20 ms·

Something tells me aspects of living in the next few decades driven by technology acceleration will feel like being lobotomized while conscious and watching one

Something tells me aspects of living in the next few decades driven by technology acceleration will feel like being lobotomized while conscious and watching oneself the whole time. Like yes, we are able to think of thousands of hypothetical ways technology (even those inferior to full AGI) could go off the rails in a catastrophic way and post and discuss these scenarios endlessly... and yet it doesn't result in a slowing or stopping of the progress leading there. All it takes is a single group with enough collective intelligence and breakthroughs and the next AI will be delivered to our doorstop whether or not we asked for it. It reminds me of the time I read books in my youth and only 20 years later realized the authors of some of those books were trying to deliver a important life messages to a teenager undergoing crucial changes, all of which would be painfully relevant to the current adult me... and yet the whole time they fell on deaf ears. Like the message was right there but I did not have the emotional/perceptive intelligence to pick up on and internalize it for too long.

Nasrudith 2y ago
I'm sorry, but when the has it ever been the case that you can just say "no" to the world developing a new technology? You might as well say we can prevent climate change by just saying no to the outcome!
- estebank 2y ago
  We no longer use asbestos as a flame flame retardant in houses. We no longer use chemicals harmful to the ozone layer on spray cans. We no longer use lead in gasoline. We figured those things were bad, and changed what we did. If evidence is available ahead of time that something is harmful, it shouldn't be controversial to avoid widespread adoption.
  - josefritzishere 2y ago
    I don't think it is safe to assume the use patterns of tangible things extend to intangible things; nor the patterns of goods to that of services. I just see this as a conclusory leap.
    - estebank 2y ago
      I was replying to > when the has it ever been the case that you can just say "no" to the world developing a new technology?
      - jpkw 2y ago
        In each of those examples, we said "no" decades after they were developed, and many had to suffer in order for us to get to the stage of saying "no".
  - bombcar 2y ago
    None of those things were said "no" to before they were used and in a wide-spread manner. The closest might be nuclear power, we know we can do it, we did it, but lots of places said no to it, and further developments have vastly slowed down.
    - estebank 2y ago
      In none of those did we know about the adverse effects. Those were observed afterwards, and it would have taken longer to know if they hadn't been adopted. But that doesn't invalidate the idea that we have followed "if something bad, collectively don't use it" at various points in time.
      - Aloisius 2y ago
        We were well aware of the adverse effects of tetraethyl lead before lead gasoline was first sold. The man who invented it got lead poisoning during its development, multiple people died of lead poisoning in a pilot plant manufacturing it and public health and medical authorities warned against prior to it being available for sale to the general public.
    - rat87 2y ago
      And for nuclear power many would say that rejecting it was a huge mistake
  - tw1984 2y ago
    [flagged]
- rurp 2y ago
  This happens in many ways with potentially catastrophic tech. There are many formal agreements and strong norms against building ever more lethal nuclear arsenals or existentially dangerous gain of function research. The current system is far from perfect, the world could literally be destroyed today based on the actions of a handful of people, but it's the best we have come up with so far. If we as a society keep developing potential existential threats to ourselves without mitigating them then we are destined for disaster eventually.
  - realce 2y ago
    John C Lilly had a concept called the "bad program" that was like an internal, natural, subconscious antithetical force that lives in us all. It seduces or lures the individual into harming themselves one way or another - in his case it "tricked" him into taking a vitamin injection improperly, leading to a stroke, even though he knew how to administer the shot expertly. At some level, there's a disaster-seeking function inside us all acting as an evolutionary propellant. You might make an argument that "AI" is an evolutionary embodiment of our conscious minds that's designed to escape these more subconscious trappings.
deadbabe 2y ago
Anyone born in the next few decades will disagree with you. They will find this new world comfortable and rich with content. They will never understand what your problem is.
- mouse_ 2y ago
  What makes you think that? That's what the last generations said about us and it turned out to not be true.
  - hcurtiss 2y ago
    Relative to them, we most certainly are. By every objective metric, humanity has flourished in "the last generations." I get it that people are stressed today -- people have always been stressed. It is, in a sense, fundamental to the human condition.
    - jmcgough 2y ago
      Easy for you to say that. The political party running this country ran on a platform of the eradication of me and my friends. I can't legally/safely use public restrooms in several states, including some which have paid bounties for reporting. Things will continue to improve for the wealthy and powerful, but in a lot of ways have become worse for the poor and vulnerable. When I was a kid, there was this grand utopian ideal for the internet. Now it's fragmented, locked in walled gardens where people are psychologically abused for advertising dollars. AI could be a force for good, but Google has already ended its ban on use in weapons and is selling it to the IAF, and Palantir is busy finding ways to use it for surveillance.
      - hcurtiss 2y ago
        [flagged]
        jmcgough 2y ago
        Sure. Their word, not mine: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/cpac-transgenderism-daily-wire-michael-knowles-b2294252.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
