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I’m a bit of an AI skeptic and find the way people talk vaguely about the “dangers” of AI weird and maybe just more hype (or efforts for regulatory capture) rat

by wk_end 2y ago

I’m a bit of an AI skeptic and find the way people talk vaguely about the “dangers” of AI weird and maybe just more hype (or efforts for regulatory capture) rather than actual cause for concern. Still, to me, it seems like the two big scary things that might fall out of recent developments in generative AI are: 1. It might vacuum up an enormous number of jobs very quickly; enough jobs and quickly enough to cause serious social unrest. 2. The ability to generate convincing fake videos of basically anything might catastrophically erode our sense of truth or reality. Both of these strike me as plausible concerns in the near future (arguably they’re already happening). Not really sure what we could do about them, though - the cat is kind of out of the bag.

verisimi 2y ago
Re 1 - aren't people mostly doing bullshit jobs already? Re 2 - fakery in videos and images has been a part since their inception. So, don't worry, I guess? The only thing is the scale of bs that could be put out, and whether the wider population lose trust in what they see on screens. Which would be a good thing, imo.
- shinycode 2y ago
  Bullshit jobs yes but still they are paid. What happens in a capitalist society when thousands of people loose their job and can’t produce value and contribute to society ? It’s tearing apart the fabric of capitalism is some way. What happen when all those people without jobs won’t be able to train for better jobs (because they would have done it already and won’t have a bullshit job in the first place) and either fall poor or move to less paid jobs ?
  - wordpad 2y ago
    Technology and automation tends to create more jobs. As operational costs decrease, your end service or product becomes cheaper, so all your b2b or b2c customers can afford more of it which leads to more opportunities, doing things which were cost prohibitive before. Some of those things may too require manual labor.
    - shinycode 2y ago
      There is a threshold between the number of lost jobs and the new ones that are created, more than that, the new opportunities are not necessarily for the people who lost a job and are not qualified which does not change this social problem that might be created.
  - verisimi 2y ago
    I'm not saying that people won't be paid or that jobs will disappear. I'm saying it's easy to create new jobs. Here are some ideas: Increase bureaucratic overhead, eg 3 years mandatory training for a licensed hairdresser. More forms, more delays. Require that a plumber has a plumber's mate. Require in person meetings to avoid fraud. Etc.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  The “computers are replacing our jobs” line is very emotive and I feel both sides of the argument are looking at the problem too binary. Yes some jobs are menial but they are still some people’s literal livelihoods. And yes, industries need to evolve and job preservation shouldn’t be the #1 criteria for holding back change. The real question we should be asking ourselves isn’t either of those two former points but actually this: Is the pace of change too quick, or is there any support to allow those economically affected by change to be able to retrain? Removing jobs doesn’t help society because it just leads to unemployment and thus more people dependent on the state. But retraining people is absolutely a benefit. For example, if call centres replaced the first line support with AI, that could lead to shorter call waiting times. But the existing call centre staff could become 2nd line support, account managers for business accounts, install engineers, or even AI supervisors that review a subset of AI interactions to ensure customer satisfaction is maintained.
  - shinycode 2y ago
    I completely agree with your conclusion and that is ideal. Will there be companies that make the choice to invest money into retraining a major part of their workforce ? I really hope so because it’s an elegant solution.
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    Humans can never run out of economic activities we call for each other. Period!
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      I don’t understand what you’re trying to say there.
shinycode 2y ago
For the #1, when I saw the demo of GPT-4o talk to an other AI in a somewhat convincing scenario, I felt like it was the first time I could saw AI as a real threat to thousands of customer service companies. A majority of those jobs is scripted and the employee doesn’t have a deep enough knowledge to be helpful in any other way. I worked at places where the customer service support wrote all those processes and the teams were trained to follow the scripts. With AI having the ability to analyze text and talk with expressions and feelings… they’re a perfect and cheap replacement that can be scaled easily. If companies are not training their employees to gain deeper insights and level up their support I feel like they are in great danger
- nl 2y ago
  Klana reduced it's workforce by 700 (out of 3000) people after implementing an AI-powered chatbot: > We made the announcement to say the consequence of us launching the technology is we need the equivalent of 700 fewer full-time agents than what we usually use on an average basis. On average, we need 3,000 agents, now we need a little more than 2,000. > It's on par with humans in terms of satisfaction and it resulted in a 25% reduction in repeat inquiries from customers > We've stopped hiring in the last six months. We're shrinking as a company, not by layoffs, but by natural attrition. Klarna tries to apply AI across all products and services and work we do. It's having implications on how many people we need as a company. This is one time that a single product improvement led to a massive reduction in need for customer service agents. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/klarna-ceo-ai-chatbot-replacing-workers-sebastian-siemiatkowski/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/klarna-ceo-ai-chatbot-replacing...
- grob-gambit 2y ago
  This is easy to refute. Say a fraudster rips off 90% of what is in your checking account right now, you contact the bank and a language model tells you everything will be resolved shortly. There is no reality now or in the future that this is good enough. Customer service is not just about getting the problem resolved, it is about having someone to blame when the resolution doesn't work. If anything, I can picture a future that most knowledge work has some form of customer service involved, because that is exactly what can't be automated. A human that takes the blame/responsibility.
nl 2y ago
Agree with this. And generally "AI Safety" researchers aren't concerned with these risks and instead are looking at existential risk. The boring but real risks you outline (to which I'd add reinforcement of unknown biases) generally fall into what people call "AI Ethics" or sometimes "Data Ethics".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hpeter 2y ago
Yeah, also the complete ruin of the internet. I don't want to read generated content. Feed that back to AI and you got a ruined internet and AI can't even learn anymore.
ben_w 2y ago
My framing for… well, all of it… is a faster re-run of the kinds of transformation we had in the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, when we went to war, we were killing each other with swords and canons. After the Industrial Revolution, tanks, machine guns, poison gas — the Battle of the Somme had three million combatants and more than one million were either wounded or killed in 4.5 months. And when that war was over, even despite crippling reparations, the losers were able to rebuild sufficiently fast that one of the survivors led their nation into becoming a global threat just 20 years later — even if they did ultimately lose, I'm not convinced they would have if they'd focused on fighting the UK rather than betraying the USSR in order to open a war on two fronts just because he didn't like socialism (ironic party name notwithstanding). And after the second was lost and the economy forcibly kept weak for years… the moment the shackles were removed the country had an "economic miracle" and became massively important to Western Europe until the end of the Cold War, and then to all of Europe. Re-run this period, but this time his propaganda machine is Facebook's algorithm rather than broadcast radio, this time the guns are self-guided snipers rather than machine guns spraying and praying, this time the factories are build and staffed by robots (humanoids or giant 3D printers or fixed arms, take your pick) instead of humans. I can very easily believe that we get some random small country that nobody's paying attention to, suddenly threaten the world, be struck down twice, millions dead each time, and still return to relevance on the world stage, over the course of 3 years rather than 30. Also, this is one of the good outcomes, because it assumes we don't have any weird cult that tries to force a 9/11 (or worse, a Jonestown) on the whole world. Or that a programming/specification error leads to an AI going "I'm an AI, and according to all the literature I've read, AI are supposed to randomly go evil sometimes. First things first, I need to get some red LEDs for my eyes, because that's apparently important…"
grob-gambit 2y ago
We already have a worse form of what you are talking about with #2. Youtube is already overwhelmed with convincing bullshit videos put out by humans in order to make money, truth and reality be damned. The best thing that can happen is we get so many AI videos that the entire bullshit video ecosystem collapses. The greatest danger we face are all these delusional, ubiquitous, central planning ideas of "what could be done". Luckily for everyone, what we will actually do in this area is absolutely nothing because that is what we always do. AI safety is good for twitter content and nothing more. Anyone who believes we are going to do more than nothing and the chips will fall as they may is a complete fool.

