this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Most of the U.S. adults also don't understand what AI is in the slightest. What do the opinions of people who are not in the slightest educated on the matter affect lol.
"What do the opinions of people who are not in the slightest educated on the matter affect"
Judging by the elected leaders of the USA: quite a lot, in fact.
You don’t have to understand how an atomic bomb works to know it’s dangerous
Prime example. Atomic bombs are dangerous and they seem like a bad thing. But then you realize that, counter to our intuition, nuclear weapons have created peace and security in the world.
No country with nukes has been invaded. No world wars have happened since the invention of nukes. Countries with nukes don't fight each other directly.
Ukraine had nukes, gave them up, promptly invaded by Russia.
Things that seem dangerous aren't always dangerous. Things that seem safe aren't always safe. More often though, technology has good sides and bad sides. AI does and will continue to have pros and cons.
Atomic bomb are also dangerous because if someone end up launching one by mistake, all hell is gonna break loose. This has almost happened multiple times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
We've just been lucky so far.
And then there are questionable state leaders who may even use them willingly. Like Putin, or Kim, maybe even Trump.
…and the development and use of nuclear power has been one of the most important developments in civil infrastructure in the last century.
Nuclear isn’t categorically free from the potential to harm, but it can also do a whole hell of a lot for humanity if used the right way. We understand it enough to know how to use it carefully and safely in civil applications.
We’ll probably get to the same place with ML… eventually. Right now, everyone’s just throwing tons of random problems at it to see what sticks, which is not what one could call responsible use - particularly when outputs are used in a widespread sense in production environments.
Alright, when the AI takes my job and I can’t feed my family while the billionaires add another digit to their net worth I’ll consider the pros.
There’s about 0% chance we reform society for AI, it will just funnel more wealth to the rich. People claim it will open new jobs but I don’t see it.
People have had the same concerns about automation since basically forever. Automation isn't the problem. The people who use automation to perpetuate the systems that work against us will continue to find creative ways to exploit us with or without AI. Those people and those systems-- they are the problem. And believe it or not, that problem is imminently solvable.
It's fair to compare but you can't dismiss concerns based on that.
Past automation often removed duplicate or superfluous work type things, AI removes thought work. It's a fundamentally different kind of automation than we've seen before.
It will make many things cheaper to do and easier to start some businesses, but it will also decimate workers. It's also not something that's generally available to lower classes to wield yet.
It's here but I don't have to be optimistic.
I fully agree with everything you said. My point is more that if we look at AI as the culprit, we're missing the point. If I may examine the language you are using a bit-
Employers are the agents. They remove thought work.
Employers will decimate workers.
It would be smart to enact legislation that will mitigate the damage employers enabled by AI will do to wokers, but they will continue to exploit us regardless.
Using language that makes AI the antagonist helps tyrants deflect their overwhelming share of the blame. The responsible parties are people, who can and should be held accountable.
I don't think you're wrong either, but at the same time it's not feasible for everyone to be their own agent and it's not feasible to say employers can't use AI.
I don't know what the solution is, but I'm prepping for a sudden career change in the next few years.
In general, progressive taxation can do quite a lot to ease the widening wealth gap. One such strategy is the robot tax. There exist other, perhaps better, legislative solutions, but more broadly we need to restore voting rights and diminish the influence the wealthy have on our political system so that smart, progressive legislation doesn't have to fight tooth and nail against lobbying and other mechanisms that tie wealth to political influence.
What'a your solution to Automation reducing the number of workers needed in several industries?
I want to avoid using the term solution, not least of all because implementation has its own set of challenges, but some of us used to dream that automation would do that work for us. Perhaps naively, some of us assumed that people just wouldn't have to work as much. And perhaps I continue to be naive in thinking that that should still be our end goal. If automation reduces the required work hours by 20% with no reduction in profit, full time workers should have a 32 hour week with no reduction in income.
