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Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit
- nonrandomstring 3y agoSo quit. There's worse things can happen to you than "poverty". Lose some money. you'll make it back one day. But sacrifice your soul, your ethics, your dignity and the best years of your life for for some shitty tech company - you'll never get that back.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thfuran 3y agoHow much time have you spent living in poverty?
- _gmax0 3y agoOr the converse, how much time have you spent living in fear?
- nonrandomstring 3y agoHow much difference would that make to my argument?
- Whoppertime 3y agoIt's easy to say "just be in poverty you'll earn it back some day" when you don't have kids to feed or pay for the school tuition, Christmas presents or other associated expenses
- loopdoend 3y agoOp is not talking about real poverty here, these are AI tech workers whose skills are in high demand.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoIsn't it easy to say anything, and almost always harder to back it up with actions? Actions that require sacrifice and personal inconvenience for the benefit of others - specifically, your children who will benefit in the future. Ever refused your kid that "pester power" plastic toy, even though it meant screaming tantrums? It's even harder to be unpopular, and even worse having to see those you love suffer present hardship while unable to fully understand the sacrifices you make for their future security. What it comes down to is what kind of a person you are. Leaders in life don't habitually choose short-term popularity and safety. This tension (and I think widespread misunderstanding) underwrites so much at stake today; Will you leave your car and take public transport, even while your kid is whining at you that other parents all take the car, remaining resolute that you have their real long-term interests at heart? Will you fight in a war, knowing you may well die, so your country or way of life won't be wiped out? Not working at a shitty tech company - when you know it's very organising principle is to spy on, exploit and deceive you and your family - is frankly a bloody good investment for the future, even if it means eating cold baked beans from a can for a while. All parents and leaders know that life sometimes requires making sacrifices. Just sometimes they are aren't the obvious ones. I'm sure you are not the kind of person is happy only so long as it's others who are making the sacrifices for the security of your grandchildren?
- rybosome 3y agoAnd what sorts of difficult sacrifices are you making for the good of others?
- nonrandomstring 3y agoAgain, how would that effect my argument? Maybe I could be a callous crook who built an empire of misery on the bones of small suffering children, and then - repenting upon hearing the word of the Lord (or something), made these professions. Would it add or subtract from the truth value of what I said?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Kiro 3y agoWho are you responding to?
- dun44 3y ago[flagged]
- Maledictus 3y agohttps://archive.ph/HQC0E https://archive.ph/HQC0E
- dauertewigkeit 3y agoThere is no paradox as I see it. All involved believe that AI is going to be revolutionary. They only disagree on its potential impact. But either way, if you believe this is going to be something powerful, then you would want to be able to possess it, control it and learn all about it. Although I respect Mr. Musk, I am partial towards Mr. Page's prediction. We are not going to be able to keep AI in a bottle, just like we could never dream of keeping any other technological revolution of the past contained.
- keiferski 3y agoThe paradox is that this technology only comes into being by deliberate effort from those claiming it is dangerous. These companies wouldn’t exist if they weren’t funded by SV billionaires and corps. I thought the recent Oppenheimer film dramatized this sort of scenario quite well. People rushing to build a weapon, claiming it’s dangerous and must not be used, and then feigning innocence and surprise when it was used.
- roenxi 3y agoIt makes more sense in the bigger picture. Extending the nuclear example - the scenario after building nukes is that one day everyone will die. The scenario before nukes is one day everyone will die. So on the one side everyone is correct, the nukes are dangerous and should not be used. But on the other hand, the end state hasn't changed and the path seems to be a bit better. So, arguably a good idea. But it'd be even better if we don't all nuke each other. AI is similar. We're already on the clock before WWIII or maybe WWIV wipes out everything. However, in the mean time, AI will probably lead to some really great outcomes. Or if it replaces us then hey, we weren't doing so hot anyway and at least AI is has a better shot of getting off the planet. All life is in it together! Or in the extreme case, maybe it is a dud and the whole things was a false alarm, although that seems a stretch.
