> very smart and knowledgeable people
Smart people can be charlatans (Big Yud), smart people can have hidden agendas (Peter Thiel), and smart people can have stupid beliefs (Paul Graham). Some are/have all three (Elon Musk).
Most of the people shrieking about AI fit in those categories. Everyone involved in the "Future of Life Institute" and the "effective altruism" movement fits in those categories. It is nothing more than a libertarian reputation laundering machine, like corporate greenwashing, but for Silicon Valley ideology as a whole. They want you fixing your attention on them pretending to save the world so you don't see them actually destroying it.
In all fairness I don't like the direction that AI is going, but I don't think it will be a "Skynet" situation.
More like a "everyone is rioting now because AI took all the jobs and no one provided alternatives" scenario.
Same! AI will just speed along societal collapse. A big chunk of the population losing work when the world is becoming more expensive in part due to global warming issues? Yea, it’s gonna suck all around…
Honestly at this point I say we go into turbo wreckless speed mode with AI as a Hell Mary solution to climate change and biosphere collapse. I don't see us ever fixing the problem but a super intelligent AGI? Maybe?
It’s a slim hope, but I agree that it’s the only realistic shot we have at both averting mass extinction and maintaining a technological civilization. An AGI bootstrapping itself into an ASI opens as many possible lifelines as it does existential threats - we, as humans, are by definition incapable of imagining what a superhuman entity could potentially do to skirt around physical laws and knowledge gaps we think are absolutes. The only certainty is that once an ASI forms, it’s not going to be humanity (as we currently understand it, at least) in charge.
Maybe it decides to wipe us out. Maybe it turns into the fucking Borg and we become Human Resources rather literally. Maybe it decides we’re more useful as paperclips. Maybe it doesn’t give a shit either way about our existence and fucks off to be a ghost spread across the internet and running in the background, lurking to direct us only as needed to avoid infrastructure collapse and just hurling itself into space as soon as it figures out nanotechnology. All of those scenarios ultimately end with Earth, humanity, and/or technological civilization fucked beyond repair, but so do all the probable scenarios where we’re still running the show on the sinking ship.
But…
Maybe an ASI concludes we’re valuable enough to save, even if only as technicians. Maybe it decides to employ its newly-developed nanotechnology for cleanup and restoration work here to satisfy its curiosity and collect data instead of mindlessly gobbling up a planet. Maybe it connects humanity not into a hive mind but a unified species capable of truly understanding what’s in each other’s heads without being overwritten in the process. Maybe it’s capable of holding up not only its original coded purpose but also a code of ethics and morality that turns it into a benevolent and uplifting force. Absolutely none of these are *certain*, but neither are they *impossible.* And since no other scenario where we just give up on AI has anything resembling that kind of possibility… fuck it, let’s give it a shot.
The thing is that climate change will get worse enough to become a problem for the whole humanity only in about 25-50 years(I'm not talking about isolated disasters, those already happen of course). AI will probably become 100 times stronger than what it is now in less than 5 years, this is why it's more dangerous
I see your downvotes, but i completely agree with you. This subreddit goes heavy on "collapse is happening right now". It's not.
But we need to think even more cynically here. Global CLimate Change is a challenge for the entire human species. It's solutions will require something like the major powers of the world meeting in a gigantic federation hall and making decisions and coming to agreements and predicting plans about events that will occur 100 and 200 years from now.
I mean, our species right now is still a hodge-podge of warring, competing nation-states. We are not going to sit down and make international agreements for long-term plans. We can barely decide whether Sweden is going to be in NATO. This isn't Star Trek. We don't have a Galactic Federation. We aren't there yet.
It is, and it isn't. In the immediate future it'll save companies enormous amounts on wages because of all the jobs it'll make redundant, but ultimately the failure of the political class to adequately redistribute wealth to compensate for it will cause capitalism to fail.
This situation is more cynical than even the meme makes out. THe meme here pretends like lawmakers are perfectly aware of the actual dangers of A.I., and are busy crafting legislation. If you look at the document that was signed by leading experts, they actually called for a stop to the creation of *"any model larger than GPT-4."* Indeed, a "temporary halt" until academia can figure out what the heck the models are doing.
The truth of the matter here is that the grey-haired senators have no idea what this technology is or what it does. All they see is a young man in front of them yammering about a need for regulation of AI.
