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The AI Threat to Open Societies

georgesoros.com

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Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#41

Post by EGreg »

est31 wrote: post #16
Animats wrote: post #4

AI 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…

I am not sure why you need the dictator. The AI would presumably be perfectly fine to control everything. It can easily wrest control from the dictator and have all the drones etc. at its disposal.

You don’t even need to go that far. Just require everyone to get a chip implanted so you can enforce punishments, and place cheap recording devices everywhere. You can easily figure out who’s saying what to whom, search everything, figure out the gist and predict every meeting before it happens. You don’t even need the chip - just make it so that a person can’t buy food, and boom. Easy social control. And inescapable because people who don’t comply are ostracized by friends otherwise the friends don’t eat either. You get the algorithm right and you can break resistance same way FBI broke Mafiosos’ “code of honor”.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#42

Post by charlesism »

leducw wrote: post #39
baruchthescribe wrote: post #23

There'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.

    I've never gotten this hate for Mr. Soros
Das Magazin published a German article about that a couple weeks back https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2019/01/12/die-finkelstein-formel Buzzfeed published an English translation: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-so...

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#43

Post by EGreg »

speedplane wrote: post #26
crishoj wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exertion of control doesn’t even have to be blatant or physical. If social credit is a determining factor in an individual’s ability to function effectively in society, e.g. by way of credit ratings and access to opportune employment, there’s a clear risk of increased self-censorship and conformance, thereby debilitating serious political opposition even in its infancy.

If this social credit or indirect influence is perfectly fair, it's not really a problem. However, it's very likely it will be unfair to some, and create tension and unrest that will lead to the same problems we have without AI.

There is no fairness in this, just a measure of distance from some perceived “ideal” by The Party.

Anyone outside of that ideal, as determined by The Party in its discretion, is by design simply robbed of influence and, if they persist, resources up to and inclhding food and water. Anyone who helps them loses the same. And finally, any breakaway groups have so few resources they can be easily hunted down and re-educated.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#44

Post by mrob »

speedplane wrote: post #30
mrob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not more deadly. Weapons of mass destruction already exist. The difference isn't increased ability to do harm, it's increased ability to target harm. It's no fun being dictator when all your subjects are dead, so old-fashioned WMDs are of limited use. Sufficiently advanced AI lets you selectively kill the troublemakers without harming the compliant subjects, and without having to rely on potential competitors fo…

Not a fundamental change. There are plenty of tools for selectively targeting individuals (e.g., guided munitions, watch lists, teams of agents that monitor your every move). It could potentially reduce the resources required for such selective targeting, but if past dictatorships are any indication, these resources are not the limiting factor.

"Who watches the watchmen?" The traditional method relies on a vast network of humans, any one of whom could betray you. Acceptance of bribes is common in dictatorships, and if your control system is powerful enough to suppress troublemakers it's also powerful enough to replace you. AI can avoid this dependence on humans.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#45

Post by js8 »

leducw wrote: post #39
baruchthescribe wrote: post #23

There'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.

I personally don't hate him, rather dislike him. I don't think he wants democracy and that's my problem with him. (And I have, from the distance, seen some decision-making in the NGOs, which alerted me of this problem.)

I think my critique is very similar to Anand Giridharadas http://www.anand.ly/winners-take-all/ and I believe many people who hate him intuitively feel the same way (although perhaps do not understand why).

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#46

Post by EGreg »

speedplane wrote: post #24
sgt101 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictators have one mind; Oligarchies have a handful, or scores. AI (as is, not scify) is (I think) a multiplier or leverage for a mind. The open societies differentiation is potentially millions or billions of minds. To realise that differentiation open societies have to create a population that has it's own mind, and develop a substrate that supports individual thinking, and of course manage the interaction and flow…

The trend seems to suggest that AI will make us think less critically, not more. The singularity posits a massive intelligence boost, the likes we can't comprehend. But what if instead it makes us all fools, unable to think for ourselves and determine true/false or right/wrong?

Like the Eloi in the Time Machine? Yes. It is already happening, in those areas where the technology does a better job, such as directions. The vast majority of city dwellers are already fools when it comes to growing crops, hunting, sewing or whatever.

If the computer is right 99.9% of the time, why bother thinking for yourself? First you stop figuring out the steps to do X, then why do X at all?

If computers get far far better at humor and charisma (don’t laugh, people laughed when they thought AI wouldn’t win at Starcraft or Chess) then why do you need human companions?

If robots get better at sexual feedback and stimulation, humans would prefer them to other humans.

People would use robots for everything, may live out fantasies and occasionally socialize with other humans.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#47

Post by jpalomaki »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #35

Some 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…

Maybe one such example is the effect of "democratization of information distribution". Combine this with standard analytics (and in future AI) and you have machinery that can deliver highly targeted messages, each crafted to have maximum effect on the opinions of a specific recipient.

In the centralized Internet (think Facebook, Twitter, Google) this is something that we can to some extent understand and maybe control. In a proper decentralized world, this won't be possible. Privacy features will also protect the identities of trolls.

In the past, the content distributed was limited by the imagination of people. In future, no such limitation exists. You will have AI (think generative adversarial networks) learning to create fake content tailored for specific persons.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#48

Post by xband »

EGreg wrote: post #46
speedplane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend seems to suggest that AI will make us think less critically, not more. The singularity posits a massive intelligence boost, the likes we can't comprehend. But what if instead it makes us all fools, unable to think for ourselves and determine true/false or right/wrong?

Like the Eloi in the Time Machine? Yes. It is already happening, in those areas where the technology does a better job, such as directions. The vast majority of city dwellers are already fools when it comes to growing crops, hunting, sewing or whatever. If the computer is right 99.9% of the time, why bother thinking for yourself? First you stop figuring out the steps to do X, then why do X at all? If computers get fa…

I think a physical paper map is superior to a "smart" phone.

I have been asked by a helpless 20yo who was tapping on his phone searching for a train station. I dragged him over to the gasp subway map that was literally 5 meters away. He followed reluctantly, and I found the station in 10 seconds.

(Note that I also had not heard of that particular station before.)

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#49

Post by pjc50 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #35

Some 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…

Open societies are threats to closed societies, and vice versa. An open world is stable; a world of closed societies is also fairly stable internally, although much more likely to go to war with each other.

The idea of "the end of history" was that Open had won, and it was just a question of mopping up the remaining closed societies. It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#50

Post by est31 »

EGreg wrote: post #41
est31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am not sure why you need the dictator. The AI would presumably be perfectly fine to control everything. It can easily wrest control from the dictator and have all the drones etc. at its disposal. You don’t even need to go that far. Just require everyone to get a chip implanted so you can enforce punishments, and place cheap recording devices everywhere. You can easily figure out who’s saying what to whom, search ev…

> The AI would presumably be perfectly fine to control everything. It can easily wrest control from the dictator and have all the drones etc. at its disposal.

It can, but AIs generally don't get the will to do this built into them. The idea that they evolve this will naturally is antropomorphizing.

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