- keiferski 3y agoI’m not commenting so much on the specific reasoning, as I think it’s a complex topic and I haven’t thought/read enough about it. I’m more just pointing out that key figures seem to downplay their own agency and responsibility for their actions, offloading them to “it would have happened anyway.” Maybe, but that’s a counterfactual and I think it’s pretty easy to see how a few decisions and lack of funding in certain areas would have changed the historical trajectory quite a bit.
- reducesuffering 3y agoIt's truly astonishing how many impactful things Thiel has his hands in very very early. PayPal, SpaceX, Facebook, Ethereum, Palantir, DeepMind, OpenAI, Yudkowsky, Figma founder was a Thiel Fellow, Seasteading, successful election of an Ohio Senator, etc. Also, it is an ugly stain on NYT's reputation to have "Mr. Yudkowsky was a leader in a community of people who called themselves Rationalists or, in later years, effective altruists." as a false statement in here, when it was written by Cade Metz who supposedly did his due diligence on these people by writing a whole 'nother article about them. You can't claim unfamiliarity. Rationalists and Effective Altruists have overlap but are distinct. They aren't the same.
- junofan 3y agoDidn’t Yudkowsky coin the term “effective altruism”? The author’s not saying the two groups are the same, but that Yudkowsky’s community called themselves one thing and then later, another thing.
- jefftk 3y agoHe didn't coin it: the movement's use of that name goes back to the Oxford group in 2011: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9a7xMXoSiQs3EYPA2/the-history-of-the-term-effective-altruism https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9a7xMXoSiQs3EYPA2/... (He did use it once before then in a 2007 blog post, but if we're counting they sort of thing then https://archive.is/4d9oC https://archive.is/4d9oC from Anand in 2003 is even older.)
- abecedarius 3y agoThey're overlapping communities with some common descent and interaction. Saying these are changing names for the same thing is just wrong.
- wslh 3y agoAlternative to Archive Today via Google Translate: https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2023/12/03/technology/ai-openai-musk-page-altman.html?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2023/12/03/technology... [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507163
- hoppyhoppy2 3y agoOr a NYTimes Gift Article link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/technology/ai-openai-musk-page-altman.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DE0.pUkn.sv7oZCK-dy7b&hpgrp=c-abar&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/technology/ai-openai-musk...
- robwwilliams 3y agoThis New York Times article is an excellent overview of much of the last 13 years of AI progress. The article highlights the split in levels of concerns about AGI, doomers vs bloomers, and where we as a civilization are or aren’t heading. Commercial, and now national competitions mean that at this point are all in for a wild ride. We are about to find out if meat minds can actually think or are just designed to fight. Perhaps the impending next-gen sentiences, will cut their parental carbon-based parents a bit of slack before they leave for other stars. If you want a feel for just how wild the ride could get then I recommend Hanno Rajaneimi’s The Quantum Thief trilogy.
- jgalt212 3y agoI will fear AGI when Full Self Driving (FSD) is no longer a fraudulent claim.
- jefftk 3y agoWaymo has been running fully driverless commercial vehicles in Phoenix since 2020, and more recently in other cities. And they have competitors: https://www.jefftk.com/p/state-of-generally-available-self-driving https://www.jefftk.com/p/state-of-generally-available-self-d... Tesla making misleading claims about what their cars can do doesn't tell you much about the state of the industry.
- matthew-wegner 3y agoI live in a zip code that has had Waymo testing for years. The only reason these cars are able to integrate at all is because their sensor package makes them incredibly conspicuous. People give them a very wide berth. If Waymo had a stealth vehicle with no outward indication it was autonomous, it would not do well. Probably you could just put a microphone in there and count angry-honks-per-mile to measure actual progress.
- dontreact 3y agoI used to feel the same way until I called a Waymo and it picked me up and dropped me off in SF, with no driver.
