6 ms·

I don't think we're dealing with "concerned" citizens in this thread, but with people who presuppose the end result with religious certainty. It's ok to be con

by madrox 3y ago

I don't think we're dealing with "concerned" citizens in this thread, but with people who presuppose the end result with religious certainty. It's ok to be concerned about the direction AI will take society, but trying to project any change (including global warming or nuclear weapons) too far into the future will put you at extremes. We've seen this over and over throughout history. So far, we're still here. That isn't because we weren't concerned, but because we dealt with the problems in front of us a day at a time.

ethanbond 3y ago
The people who, from Trinity (or before), were worried about global annihilation and scrambled to build systems to prevent it were correct. The people saying “it’s just another weapon” were incorrect.
- __loam 3y ago
  It's kind of infuriating to see people put global thermonuclear conflict or a sudden change in atmospheric conditions (something that has cause 4 of the 5 biggest mass extinctions in the entire history of the planet) on the same pedestal as a really computationally intense text generator.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    It’s kind of infuriating to see people put trench warfare or mustard gas on the same pedestal as a tiny reaction that couldn’t even light a lightbulb. There are different sets of concerns for the current crop of “really computationally intense text generators” and the overall trajectory of AI and the field’s governance track record.
  - sensanaty 3y ago
    My worries about AI are more about the societal impact it will have. Yes it's a fancy sentence generator, the problem is that you already have greedy bastards talking about replacing millions of people with that fancy sentence generator. I truly think it's going to lead to a massive shift in economic equality, and not in favor of the masses but instead in favor of the psychopathic C-suite like Altman and his ilk.
    - staunton 3y ago
      I'm personally least worried about short-term unemployment resulting from AI progress. Such structural unemployment and poverty resulting from it happens when a region loses the industry that is close to the single employer there and people affected don't have the means to move elsewhere or change careers. AI is going to replace jobs that can be done remotely from anywhere in the world. The people affected will (for the first time in history!) not mostly be the poorest and disenfranchised parts of society. Therefore, as long as countries can maintain political power in their populations, the labor market transition will mostly be fine. The part where we "maintain political power in populations" is what worries me personally. AI enables mass surveillance and personalized propaganda. Let's see how we deal with those appearing, which will be sudden by history's standards... The printing press (30 years war, witch-hunts) and radio (Hitler, Rwandan genocide) might be slow and small innovations compared at what might be to come.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - jmoak3 3y ago
        With respect to communication innovation, I think AI Hitler put it best: "we can't rewind we've gone too far." Here's a link to the relevant historical record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GjijODWoI&t=93s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GjijODWoI&t=93s I don't think existing media channels will continue to be an effective way to disseminate information. The noise destroys the usefulness of it. I think people will stop coming to platforms for news and entertainment as they begin to distrust them. The surveillance prospect however, is frightening.
        __loam 3y ago
        I think people aren't thinking about these things in the aggregate enough. In the long term, this does a lot of damage to existing communication infrastructure. Productivity alone isn't necessarily a virtue.
        3y ago
  - cornel_io 3y ago
    ...you do realize that a year or two into the earliest investigations into nuclear reactions what you would have measured was less energy emission than a match being lit, right? The question is, "Can you create a chain reaction that grows?", and the answer is unclear right now with AI, but it's hard to say with any confidence that the answer is "no". Most experts five years ago would have confidently declared that passing the Turing test was decades to centuries away, if it ever happened, but it turned out to just require beefing up an architecture that was already around and spending some serious cash. I have similarly low faith that the experts today have a good sense that e.g. you can't train an LLM to do meaningful LLM research. Once that's possible, the sky is the limit, and there's really no predicting what these systems could or could not do.
    - __loam 3y ago
      It seems like a very flawed line of reasoning to compare very early days nuclear science to an AI system that has already scaled up substantially. Regarding computing technology, I think the positive feedback you're describing happened with chip design and vlsi stuff, eg. better computers help design the next generation of chips or help lead to materials breakthroughs. I'm willing to believe LLMs have a macro effect on knowledge work in a similar way search engines, but as you said, it remains to be seen whether the models can feed back into their own development. From what I can tell, gpu speed and efficiency along with better data sets are the most important inputs for these things. Maybe synthetic data works out, who knows.
      - Solvate8441 3y ago
        It's a perfectly fine comparison to make until it is proven that AI has no potential to continuously improve upon itself.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        The people who thought Trinity was “scaled up” were also wrong. The only reason we stopped making larger nuclear weapons is because they were way, way, way beyond useful for anything. There’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists in the physical universe (especially given how tiny and energy efficient the human brain is, we’re definitely nowhere near it) and there’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists on the usefulness of marginally more intelligence. Especially when you’re competing for resources with other nearly-as-intelligent superintelligences.

by madrox 3y ago

ethanbond 3y ago

The people who, from Trinity (or before), were worried about global annihilation and scrambled to build systems to prevent it were correct. The people saying “it’s just another weapon” were incorrect.

