4 ms·

Of course it isn’t. It’s about regulatory capture. They’re trying to con technically unsophisticated politicians (which is almost all of them) into granting the

by api 3y ago

Of course it isn’t. It’s about regulatory capture. They’re trying to con technically unsophisticated politicians (which is almost all of them) into granting them a monopoly or erecting a bunch of onerous regulations to make competition or decentralized open source alternatives harder. Their allies in this are otherwise very smart people that have thought themselves into a panic over this stuff, as smart people sometimes do. Intelligence increases one’s likelihood of delusional thinking, especially when paired with an intellectual climate that praises being contrarian and intellectual edgelording as a sign of genius. (This is my personal hypothesis on why the average intelligence is not higher. It’s not always adaptive. Smart people can be way better at being dumb.) There are dangers associated with AI but they are not the sci fi scenarios the doomers are worried about. Most of them revolve around bad things humans can do that AI can assist and accelerate, like propaganda or terrorism.

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
I’m not sure there’s a real distinction here. If AI makes it trivial for the average person to create an effective terrorist movement, or floods us with so much propaganda that most information you see is false, I would characterize that as doom. Neither seems very compatible with the orderly functioning of society.
- spunker540 3y ago
  I actually heard the opposite, that AI will make it trivial to defeat a terrorist movement, and trivial to filter out dangerous untrue propaganda. I would characterize that as utopia, and highly compatible with the orderly functioning of society.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  > If AI makes it trivial for the average person to create an effective terrorist movement How do you imagine this and what exact role AI is going to fill that would make it somehow trivial? I have trouble imagining that AI would be able to somehow magically do better than my project manager (and she's a good one). Being able to possibly think faster and not needing to sleep won't make any difference, and neither will scaling. Nine doctors won't help a baby to be born in a month. Buying a bajillion dollar TPU farm to run some hypothetical AI brainwashed with terrorist agenda that'll somehow replace hundreds of propagandists is not trivial. And I don't think it's enough to start a movement. > floods us with so much propaganda that most information you see is false This ship had already sailed (one can say, some millennia ago) and it didn't require any recent scientific breakthroughs. Scientific breakthroughs (such as printing press, or radio, or Internet) only improve spread of information, and propaganda saturates available media channels to... uh... comfortable levels. But it'll never reach the "most information" state because that's just illogical (the consumption will stop before that point, just like how no one reads their spam folder today). And there's nothing AI-specific here, humans manage this just fine. Honestly, I believe AGI won't change a thing, for the same reasons there are still manual workers everywhere despite all the stories how robotics was gonna change the world. The reason is very simple: troll farms are way, way cheaper than computers. Just like a cleaner person is cheaper than a cleaner robot. Yes, it could be speculated that somehow all those speculated data hoards about us, paired with extreme amounts of processing power could somehow lead to personalized propaganda. I'm very skeptical - I was told the very same story about targeted ads (how they're gonna change my shopping experience and whatever), and despite what Google wants to make everyone believe (because their valuation highly depends on it), I'd say they were a complete failure. I really doubt targeted propaganda will be economically feasible either. This stuff only happens in soft sci-fi stories, where economics and logistics are swept under the rug of our suspension of disbelief. It's not the AGI we should be afraid of, but a technical progress that will allow AGI to become drastically better than us, puny meatbags, at lower costs. Which is entirely different story. Oh, and human susceptibility to propaganda and populism of all sorts. Which, again, is not related to AI at all. Unless we should call our politicians artificial intelligence. (Looking at some, maybe we should... Just kidding, of course.)

by api 3y ago

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago

I’m not sure there’s a real distinction here. If AI makes it trivial for the average person to create an effective terrorist movement, or floods us with so much propaganda that most information you see is false, I would characterize that as doom. Neither seems very compatible with the orderly functioning of society.

spunker540 3y ago
I actually heard the opposite, that AI will make it trivial to defeat a terrorist movement, and trivial to filter out dangerous untrue propaganda. I would characterize that as utopia, and highly compatible with the orderly functioning of society.
drdaeman 3y ago
> If AI makes it trivial for the average person to create an effective terrorist movement How do you imagine this and what exact role AI is going to fill that would make it somehow trivial? I have trouble imagining that AI would be able to somehow magically do better than my project manager (and she's a good one). Being able to possibly think faster and not needing to sleep won't make any difference, and neither will scaling. Nine doctors won't help a baby to be born in a month. Buying a bajillion dollar TPU farm to run some hypothetical AI brainwashed with terrorist agenda that'll somehow replace hundreds of propagandists is not trivial. And I don't think it's enough to start a movement. > floods us with so much propaganda that most information you see is false This ship had already sailed (one can say, some millennia ago) and it didn't require any recent scientific breakthroughs. Scientific breakthroughs (such as printing press, or radio, or Internet) only improve spread of information, and propaganda saturates available media channels to... uh... comfortable levels. But it'll never reach the "most information" state because that's just illogical (the consumption will stop before that point, just like how no one reads their spam folder today). And there's nothing AI-specific here, humans manage this just fine. Honestly, I believe AGI won't change a thing, for the same reasons there are still manual workers everywhere despite all the stories how robotics was gonna change the world. The reason is very simple: troll farms are way, way cheaper than computers. Just like a cleaner person is cheaper than a cleaner robot. Yes, it could be speculated that somehow all those speculated data hoards about us, paired with extreme amounts of processing power could somehow lead to personalized propaganda. I'm very skeptical - I was told the very same story about targeted ads (how they're gonna change my shopping experience and whatever), and despite what Google wants to make everyone believe (because their valuation highly depends on it), I'd say they were a complete failure. I really doubt targeted propaganda will be economically feasible either. This stuff only happens in soft sci-fi stories, where economics and logistics are swept under the rug of our suspension of disbelief. It's not the AGI we should be afraid of, but a technical progress that will allow AGI to become drastically better than us, puny meatbags, at lower costs. Which is entirely different story. Oh, and human susceptibility to propaganda and populism of all sorts. Which, again, is not related to AI at all. Unless we should call our politicians artificial intelligence. (Looking at some, maybe we should... Just kidding, of course.)