timewizard 2y ago
People like to pretend that AGI isn't going to cost money to run. The power budget alone is something no one is contemplating. Technology doesn't accelerate endlessly. Only our transistor spacing does. These two are not the same thing.
- dr_dshiv 2y ago
  Power budget will drop like a rock over time. Exponential increases in cost (and power) for next-level AI and exponential decreases for the cost (and power) of current level AI.
- bigbones 2y ago
  More efficient hardware mappings will happen, and as a sibling comment says, power requirements will drop like a rock. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hz4cs-hGew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hz4cs-hGew for some idea of what that might eventually look like
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  The power budget alone is something no one is contemplating. It is very hard to find a discussion about the growth and development of AI that doesn't discuss the issues around power budget. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/white-house-backs-nuclear-energy-for-data-centers https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/whit... https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2025/01/14/executive-order-on-advancing-united-states-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-infrastructure/ https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/president... In building domestic AI infrastructure, our Nation will also advance its leadership in the clean energy technologies needed to power the future economy, including geothermal, solar, wind, and nuclear energy; foster a vibrant, competitive, and open technology ecosystem in the United States, in which small companies can compete alongside large ones; maintain low consumer electricity prices; and help ensure that the development of AI infrastructure benefits the workers building it and communities near it.
gretch 2y ago
> Like yes, we are able to think of thousands of hypothetical ways technology (even those inferior to full AGI) could go off the rails in a catastrophic way and post and discuss these scenarios endlessly... and yet it doesn't result in a slowing or stopping of the progress leading there. The problem is sifting through all of the doomsayer false positives to get to any amount of cogent advice. At the invention of the printing press, there were people with this same energy. Obviously those people were wrong. And if we had taken their "lesson", then human society would be in a much worse place. Is this new wave of criticism about AI/AGI valid? We will only really know in retrospect.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  > Is this new wave of criticism about AI/AGI valid? We will only really know in retrospect. All of the focus on AGI is a distraction. I think it's important for a state to declare it's intent with a technology. The alternative is arguing the idea that technology advances autonomously, independent of human interactions, values, or ideas, which is, in my opinion, an incredibly naïve notion. I would rather have a state say "we won't use this technology for evil" than a state that says nothing at all and simply allows the businesses to develop in any direction their greed leads them. It's entirely valid to critique the uses of a technology, because "AI" (the goalpost shifting for marketing purposes to make that name apply to chatbots is a stretch honestly) is a technology like any other, like a landmine, like a synthetic virus, etc. In the same way, it's valid to criticize an actor for purposely hiding their intentions with a technology.
  - circuit10 2y ago
    The idea is that by its very nature as an agent that attempts to make the best action to achieve a goal, assuming it can get good enough, the best action will be to improve itself so it can better achieve its goal. In fact we humans are doing the same thing, we can't really improve our intelligence directly but we are trying to create AI to achieve our goals, and there's no reason that the AI itself wouldn't do so assuming it's capable and we don't attempt to stop it, and currently we don't really know how to reliably control it. We have absolutely no idea how to specify human values in a robust way which is what we would need to figure out to build this safely
zoogeny 2y ago
I think the alternative is just as chilling in some sense. You don't want to be stuck in a country that outlaws AI (especially from other countries) if that means you will be uncompetitive in the new emerging world. The future is going to be hard, why would we choose to tie one hand behind our back? There is a difference between being careful and being fearful.
- latexr 2y ago
  > if that means you will be uncompetitive in the new emerging world. (…) There is a difference between being careful and being fearful. I’m so sick of that word. “You need to be competitive”, “you need to innovate”. Bullshit. You want to talk about fear? “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant. They’re not being competitive or innovative, they’re sucking you dry of as much value as they can. We all need to take a breath. Stop and think for a moment. You can literally eat food which grows from the ground and make a shelter with a handful of planks and nails. Humanity survived and thrived before all this unfettered consumption, we don’t need to kill ourselves for more. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant If a society is okay accepting a lower standard of living and sovereign subservience, then sure, competition doesn't matter. But if America and China have AI and nukes and Europe doesn't, one side gets to call the shots and the other has to listen.
    - latexr 2y ago
      > a lower standard of living We better start really defining what that means, because it has become quite clear that all this “progress” is not leading to better lives. We’re literally going to kill ourselves with climate change. > AI and nukes Those two things aren’t remotely comparable.
pj_mukh 2y ago
