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The AI Threat to Open Societies

georgesoros.com

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Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#71

Post by gnomewascool »

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…

> You post an article about open societies and then I can't access it without subscribing - LOL

While I also dislike being forced to subscribe to read something, free access to publications and open society are completely different things. After all, you had open societies before the digital age, when the vast majority of newspapers were paid.

Obviously, the two are linked, but I'm not even sure whether gratis access to all journalism encourages an open society or discourages it. (You can imagine just-so stories for either case:

1. free access to articles → everyone can read them → better informed society → open society

2. free access to articles → high quality journalism goes out of business as they have to compete against zero-cost alternatives → misinformed (or even deliberately disinformed) society → people less likely to fight for openness.

)

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#72

Post by acqq »

paganel wrote: post #68
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 i…

Also:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

IBM and the Holocaust

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#73

Post by lucio »

paganel wrote: post #68
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 i…

So? let's make any modern-ish technology illegal?

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#74

Post by luckylion »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
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.

> It turns out that maybe the open societies weren't as open as they thought.

Or that an "open world" isn't as stable as predicted.

Would we even have the same "open" societies without China's repressive society and their willingness to finance western consumption?

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#75

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#76

Post by luckylion »

raverbashing wrote: post #54
ngcc_hk wrote: post #52

It 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.

Yeah. The SU was much smaller than the US-led side (~300m vs ~700m), it's very different with China, so that will be interesting.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#78

Post by buboard »

chalst wrote: post #29
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…

George Orwell made much the same point in 1945: http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb

"ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance"

All we need to do is democratize AI. It can be well argued that it is happening.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#79

Post by buboard »

devoply wrote: post #13
fooker wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

You make a case why the private sector should be encouraged to monitor as well.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#80

Post by [deleted] »

js8 wrote: post #40
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…

> He argues that technologies have inherent political traits. What are the traits of money and billionaires?

[deleted]
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