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AI is clearly not the problem here. Our preexisting society and massive wealth inequality is. I'll add though that many, many open models of high quality that s
by rockemsockem 2y ago
AI is clearly not the problem here. Our preexisting society and massive wealth inequality is. I'll add though that many, many open models of high quality that smaller companies can build on exist and these models and companies are likely to be the most harmed by over-the-top regulation. OpenAI will survive jumping through hoops just fine.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago> Our preexisting society and massive wealth inequality It seems like anything that will make this problem worse is a net negative for society If the only way to make it a positive is to change everything underneath it, then...
- aperrien 2y agoIf your subfloor is rotting away, do you replace it or put new carpeting on top of it?
- funciton 2y agoThe city is polluted. Do we replace the entire city or install air filters? It's mostly a matter of scale.
- xboxnolifes 2y agoI'd like air filters, but AI is not air filters in this analogy.
- disqard 2y agoIs GenAI more like cigarettes ("cool factor", but harmful in the long run), or is it more like cars (noisy and creates pollution, but super-convenient and therefore something most people should adopt)? I still struggle with this every day. Maybe I'll figure it out someday soon...
- bluefirebrand 2y agoIf the carpet is AI, and the subfloor is everything else, then we're already in the process of putting the new carpet overtop of it And there's a lot of people telling us we can't afford the time or money to replace the subfloor first
- aperrien 2y agoI understand in this case the subfloor is unrestrained and unregulated capitalism.
- rockemsockem 2y agoThose two problems are some of the largest we have at the moment. They screw everything up. We should not optimize for a shitty existence. I actually think making the problem worse is a good side-effect. The larger and more direct a problem is impacting us the greater impetus for fixing it.
- hackinthebochs 2y agoThe casualness some people talk about putting large segments of society's lives and livelihoods on the brink never ceases to amaze me.
- rockemsockem 2y agoI really wish our society was able to solve problems before that become enormous, but that just doesn't seem to be something that happens very often. :/
- hackinthebochs 2y agoAbsolutely. We're incapable of the foresight and coordination needed to stave off these disasters. It doesn't help that "progress" has become the idol of our secular religion. Slowing down or stopping is just sacrilegious to modernity.
- sweetheart 2y agoI completely agree. I have many, many friends who are commercial illustrators, and many of them are very anti-AI now due to popularity of DALLE. They feel that they've been cheated out of a job. I'm an artist and a software engineer, though, so I'm in the same boat of having had my output used to train LLMs. But the outrage, at least in the conversations I've had, seems to always be rooted in a fear about economic insecurity if these models take their jobs. To me, this doesn't mean the issue is that we should expect our output to not be used to train models, but that we should expect our governments to support us in the event that large swathes of professionals find their jobs suddenly far less profitable.
- gsibble 2y agoThat would require some kind of profit sharing agreement from the companies that benefit from replacing employees to redistribute to society, which frankly I cannot ever seen happening. This is that "tax" I hinted at in my article.
- smegger001 2y agoAnd professional musicians in a previous century felt cheated out of a job by the phonograph. Time and tech change. Such is life. Painters hated photography when it was invented. Jobs are distroy and new ones made by tech. No one is crying about the typest in typing pools loosing jobs to word processor. Its just artists turn this time.
- JohnFen 2y agoYou're not wrong, but the heartlessness of that sentiment is striking. Real people get hurt. That in the long run we'll adapt as a society doesn't mean we should just write off those whose lives are ruined in the now. A little empathy is a good thing here.
- smegger001 2y agoYet we tell the coal miners to go take job retraining because photovoltaic are a better power source than burning carbon. It suck for people being replaced but is better for the whole. Should we subsidise buggy whip manufactures because they were obsoleted. No one is well served by trying to fight the tides.
- Justsignedup 2y agoWhenever a company is gleeful for regulation this is where my mind goes. Do they see regulation as an extra moat? We have the cash and years head start. It's love government procurement. Companies love it because once they are in, they rarely have competition and can charge extra.