"We are able to think of thousands of hypothetical ways technology could go off the rails in a catastrophic way" Am I the only one here saying that this is no reason to preemptively pass legislation? That just seems crazy to me. Imagined horrors aren't real horrors? I disagree with this administrations approach, I think we should be vigilant, and keeping people who stand to gain so much from the tech in the room, doesn't seem like a good idea, but other than that, I haven't seen any real reason to do more than wait and be vigilant?
- saulpw 2y ago
  Predicted horrors aren't real horrors either. But maybe we don't have to wait until the horrors are realized and embedded into the fabric of society before we apply the brakes a bit. How else could we possibly be vigilant? Reading news articles and wringing our hands?
  - XorNot 2y ago
    There's a difference between the trolley speeding towards someone tied to the tracks, versus someone tied to the tracks but the trolley is stationary, and to someone standing at the station looking at the bare ground and saying "if we built some tracks and put a trolley on it, and then tied someone to the tracks the trolley would kill them! We need to regulate against this dangerous trolley technology before it's too late". Then instead someone builds a freeway because it turns out the area wasn't well suited to a rail trolley.
    - saulpw 2y ago
      The tracks have been laid by social media and smartphones, we've all been tied to the tracks for awhile and some people have definitely been run over by trolleys, and the people building this next batch of monster trolleys are accelerationists.
  - talldrinkofwhat 2y ago
    I think it's worth noting that we can't even combat the real horrors. The fox is already in the henhouse. The quote that sticks with me is: "We've already lost our first encounter with AI" - I think Yuval Hurari. Algorithms heavily thumbed the scales on our social contracts. Where did all of the division come from? Why is extremism blossoming everywhere? Because it gets clicks. Maybe we're just better observing what's been going on under the hood all along, but it seems like there's about 350 million little cans of gasoline dousing American eyeballs. Make Algorithms Govern All indeed.
Gud 2y ago
I wish your post wasn’t so accurate. Yet, I can’t help but be hopeful about the future. We have to be, right?
alfalfasprout 2y ago
The harsh reality is that a culture of selfishness has become too widespread. Too many people (especially in tech) don't really care what happens to others as long as they get rich off it. They'll happily throw others under the bus and refuse to share wellbeing even in their own communities. It's the inevitable result of low-trust societies infiltrating high trust ones. And it means that as technologies with dangerous implications for society become more available there's enough people willing to prostitute themselves out to work on society's downfall that there's no realistic hope of the train stopping.
- greenimpala 2y ago
  Profit over ethics, self-interest over communal well-being, and competition over cooperation. You're describing capitalism.
  - tmnvix 2y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think the issue is a little more nuanced. Capitalism obviously has advantages and disadvantages. Regulation can address many disadvantages if we are willing. Unfortunately, I think a particular (mostly western) fetish for privileging individuals over communities has been wrongly extended to capital itself (e.g. corporations recognised as entities with rights similar to - and sometimes over-and-above - those of a person). We have literally created monsters. There is no reason we had to go this far. Capitalism doesn't have to mean the preeminence of capital above all else. It needs to be put back in its place and not necessarily discarded. I am certain there are better ways to practice capitalism. They probably involve balancing it out with some other 'isms.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - FpUser 2y ago
      >"I think a particular (mostly western) fetish for privileging individuals over communities has been wrongly extended to capital itself (e.g. corporations recognised as entities with rights similar to - and sometimes over-and-above - those of a person)" Possible remedy will be to tie corporation to a person - person (or many if there are few owners and directors) become personally liable for everything corporation does.
idiotsecant 2y ago
Let's say we decide, today, that we want to prevent an AI armageddon that we assume is coming. How do you do that?
debbiedowner 2y ago
Which books?
chasd00 2y ago
How to you prevent advancements in software? The barrier to entry is so low, you just need a cheap laptop and an internet connection and then day 1 you're right on the cutting edge driving innovation. Current AI requires a lot of hardware for training but anyone with a laptop and inet connection can still do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms. If a law is passed saying "AI advancement is illegal" how can it ever be enforced?
- palmotea 2y ago
  > How to you prevent advancements in software? The barrier to entry is so low, you just need a cheap laptop and an internet connection and then day 1 you're right on the cutting edge driving innovation. Current AI requires a lot of hardware for training but anyone with a laptop and inet connection can still do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms. > If a law is passed saying "AI advancement is illegal" how can it ever be enforced? Like any other real-life law? Software engineers (a class which I'm a recovering member of) seem to have a pretty common misunderstanding about the law: that it needs to be air tight like secure software, otherwise it's pointless. That's just not true. So the way you "prevent advancements in [AI] software" is you 1) punish them severely when detected and 2) restrict access to information and specialized hardware to create a barrier (see: nuclear weapons proliferation, "born secret" facts, CSAM). #1 is sufficient to control all the important legitimate actors in society (e.g. corporations, university researchers), and #2 creates a big barrier to everyone else who may be tempted to not play by the rules. It won't be perfect (see: the drug war), but it's not like cartel chemists are top-notch, so it doesn't have to be. I don't think the software engineering equivalent of a cartel chemist will be able to "do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms" with only a "laptop and inet connection." Would the technology disappear? No. Will it be pushed to the margins? Yes. Is that enough? Also yes.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Punish them severely when detected? Nice plan. What if they aren't in your jurisdiction? Are you going to punish them severely when they're in China? North Korea? Somalia? Good luck with that. The problem is that the information can go anywhere that has an internet connection, and the enforcement can't.
