Screw Soros.
The AI Threat to Open Societies
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#32AI 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.
And tech will also solve the power problem of autocratic regimes. Right now, a dictator can't control every single individual in the country on their own. They need police that can search your apt at 5am because you made a blog post critical of the government. They need lawyers to convict you, prison guards, etc. In such regimes, the dictator still has to put people into places of power so that the will of the dictat…
You don’t even need citizens or serfs in this case.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#33There's a special place picked out for George Soros. Really special.
Without a clear explanation of your statement (why does he deserve this euphemized special place?) this is just a personal attack, which seems to be the common response to any assertion or action coming from him.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#34This 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…
An interesting perspective, however I do not believe that the Internet is democratising. I regard democracy (and capitalism) as being an industrial-era approximation of solutions to the institution-alignment-problem (analogous to the AI alignment problem, but for governments and corporations). Both of these have their own failure modes; In the case of democracy, the failure mode is that people do not know objective t…
Have you read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) - well worth reading and rereading. The theme of it in a way is "that people do not know objective truth, and can be fooled by propaganda" It's about things he observed in WWI, the role of the media, the failure of the media, the start of the propaganda age.. My point is - none of these problems are new. Lippmann was writing about very similar problems 100 years ago. (In that and his other early books, e.g. Liberty and the News - on how somehow, we don't require journalists be qualified, although they have such a vital role in democracy.) It's hard to think that democracy is possible, given these problems.
(Saward in his Democracy says that Schumpeter in the mid-20th C simply redefined 'democracy' as 'whatever they now have in countries we call democratic', thus avoiding the worrying about democracy that produced the fascinating books of the early 20th C on problems with it. e.g. Lippmann's, Michels' Political Parties)
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#35Some thoughts I just had, and haven't really developed yet beyond the initial moment of having them:
It used to be you would see theories about the internet threat to Closed societies, and I suppose those threats are real too. But perhaps the threats to closed societies are the obvious threats, and the threats to the open societies were not immediately obvious, and thinking on this is somewhat murky but if there are a bunch of obvious threats and a bunch of hidden threats then I guess people guard against the obvious threats.
Finally maybe anything that threatens one type of human society must also threaten all types, only the threats are changed around for each type.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#36This 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…
An interesting perspective, however I do not believe that the Internet is democratising. I regard democracy (and capitalism) as being an industrial-era approximation of solutions to the institution-alignment-problem (analogous to the AI alignment problem, but for governments and corporations). Both of these have their own failure modes; In the case of democracy, the failure mode is that people do not know objective t…
None of these effects is new. One could print anything on pamphlets, or shout it in the town square before literacy was widespread.
When searching for that boots quote to put here, I found this reference with excellent 18th century quotes about the issue: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
There's the possibility that the internet has made it worse, but that's a theory I've yet to see evidence for. You could spread fake news a day before the election in ancient Rome or Greece, what would stop you? Today at least we have most people doubting candidate cannibalism stories because if they were true they would be on mainstream sites. What did they have back then? It was normal to not have access to a second news source to seek out at reasonable effort for months.
Even with all the garbage out there, I think the cheap mass access to information was a net gain. Lies can be made up on the spot, while the truth must be carefully researched. Being able to put a well-researched rebut on a blog where someone might read it is something, something they didn't have before. Everyone would just go home after the people who could produce information on the spot had shouted it.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#37I think the biggest threat to open societies is that nobody will be able to read the warnings against dangers if they don’t have money to subscribe to a thousand publications :/
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The internet allows governments to tightly monitor, as time progresses, all communication... Therefore the internet may be under different governments a tool of immense totalitarian control.
One could argue that it already is...
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#39There's a special place picked out for George Soros. Really special.
I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros. Could you take some time and perhaps expound on why you dislike him? It'd be of great interest to me if I had an individual perspective on why he's disliked rather than the odd mishmash of reasons I find online about him.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#40This 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…
> He argues that technologies have inherent political traits.
What are the traits of money and billionaires?