That's funny coming from from George Soros especially that it was delivered at Davos.
The AI Threat to Open Societies
91–100 of 157 posts
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#92There'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.
It’s not a personal attack, it’s a thinly veiled death thread.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#93It 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…
Genghis Khan didn't need modern technology to kill millions.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#94History has already answered this numerous times. AI is a tool much like a semi-automatic rifle or the printing press. The people who understand it well have an accelerated advantage over those who do not. It is both a good and bad thing depending upon who wields the tool. Like any force multiplier it will be misunderstood (magic) and improperly regulated by both open and closed societies alike. Like with any tool th…
Some technology is obviously more useful to the population at large, such as the printing press. Other trchnology is more useful to the tyrant, such as the helicopter only they can afford, and use to monitor the city centers for groups of those unruly students. The idea of all technology being neutral and equally useful for any cause is absurd.
The discussion is what category AInfalls under. I can instantly see its value for the centralized surveillance state: find the signal within all the noise of those bills of calls, messages, and CCTV images a state can capture. I can’t immediately think of anything useful the technology could do for a few people fighting for dmcrocracy. They do not even have access to any such vast data trove that’s usually at the beginning of the AI value chain.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#95This 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…
technologies having inherent political traits is a consequence of a much deeper and more important aspect of technology -- that it has inherent traits of human economics. if you take a set of technological realities that might be imposed on some society, it leads to that society eventually reaching exactly one stable state. a very simple example is the technology of guns. this technology leads inevitably to a state o…
I'm not going to subscribe to your newsletter ;)
Sometimes you feel that you need some special insight that nobody else knows because it makes you feel special. It's probably better to just keep it to yourself when it doesn't reflect any valid reality.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#96Earlier 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…
Dont worry about robots and self driving tanks. That I can assure you, will not happen. Any one still selling that is selling a pipe dream. The acid test for self driving cars is whether they can drive down a road in India or any other country where people don't have western stands of driving discipline. The worse the better. HOWEVER, And this is the idea I would pursue and sell to authoritarian governments everywher…
Your assurances mean nothing. The robots are already here, drones are already "self driving"
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#97This 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…
Solar power is considered democratic since anyone can harness it But that makes literally no sense. You can’t fabricate solar panels in your backyard. You need a factory handling toxic chemistry and a supply chain of rare earth elements from open cast mining! Solar is no less centralised than nukes.
You don't need to use photovoltaic cells to harness solar power. It can be as simple as mounting a coil of tube on a flat board and painting the whole thing black, then pumping water through it. Backyard solar water heater made with cheap materials you can get at any hardware store.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Genghis Khan didn't need modern technology to kill millions.
Yeah he did, it was called the stirrup.
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#99[deleted]
Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
technologies having inherent political traits is a consequence of a much deeper and more important aspect of technology -- that it has inherent traits of human economics. if you take a set of technological realities that might be imposed on some society, it leads to that society eventually reaching exactly one stable state. a very simple example is the technology of guns. this technology leads inevitably to a state o…
I'm not going to subscribe to your newsletter ;) Sometimes you feel that you need some special insight that nobody else knows because it makes you feel special. It's probably better to just keep it to yourself when it doesn't reflect any valid reality.
He probably read Nick Land without understanding him. Or some cybernetics critics.