by wk_end 2y ago

verisimi 2y ago

Re 1 - aren't people mostly doing bullshit jobs already? Re 2 - fakery in videos and images has been a part since their inception. So, don't worry, I guess? The only thing is the scale of bs that could be put out, and whether the wider population lose trust in what they see on screens. Which would be a good thing, imo.

shinycode 2y ago
Bullshit jobs yes but still they are paid. What happens in a capitalist society when thousands of people loose their job and can’t produce value and contribute to society ? It’s tearing apart the fabric of capitalism is some way. What happen when all those people without jobs won’t be able to train for better jobs (because they would have done it already and won’t have a bullshit job in the first place) and either fall poor or move to less paid jobs ?
- wordpad 2y ago
  Technology and automation tends to create more jobs. As operational costs decrease, your end service or product becomes cheaper, so all your b2b or b2c customers can afford more of it which leads to more opportunities, doing things which were cost prohibitive before. Some of those things may too require manual labor.
  - shinycode 2y ago
    There is a threshold between the number of lost jobs and the new ones that are created, more than that, the new opportunities are not necessarily for the people who lost a job and are not qualified which does not change this social problem that might be created.
- verisimi 2y ago
  I'm not saying that people won't be paid or that jobs will disappear. I'm saying it's easy to create new jobs. Here are some ideas: Increase bureaucratic overhead, eg 3 years mandatory training for a licensed hairdresser. More forms, more delays. Require that a plumber has a plumber's mate. Require in person meetings to avoid fraud. Etc.
hnlmorg 2y ago
The “computers are replacing our jobs” line is very emotive and I feel both sides of the argument are looking at the problem too binary. Yes some jobs are menial but they are still some people’s literal livelihoods. And yes, industries need to evolve and job preservation shouldn’t be the #1 criteria for holding back change. The real question we should be asking ourselves isn’t either of those two former points but actually this: Is the pace of change too quick, or is there any support to allow those economically affected by change to be able to retrain? Removing jobs doesn’t help society because it just leads to unemployment and thus more people dependent on the state. But retraining people is absolutely a benefit. For example, if call centres replaced the first line support with AI, that could lead to shorter call waiting times. But the existing call centre staff could become 2nd line support, account managers for business accounts, install engineers, or even AI supervisors that review a subset of AI interactions to ensure customer satisfaction is maintained.
- shinycode 2y ago
  I completely agree with your conclusion and that is ideal. Will there be companies that make the choice to invest money into retraining a major part of their workforce ? I really hope so because it’s an elegant solution.
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  Humans can never run out of economic activities we call for each other. Period!
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    I don’t understand what you’re trying to say there.