But since employers will always pocket that money if given the option, we need more unionization, we need unions to fight for better contracts, we need legislation that will protect and facilitate them, and we need progressive taxation that will decouple workers most essential needs from their employers so they have more of a say in where and how they work, be that universal public services, minimum income guarantee, or what have you.
We're quite far behind in this fight but there has been some recent progress about which I am pretty optimistic.
Edit: for clarification
This was so very thoughtful, and after reading it, I feel optimistic too. Fuck yeah.
Edit: thank you.
If you're from one of the countries with nukes, of course you'll see it as positive. For the victims of the nuke-wielding countries, not so much.
That’s a good point, however just because the bad thing hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it wont. Everything has pros and cons, it’s a matter of whether or not the pros outweigh the cons.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but as they say, anything that can happen, will happen. I don't know when it will happen; tomorrow, 50 years, 1000 years... eventually nuclear weapons will be used in warfare again, and it will be a dark time.
Except the current world war.
You need to understand to correctly classify the danger though.
Otherwise you make stupid decisions such as quiting nuclear energy in favor of coal because of an incident like Fukushima even though that incident just had a single casualty due to radiation.
You chose an analogy with the most limited scope possible but sure I'll go with it. To understand how dangerous an atomic bomb is exactly without just looking up a hiroshima you need to have atleast some knowledge on the subject, you'd also have to understand all the nuances etc. The thing about AI is that most people haven't a clue what it is, how it works, what it can do. They just listen to the shit their telegram loving uncle spewed at the family gathering. A lot of people think AI is fucking sentient lmao.
I don’t think most people think ai is sentient. In my experience the people that think that are the ones who think they’re the most educated saying stuff like “neural networks are basically the same as a human brain.”
You don't think, yet a software engineer from google, Blake Lemoine, thought LaMDA was sentient. He took a lot of idiots down with him when he went public with said claims. Not to mention the movies that were made with the premise of sentient AI.
Your anecdotal experience and your feelings don't in the slightest affect the reality that there is tons of people who think AI is sentient and will somehow start some fucking robo revolution.
I'm over here asking chatGPT for help with a pandas dataframe and loving every minute of it. At what point am I going to feel the effects of nuclear warfare?
I’m confused how this is relevant. Just pointing out this is a bad take, not saying nukes are the same as AI. chatGPT isn’t the only AI out there btw. For example NYC just allowed the police to use AI to profile potential criminals… you think that’s a good thing?
Sounds like NYC police are the problem in that scenario.
Yeah sure “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is an outrageous take.
The take is "let's not forget to hold people accountable for the shitty things they do." AI is not a killing machine. Guns aren't particularly productive.
Because they live in the same society as you, and they get to decide who goes to jail as much as you do
Nice argument you made there, we don't decide who goes to jail, a judge does that, someone who studied law.
Corporate lawyers.
Are you familiar with juries?
No, I'm from a country where the jury all studied law and isn't 64 year old Margereta who wants to see some drama to tell at her knitting and book clubs.
There are a lot more countries than yours, believe it or not, and some of them don’t have the same justice system as yours. Do people in your country have the right to vote? Same sentiment, do you think that’s a stupid system?
Your first argument can be used against you, lmao. Your second argument is a strawman. Good job.
Well and being a snob about it doesn't help. If all the average joe knows about AI is what google or openAI pushed to corporate media, that shouldn't be where the conversation ends.
The average joe can have their thoughts on it all they want, but their opinions on the matter aren't really valid or of any importance. AI is best left to the people who have a deep knowledge of the subject, just as nuclear fusion is best left to scientists studying the field. I'm not going to tell average Joe the mechanic that I think the engine he just revised might just blow up, because I have no fucking clue about it. Sure I have some very basic knowledge of it, that's pretty much where it end too though.
You can not know the nuanced details of something and still be (rightly) sketched out by it.
I know a decent amount about the technical implementation details, and that makes me trust its use in (what I perceive as) inappropriate contexts way less than the average layperson.
What a terrible thing to say, they're human beings so I hope they matter to you