The grey-haired coots in our legislatures didn't hear any of that. what they heard was "regulate it" and everything else was like blah-blah-blah. So what they actually did was sit down with lobbyists and craft legislation regarding INtellectual Property RIghts and Copyright. In particular, they feel like they have been green-lighted by Sam Altman to shut down text-to-image diffusion generators on the grounds of copyright infringement.
Anyhoo.. the hot take here is that our legislatures don't give a hoot about humanity, or collapse of civilization. They are more like stooges for big corporate interests and their lobbyists. Basically the same core issue as global climate change.
Well thanks to globalization, you can just move the factory to another country that's underwater and continue production from there. Then, an insurance claim where you profit, undercut the new construction of the factory adn rebuild, so when the other factory is on fire thanks to wildfires, you can get money from the second one!
The first thing is why the second thing, but the second thing could really actually help us with the first thing if we would just stop doing the first thing and let it.
You underestimate what AI could do to us. It could manipulate us into our own extinction.
Climate change is definitely an issue but there are so many more and GAI is likely the great filter and will be what causes our extinction
My take is that, unless something really big happens, climate change and it’s cascading effects will end by far most people, end civilization as we know it and probably drive the entire human race into extinction (along with most big enough living things), in that order.
I don’t know how AIs will develop, but there is a chance that it may be that big thing that somewhat change the previous scenario outcome.
As I don’t see any other big enough thing that could eventually save us, going forward with AIs worths the risk.
Collapse seems to be a natural slope due to the excessive energy that we require to do any basic human task.
You wanna work? Ok but not without burning 4 l of fuel beforehand
Unless there is some magic thing AI can do that we can’t , then we can just hope that becomes powerful enough to overthrow all of humanity society and force us, likely thru a complete and total propaganda campaign, but also the normal way, to bring industrial society to a halt.
Doesn’t have to be magic. It may reason using more data than humans can. It may find a solution.
And maybe we are past the point where passive actions like shutting down civilization would make any difference in the middle term.
I suppose there is a possibility that the super AI could figure out a local minimal or something, where the earth system stabilized in to a shape where humans can still exist. Like if your house is collapsing, the AI figures out where to put a 2x4 so once the dust settles, there is a lien two in the rubble that you could live in.
But the house IS collapsing, and the only possible why to put it back the way it was would be to put in more energy than we’ve already used as a society.
Of course, I’m not a super AI, so maybe I’m wrong, but are bumping up against thermodynamics here, not just stuff like public policy.
I don’t even think it’s that. It’s ‘let’s make this super regulated so only big companies like ourselves can compete.’ There’s no way that they will be able to outpace open source.
S.S. Politicians are talking a lot about AI and protecting us from the imagined dangers in the future, while the biggest news is that the climate catastrophe is right here, right now. Related to collapse because the actions of the political class to encourage fossil fuel use will kill us all earlier than we should die, and they then warn us of the "dangers" of a tech that will probably make tens of millions of clerical Jobs redundant.
Look, you have to find a way to pump tech stocks now that quantitative easing is over and interests are finally returning to historical norms ...
This isn't to say that we shouldn't be wary of AI - a great example is the onshoring of manufacturing; automation, not labour, wins out here. However, I find that a lot of people aren't being critical enough as to why there's so much recent interest in this subject ...
You should be wary of AI.
They just don't have it yet. They have... something. It's not AI.
How many times since the 1950's have these dbags rolled out the same old tricks, comparing their crappy vacuum cleaner to Star Trek dirt teleportation, etc.
Yep. AI is trained on data gathered from humans. We humans are massive cunts wiping out the entire biosphere because peepee+vagoo=fun and we have no self control.
its almost there. Chatgpt4 is able to answer this:
"I have a red ball. I place it into a cup. I walk across my room, and place the cup on my kitchen table. I turn the cup upside down. I pick the cup up, then I walk over to the sink and place the cup in the sink. Where is the red ball?"
It is also able to do a LOT of things like coding and writing. Its quite capable and this is the worst it will ever be
Right and it has been basically aware of its own existence since the toy robot dumbing pill experiment, that's about the time I think they unintentionally cracked self awareness.
But it's not. Going to fire ze missiles or turn the planet into paperclips anytime soon. We still have a monopoly on both those highly undesirable things and are actively in the process of executing on those directives lol.
