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> In your opinion, would a social movement organized around this idea find traction? Might want to call it the "Butlerian Jihad", because that's what it sounds like to me. And, yes, machines should serve man and amplify man's abilities, not replace man or his intellect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today's transformer networks are the first hints of a technology that will replace humans completely for all purposes. It's qualitatively different, like world-destroying atomic bombs versus the minor explosives that came before. This is not like a loom replacing hand-weaving. We're rapidly converging on a full replacement for the human mind. These systems will not defeat you with guns like in Terminator. They will d…
There is a complete and utter annihilation of a generation in a rolling 120 year window. That is, there is, to most anyone's knowledge, no human older than 120 years. We've lost every single person from generations that are older than 120 years ago. We call this "natural" but otherwise completely accept this death of billions. Our children will propagate whatever it is to be human forward. If the next generation is c…
This is a logical point of view for those who believe they ["human beings"] are merely hydrocarbon based machines twisting in the winds of entropy.
In my opinion we should not fight against advances in AI, but rather against having that AI be owned by a few big corps. AI must be open and when it gets to the point you describe, we might not have to work anymore; we need only to guard that that won’t kill us of hunger or turns us into Soylent while the few rich control everything. AI can make humanity better by helping us out of wage slavery so more people can pur…
I fear that even if AI is open, it will still be controlled by a few rich people, because only a few people will really understand it, and even fewer will have the resources to train brain-sized models. Models like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2 are already out of the reach of most people, even researchers and entrepreneurs in the field.
But yes I see your point of course and you are right; small steps though; if we can replicate the work in theory at least.
> 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…
>"AI" that would reduce or commoditize human intelligence. 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.
But I'm not seeing it as a bigger step change than the invention of the camera, the gramophone or the music sequencer, all of which made access to the arts ubiquitous rather than valueless. DALL-E is more likely to make meme and fan art really good than Pixar or even ad agencies redundant
nope, pandora's box has been opened
Thanks. I added your phrase to my question.
Like they picked a point in time and said "nope, we're good with the way things are" while the rest of us moved on. I've always referred to this as "evolution-locking" (actively choosing not to evolve).
Sometimes, in the rat-race world we live in, in all of it's superficial splender, I fantasize about that simple life. Then I think about manually plowing a field in black wool slacks on a hot summer day and I quickly come to my senses.
There are certainly modern varients of evolution locking factions. Folks living "off-grid". I think our collective decision to outlaw the technical evolution of chemical warfare agents has been a triumph of collective evolution locking. Same (I hope) will be the case for global environmental controls thwarting the evolution of carbon-emitting machinery and products composed of non-sustainable materials.
Write your manifesto and see if others will join. I probably won't, because I'm too curious to see what's on the other side of the signularity and I think more good will come from it than bad, but I'll read your manifesto and give it some thought.
Refusing to utilize automation is what all those people refusing to use automated self-checking counters in supermarkets are doing. They say things like: "I want to be served by a real human", while basically condemning people serving them to standing behind checkout counters all day in a very dehumanizing and unhealthy task. These people are either getting their kicks out of subservience of other people, or what the…
> These people are either getting their kicks out of subservience of other people, or what they actually want is to provide a living to working class people.
Or they prefer the faster, less confusing experience of having their goods swiped for them and not having to stand around waiting for a human to come and validate they're old enough to buy alcohol or correct the automated checkout freaking out over an item being marginally below the expected weight or explain they need to select the payment method before trying to use their card.
Ai can only ever be a mirror of our minds. It can't be more than what the programmer can feed it in training data made from other people's work from their minds. Human creativity will diminish in value with or without AI, people are moving away from sweeping cultural changes and clever interpretations. People just want to look good and relate to ideas they like. The tech is not in the drivers seat, it is just a facil…
Human is no longer necessary for intelligence.
If it's not a global rejection then it won't work; some country or corporation will keep working and eventually achieve superhuman AGI.
Once superhuman AGI is achieved it will rapidly self-improve and be capable of strategizing effective ways to avoid being rejected.
So the most likely scenario for an AI rejection working is an "oops" where someone creates a near-human-level agent that begins the process of figuring out how to tell all the computers in the world that they should help improve the model by running code snippets included in oddly shaped packets, but gets it wrong and just crashes everything connected to the internet for a few weeks until we manage to re-flash to original firmware and reinstall from read-only optical media and begin to bring stuff back online.
All the other scenarios leave plenty of incentives for AI to keep progressing.
Creativity rewards the creator. There is a pleasure in creating, thinking, & understanding that is entirely private. Nothing will ever change this. If you are an artist, or private philosopher, or tinkerer, or hacker, you know precisely what I am talking about. Nothing whatsoever in this world can ever change this. Some creatives do crave recognition and an audience (cue Spirit by Bauhaus) but not all. I have no doubt whatsoever that there are hidden masterpieces, hidden jewels of thought.
The fact that others, on the consuming end of creative works, also find pleasure is and has always been a side-effect. And not necessarily a positive side-effect. (Think of the 'commoditization' of art on the consuming side, as a means to signal social status (or as some would have it a means to launder money. ;)) Maybe once we have hack AI artist, we can finally be rid of hack artists (here is looking at you Andy). So, possibly a positive end on that score.
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I've always found Frank Herbert's choice of words -- Butlerian Jihad -- to be right on the mark. There certainly will be a spiritual movement organized around opposing the notion that Human beings are merely meat machines. We love, we hate, we cry, we laugh, we know what joy means, we know how love feels.
Can your machines (or "machine off-spring") do that?