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The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

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Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#31

Post by mikestew »

narrator wrote: post #8

Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. These scales by which progress toward the future is measured are a key ingredient of social engineering. One task that Free Software…

The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god.

Umm, no, the "progress" is machines that I don't have to micro-manage anymore. Imagine an oven in your house that you had to constantly adjust to keep it at the desired temperature. No, that would be stupid, we've solved that problem decades ago. Now imagine a car that you had to control by hand with the necessary micro adjustments needed to keep it between the lines. No, that would be...well, it will be stupid, and a solved problem, one of these days.

"Hey, oven, make your interior 425F so I can bake a pizza."

"Hey, car, drive me to Dusty Strings in Fremont. Oh, why am I talking to you? You see it on my calendar, and you've been warmed up and ready waiting for me."

I don't know what dystopian future you're imagining, but I don't see the AI gods whisking me off to places I don't want to go. I see machines that finally, FINALLY, do what I want without me having to speak baby talk to them.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#32

Post by matt_kantor »

api wrote: post #19
zpallin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, such memetic behavior such as fads, echo chambers, and meme outbreaks predates the internet and even modern technology. So, according to your logic, it would seem we have always been the Borg.

The quantitative difference in spreading velocity and general bandwidth is so large it becomes qualitative and looks a lot like a phase change. We burned stuff long before modern steam turbines and internal combustion engines...

The same sort of thing could have been said (and was) when the telephone and printing press were invented, to pick just two examples.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#33

Post by skybrian »

If you hired a human assistant (or had an assistant at work), they would know when you're working and generally what you're up to. It would make sense that a digital assistant would need to know these things, too. It's inherently a high-trust relationship.

Of course, the risks are different when you're trusting a device from a large corporation to take on a role that a human would do.

I wouldn't buy one, but some people will decide it's worth it, and I don't think they are losing their freedom by giving orders to a machine.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#34

Post by Zooper »

narrator wrote: post #8

Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. These scales by which progress toward the future is measured are a key ingredient of social engineering. One task that Free Software…

As a side note: myself and the public fully retain the rights to Google's self-driving cars, as my work has created it through answering captchas. We observe our rights through force, if necessary. This is where we're heading.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#35

Post by ryanwaggoner »

dpark wrote: post #27
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I think the last fifty years proves that the vast majority of people will almost always go with convenience over some abstract ideal of "privacy".

People don't care about privacy in the abstract but do care once it becomes concrete. If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no. The problem privacy advocates have is forging a link between the abstract…

If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no.

Exactly. That's why I put "privacy" in quotes. I think people are smarter than you give them credit for. I don't give out the password to my email account, but do I care that much if Google has some machine learning algorithm with a bunch of data points buried in there that I use the word "NYC" a lot? No, I really don't care. And yeah, they might get hacked and leak my emails to the world. That would suck. But that risk is worth it to me, and judging by the hundreds of millions of people with Gmail accounts, I'm not alone.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#36

Post by pacala »

skymuse wrote: post #24

I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm. I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI…

Judging by the relative success of biological and social systems, systems that communicate effectively with each other end up much smarter than systems that don't communicate as effectively. Smarter as in winning the competition for resources more often.

The big question is whether we can build systems that communicate, but don't create vast disparities of information between overminds and everybody else. At this point the handful of information slurping mega-corporations have a huge information advantage compared with the average person. If nothing changes, this is the end of the humanistic world order based on the primacy of the individual brain.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#37

Post by GenghisSean »

dpark wrote: post #18
narrator wrote: post #8

Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. These scales by which progress toward the future is measured are a key ingredient of social engineering. One task that Free Software…

> Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely ab…

> Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely absent, so long as it's not needed and it's not in the way.

I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent. Some people enjoy driving, albeit usually in times/places without much traffic. If someone who found driving therapeutic instead spends their commute time staring at a social media feed on their phone because that's their default action when they aren't sure what to do, would that be fundamentally better for them?

> Who is defining progress that way? Everyone I know who wants a self-driving car wants it to go where they tell it to.

Of course everyone wants self-driving cars to go where they tell it, but that is different from having control over where the car goes. What if the AI that controls the self-driving car takes 99% of people to their destination, but rounds up a few political dissidents and whisks them away to an unknown location. Most everyone would get what they want, but none of the passengers are able to control where the AI takes them. Like Stallman says, "Either the users control the program or the program controls the users."

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#38

Post by pacala »

skybrian wrote: post #33

If you hired a human assistant (or had an assistant at work), they would know when you're working and generally what you're up to. It would make sense that a digital assistant would need to know these things, too. It's inherently a high-trust relationship. Of course, the risks are different when you're trusting a device from a large corporation to take on a role that a human would do. I wouldn't buy one, but some peo…

If I catch said human assistant reporting my daily activities to a third party, they will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#39

Post by bsanr »

mikestew wrote: post #31
narrator wrote: post #8

Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. These scales by which progress toward the future is measured are a key ingredient of social engineering. One task that Free Software…

The "progress" defined here is complete control over all actions of individuals in society by an AI god. Umm, no, the "progress" is machines that I don't have to micro-manage anymore. Imagine an oven in your house that you had to constantly adjust to keep it at the desired temperature. No, that would be stupid, we've solved that problem decades ago. Now imagine a car that you had to control by hand with the necessary…

How'd you decide where you did or did not want to go?

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#40

Post by dpark »

GenghisSean wrote: post #37
dpark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kind of reminds me about how they say the highest level of automation of self-driving cars will be no steering wheel. Who decided that that was higher on the scale and a good thing? Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely ab…

> Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely absent, so long as it's not needed and it's not in the way. I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent. Some people enjoy driving, albeit usually…

> I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent....

Perhaps I was ambiguous. You're reading my intent backwards. Few people specifically want the steering wheel to be gone. They generally just want to not care about it.

> If someone who found driving therapeutic instead spends their commute time staring at a social media feed on their phone because that's their default action when they aren't sure what to do, would that be fundamentally better for them?

The car enthusiasts I know still don't like sitting in traffic. It's not the fun sort of driving.

> Of course everyone wants self-driving cars to go where they tell it, but that is different from having control over where the car goes. What if the AI that controls the self-driving car takes 99% of people to their destination, but rounds up a few political dissidents and whisks them away to an unknown location. Most everyone would get what they want, but none of the passengers are able to control where the AI takes them. Like Stallman says, "Either the users control the program or the program controls the users."

I don't know what to say in response to this. This feels over the top absurd to me. If your government is this fundamentally evil and amoral, I don't think driving your own car is going to protect you. There are already lots of ways to get rid of political dissidents.

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