yibg 2y ago
This is true for all new technology of significant potential impact right? Similar discussions were had about nuclear technology I'm sure. The reality is, with increased access to information and accelerated pace of discovery in various fields, we'll come across things that has the potential for great harm. Be it AI, some genetical engineering causing a plague, nuclear fallout etc. We don't necessarily know what the harm / benefits are all going to be ahead of time, so we only really have 2 choices: 1. try to stop / slow down such advances. Not sure this is even possible in the long run 2. try to get a good grasp of potential dangers and figure out ways to mitigate / control them
tim333 2y ago
> living in the next few decades driven by technology acceleration will feel like being lobotomized while conscious and watching oneself the whole time Seems a bit negative. I think it'll be cool.
jowea 2y ago
I think that international competition is one of the greatest guarantees that trying to stand athwart history and yelling stop never works in the long term.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway9980 2y ago
Everything you are describing sounds like the phenomenon of government in the United States. If we replace a human powered bureaucracy with a technofeudalist dystopia it will feel the same, only faster. We are upgrading the gears that turn the grist mill. Stupid, incoherent, faster.
hotpepperishot 2y ago
[dead]
taurknaut 2y ago
The most likely catastrophe remains giving capital outsized influence on our society. It's the easiest to imagine, and the idea of a capitalist making a money-making machine that can actually think for itself and wields actual power feels very difficult to imagine. (Granted, maybe Musk himself really is that dumb. Inshallah, I guess.) Humans are easy to manipulate and most can just be bought with sufficient money. The last thing the super wealthy want will be to rely on software that has individual agency outside the will of the owner. Meanwhile the sort of destruction this will cause is already happening around us in the form of a highly financially insecure populace, supply chain instability, climate change, automated bombings of "terrorists", "smart" fences to keep out criminals (let's just ignore the fact you're more likely to get murdered by your citizen neighbor), the reduction of journalism to either propaganda or atomized hand-wringing about mental health and individual agency, and a kafkaesque system of algorithmicly-priced rents for every sector of life. Is the algorithm "a reasonable value to both the consumer and producer"? No, it will be "how much blood can I squeeze from this peasant". Hell kroger is already playing around with dynamic-pricing-via-facial-recognition at checkout. I always thought skynet was a great metaphor for the market, a violent and inhuman thing that we created that dominates our lives and dictates the terms of our day to day life and magically thinks for itself and threatens the very future of this planet, our species, and our loved ones, and is somehow out of popular control. Not actual commentary on a realistic scenario about the dangers of ai. Sometimes these metaphors work out great and Terminator is a great example. Maybe the AI we've been fearing is already here. I think for the most part the enshittification of everything will just accelerate and it'll be pretty obvious who benefits and who doesn't.
- Ray20 2y ago
  >The most likely catastrophe remains giving capital outsized influence on our society. No, in this regard, capital is ABSOLUTELY harmless. I mean, if the capital get outsized influence on our society, in the WORST case it will turn into a government. And we already have it.
mozvalentin 2y ago
The next season of Black Mirror is just going to be international news coverage.
casey2 2y ago
Unfalsifiable psuedophilosophy shouldn't be mistaken for science nor legislative advise. I don't care what your cult thinks, religion and government should stay separate.
logicchains 2y ago
The biggest problem with AI is people with poor understanding of computer science developing an almost religious belief that increasing vaguely defined "intelligence" will somehow translate into godlike power. There's actually a field devoted to the rigorous study of what "intelligence" can achieve, called complexity theory, and it makes it clear that many of the problems that AI cultists expect "superintelligence" to solve (problems it'd need to solve to be "godlike") are not tractable even if every atom in the observable universe was combined into a giant computer.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Lucky us we life in times, were single individuals and states soon will veto via nukes on civilization.
orangebread 2y ago
I think the core of what people are scared of is fear itself. Or put more eloquently by some dead guy "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself". If we don't want to live in a world where these incredibly powerful technologies are leveraged for nefarious purposes there needs to be emotional maturity and growth amongst humanity. Those who are able to make these growths need to hold the irresponsible ones accountable (with empathy). The promise of AI is that these incredibly powerful technologies will be disseminated to the masses and Open AI know this is the next step and it's why they're trying to keep a grip on their market share. With the advent of nVidia's project digits and powerful open source models like deepseek, it's very clear how this trajectory will go. Just wanted to add some of this to the convo. Cheers.
sharpshadow 2y ago
Wait where are those dangerous AI outcomes? Did we manage to prevent them or did they never occur?

