31–40 of 117 posts
Which is a good thing, value is fundamentally based of scarcity, by commoditizing human intelligence and creativity, people are just making it less scarce (by offering plentiful substitute - AI), so more affordable.
I'm curious what you do in ML, because I also work professionally in the field, and see no relationship or even pathway between current ML research and practice and any sort of "AI" that would reduce or commoditize human intelligence. It's all just marketing hype. If we somehow get "I robot" style robots (the movie, not the book) that we're uncomfortable with, sure, let's have a social movement. As long as we're still talking about SGD (or similar) optimized neural networks, you're rebelling against an equation (with no actual applications that co-opt human intelligence). Personally I don't feel threatened, even if a neural network can draw Kermit the frog in different movie styles, or perform other cool tricks
We've seen similar movements at every major technological shift in human history. Some examples off the top of my head are certain types of Orthodox Jewish religions and the Amish. Even the term "sabotage" was from workers throwing their shoes ("sabos") into machines for fear of them losing their jobs [0].
There's been a steady stream of anarchists, luddites, neo-luddites and other extremists arguing against technology [1]. Ted Kacyznski famously killed scientists and academics for precisely that reason [2].
From what I can tell, the vast majority of people tend to accept the compromises of new technology and live with the drawbacks, making any anti-technology movement either short-lived or niche, especially the more extreme or repressive they become, but they do exist and continue to exist.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
1. How did rejecting atomic weapons go? 2. In what way does it "threaten human dignity" that is different from the technologies that came before it? Automation took away the livelihoods of people in industries like manufacturing decades ago. Feels like what is truly "different" this time around is just that you feel your job is threatened, so now it's a problem for all of society.
1. For many countries (e.g. Australia), quite successfully. We said no, and then we didn't.
2. We can replace physical activity (e.g. machinery instead of human motion), and that doesn't move human beings from the place of control and power. Likewise, we can replace certain kinds of thinking work (e.g. programming or medicine) and that in itself isn't a major problem (except for the out-of-work programmers or doctors).
But replacing all cognitive activity (which is what a hypothetical future AI would do), what are we --- as humans --- left with?
I don't think you've explained why they're immoral. Is it because they displace low skill jobs (seems like a core consequence of technology) or because they're less safe than human drivers (likely temporarily so, with a net number of lives saved through continued use and adoption)?
> 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…
We do it as an aggregate society as well whether we actually realize it or not; they are just negative examples of pursuing one kind of technology over another. We started out with a decentralized web, but economic forces have pushed tech development towards building walled gardens and rent extraction.
There are many, many people (myself included) who want to see black-box predictors banned unless they are doing something trivial and unimportant (and that's the goal of the GDPR and PIPL rules). So there's another group to align with, and this group has a lot of political clout at the moment.
Rejecting automated art is a slightly odd, but I presume there will be some group that would align with that too.
So it sounds like you can start building consensus with some other groups already, which is the kind of political power you will need in order to effect change.
In my opinion, yes, of course such a movement would find traction. We've seen similar movements at every major technological shift in human history. Some examples off the top of my head are certain types of Orthodox Jewish religions and the Amish. Even the term "sabotage" was from workers throwing their shoes ("sabos") into machines for fear of them losing their jobs [0]. There's been a steady stream of anarchists, l…
> I work professionally in the machine learning field I'm curious what you do in ML, because I also work professionally in the field, and see no relationship or even pathway between current ML research and practice and any sort of "AI" that would reduce or commoditize human intelligence. It's all just marketing hype. If we somehow get "I robot" style robots (the movie, not the book) that we're uncomfortable with, sur…
Computer generated art (DALL-E~), fiction literature, music et al. It wouldn't really reduce human intelligence, but it will definitely commoditize creative crafts even further. Which I think is what the OP is mostly referring to.