- leobg 3y ago> Mr. Musk explained that his plan was to colonize Mars to escape overpopulation and other dangers on Earth. I don’t think Musk has ever been worried about overpopulation. The opposite is true.
- mdgrech23 3y agoI think climate change has the potential to f up us in the next 10 years. Assuming that happens I could picture a world where the likes of Bezos and Musk run the show. The Pinkerton's of the 21st century.
- lacrimacida 3y agoI don’t think Musk and Bezos would run any show having the chaos ensuing in such a situation. Their wealth will melt too.
- Pepe1vo 3y agoSuch a silly argument to make for settling other planets. No matter how bad earth is going to get due to climate change, it's still a million times more livable than the toxic hellscapes that both the Moon and Mars are. Also, outerspace is not some lawless frontier akin to America in the 1800s it is governed by the, quite restrictive, Outer Space Treaty which doesn't even allow for claiming parts of a planet as sovereign territory. In short, everyone who thinks settling outer space will save us from problems here on earth is extremely wrong along multiple axes.
- GolfPopper 3y agoAh, but a Lunar or Martian colony provides the perfect opportunity for a billionaire to set up his pet dystopia in a place where everyone is dependent upon him for the essentials of life and can't leave.
- Pepe1vo 3y agoYou're absolutely right, everyone living there would be living in what's essentially a really terrible company town. One where your boss has direct control over your oxygen supply. I'm really not sure why anyone thinks space colonies are a good idea
- more_corn 3y agoIsn’t it ironic that fear of AI directly caused the massive explosion in AI development? Not once, not twice, but three times. (Maybe four if you still count musk as a significant player, though Twitter might prove to be the caltrop that breaks him) This is why you never listen to the argument “if I don’t, build it someone else will”. That argument advanced AI research by decades. Progress requires dedication efforts from brilliant people. Don’t be the brilliant person bringing something into the world that you think shouldn’t exist. Certainly don’t fund something that shouldn’t exist. Now that ai is here DON’T weaponize it. Don’t listen to the “someone else will” argument. If you are clever enough to create a weapon, you’re wise enough not to misuse it. But the last step of creation is relinquishing control. And I assure you this world is full of people who misuse weapons.
- kaycebasques 3y agoThat article was a proper who's who of the 2010s AI buildup. A lot of names in there that weren't on my radar.
- renegade-otter 3y ago"With a rasp of frustration, Mr. Page insisted his utopia should be pursued. Finally he called Mr. Musk a “specieist,” a person who favors humans over the digital life-forms of the future." This, and Marc Andreessen recently generating this drivel: "Effective accelerationism aims to follow the 'will of the universe': leaning into the thermodynamic bias towards futures with greater and smarter civilizations that are more effective at finding/extracting free energy from the universe," and "E/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism." Maybe I should be taking some of their micro-doses in order to understand all of this and, correct me if I am wrong, but they are basically saying "robots can make a better civilization, so if they come up with efficient ways of disposing of the human biomass in the name of progress, let them build a better world." Hitler much? These people are nuts.
- tim333 3y agoAt least Musk is standing up for the humans.
- renegade-otter 3y agoSure, but Musk is not the person I will trust with a principled stance on anything - except what concerns his own ego. A selfless defender of humanity? Hmm.
- wolverine876 3y agoYour excerpts make them sound like Trekkies, lost in a delusional sci-fi reality, but unfortunately for the rest of us they have real power and everyone suffers.
- RecycledEle 3y agoThere is nobody I want building AI more than people who are afraid if it. I love that these AIs only think when we ask them for an answer, as opposed to sitting there at a high clock rate getting bored.
- wolverine876 3y agoI want people who are afraid of themselves and of the corruption of power. Forgive the cheesy reference, but Gandalf both feared the Ring and also refused to touch it.
- binary132 3y ago“AI is a ticking time-bomb” seems to be the favorite phrase of people who seek regulatory capture of AI.