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>This would be a good counter if this were all that this technology is being used for. Do you hold the position that a thing is bad because it is possible to d
by Lerc 1y ago
>This would be a good counter if this were all that this technology is being used for.
Do you hold the position that a thing is bad because it is possible to do harm, or that it is predominantly causing harm?
Most criticisms cite examples demonstrating the existence of harm because proving existence requires a single example. Calculating the sum of an effect is much harder.
Even if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful, it does not stand that the problem is with the what is being attempted. Consider healthcare, a few hundred years ago much of healthcare did more harm than good, charlatans and frauds were commonplace. Was that because healthcare itself was a bad thing? Was it a mistake to even go down that path?
- adamc 1y agoI don't think the path was fixed by healthcare, per se. It was fixed by adopting scientific investigation. So I think your argument is kind of misleading.
- Lerc 1y agoWhy misleading? I am advocating adopting methods of improvement rather than abandoning the persuit of beneficial results. I think science was just a part of the solution to healthcare, much of the advance was also in what was considered allowable or ethical. There remains a great deal of harmful medical practices that are used today in places where regulation is weak. Science has done little to stop those harms. The advances that led to the requirement for a scientific backing were social. That those practices persist in some places is not a scientific issue but a social one.
- adamc 1y agoBecause adopting having "doctors", for example, isn't really what made for better healthcare. We had doctors for centuries (arguably millenia) who were useful in very limited cases, and probably harmful most of the rest of the time. What made for better healthcare was changing the way we investigated problems. That ultimately enabled "doctors" to be quite useful. But the fact that the "profession" existed earlier is not what allowed it to bloom.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago> Do you hold the position that a thing is bad because it is possible to do harm, or that it is predominantly causing harm? Mere moments later... > Even if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful So let's just skip the first part then, you conceded it's predominantly harmful. On this we agree. > it does not stand that the problem is with the what is being attempted. Well, it's not a logical 1-to-1, no. But I would say if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful, then revisiting what is being attempted isn't the worst idea. > Consider healthcare, a few hundred years ago much of healthcare did more harm than good, charlatans and frauds were commonplace. Was that because healthcare itself was a bad thing? Was it a mistake to even go down that path? If OpenAI and company were still pure research projects, this would hold some amount of water, even if I would still disagree with it. However that exempts the context that OpenAI is actively (and under threat of financial ruin) turning itself into a for-profit business, and is actively selling it's products, as are it's competitors, to firms in the market with the explicit notion of reducing headcount for the same productivity. This doesn't need a citation, look at any AI product marketing and you see a consistent theme is the removal of human labor and/or interaction.
- Lerc 1y ago>> Even if the current impact of a field is predominantly harmful >So let's just skip the first part then, you conceded it's predominantly harmful. On this we agree. I'm afraid if you interpret that statement as a concession of a fact, I don't think we can have a productive conversation.