3 ms·

No, it really is not, because that is a quasi-religious belief based on a hope for a particular future event at the end of a long chain of very improbable event

No, it really is not, because that is a quasi-religious belief based on a hope for a particular future event at the end of a long chain of very improbable events. (Don't get me wrong: I've been reading science fiction for half a century and I wish it may happen. I devoutly hope it might. I want it to happen. The difference is, I don't think it will.) Whereas the article is attempting to be factual.

natch 2y ago
Your point was well put and would have landed well five years ago, but today the unstoppable (short of global, civilization-ending catastrophe) march toward ubiquitous smart robots refutes that this is a chain of unlikely events. The built in incentives for technology to improve will continue after we get smart robots. This will change things. In a couple of decades it will be very hard to argue that they aren’t human 2.0 or <n>.0. And if we still insist, they might decide for us. I don’t fervently hope for this but I am very curious how it plays out. The opposite view to yours is valid: Us not arriving at human 2.0 would only be possible by a long chain of improbable events. And in this view those who think we will continue as we are (cancer-susceptible meat bags) are the ones taking a quasi religious position.
- lproven 2y ago
  No, it's not, and your point continues your faith-based belief. I am 57. I've been working in this industry for 36 years. The computer world is no closer to machine intelligence today than it was in 1988 when I walked into my first job. It's no closer than in 1981 when I touched my first microcomputer. LLM bots are not in any way intelligent, but they do expose a type of flawed non-analytical thinking in humans that is easily persuaded that a machine is intelligent if it can emit coherent sentences. I think you are totally wrong and that this will be abundantly apparent in a decade, perhaps in half a decade. The next few years will usher in the latest AI winter, just as they did a generation ago and a generation before that.
- lproven 2y ago
  P.S. > (short of global, civilization-ending catastrophe) We are well on our way to that, and almost certainly past the point of no return. https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7 https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
  - natch 2y ago
    Good link, terrifying read, thank you.

natch 2y ago

Your point was well put and would have landed well five years ago, but today the unstoppable (short of global, civilization-ending catastrophe) march toward ubiquitous smart robots refutes that this is a chain of unlikely events. The built in incentives for technology to improve will continue after we get smart robots. This will change things. In a couple of decades it will be very hard to argue that they aren’t human 2.0 or <n>.0. And if we still insist, they might decide for us. I don’t fervently hope for this but I am very curious how it plays out. The opposite view to yours is valid: Us not arriving at human 2.0 would only be possible by a long chain of improbable events. And in this view those who think we will continue as we are (cancer-susceptible meat bags) are the ones taking a quasi religious position.

lproven 2y ago
No, it's not, and your point continues your faith-based belief. I am 57. I've been working in this industry for 36 years. The computer world is no closer to machine intelligence today than it was in 1988 when I walked into my first job. It's no closer than in 1981 when I touched my first microcomputer. LLM bots are not in any way intelligent, but they do expose a type of flawed non-analytical thinking in humans that is easily persuaded that a machine is intelligent if it can emit coherent sentences. I think you are totally wrong and that this will be abundantly apparent in a decade, perhaps in half a decade. The next few years will usher in the latest AI winter, just as they did a generation ago and a generation before that.
lproven 2y ago
P.S. > (short of global, civilization-ending catastrophe) We are well on our way to that, and almost certainly past the point of no return. https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7 https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
- natch 2y ago
  Good link, terrifying read, thank you.