__loam 3y ago
It's kind of infuriating to see people put global thermonuclear conflict or a sudden change in atmospheric conditions (something that has cause 4 of the 5 biggest mass extinctions in the entire history of the planet) on the same pedestal as a really computationally intense text generator.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  It’s kind of infuriating to see people put trench warfare or mustard gas on the same pedestal as a tiny reaction that couldn’t even light a lightbulb. There are different sets of concerns for the current crop of “really computationally intense text generators” and the overall trajectory of AI and the field’s governance track record.
- sensanaty 3y ago
  My worries about AI are more about the societal impact it will have. Yes it's a fancy sentence generator, the problem is that you already have greedy bastards talking about replacing millions of people with that fancy sentence generator. I truly think it's going to lead to a massive shift in economic equality, and not in favor of the masses but instead in favor of the psychopathic C-suite like Altman and his ilk.
  - staunton 3y ago
    I'm personally least worried about short-term unemployment resulting from AI progress. Such structural unemployment and poverty resulting from it happens when a region loses the industry that is close to the single employer there and people affected don't have the means to move elsewhere or change careers. AI is going to replace jobs that can be done remotely from anywhere in the world. The people affected will (for the first time in history!) not mostly be the poorest and disenfranchised parts of society. Therefore, as long as countries can maintain political power in their populations, the labor market transition will mostly be fine. The part where we "maintain political power in populations" is what worries me personally. AI enables mass surveillance and personalized propaganda. Let's see how we deal with those appearing, which will be sudden by history's standards... The printing press (30 years war, witch-hunts) and radio (Hitler, Rwandan genocide) might be slow and small innovations compared at what might be to come.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jmoak3 3y ago
      With respect to communication innovation, I think AI Hitler put it best: "we can't rewind we've gone too far." Here's a link to the relevant historical record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GjijODWoI&t=93s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GjijODWoI&t=93s I don't think existing media channels will continue to be an effective way to disseminate information. The noise destroys the usefulness of it. I think people will stop coming to platforms for news and entertainment as they begin to distrust them. The surveillance prospect however, is frightening.
      - __loam 3y ago
        I think people aren't thinking about these things in the aggregate enough. In the long term, this does a lot of damage to existing communication infrastructure. Productivity alone isn't necessarily a virtue.
        3y ago
- cornel_io 3y ago
  ...you do realize that a year or two into the earliest investigations into nuclear reactions what you would have measured was less energy emission than a match being lit, right? The question is, "Can you create a chain reaction that grows?", and the answer is unclear right now with AI, but it's hard to say with any confidence that the answer is "no". Most experts five years ago would have confidently declared that passing the Turing test was decades to centuries away, if it ever happened, but it turned out to just require beefing up an architecture that was already around and spending some serious cash. I have similarly low faith that the experts today have a good sense that e.g. you can't train an LLM to do meaningful LLM research. Once that's possible, the sky is the limit, and there's really no predicting what these systems could or could not do.
  - __loam 3y ago
    It seems like a very flawed line of reasoning to compare very early days nuclear science to an AI system that has already scaled up substantially. Regarding computing technology, I think the positive feedback you're describing happened with chip design and vlsi stuff, eg. better computers help design the next generation of chips or help lead to materials breakthroughs. I'm willing to believe LLMs have a macro effect on knowledge work in a similar way search engines, but as you said, it remains to be seen whether the models can feed back into their own development. From what I can tell, gpu speed and efficiency along with better data sets are the most important inputs for these things. Maybe synthetic data works out, who knows.
    - Solvate8441 3y ago
      It's a perfectly fine comparison to make until it is proven that AI has no potential to continuously improve upon itself.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      The people who thought Trinity was “scaled up” were also wrong. The only reason we stopped making larger nuclear weapons is because they were way, way, way beyond useful for anything. There’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists in the physical universe (especially given how tiny and energy efficient the human brain is, we’re definitely nowhere near it) and there’s no reason to believe an upper bound exists on the usefulness of marginally more intelligence. Especially when you’re competing for resources with other nearly-as-intelligent superintelligences.