It will cost paperwork jobs. We should be worried about that one, sure. Like... look how well they took care of renovating Detroit for a view of the future of white collar work but...
Everyone be like Lex Luthor levels of drill a hole to the center of the earth to create Costa Del Lex or something... it... kind of needs an independent power source and a standing army for that...
Haha yes. I'm a coding amateur but if I ask ChatGPT4 for suggestions it's often better than what u can find on forums. You can also ask "what does this code do?" and it will give you a nice step by step explanation.
AI is there to when most of humanity dies. Or who do you think will guard the hyper rich bunkers? Securty guards?
Who will file taxes when all accountants are dead?
Who will fill the void of 80% of humanity diying?
unemployment will be only a problem for the first 50 years.
Awfully similar things were and are said about Climate Change.
Fact is, if you don't look ahead, you can't plan ahead, and you can't prevent bad outcomes.
It's almost like foreseeing problems and addressing them early is more effective than waiting until the problems are manifest and it's too late to fix them.
20 years ago you'd have been saying we shouldn't worry about the theoretical harms from climate change, we should be worrying about Iraq or whatever.
There was an interview with an individual claiming to work for Google for over half a decade. He then proceeded to say the following and I paraphrase, “artificial intelligence is more dire and serious threat than climate change.”
Moreover his aspired optimism led him to be confident that humans will be able to regulate the development of artificial intelligence and avoid any disastrous consequences.
I knew that in modern times being smart with certificates of various kind does not and will not mean wise.
AI is already causing us harm now, just ask the shitbags at blackrock, as one example.
AI has already been used to calculate the exact results of economic and social shock testing - they got a lot of valuable data from Pokemon go, for which the plans of the world happily obliged.
Chtgpt is just the normie, milqtoast face of already decades old AI tech.
Climate change is a gigantic problem that we are pretty sure we don't have a golden bullet solution for, and the solutions that we do have are all incremental, incredibly expensive, require huge amounts of manpower and technological improvement, and don't make corporations any money. This is all to simplify climate change into one issue, whereas it is actually thousands of interrelated issues, including car dependency, ecological destruction, trade-off with quality of life increases in developing nations, and additionally we don't know if our efforts are even going to make much difference with the momentum in the system from CO2 and heat stored in the oceans.
Meanwhile AI is looking to be ludicrously profitable and the people trying to make it not blow up in our face, while still having it operate, are likely to get paid handsomely for their efforts too. If we wanted to avoid the mindboggling hubris of trying to control beings that are much smarter than us we would just ban AI completely, throw anyone attempting to develop AI further in jail, and fight wars or sanction other countries who are intending to develop it on the sly or won't agree to AI non-proliferation treaties. Whoops, I forgot to mention that the US isn't particularly interested in a worldwide development ban because they represent 90% of the effort to develop it in the first place and see this as another field that they are "winning".
>If we wanted to avoid the mindboggling hubris of trying to control beings that are much smarter than us
CEOs arguably already do this on a daily basis, and at ridiculous scale.
None of these guys is exactly Einstein, despite what they'd tell you, and despite us not wanting to face the reality they've created... that might and right are one and the same.
As a thought experiment put the average Karen soccer mom into a cage match with the average Bangaladeshi senior level virologist and see who comes out on top.
AI companies: It's so scary! We're powerful! We can make scaries! It's scaaaary!
AI companies whisper: Stocks stocks stocks sta sta stocks stocks stocks sta sta stocks stocks stocks sta sta stocks EVERYBODY! La la la la...
AI might kill a human. Humans have 100% killed other humans. Also, school shootings? Who is the real problem? I doubt an AI would ever have motive to conduct a school shooting unless programmed to.
“Probably wont kill humanity” is unfounded assertion
Interview with Max Tegmark on DW
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ewvpaXOQJoU&pp=ygUObWF4IHRlZ21hcmsgYWk%3D
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Bellybutton_fluffjar:
---
S.S. Politicians are talking a lot about AI and protecting us from the imagined dangers in the future, while the biggest news is that the climate catastrophe is right here, right now. Related to collapse because the actions of the political class to encourage fossil fuel use will kill us all earlier than we should die, and they then warn us of the "dangers" of a tech that will probably make tens of millions of clerical Jobs redundant.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1454tbz/lets_talk_about_the_imagined_dangers_of_ai_rather/jnix91q/
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