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I think that the main thing people in this thread are missing, is that it's not about math. AI progression is very likely to affect every single thing humans ca
by gpt5 15d ago
I think that the main thing people in this thread are missing, is that it's not about math. AI progression is very likely to affect every single thing humans can do today. Mathematicians are feeling the blow this week, especially as there was wide spread denial in that math community over the capabilities of AI over the last few years, but it's the same problem everywhere.
- octoberfranklin 15d ago[flagged]
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- pvab3 15d agothat is incredibly depressing
- nmeagent 14d agoYep. Perhaps humanity would be better off if we instituted and enforced the notion of "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." It's worth thinking about; just because we can build AI systems doesn't mean we should.
- mxkopy 14d agoThe technology is fine, great even. It’s the rabid greed of venture capital and sociopathic CEOs that try to integrate themselves into every aspect of our lives for profit, that’s the problem. “For 19.99 a month you too can be a world class mathematician!” Meanwhile they are extinct.
- demibabs 14d agoI think it would be depressing in its own way if this technology just ended up being regulated out of existence.
- vips7L 14d agoWhy what benefit has it brought? Mass anxiety?
- Turfie 14d agoYes, and mass excitement
- YeGoblynQueenne 14d agoDon't you mean mass investment?
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- kaffekaka 14d agoYes. In the best possible world AI could enable a much better future, but currently we are on a quite bad trajectory.
- JumpCrisscross 14d ago> what benefit has it brought? I mean, we have a Millenium problem that is most likely solved. Either by OpenAI on its own, OpenAI stealing another's work and finishing it or a researcher using AI to iterate more rapidly than a human alone could.
- vips7L 14d agoWe should be happy that they’re stealing people’s work?
- applfanboysbgon 14d agoThe problem with technology is that the people who have it conquer and kill all the people who don't, essentially ensuring a destructive race to the bottom. You would need a mutual international alliance of nations who not only renounce the technology but also agree to invade anyone who attempts to develop it. Our closest precedent is nuclear weapons, but rather than renouncing them, the US's position is that "only we should have them" and that other people acquiring the same tech they have are valid targets for invasion, and they will obviously apply that notion to any new technology that can be weaponised as well.
- simianparrot 14d agoGoogle which countries have nuclear weapons. Hint: It’s not just the US, it’s also its allies and frenemies who’ve not been invaded. It’s only nutball countries like Iran that get invaded when on the cusp of acquiring it and for good reason.
- FreePalestine1 14d agoTry googling which country was the only country to use nukes. Hint: it's another nutball country. There is strong evidence that Iran was not as close to a nuclear weapon as you say. We will find out the truth eventually, like we found out that the WMDs in Iraq claim was a complete lie.
- deaux 14d agoAh yes, such nutball countries who have apparently been on the cusp for 30 years. Wild definition of cusp for sure.
- pfdietz 14d agoThe consequences of that invasion debunks the claim it was done "for good reason". It seems to have been done without use of reason at all.
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- int_19h 14d agoI would remind you that the fictional society that did this was also described as a feudal monarchy in which a tiny class of nobles exploits the economic output of trillions of people reduced to serfs by controlling all means of interstellar trade. Oh, and they also have legal slavery.
- laughingcurve 14d ago“B-b-b-but muh pop culture trope” Thank you for commenting this. I'm tired of hearing about Dune like its some kind of utopia
- achierius 14d agoDo you seriously think that's that people mean when they quote that?
- int_19h 14d agoOf course they don't, but if you choose to use a work of fiction as an illustration, it comes as a coherent package (assuming the author did a good job at worldbuilding) - you can't just take the bits you like and ignore the bits you don't and still have something coherent.
- jackie293746 14d agoWhat a stupid pov lmao
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- silver_silver 14d agoThe implication in the book is that the exploitation enabled by AI in their history was somehow even worse.
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- munksbeer 14d agoI feel the opposite. Human history is depressing overall. I imagine AI will eventually lead to less scarcity and better lives overall.
- reasonableklout 14d agoI am sure it will lead to more material wealth, but I can’t help but feel pessimistic about the political economy of making millions of people redundant. What leverage will knowledge workers have in the new world?
- rester324 14d agoWell, yeah, while that is true, my impression is that mathematicians (as a community, even though there were outliers) didn't care - not even the slightest - about the impact of LLMs and generative AI, other type of AI and machine learning until it started impacting them. So I have no sympathy for their community at all. They brought all this AI dystopia on us, so they should have voiced their concerns much louder and much much earlier. They should also have shamed their peers who helped these companies much louder and they should have lobbied their institutions and their governments much earlier and much stronger. They should also have protested the direction these companies took at the exact moment when they started using AI for profit.
- reasonableklout 14d agoWe can look at the past and wish we were more clear-eyed about what was happening, just as we can look to the present and ask that we have more empathy for each other going forward. But I don't think it helps anybody to blame the mathematics community for not organizing until they were directly impacted. This is a tidal wave that has caught everyone off guard in <3 years.
- andrepd 14d ago> mathematicians (as a community, even though there were outliers) didn't care - not even the slightest - about the impact of LLMs and generative AI, other type of AI and machine learning until it started impacting them. So I have no sympathy for their community at all. They brought all this AI dystopia on us Wait wait wait. The research mathematicians brought this AI dystopia on us. Not the techbros, not Silicon Valley, not the global financial system and its tentacles, not surveillance capitalism... No, it was the postdocs working on ultrafilters for C(2,3) epimorphisms on symplectic manifolds. That's certainly a take.
- talon8635 14d agoI work at a top tier academic institution and they are completely asleep at the wheel on this topic. They just blindly assume people will keep taking on a potential lifetime of debt when there is a genuine existential (for ed, at the very least… ignoring humanity for the time being) crisis looming