Most of these idealistic pieces about AI seem to come from senior, established or wealthy people who aren't very exposed to the labor market. In that view, the question of AI and its transformation is almost philosophical like this piece.
It's more a question of survival if you're labor though. It's very transformative tech but it's coming at a time when the scales are heavily tilted in favor of capital over labor, the government is the most corrupt its ever been and AI is going to make that much more extreme. It doesn't matter how amazing the technology is if all the benefits are going to accrue to the same few people who already have everything and destroy everyone else's bargaining power.
While it is certainly right, I also find the take to be a bit fatalistic.
Nothing in this world is set in stone and everything can be changed if someone just injects enough energy into doing so.
This usually doesn't happen, as things often aren't as bad as they may seem, because lethargy and inertia are a thing and of course because self-preservation is an instinctual thing in humans. It could though.
As long as the status quo isn't defended by an infinitely scaling robotic enforcement war machine, physical leverage is always available. Just - depending on the scenario - at a steep price, of course.
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A lot of the bad in the world hinges on effective PR, insisting that the bad is inevitable and resistance is futile. You're supposed to feel this exact despair and choose to do nothing.
Don't support the bad causes by merely replicating it. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't be talking about these real differences you've pointed out, but we should probably do so differently.)
Most people who oppose AI don’t oppose it because it’s so good it can replace us. They oppose it because, in their own words, they think it’s hype and it doesn’t work. The first step is to collectively agree that yes, AI is powerful and it can replace us at work. Then we can speak about how to protect livelihood. How does one even have a discussion when the other side doesn’t even believe in the capabilities of AI?
I 'oppose' Ai for exactly the reasons parent mentions, seems like most common folks over long term will lose much more than they could ever gain from it. Societal loss by definition, on massive scale.
Don't reduce opposition to something you like to some primitive irrational luddites, thats cheap and doesn't represent reality.
"AI is not as good as it is hyped up to be" and "AI is 'good enough' for the overlords to replace some amount of workers, or at least to leverage into depressing their wages significantly and permanently" are not mutually exclusive claims. You don't have to buy the hype to agree that it is dangerous.
A chimp with a gun is not dangerous because of how good a shot he is.
I share the optimism here. Connecting dots across knowledge, lived experience and purpose remains, to me, a deeply human pursuit. The more AI discovers, the more possibilities we have to connect those discoveries to questions that matter to us.
Unfortunately I don’t see much evidence of AI connecting dots. What’s interesting to me is that this is more of a run time or inference problem, instead of emergent from training itself.
For example, if there were hypothetically some dots to be connected between the world war and some geological event - you need to make AI brute force and do an O(N) scan at run time. But it wouldn’t have learned it during training. Why?
Most of these idealistic pieces about AI seem to come from senior, established or wealthy people who aren't very exposed to the labor market. In that view, the question of AI and its transformation is almost philosophical like this piece.
It's more a question of survival if you're labor though. It's very transformative tech but it's coming at a time when the scales are heavily tilted in favor of capital over labor, the government is the most corrupt its ever been and AI is going to make that much more extreme. It doesn't matter how amazing the technology is if all the benefits are going to accrue to the same few people who already have everything and destroy everyone else's bargaining power.
While it is certainly right, I also find the take to be a bit fatalistic. Nothing in this world is set in stone and everything can be changed if someone just injects enough energy into doing so.
This usually doesn't happen, as things often aren't as bad as they may seem, because lethargy and inertia are a thing and of course because self-preservation is an instinctual thing in humans. It could though.
As long as the status quo isn't defended by an infinitely scaling robotic enforcement war machine, physical leverage is always available. Just - depending on the scenario - at a steep price, of course.
___
A lot of the bad in the world hinges on effective PR, insisting that the bad is inevitable and resistance is futile. You're supposed to feel this exact despair and choose to do nothing.
Don't support the bad causes by merely replicating it. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't be talking about these real differences you've pointed out, but we should probably do so differently.)
Is mathematics research even a job you pursue if survival is the question?
Most people who oppose AI don’t oppose it because it’s so good it can replace us. They oppose it because, in their own words, they think it’s hype and it doesn’t work. The first step is to collectively agree that yes, AI is powerful and it can replace us at work. Then we can speak about how to protect livelihood. How does one even have a discussion when the other side doesn’t even believe in the capabilities of AI?
> They oppose it because, in their own words, they think it’s hype and it doesn’t work.
This was maybe true a year ago, but is certainly not true any more.
The laments these days almost always begin with the assertion that the AI does work.
Mostly it's about funneling even more wealth into the bands of the richest and the incredible environmental penalty.
I 'oppose' Ai for exactly the reasons parent mentions, seems like most common folks over long term will lose much more than they could ever gain from it. Societal loss by definition, on massive scale.
Don't reduce opposition to something you like to some primitive irrational luddites, thats cheap and doesn't represent reality.
"AI is not as good as it is hyped up to be" and "AI is 'good enough' for the overlords to replace some amount of workers, or at least to leverage into depressing their wages significantly and permanently" are not mutually exclusive claims. You don't have to buy the hype to agree that it is dangerous.
A chimp with a gun is not dangerous because of how good a shot he is.
I’m just waiting for blue chip company boards to start replacing CROs with agents. I’m thinking it will happen within the next 2 years
I share the optimism here. Connecting dots across knowledge, lived experience and purpose remains, to me, a deeply human pursuit. The more AI discovers, the more possibilities we have to connect those discoveries to questions that matter to us.
Unfortunately I don’t see much evidence of AI connecting dots. What’s interesting to me is that this is more of a run time or inference problem, instead of emergent from training itself.
For example, if there were hypothetically some dots to be connected between the world war and some geological event - you need to make AI brute force and do an O(N) scan at run time. But it wouldn’t have learned it during training. Why?
Buzzard is such a good writer. Read it all the way to the end - it gets (even) better as it goes along.
You might say his prose is very lean.
(Sorry (?))
As a non mathematician I think it could be kind of interesting to see what the AI can come up with.
The shape of five stages of grief is something I see recurring in AI discourse. It also happened with programmers - they are currently at bargaining.
Some are still at denial. “It’s all hype like NFT and crypto, the bubble will pop soon”.
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