Nasrudith 2y ago

I'm sorry, but when the has it ever been the case that you can just say "no" to the world developing a new technology? You might as well say we can prevent climate change by just saying no to the outcome!

estebank 2y ago
We no longer use asbestos as a flame flame retardant in houses. We no longer use chemicals harmful to the ozone layer on spray cans. We no longer use lead in gasoline. We figured those things were bad, and changed what we did. If evidence is available ahead of time that something is harmful, it shouldn't be controversial to avoid widespread adoption.
- josefritzishere 2y ago
  I don't think it is safe to assume the use patterns of tangible things extend to intangible things; nor the patterns of goods to that of services. I just see this as a conclusory leap.
  - estebank 2y ago
    I was replying to > when the has it ever been the case that you can just say "no" to the world developing a new technology?
    - jpkw 2y ago
      In each of those examples, we said "no" decades after they were developed, and many had to suffer in order for us to get to the stage of saying "no".
- bombcar 2y ago
  None of those things were said "no" to before they were used and in a wide-spread manner. The closest might be nuclear power, we know we can do it, we did it, but lots of places said no to it, and further developments have vastly slowed down.
  - estebank 2y ago
    In none of those did we know about the adverse effects. Those were observed afterwards, and it would have taken longer to know if they hadn't been adopted. But that doesn't invalidate the idea that we have followed "if something bad, collectively don't use it" at various points in time.
    - Aloisius 2y ago
      We were well aware of the adverse effects of tetraethyl lead before lead gasoline was first sold. The man who invented it got lead poisoning during its development, multiple people died of lead poisoning in a pilot plant manufacturing it and public health and medical authorities warned against prior to it being available for sale to the general public.
  - rat87 2y ago
    And for nuclear power many would say that rejecting it was a huge mistake
- tw1984 2y ago
  [flagged]
rurp 2y ago
This happens in many ways with potentially catastrophic tech. There are many formal agreements and strong norms against building ever more lethal nuclear arsenals or existentially dangerous gain of function research. The current system is far from perfect, the world could literally be destroyed today based on the actions of a handful of people, but it's the best we have come up with so far. If we as a society keep developing potential existential threats to ourselves without mitigating them then we are destined for disaster eventually.
- realce 2y ago
  John C Lilly had a concept called the "bad program" that was like an internal, natural, subconscious antithetical force that lives in us all. It seduces or lures the individual into harming themselves one way or another - in his case it "tricked" him into taking a vitamin injection improperly, leading to a stroke, even though he knew how to administer the shot expertly. At some level, there's a disaster-seeking function inside us all acting as an evolutionary propellant. You might make an argument that "AI" is an evolutionary embodiment of our conscious minds that's designed to escape these more subconscious trappings.

deadbabe 2y ago

Anyone born in the next few decades will disagree with you. They will find this new world comfortable and rich with content. They will never understand what your problem is.

mouse_ 2y ago
What makes you think that? That's what the last generations said about us and it turned out to not be true.
- hcurtiss 2y ago
  Relative to them, we most certainly are. By every objective metric, humanity has flourished in "the last generations." I get it that people are stressed today -- people have always been stressed. It is, in a sense, fundamental to the human condition.
  - jmcgough 2y ago
    Easy for you to say that. The political party running this country ran on a platform of the eradication of me and my friends. I can't legally/safely use public restrooms in several states, including some which have paid bounties for reporting. Things will continue to improve for the wealthy and powerful, but in a lot of ways have become worse for the poor and vulnerable. When I was a kid, there was this grand utopian ideal for the internet. Now it's fragmented, locked in walled gardens where people are psychologically abused for advertising dollars. AI could be a force for good, but Google has already ended its ban on use in weapons and is selling it to the IAF, and Palantir is busy finding ways to use it for surveillance.
    - hcurtiss 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - jmcgough 2y ago
        Sure. Their word, not mine: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/cpac-transgenderism-daily-wire-michael-knowles-b2294252.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

timewizard 2y ago

People like to pretend that AGI isn't going to cost money to run. The power budget alone is something no one is contemplating. Technology doesn't accelerate endlessly. Only our transistor spacing does. These two are not the same thing.

