The AI Threat to Open Societies
georgesoros.com
The AI Threat to Open Societies
1–10 of 157 posts
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#2Any non-paywalled version?
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#3Any non-paywalled version?
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#4AI is only in a supporting role here. It's massive data collection and storage at low cost that's the problem. Machine learning just helps to digest the data.
Tech has solved the problem of previous attempts at Big Brother - you just couldn't afford enough watchers to watch everybody all the time. Now, you can. It's even profitable.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#5This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits.
Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read.
On similar lines, I feel internet is a democratizing force, since it allowed anyone to publish data and anyone to consume it, and is (somewhat) difficult to control centrally. AI, on the other hand, is a centralizing force, since the most powerful AI can be managed and powered by the most powerful institutions.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#6Any non-paywalled version?
It's still an inconvenience but you can read the article for free by registering.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#7This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read…
Indeed, one could consider machine learning an authoritarian technology if given power over individuals. AI's fundamental problem is it winds-up being a "results oriented" approach where individuals characteristics are weighed by black-box systems and the individual is judged without any recourse or even any exact idea what the criteria is.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#8This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read…
technologies having inherent political traits is a consequence of a much deeper and more important aspect of technology -- that it has inherent traits of human economics. if you take a set of technological realities that might be imposed on some society, it leads to that society eventually reaching exactly one stable state.
a very simple example is the technology of guns. this technology leads inevitably to a state of the world that is characterized by the presence of gun-utilizing nations. this is because the world is a kind of market, and when guns exist the only entities that are competitive are those that use guns.
right now, market economies dominate the world. even china utilizes markets for its own internal economic affairs. when AI comes, this will turn on its head -- market economies will no longer be competitive and centralized ones will replace them. this will be a pretty shocking change.
also, rather soon, humans will stop being present. this is because they will no longer be competitive, their existence will be vestigial and therefore fragile and vulnerable to the slightest perturbation. it will be similar to endangered animals in the present -- no longer competitive, their existence no longer perpetuates itself and therefore is terminated for any old reason, such as condominium developments or pollution.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#9Even though the reason why the author has these positions is perfectly understandable, I don't subscribe to his views, and there is an issue in complete liberalization of movements across borders.
Fundamentally, AI is not a threat or a blessing, it is a technology.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#10This reminds me of the "Do artifacts have politics" paper by Langdon Winner [1]. He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. Nuclear power is considered to be supportive of autocratic political systems since nuclear power plants need centralized planning and networks to be effective. Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it. It's an interesting paper and definitely worth a read…
The internet once required a huge amount of centralized resources and infrastructure to be realized.
I don't see why "AI" as we know it now is any different.