Full video of his speech. His delivery adds to the message: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGoXP-BWoc
The transcript of the speech.
https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...
The AI Threat to Open Societies
51–60 of 157 posts
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#52It is not AI. It is the chinese communist party.
Otherwise might as well have a paper called “The Internet Threat ...” or “The pen and paper threat ...”
The America fought Soviet Union. But ok with a communist party in china, with their all in and everywhere in the society (and copy things on top of contributions) ... it might be too interwoven and too big to ...
Good luck.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#53This 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…
Internet is out of control by citizens. The web was such a democratic space but browsers narrow that space down because they are centralized products. DRM-enabled only (if ever comes) will kill the web.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#54It is not AI. It is the chinese communist party. Otherwise might as well have a paper called “The Internet Threat ...” or “The pen and paper threat ...” The America fought Soviet Union. But ok with a communist party in china, with their all in and everywhere in the society (and copy things on top of contributions) ... it might be too interwoven and too big to ... Good luck.
Also the US antagonized the Soviet Union but ultimately it fell by itself.
Remains to be seen what will happen in the Chinese case.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#55This 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.
Well, we’re judged by human brains every day, which are even more opaque.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#56Earlier 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…
You don’t even need citizens or serfs in this case.
I think they still serve a purpose — to feed the dictator’s ego.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#57I disagree with the premise. The threat from AI, while serious, isn't immediate compared to the threat of using thing like AI to justify inequality. You want to tell me that suddenly the global elite became concerned about relatively esoteric technology to the point where common politicians talk about it like it is the tax rate? And that just happens go with with the effects of globalization, crony capitalism and extreme rent seeking? If the excuse wasn't AI it would be something else.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
If this article is correct, could hate for Soros be seen as a sign for a mind tainted by right wing propaganda?
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#59This 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…
Internet is out of control by citizens. The web was such a democratic space but browsers narrow that space down because they are centralized products. DRM-enabled only (if ever comes) will kill the web.
Accessible isn't necessarily the same thing as democratic. The future of the Internet was always decided essentially behind closed doors. No surprise that it is now being done at the big companies rather than 'by the public'. Any country could regulate the Internet in a democratic direction if it wanted to, but that isn't very popular from what I have seen.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#60You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL
Just my opinion then without reading it: - in China we already see what a government can do with technologies including AI to control the behaviour of people - the West always seems to think it's not going to be that evil around here because people are moral superior (I don't believe that - with Hitler in Germany we saw how quickly things can change and with refugees and poor citizens in all those countries we see how badly people can treat others and still think this is correct - even without an AI they'd believe blindly) - too many techies have no moral & ethics. While studying and also in business I saw most of the people just being interested in personal welfare and earning the most money they can
TLDR; This (whatever 'this' will be) is definitely going to happen if not enough people find back to humanity - with or without support of IT/AI/... (just tools)