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Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

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Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#11

Post by NO-AI »

qgin wrote: post #8

> As a society we can reject this technology. I don't see a lot of precedent for this. I actually can't think of one example where society has rejected a useful technology. I believe that affluent people will pay more for artisinal/organic/human-created things. But the majority of the world without disposable income will choose cheaper over human. Even if human-made is better. Especially if AI-made is better. It's tr…

I work with these systems all day, every day, and these new systems are qualitatively different. These new transformer systems have crossed a line and its easy to see how they will threaten human dignity. This technology crosses a line. It's like atomic weapons. This is the commoditization of the human mind.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#12

Post by natch »

No, the unstoppable force here is the imperative that every organization must keep up with its peers to survive. Just to simplify by keeping it in the realm of business, if only one company adopts an advantageous technology, all other companies are forced to find a way to keep up, get ahead, or leave the field. The ratchet effect is inexorable. It can only be tweaked and maybe guided, not stopped.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#13

Post by krapp »

If it did, it would only be after AI became ubiquitous and the shock to human society and culture of having machines govern and commoditize their lives became great enough that a counterculture rose up against it organically. You can't just plan the revolution in advance, though, you aren't the CIA.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#14

Post by NO-AI »

t-3 wrote: post #5

Why? AI is a tool, not even a servant, for that would imply will. We can use and direct it to whatever ends please us. The realization of AI as a general tool for the individual is approaching rapidly, and it will have radically transformative potential. Don't be afraid, push from behind so that progress won't stall in the period where it's only accessible to institutions.

Capitalism is a wonderful system. But when your mind has become a commodity your economic value will approach zero. I hope you're not expecting our capitalist society to coddle you when that day arrives. Perhaps you will do manual labor for the machines, but I doubt the value of human physical labor will last. So good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#18

Post by vinaypai »

NO-AI wrote: post #9
vinaypai wrote: post #6

No. People have been bellyaching about technology replacing humans literally through all of history. Computers, automation, industrial revolution, what have you. Hunter gatherers were probably complaining about how agriculture was going to make people obsolete too. You can certainly reject whatever you want but don't fool yourself into thinking you're accomplishing anything.

For example, if we as a society refuse to use self-driving cars, we can make the industry unprofitable. Society says, "No, this is not the kind of product we want" and capitalism works to starve the harmful industry.

You're pretending that everyone, or even a large subset of people agree with your central premise. The replies on this thread ought to disabuse you of that notion.

I, for one, can't wait for self-driving cars to replace the average moron driving multi-ton vehicles around.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#19

Post by NO-AI »

pid-1 wrote: post #15

Most things people call AI nowadays is rubbish techbro hype. Don't hold your breath waiting for "AI" to replace humans. If anything, we should be against AI being used for important stuff because most AI suck.

Visual artists have already been replaced. It won't be long before we have transformers over token trees containing millions of tokens. We've reached a point where we understand how to make the machine manipulate concepts. It's all just vectors of numbers and dot products. Really.

Re: Ask HN: Viability of an anti-AI social movement?

#20

Post by qgin »

NO-AI wrote: post #11
qgin wrote: post #8

> As a society we can reject this technology. I don't see a lot of precedent for this. I actually can't think of one example where society has rejected a useful technology. I believe that affluent people will pay more for artisinal/organic/human-created things. But the majority of the world without disposable income will choose cheaper over human. Even if human-made is better. Especially if AI-made is better. It's tr…

I work with these systems all day, every day, and these new systems are qualitatively different. These new transformer systems have crossed a line and its easy to see how they will threaten human dignity. This technology crosses a line. It's like atomic weapons. This is the commoditization of the human mind.

You're 100% right. But I'm convinced there's realistically nothing we can do to stop it. Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus (and Sapiens to a lesser extent) are about the possible future paths for humanity and computers that increasingly surpass our abilities in more and more ways.

It will absolutely be hugely disruptive to culture, the structure of society, and our perception of ourselves. But I don't see how it can be avoided.

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