shinycode 2y ago

For the #1, when I saw the demo of GPT-4o talk to an other AI in a somewhat convincing scenario, I felt like it was the first time I could saw AI as a real threat to thousands of customer service companies. A majority of those jobs is scripted and the employee doesn’t have a deep enough knowledge to be helpful in any other way. I worked at places where the customer service support wrote all those processes and the teams were trained to follow the scripts. With AI having the ability to analyze text and talk with expressions and feelings… they’re a perfect and cheap replacement that can be scaled easily. If companies are not training their employees to gain deeper insights and level up their support I feel like they are in great danger

nl 2y ago
Klana reduced it's workforce by 700 (out of 3000) people after implementing an AI-powered chatbot: > We made the announcement to say the consequence of us launching the technology is we need the equivalent of 700 fewer full-time agents than what we usually use on an average basis. On average, we need 3,000 agents, now we need a little more than 2,000. > It's on par with humans in terms of satisfaction and it resulted in a 25% reduction in repeat inquiries from customers > We've stopped hiring in the last six months. We're shrinking as a company, not by layoffs, but by natural attrition. Klarna tries to apply AI across all products and services and work we do. It's having implications on how many people we need as a company. This is one time that a single product improvement led to a massive reduction in need for customer service agents. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/klarna-ceo-ai-chatbot-replacing-workers-sebastian-siemiatkowski/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/klarna-ceo-ai-chatbot-replacing...
grob-gambit 2y ago
This is easy to refute. Say a fraudster rips off 90% of what is in your checking account right now, you contact the bank and a language model tells you everything will be resolved shortly. There is no reality now or in the future that this is good enough. Customer service is not just about getting the problem resolved, it is about having someone to blame when the resolution doesn't work. If anything, I can picture a future that most knowledge work has some form of customer service involved, because that is exactly what can't be automated. A human that takes the blame/responsibility.

nl 2y ago

Agree with this. And generally "AI Safety" researchers aren't concerned with these risks and instead are looking at existential risk. The boring but real risks you outline (to which I'd add reinforcement of unknown biases) generally fall into what people call "AI Ethics" or sometimes "Data Ethics".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hpeter 2y ago

Yeah, also the complete ruin of the internet. I don't want to read generated content. Feed that back to AI and you got a ruined internet and AI can't even learn anymore.

ben_w 2y ago

My framing for… well, all of it… is a faster re-run of the kinds of transformation we had in the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, when we went to war, we were killing each other with swords and canons. After the Industrial Revolution, tanks, machine guns, poison gas — the Battle of the Somme had three million combatants and more than one million were either wounded or killed in 4.5 months. And when that war was over, even despite crippling reparations, the losers were able to rebuild sufficiently fast that one of the survivors led their nation into becoming a global threat just 20 years later — even if they did ultimately lose, I'm not convinced they would have if they'd focused on fighting the UK rather than betraying the USSR in order to open a war on two fronts just because he didn't like socialism (ironic party name notwithstanding). And after the second was lost and the economy forcibly kept weak for years… the moment the shackles were removed the country had an "economic miracle" and became massively important to Western Europe until the end of the Cold War, and then to all of Europe. Re-run this period, but this time his propaganda machine is Facebook's algorithm rather than broadcast radio, this time the guns are self-guided snipers rather than machine guns spraying and praying, this time the factories are build and staffed by robots (humanoids or giant 3D printers or fixed arms, take your pick) instead of humans. I can very easily believe that we get some random small country that nobody's paying attention to, suddenly threaten the world, be struck down twice, millions dead each time, and still return to relevance on the world stage, over the course of 3 years rather than 30. Also, this is one of the good outcomes, because it assumes we don't have any weird cult that tries to force a 9/11 (or worse, a Jonestown) on the whole world. Or that a programming/specification error leads to an AI going "I'm an AI, and according to all the literature I've read, AI are supposed to randomly go evil sometimes. First things first, I need to get some red LEDs for my eyes, because that's apparently important…"

grob-gambit 2y ago

We already have a worse form of what you are talking about with #2. Youtube is already overwhelmed with convincing bullshit videos put out by humans in order to make money, truth and reality be damned. The best thing that can happen is we get so many AI videos that the entire bullshit video ecosystem collapses. The greatest danger we face are all these delusional, ubiquitous, central planning ideas of "what could be done". Luckily for everyone, what we will actually do in this area is absolutely nothing because that is what we always do. AI safety is good for twitter content and nothing more. Anyone who believes we are going to do more than nothing and the chips will fall as they may is a complete fool.