photo.AI). I know a local photographer who takes nice portraits for businesses. Now people can use this service for their headshots. (You may argue that it's good for people but at which point does it remain good if NOBODY can use their creative talents to make a living.) 3. Writing. Many websites are now using writers to write their articles. That means they hire less writers. Again, you can say that it makes society more efficient and I guess it does for consumers, but those people such as copy editors will have to find new jobs. You may say that new jobs will be created but we have not seen such a versatile tool that can take away so many jobs at such a quick pace before. Moreover, will the world really be a nice place to live in if most of the creative jobs or at least jobs involved IN producing something nice will be left to machines? What about Hollywood and their desire to replace writers and actors? You may say that Hollywood is dead anyway, but I'm sure it's about to get a lot worse...
- rvnx 3y ago
  4. Translators 5. Programmers
  - airstrike 3y ago
    6. Voice actors and narrators (eventually news anchors, reporters, etc) 7. Composers, hired musicians, eventually singers, producers
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      There’s a real chance that one thing AI will make better—not just cheaper—is original scores for movies. Get us out of this “just match the shitty generic placeholder music we already edited the movie to” norm we’ve been in for almost two decades (which itself came about due to changes in technology!)

fallingknife 3y ago

> AI not only takes jobs away from creatives such as illustrators Why do these people deserve protection from automation any more than all the millions of people who worked other jobs tat were eliminated by automation up to this point?

vouaobrasil 3y ago
> Why do these people deserve protection from automation any more than all the millions of people who worked other jobs tat were eliminated by automation up to this point? You got it!!! All those other people DO deserve protection from automation! But our society made a mistake and pushed them out. Many communities were destroyed by efficient automation and guess what, efficient automation via cars and vehicles is what caused our most immense disaster now, the climate crisis. We made a mistake by creating so much automation. We should strive to recreate smaller communities in which more creative AND manual tasks are appreciated.
- anon291 3y ago
  > We made a mistake by creating so much automation. We should strive to recreate smaller communities in which more creative AND manual tasks are appreciated. Those exist?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Yes, they do. Indigineous tribes for one...which did more manual labor but also had creative outlets as well.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > We made a mistake by creating so much automation. So you're volunteering to become a stoop-labor agricultural serf, then?
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Basically, you are creating a strawman. I said too much automation. And nothing about removing automation implies going back into serfdom. If you want to actually have a debate, say something intelligent rather than a quick quip.

phpisthebest 3y ago

I find it amusing that just a few short years ago the idea was that automation / ai would replace the truck drivers, factory workers, and blue collar jobs where the Developer, the lawyer, information worker was safe from this... It seems the last mile in replacing blue collar jobs may be more expensive and more challenging (if not impossible) than replacing information workers with AI...

vouaobrasil 3y ago
I actually agree with this. All along, people thought that automation would mainly replace manual labor (which I also disagree with in many instances -- I believe people should be able to make a DECENT wage doing things, even manual things, even if other things become more expensive for people "at the top"). It seems likely that AI will either replace or augment people in the most creative fields, creating a homogeneous MUSH out of once interesting things, making us consumerist and mindless drones that simply react like amoebas to advertising, buying junk we don't need so that the top 0.1% rule the world, pushed their by their intense narcissism and lack of empathy (like Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella who are by definition narcissists for doing what they do.)
- Applejinx 3y ago
  I emphatically agree, with a caveat: I work in the music business. I've seen homogenous mush before. AI and related technologies have already augmented people in the homogenous mush business, and will most certainly replace them, and this will serve a sort of mass market with mass distribution that's recognizable as 'creative fields' of a sort. This is self-limiting. It's a sort of built-in plateau. You can't serve the whole market with anything: the closest you'll get is something like a Heinz Ketchup, a miraculously well-balanced creation with something for everyone. It's also a relatively small market segment for all its accessibility. We cannot be made 'consumerist and mindless drones that simply react like amoebas to advertising' more than we already are, which is a LOT: whole populations are poisoned by carefully designed unhealthy food, conned by carefully designed propaganda in various contradictory directions. We're already at saturation point for that, I think. It's enough to be a really toxic situation: doesn't have to threaten to be far worse. The backlash always happens, in the form of more indigestible things that aren't homogenous mush, whether that's the Beatles or the Sex Pistols or, say, Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The more homogenous everything is, the more market power is behind whatever backlash happens. This is actually one argument for modern democracies and their howling levels of cultural tension… it's far more difficult to impose homogenity on them, where other systems can be more easily forced into sameness, only to snap.

ChatGTP 3y ago

it also is removing the reliance that people have on each other. On the other hand access to information has given me more independence, and this hasn't been a bad thing. I do rely less on others, like my parents, but I still love them and spend more time having fun with them rather than relying on them. I do understand what you mean, it just doesn't like up as all negative to me. I also think open source AI will destroy any feudalistic society. These companies like MS are going to have a problem when their own technology starts to destroy their value add. Look ad Adobe and some of the open source video and graphis editing AI software, there goes one fiefdom.

javier_e06 3y ago

We can say fro big-tech the same for oil, penecilin or gmo's. What does it mean to be human when we, all humans, are the sons and daughters of big industry for profit ventures? Open AI board stopped trusting Altman when he went started pitching the Open AI technology elsewhere behind their backs. At least that the rumors I read. If OpenAI developers truly believe the AI can be weaponized and that they should not be following the leadership of for-profit ventures they won't jump ship. We will see.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
> We can say fro big-tech the same for oil, penecilin or gmo's. What does it mean to be human when we, all humans, are the sons and daughters of big industry for profit ventures? That is why we should be cautious about technology instead of inviting it with open arms. It is a question we should continue to ask ourselves with more wisdom, instead of relying on our mass global capitalistic system to deliver easy answers for us from the depths of the profit motive.

zemvpferreira 3y ago

I couldn't disagree more. The more wealth is created out of thin air by technology, the better we all live, and the better our relations with one another. Scarcity creates conflict and pain. Prosperity makes good neighbours out of enemies. I don't care if I have to pay megacorps for a right to my modern conveniences, if that means they extend to more and more people. Monsanto can take all my money if no one ever dies of starvation again. Microsoft can take all my data if we never have to do rote tasks again.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
The more wealth is created, the more we abuse wild resources and the natural ecosystem as well. If there were only humans on the planet, I would not disagree. But it is immoral to live better if it comes to destroying out natural connection with the biosphere. I also disagree that scarcity creates conflict and pain. Scarcity limits growth, which means it limits our expansion, which is good because other creatures have to live here too.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > I also disagree that scarcity creates conflict and pain. Every war in human history (and there have been a lot of them) was fought over control of scarce resources. Sure looks like scarcity creates conflict and pain to me.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    War causes some short-term pain but nothing in comparison to the long-term pain of post-scarcity where we use up so many resources that there are none left to use -- such as depleting most fishing stocks, rainforest destruction, and global warming. I'd take a few wars here and there over what we have now any day. Even if it means I die. It would be much better if humanity's population were limited.
    - zemvpferreira 3y ago
      If you want to limit human population, with all respect, you first. Talk is cheap.