dr_dshiv 2y ago
Power budget will drop like a rock over time. Exponential increases in cost (and power) for next-level AI and exponential decreases for the cost (and power) of current level AI.
bigbones 2y ago
More efficient hardware mappings will happen, and as a sibling comment says, power requirements will drop like a rock. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hz4cs-hGew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hz4cs-hGew for some idea of what that might eventually look like
WillPostForFood 2y ago
The power budget alone is something no one is contemplating. It is very hard to find a discussion about the growth and development of AI that doesn't discuss the issues around power budget. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/white-house-backs-nuclear-energy-for-data-centers https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/whit... https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2025/01/14/executive-order-on-advancing-united-states-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-infrastructure/ https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/president... In building domestic AI infrastructure, our Nation will also advance its leadership in the clean energy technologies needed to power the future economy, including geothermal, solar, wind, and nuclear energy; foster a vibrant, competitive, and open technology ecosystem in the United States, in which small companies can compete alongside large ones; maintain low consumer electricity prices; and help ensure that the development of AI infrastructure benefits the workers building it and communities near it.

gretch 2y ago

> Like yes, we are able to think of thousands of hypothetical ways technology (even those inferior to full AGI) could go off the rails in a catastrophic way and post and discuss these scenarios endlessly... and yet it doesn't result in a slowing or stopping of the progress leading there. The problem is sifting through all of the doomsayer false positives to get to any amount of cogent advice. At the invention of the printing press, there were people with this same energy. Obviously those people were wrong. And if we had taken their "lesson", then human society would be in a much worse place. Is this new wave of criticism about AI/AGI valid? We will only really know in retrospect.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
> Is this new wave of criticism about AI/AGI valid? We will only really know in retrospect. All of the focus on AGI is a distraction. I think it's important for a state to declare it's intent with a technology. The alternative is arguing the idea that technology advances autonomously, independent of human interactions, values, or ideas, which is, in my opinion, an incredibly naïve notion. I would rather have a state say "we won't use this technology for evil" than a state that says nothing at all and simply allows the businesses to develop in any direction their greed leads them. It's entirely valid to critique the uses of a technology, because "AI" (the goalpost shifting for marketing purposes to make that name apply to chatbots is a stretch honestly) is a technology like any other, like a landmine, like a synthetic virus, etc. In the same way, it's valid to criticize an actor for purposely hiding their intentions with a technology.
- circuit10 2y ago
  The idea is that by its very nature as an agent that attempts to make the best action to achieve a goal, assuming it can get good enough, the best action will be to improve itself so it can better achieve its goal. In fact we humans are doing the same thing, we can't really improve our intelligence directly but we are trying to create AI to achieve our goals, and there's no reason that the AI itself wouldn't do so assuming it's capable and we don't attempt to stop it, and currently we don't really know how to reliably control it. We have absolutely no idea how to specify human values in a robust way which is what we would need to figure out to build this safely

zoogeny 2y ago

I think the alternative is just as chilling in some sense. You don't want to be stuck in a country that outlaws AI (especially from other countries) if that means you will be uncompetitive in the new emerging world. The future is going to be hard, why would we choose to tie one hand behind our back? There is a difference between being careful and being fearful.

latexr 2y ago
> if that means you will be uncompetitive in the new emerging world. (…) There is a difference between being careful and being fearful. I’m so sick of that word. “You need to be competitive”, “you need to innovate”. Bullshit. You want to talk about fear? “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant. They’re not being competitive or innovative, they’re sucking you dry of as much value as they can. We all need to take a breath. Stop and think for a moment. You can literally eat food which grows from the ground and make a shelter with a handful of planks and nails. Humanity survived and thrived before all this unfettered consumption, we don’t need to kill ourselves for more. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > “Competitiveness” and “innovation” are the words the unscrupulous people at the top use to instil fear on everyone else and run rampant If a society is okay accepting a lower standard of living and sovereign subservience, then sure, competition doesn't matter. But if America and China have AI and nukes and Europe doesn't, one side gets to call the shots and the other has to listen.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > a lower standard of living We better start really defining what that means, because it has become quite clear that all this “progress” is not leading to better lives. We’re literally going to kill ourselves with climate change. > AI and nukes Those two things aren’t remotely comparable.

pj_mukh 2y ago

"We are able to think of thousands of hypothetical ways technology could go off the rails in a catastrophic way" Am I the only one here saying that this is no reason to preemptively pass legislation? That just seems crazy to me. Imagined horrors aren't real horrors? I disagree with this administrations approach, I think we should be vigilant, and keeping people who stand to gain so much from the tech in the room, doesn't seem like a good idea, but other than that, I haven't seen any real reason to do more than wait and be vigilant?

