4 ms·

I believe that the root cause for the "fatigue" and tension around AI is much more embedded in the societal context. US (and the rest of the western world) cit

by maciejzj 11mo ago

I believe that the root cause for the "fatigue" and tension around AI is much more embedded in the societal context. US (and the rest of the western world) citizens face real life problems in youth employment, social/political instability, unaffordable housing, internet addiction (yes, I believe that it is real problem that people spend 5 hours on their phones daily) and social atomisation. Meanwhile all resources are put in a rush into building technology that does not fundamentally improve people's well being. Advanced societies have had pretty good capabilities of doing writing, design, coding, searching information, etc. Now we are pouring all available resources, at any cost, to automate these processes even more. The costs of this operation are tremendous and it doesn't yield any results that improve everyday lives. In 2020 there was a ton of UI/UX/graphics companies that could produce copious amount of visual content for the society while providing work to many people. Now we are about to automate this process and be able to generate infinite amount of graphics on demand. To what end? Were our capabilities to create graphics any kind of bottleneck before? I don't think so. The stock market and tech leadership are completely decoupled from the problems that the majority of people faces. The real effect of AI at hand is to commoditise intellectual work that previously functioned well dispersed in society. This does not bring benefit to the majority of people.

gwbas1c 11mo ago
IMO: We should be using AI for the common good, IE, lower the cost of living, increase our living standards, improve health, improve access to food and shelter, ect. I still have yet to see any LLM that appears to do that. They all seem to allow me to have a conversation with data; IE, a better Google search, or a quick way to make clip art.
- AlecSchueler 11mo ago
  > We should be using AI for the common good, IE, lower the cost of living, increase our living standards, improve health, improve access to food and shelter, ect. I think the issue is that these aren't really technical problems, they're social problems.
jimmaswell 11mo ago
I can't express how disappointed I am in the societal backlash to AI. It used to rightfully be something we looked forward to. I've been fascinated by it for as long as I've known what a computer was, from watching CyberChase as a kid in the early 2000s to reading the Asimov books to making my own silly sentence-mixing chatbot with a cult following on IRC. I never thought a computer would pass the turing test in our lifetime (my bot did by accident sometimes, which was always amusing). I spoke to an AI professor who's been at this since the 80s and he never thought a computer would pass the turing test in our lifetime. And for it to happen and the reaction to be anything short of thunderous applause betrays a society bankrupt of imagination, forward thinking, and wonder. We let pearl-clutching loom smashers hijack the narrative to the point where a computer making a drawing based on natural language is "slop" and you're a bad person if you like it, instead of it being the coolest thing in the fucking world which it actually is. We have chatbots that can do extraordinary feats of research and pattern-matching but all we can do is cluck over some idiot giving himself bromide poisoning. The future is here and it's absolutely amazing, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. I can't wait for this "AI users DNI", "This video proudly made less efficiently than it could have been because I'm afraid of AI" social zietgeist to die off.
- hunterpayne 11mo ago
  > instead of it being the coolest thing in the fucking world Some people think a M-16 is the coolest thing in the world. Nobody thinks we should be handing them out to school children. The reaction is because most people think AI will compound our current problems. Look at video generation. Not only does it put a lot of people out of work, it also breaks the ability of people to post a video as proof of something. Now we have to try to determine if the very real looking video is from life or a neural net. That is very dangerous and the tech firms released it without any real thought or discussion as to the effect it would have. They make illegal arms dealers look thoughtful by comparison. You ignoring this (and other effects) is just childish.
  - soco 11mo ago
    Even the rationale is looking to me childish "coolest thing in the fuckin world" come on, we're adults here, adults who actually care about the world, and not to woo the world, but to keep it and pass it to our kids in the best shape. Or at least in a better shape, and I believe right now we're failing at it, we are failing our children by throwing at them a flaming molotov instead of a playing ball.

gwbas1c 11mo ago

IMO: We should be using AI for the common good, IE, lower the cost of living, increase our living standards, improve health, improve access to food and shelter, ect. I still have yet to see any LLM that appears to do that. They all seem to allow me to have a conversation with data; IE, a better Google search, or a quick way to make clip art.

AlecSchueler 11mo ago
> We should be using AI for the common good, IE, lower the cost of living, increase our living standards, improve health, improve access to food and shelter, ect. I think the issue is that these aren't really technical problems, they're social problems.

jimmaswell 11mo ago

I can't express how disappointed I am in the societal backlash to AI. It used to rightfully be something we looked forward to. I've been fascinated by it for as long as I've known what a computer was, from watching CyberChase as a kid in the early 2000s to reading the Asimov books to making my own silly sentence-mixing chatbot with a cult following on IRC. I never thought a computer would pass the turing test in our lifetime (my bot did by accident sometimes, which was always amusing). I spoke to an AI professor who's been at this since the 80s and he never thought a computer would pass the turing test in our lifetime. And for it to happen and the reaction to be anything short of thunderous applause betrays a society bankrupt of imagination, forward thinking, and wonder. We let pearl-clutching loom smashers hijack the narrative to the point where a computer making a drawing based on natural language is "slop" and you're a bad person if you like it, instead of it being the coolest thing in the fucking world which it actually is. We have chatbots that can do extraordinary feats of research and pattern-matching but all we can do is cluck over some idiot giving himself bromide poisoning. The future is here and it's absolutely amazing, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. I can't wait for this "AI users DNI", "This video proudly made less efficiently than it could have been because I'm afraid of AI" social zietgeist to die off.

hunterpayne 11mo ago
> instead of it being the coolest thing in the fucking world Some people think a M-16 is the coolest thing in the world. Nobody thinks we should be handing them out to school children. The reaction is because most people think AI will compound our current problems. Look at video generation. Not only does it put a lot of people out of work, it also breaks the ability of people to post a video as proof of something. Now we have to try to determine if the very real looking video is from life or a neural net. That is very dangerous and the tech firms released it without any real thought or discussion as to the effect it would have. They make illegal arms dealers look thoughtful by comparison. You ignoring this (and other effects) is just childish.
- soco 11mo ago
  Even the rationale is looking to me childish "coolest thing in the fuckin world" come on, we're adults here, adults who actually care about the world, and not to woo the world, but to keep it and pass it to our kids in the best shape. Or at least in a better shape, and I believe right now we're failing at it, we are failing our children by throwing at them a flaming molotov instead of a playing ball.