7 ms·

You should read Dune. 'Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machin

You should read Dune. 'Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.' Hence... 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.' For most things I think we can agree. The problem is when machines can 'think'. How much should we offload thinking to the machines.

hooverd 3y ago
What I think might happen is people will say "wow ML is just like the human mind", and extrapolate from there that people who aren't special boys like them are just NPCs and don't have as many human rights.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  There have always been people who have thought themselves better or more worthy than those they felt were beneath them, and there always will be. The solution is not allowing any one person to collect more resources or power than the rest. We’re failing there.
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    > The solution is not allowing any one person to collect more resources or power than the rest. How are you going to "not allow" them? By being more powerful. "No it'll be a committee of shared power all the way up." You'll end up with Stalin, one of the most powerful single humans the world has ever seen.
    - throwaway14356 3y ago
      i want everyone to have buttons to fire officials. Enough clicks and you're gone.
Animats 3y ago
It's not an AI thing. It's an organization thing. Two big breakthroughs were needed to create organizations bigger than one person could own and run - the corporation, and the org chart. Daniel McCallum invented modern business organization in 1854. [1] He ran a railroad. The railroad became big enough that one person couldn't keep track of everything that was going on. A railroad has to have tight coordination, or it won't work. There are many things happening at different locations which depend on things happening at other locations. Some things had to coordinated on a scale of minutes, some on a scale of hours, days, or weeks. A railroad needed a distributed system which could, in a sense, think. This was a new problem. Before that, there were few inter-city organizations, and the ones that existed, such as post offices, governments, and shipping lines, were very loosely coupled. Each location had a boss, who was mostly autonomous. That didn't work for railroads. Unlike ships, the moving trains are totally dependent on a fixed infrastructure. Different people deal with the rolling stock, the track, the freight, and the passengers. McCallum figured out how to make that work. McCallum came up with daily, weekly, and monthly reports, exception reporting, and line and staff management. This made it possible for ordinary people to do something no one person could comprehend in totality. Most organizations still follow his general approach. That was the point at which the organization became bigger than any one person. We're not there yet with AI. Coordinating large numbers of AIs is an unsolved problem. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/big-data-in-the-age-of-the-telegraph https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizatio...
- heavenlyblue 3y ago
  Banks existed for centuries?

hooverd 3y ago

What I think might happen is people will say "wow ML is just like the human mind", and extrapolate from there that people who aren't special boys like them are just NPCs and don't have as many human rights.

ok_dad 3y ago
There have always been people who have thought themselves better or more worthy than those they felt were beneath them, and there always will be. The solution is not allowing any one person to collect more resources or power than the rest. We’re failing there.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  > The solution is not allowing any one person to collect more resources or power than the rest. How are you going to "not allow" them? By being more powerful. "No it'll be a committee of shared power all the way up." You'll end up with Stalin, one of the most powerful single humans the world has ever seen.
  - throwaway14356 3y ago
    i want everyone to have buttons to fire officials. Enough clicks and you're gone.

Animats 3y ago

It's not an AI thing. It's an organization thing. Two big breakthroughs were needed to create organizations bigger than one person could own and run - the corporation, and the org chart. Daniel McCallum invented modern business organization in 1854. [1] He ran a railroad. The railroad became big enough that one person couldn't keep track of everything that was going on. A railroad has to have tight coordination, or it won't work. There are many things happening at different locations which depend on things happening at other locations. Some things had to coordinated on a scale of minutes, some on a scale of hours, days, or weeks. A railroad needed a distributed system which could, in a sense, think. This was a new problem. Before that, there were few inter-city organizations, and the ones that existed, such as post offices, governments, and shipping lines, were very loosely coupled. Each location had a boss, who was mostly autonomous. That didn't work for railroads. Unlike ships, the moving trains are totally dependent on a fixed infrastructure. Different people deal with the rolling stock, the track, the freight, and the passengers. McCallum figured out how to make that work. McCallum came up with daily, weekly, and monthly reports, exception reporting, and line and staff management. This made it possible for ordinary people to do something no one person could comprehend in totality. Most organizations still follow his general approach. That was the point at which the organization became bigger than any one person. We're not there yet with AI. Coordinating large numbers of AIs is an unsolved problem. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/big-data-in-the-age-of-the-telegraph https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizatio...

heavenlyblue 3y ago
Banks existed for centuries?