saulpw 2y ago
Predicted horrors aren't real horrors either. But maybe we don't have to wait until the horrors are realized and embedded into the fabric of society before we apply the brakes a bit. How else could we possibly be vigilant? Reading news articles and wringing our hands?
- XorNot 2y ago
  There's a difference between the trolley speeding towards someone tied to the tracks, versus someone tied to the tracks but the trolley is stationary, and to someone standing at the station looking at the bare ground and saying "if we built some tracks and put a trolley on it, and then tied someone to the tracks the trolley would kill them! We need to regulate against this dangerous trolley technology before it's too late". Then instead someone builds a freeway because it turns out the area wasn't well suited to a rail trolley.
  - saulpw 2y ago
    The tracks have been laid by social media and smartphones, we've all been tied to the tracks for awhile and some people have definitely been run over by trolleys, and the people building this next batch of monster trolleys are accelerationists.
- talldrinkofwhat 2y ago
  I think it's worth noting that we can't even combat the real horrors. The fox is already in the henhouse. The quote that sticks with me is: "We've already lost our first encounter with AI" - I think Yuval Hurari. Algorithms heavily thumbed the scales on our social contracts. Where did all of the division come from? Why is extremism blossoming everywhere? Because it gets clicks. Maybe we're just better observing what's been going on under the hood all along, but it seems like there's about 350 million little cans of gasoline dousing American eyeballs. Make Algorithms Govern All indeed.

Gud 2y ago

I wish your post wasn’t so accurate. Yet, I can’t help but be hopeful about the future. We have to be, right?

alfalfasprout 2y ago

The harsh reality is that a culture of selfishness has become too widespread. Too many people (especially in tech) don't really care what happens to others as long as they get rich off it. They'll happily throw others under the bus and refuse to share wellbeing even in their own communities. It's the inevitable result of low-trust societies infiltrating high trust ones. And it means that as technologies with dangerous implications for society become more available there's enough people willing to prostitute themselves out to work on society's downfall that there's no realistic hope of the train stopping.

greenimpala 2y ago
Profit over ethics, self-interest over communal well-being, and competition over cooperation. You're describing capitalism.
- tmnvix 2y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think the issue is a little more nuanced. Capitalism obviously has advantages and disadvantages. Regulation can address many disadvantages if we are willing. Unfortunately, I think a particular (mostly western) fetish for privileging individuals over communities has been wrongly extended to capital itself (e.g. corporations recognised as entities with rights similar to - and sometimes over-and-above - those of a person). We have literally created monsters. There is no reason we had to go this far. Capitalism doesn't have to mean the preeminence of capital above all else. It needs to be put back in its place and not necessarily discarded. I am certain there are better ways to practice capitalism. They probably involve balancing it out with some other 'isms.
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  - FpUser 2y ago
    >"I think a particular (mostly western) fetish for privileging individuals over communities has been wrongly extended to capital itself (e.g. corporations recognised as entities with rights similar to - and sometimes over-and-above - those of a person)" Possible remedy will be to tie corporation to a person - person (or many if there are few owners and directors) become personally liable for everything corporation does.

idiotsecant 2y ago

Let's say we decide, today, that we want to prevent an AI armageddon that we assume is coming. How do you do that?

debbiedowner 2y ago

Which books?

chasd00 2y ago

How to you prevent advancements in software? The barrier to entry is so low, you just need a cheap laptop and an internet connection and then day 1 you're right on the cutting edge driving innovation. Current AI requires a lot of hardware for training but anyone with a laptop and inet connection can still do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms. If a law is passed saying "AI advancement is illegal" how can it ever be enforced?

palmotea 2y ago
> How to you prevent advancements in software? The barrier to entry is so low, you just need a cheap laptop and an internet connection and then day 1 you're right on the cutting edge driving innovation. Current AI requires a lot of hardware for training but anyone with a laptop and inet connection can still do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms. > If a law is passed saying "AI advancement is illegal" how can it ever be enforced? Like any other real-life law? Software engineers (a class which I'm a recovering member of) seem to have a pretty common misunderstanding about the law: that it needs to be air tight like secure software, otherwise it's pointless. That's just not true. So the way you "prevent advancements in [AI] software" is you 1) punish them severely when detected and 2) restrict access to information and specialized hardware to create a barrier (see: nuclear weapons proliferation, "born secret" facts, CSAM). #1 is sufficient to control all the important legitimate actors in society (e.g. corporations, university researchers), and #2 creates a big barrier to everyone else who may be tempted to not play by the rules. It won't be perfect (see: the drug war), but it's not like cartel chemists are top-notch, so it doesn't have to be. I don't think the software engineering equivalent of a cartel chemist will be able to "do cutting edge research and innovate with architectures and algorithms" with only a "laptop and inet connection." Would the technology disappear? No. Will it be pushed to the margins? Yes. Is that enough? Also yes.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Punish them severely when detected? Nice plan. What if they aren't in your jurisdiction? Are you going to punish them severely when they're in China? North Korea? Somalia? Good luck with that. The problem is that the information can go anywhere that has an internet connection, and the enforcement can't.

