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The AI Threat to Open Societies

georgesoros.com

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Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#61

Post by malloryerik »

VvR-Ox wrote: post #60

You 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…

Btw you can read the article for free by registering, though it's a hassle. Might be easier to read from some of the alternative links with the same speech posted by others here:

https://www.wired.com/story/mortal-danger-chinas-push-into-a...

https://www.georgesoros.com/2019/01/24/remarks-delivered-at-...

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#62

Post by EGreg »

est31 wrote: post #50
EGreg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would they need to evolve this? Is the dictator examining the source code? How would he know exactly what is being coded? By the time everyone else is eliminated it’s just him and the AI. How would the dictator know what the AI will do?

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#63

Post by hyperdunc »

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.

Many nationalists and traditionalists hate him because he doesn't share their values. Rather, he uses his wealth to influence the movement of power from national to supranational institutions.

In particular the Soros-sponsored Open Society Foundation has had many dozens of meetings with the EU Commission and a hand in forming multicultural-based policies.

My own thought is that this political agenda is naive and may result in a backlash that ends up achieving the opposite of what he intends. There are already signs of this happening.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#66

Post by tim333 »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #58
charlesism wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think that is often the case. As the most prominent funder of left wing / human rights causes he tends to be a bit of a hate figure for the far right.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#67

Post by nabla9 »

raz32dust wrote: post #5

This 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…

I see Internet as somewhat neutral neutral in relation to democracy in already existing liberal democratic societies. It promotes diffusion of information, but not synthesis.

Internet really promotes anarchism. Even today with most of the discussion going trough few choke points.

Internet is an anarchist force and as such it's prone to informal elites. They are cliques that control people without well defined responsibility, and often without peoples knowledge or consent. The controlling groups can be rich individuals, corporations, foreign states marketers and political operators.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#68

Post by paganel »

quantum_state wrote: post #64

It is self evident that labeling any knowledge, technology, or artifacts to be against open society is completely nonsense and contradicts the very concept of open society itself.

It’s not nonsense, as you cannot carry on mass-killing events like the Holocaust or the Goulag without a modern-ish technology like the railway system. Or, to go directly to the source, let’s use Goebbels [1], as he was explaining that without modern technologies like the radio or the airplane the nazis’ ascent to power wouldn’t have been possible:

> It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio and the airplane. It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio.

[1] https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb56...

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#69

Post by rjf72 »

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.

George Soros in George Soros' own words [1]: "I fancied myself as some kind of god ... If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble. ... It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out."

He also did a very forward interview with 60 minutes. This [2] is a transcript of the video [3]. A couple of quotes from him there,

- "I think I’ve been blamed for everything. I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do."

- "Whether I or somebody else does whatever is happening in the markets really doesn’t make any difference to the outcome. I don’t feel guilty because I’m engaged in an amoral activity which is not meant to have anything to do with guilt."

And you can find countless similar quotes and discussions from him. I respect him since he is honest about his motivations and beliefs which is something that cannot be said about the vast majority of people, let alone billionaires. At the same time he is undoubtedly a textbook narcissistic megalomaniac whose sole interest in the world is George Soros. And he will happily and openly share his willingness to engage in awful actions if he thinks it would benefit himself. Consequently, I can understand why many - particularly when we put on these charades of virtue - would find him a less than desirable person.

[1] - http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/04/opinion/oe-ehrenfeld...

[2] - https://pastebin.com/MMFmtPzd

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSyczwuTQfo

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#70

Post by StreamBright »

This is kind of funny how this article focuses on China and totally leaves our surveillance capitalism (Google, Facebook) out of the picture. If this article was unbiased than we would see example how the AI threat impacted the last election in the USA as well.
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