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The AI Threat to Open Societies

georgesoros.com

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Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#101

Post by chobeat »

6d6b73 wrote: post #93
paganel wrote: post #68

Earlier 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.

Genghis Khan had a technological advantage over his competitors: the mongolian bow, the stirrup, the logistical ability to coordinate over a distance that was unthinkable for most of the other nations that ever tried to chase nomads into the steppes and then all the knowledge and tools necessary to forage in the steppe.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#102

Post by Ar-Curunir »

buboard wrote: post #78
chalst wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, training modern enural networks requires a ton of data and a ton of computing power, both of which are available only to the biggest organizations.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#103

Post by joejerryronnie »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #36
ben_w wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting perspective, however I do not believe that the Internet is democratising. I regard democracy (and capitalism) as being an industrial-era approximation of solutions to the institution-alignment-problem (analogous to the AI alignment problem, but for governments and corporations). Both of these have their own failure modes; In the case of democracy, the failure mode is that people do not know objective t…

None of these effects is new. One could print anything on pamphlets, or shout it in the town square before literacy was widespread. When searching for that boots quote to put here, I found this reference with excellent 18th century quotes about the issue: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ There's the possibility that the internet has made it worse, but that's a theory I've yet to see evidence for. You c…

While this may be true, it doesn’t provide a scapegoat for why I can’t buy a house in SF.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#104

Post by sgt101 »

joakinen wrote: post #53
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…

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.

I don't understand - why are browsers centralised?

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#105

Post by sgt101 »

trevyn wrote: post #55
joe_the_user wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a sorta standard rejoiner.. but other humans should have to account/take responsibility for their decisions, and part of that process is that other humans should judge individuals as individuals which almost by definition machine learned classifiers cannot. ML is great for dealing with massproduced artefacts, or standardised processes, but it's just not the right tool for reasoning over domains that are not full of approximately similar things. That the Chinese government (and Google, and Facebook) think that humans are in that category speaks volumes about them.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#106

Post by sgt101 »

buboard wrote: post #79
devoply wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm really curious : could you try to make the case here? I'd be very interested in this perspective.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#107

Post by RealityVoid »

hyperdunc wrote: post #63
leducw wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

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…

In your view - are "open societies" as an idea naive or the means of achieving them employed naive? You might very well be right, but imagine desiring a more open world, what would be the correct course to achieve it?

Also, what would be the mechanisms you would employ if you were a person with lots of money and desiring to shape the world into a better place? One approach is the one taken by Bill Gates, where he focuses on technological and social ones, but steers away from the political issues. But lots and lots of evil from this world stems from political reasons. Surely there should be a way to improve that, besides just focusing on the technical and hoping the politics would sort itself out.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#108

Post by 0x445442 »

bambax wrote: post #77
xolorg wrote: post #65

[flagged]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/george-soros-ss-nazi-germa... > Claim: During World War II, George Soros was a member of the SS (a Nazi paramilitary organization) or a Nazi collaborator who helped confiscate property from Jews. > Rating: False.

Not sure I'd hang my hat on Snopes as the arbiter of truth. Soros himself admits in the 60 minutes interview in having a role in the property confiscation. However, IMO his actions at that time are morally justifiable given he was a 14 year old boy attempting to survive in a historically unique context.

However, WRT this speech at Davos, I suspect his problem isn't with mass surveillance as much as it is with China performing the mass surveillance. Soros is an ideologue and I'm sure he'd be just fine with the technology being used to support his political agendas.

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#109

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

Jacques Ellul makes very similar points in his work La Technique (The Technological Society). He traces how technology and power interplay from the invention of the pocket watch and steam engine, all the way to computers. It's one of the best works I've come across in this space and a must read for Technology critics and advocates alike. I wish it would be (even) more widely read here[1] than it is but finding it in languages others than English or French might prove a challenge. His follow up work "Propaganda The Formation of Mens Attitudes" is also phenomenal. These 2 books are among the best books I discovered in 2018 (if not in the last decade).

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Jacques%20Ellul&sort=byPopular...

Re: The AI Threat to Open Societies

#110

Post by buboard »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #102
buboard wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No, training modern enural networks requires a ton of data and a ton of computing power, both of which are available only to the biggest organizations.

We re not talking about Apollo-level investments
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