yibg 2y ago

This is true for all new technology of significant potential impact right? Similar discussions were had about nuclear technology I'm sure. The reality is, with increased access to information and accelerated pace of discovery in various fields, we'll come across things that has the potential for great harm. Be it AI, some genetical engineering causing a plague, nuclear fallout etc. We don't necessarily know what the harm / benefits are all going to be ahead of time, so we only really have 2 choices: 1. try to stop / slow down such advances. Not sure this is even possible in the long run 2. try to get a good grasp of potential dangers and figure out ways to mitigate / control them

tim333 2y ago

> living in the next few decades driven by technology acceleration will feel like being lobotomized while conscious and watching oneself the whole time Seems a bit negative. I think it'll be cool.

jowea 2y ago

I think that international competition is one of the greatest guarantees that trying to stand athwart history and yelling stop never works in the long term.

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throwaway9980 2y ago

Everything you are describing sounds like the phenomenon of government in the United States. If we replace a human powered bureaucracy with a technofeudalist dystopia it will feel the same, only faster. We are upgrading the gears that turn the grist mill. Stupid, incoherent, faster.

hotpepperishot 2y ago

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taurknaut 2y ago

The most likely catastrophe remains giving capital outsized influence on our society. It's the easiest to imagine, and the idea of a capitalist making a money-making machine that can actually think for itself and wields actual power feels very difficult to imagine. (Granted, maybe Musk himself really is that dumb. Inshallah, I guess.) Humans are easy to manipulate and most can just be bought with sufficient money. The last thing the super wealthy want will be to rely on software that has individual agency outside the will of the owner. Meanwhile the sort of destruction this will cause is already happening around us in the form of a highly financially insecure populace, supply chain instability, climate change, automated bombings of "terrorists", "smart" fences to keep out criminals (let's just ignore the fact you're more likely to get murdered by your citizen neighbor), the reduction of journalism to either propaganda or atomized hand-wringing about mental health and individual agency, and a kafkaesque system of algorithmicly-priced rents for every sector of life. Is the algorithm "a reasonable value to both the consumer and producer"? No, it will be "how much blood can I squeeze from this peasant". Hell kroger is already playing around with dynamic-pricing-via-facial-recognition at checkout. I always thought skynet was a great metaphor for the market, a violent and inhuman thing that we created that dominates our lives and dictates the terms of our day to day life and magically thinks for itself and threatens the very future of this planet, our species, and our loved ones, and is somehow out of popular control. Not actual commentary on a realistic scenario about the dangers of ai. Sometimes these metaphors work out great and Terminator is a great example. Maybe the AI we've been fearing is already here. I think for the most part the enshittification of everything will just accelerate and it'll be pretty obvious who benefits and who doesn't.

Ray20 2y ago
>The most likely catastrophe remains giving capital outsized influence on our society. No, in this regard, capital is ABSOLUTELY harmless. I mean, if the capital get outsized influence on our society, in the WORST case it will turn into a government. And we already have it.

mozvalentin 2y ago

The next season of Black Mirror is just going to be international news coverage.

casey2 2y ago

Unfalsifiable psuedophilosophy shouldn't be mistaken for science nor legislative advise. I don't care what your cult thinks, religion and government should stay separate.

logicchains 2y ago

The biggest problem with AI is people with poor understanding of computer science developing an almost religious belief that increasing vaguely defined "intelligence" will somehow translate into godlike power. There's actually a field devoted to the rigorous study of what "intelligence" can achieve, called complexity theory, and it makes it clear that many of the problems that AI cultists expect "superintelligence" to solve (problems it'd need to solve to be "godlike") are not tractable even if every atom in the observable universe was combined into a giant computer.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Lucky us we life in times, were single individuals and states soon will veto via nukes on civilization.

orangebread 2y ago

I think the core of what people are scared of is fear itself. Or put more eloquently by some dead guy "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself". If we don't want to live in a world where these incredibly powerful technologies are leveraged for nefarious purposes there needs to be emotional maturity and growth amongst humanity. Those who are able to make these growths need to hold the irresponsible ones accountable (with empathy). The promise of AI is that these incredibly powerful technologies will be disseminated to the masses and Open AI know this is the next step and it's why they're trying to keep a grip on their market share. With the advent of nVidia's project digits and powerful open source models like deepseek, it's very clear how this trajectory will go. Just wanted to add some of this to the convo. Cheers.

sharpshadow 2y ago

Wait where are those dangerous AI outcomes? Did we manage to prevent them or did they never occur?