Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The illusion of AI’s existential risk

noemamag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 154 posts

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#31

Post by cristiancavalli »

jefftk wrote: post #30
version_five wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only seen grifters, hysterics, or the ignorant talking about existential AI risk. A lot of people just nods their heads and go along, but I don't think there are many that have really thought about it (and understand what modern AI is) that really belive the risk. It's more like political polarization where people dwell on something they don't agree with to the point where they treat it as if the world is going…

> I've only seen grifters, hysterics, or the ignorant talking about existential AI risk. Which category would you put Geoffrey Hinton in? https://www.utoronto.ca/news/risks-artificial-intelligence-m...

hysterics. Remember when he said we should stop training radiologists, that’s aged pretty poorly given there’s actually a need to have more:

https://www.rsna.org/news/2022/may/global-radiologist-shorta...

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/08/turns-out-computers-are-not-v...

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#32

Post by janalsncm »

RC_ITR wrote: post #21
janalsncm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need to be consumer goods. $1000 spent on clothes is the same as $1000 spent on GPUs as far as GDP is concerned. Headless businesses swapping dollars around creates plenty of GDP with few to no people involved.

A common fallacy is thinking that transactions exist without a human at either end of it (usually due to many layers of complexity in between). You can talk all you want about companies selling to companies, etc., but at the end of the day everything on earth is owned by a human eventually. Even high-frequency trades between two hedge funds are done with capital that was supplied by Limited Partners who probably are…

Sure, everything is owned by a human. But does it have to be 8 billion humans? Why not 8 million or even 8 thousand? If humans provide literally zero economic value and their costs are significant, what can our economic systems say about whether they should even exist? It’s Macroeconomic Changes Have Made it Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You [1] but on a global level.

[1] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#33

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

Aerroon wrote: post #27
janalsncm wrote: post #7

I don’t understand why economic disruption and human obsolescence isn’t considered an existential risk. We could end up in a world where 99.99% of people are redundant and useless cost centers for our GDP maximizing economic paradigm. In that case, you don’t need killer robots in order to push humanity towards near-extinction. The invisible hand will smite them. But don’t worry, TED Talk attendee. The obsoletariat mo…

> I don’t understand why economic disruption and human obsolescence isn’t considered an existential risk. Because that's the goal of our economic system! If everything could be made with no human labor requirement, then the price of these goods is going to trend towards zero. The disruption is going to cause pain, but ultimately that's what we've always been after.

Well, no. The goal is to maximise profit. One way to do that is to minimise labour costs. But at the extreme, if there are then no consumers who can buy your goods there is no profit...

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#34

Post by jiggawatts »

I’m just re-reading Blindsight by Peter Watts, a novel that is amazingly prescient in — amongst other things — its predictions of this coming economic upheaval.

Speaking of… one scene in the book has humans communicating with an alien that appears to have “learned” human speech by training a non-sentient LLM on human ship-to-ship transmissions, and then “fine tuned” it to achieve the desired communication goal without ever actually understanding what the LLM is saying.

This is a book from 2006 accurately using the salient features of LLMs popularised in the 2020s! That’s proper science fiction, right there.

Back to the economic aspect: Several characters in the book had to “butcher themselves” with implants and enhancements to remain economically relevant in the age of AIs. It’s that… or you’re packed away in storage. Useless.

PS: Imagine training an LLM on cetacean recordings and then fine-tuning on “orca attack imminent”. You could use this to scare whales away from ships without understanding what specifically the LLM was singing to them!

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#35

Post by somewhereoutth »

Probably things would become clearer if what we currently describe as 'AI' we instead term as 'Statistical Pattern Regurgitator' or similar.

Any serious attempt at AI would: need to be trained on reality - like people are trained; need to overcome the cardinality barrier - digital systems can only approximate analogue systems; and need to demonstrate spontaneous language emergence driven by survival in a social environment.

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#36

Post by RC_ITR »

janalsncm wrote: post #32
RC_ITR wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common fallacy is thinking that transactions exist without a human at either end of it (usually due to many layers of complexity in between). You can talk all you want about companies selling to companies, etc., but at the end of the day everything on earth is owned by a human eventually. Even high-frequency trades between two hedge funds are done with capital that was supplied by Limited Partners who probably are…

Sure, everything is owned by a human. But does it have to be 8 billion humans? Why not 8 million or even 8 thousand? If humans provide literally zero economic value and their costs are significant, what can our economic systems say about whether they should even exist? It’s Macroeconomic Changes Have Made it Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You [1] but on a global level. [1] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroe…

The scenario you're describing is one of extreme wealth inequality, which is a real problem, but one that's supposed to be solvable through democratic means. Stopping technological progress isn't going to solve it.

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#37

Post by winstonprivacy »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #33
Aerroon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand why economic disruption and human obsolescence isn’t considered an existential risk. Because that's the goal of our economic system! If everything could be made with no human labor requirement, then the price of these goods is going to trend towards zero. The disruption is going to cause pain, but ultimately that's what we've always been after.

Well, no. The goal is to maximise profit. One way to do that is to minimise labour costs. But at the extreme, if there are then no consumers who can buy your goods there is no profit...

I'm sure the people you were replying to don't appreciate your inconvenient insertion of critical thinking...

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#38

Post by Vecr »

__loam wrote: post #24
JimtheCoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And AGI could happen in the coming year." "People who talk like this are idiotic at best."

Someone built what is essentially a fancy markov chain that was trained to look convincing to people and people think that's going to lead to AGI lol.

Why can't a (very optimized to the point of not really being a) markov chain be smarter than a person? What are your requirements for outputs, abilities, and internal methods?

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#39

Post by RandomLensman »

janalsncm wrote: post #32
RC_ITR wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common fallacy is thinking that transactions exist without a human at either end of it (usually due to many layers of complexity in between). You can talk all you want about companies selling to companies, etc., but at the end of the day everything on earth is owned by a human eventually. Even high-frequency trades between two hedge funds are done with capital that was supplied by Limited Partners who probably are…

Sure, everything is owned by a human. But does it have to be 8 billion humans? Why not 8 million or even 8 thousand? If humans provide literally zero economic value and their costs are significant, what can our economic systems say about whether they should even exist? It’s Macroeconomic Changes Have Made it Impossible for Me to Want to Pay You [1] but on a global level. [1] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroe…

Functioning societies are a lot more than economic systems.

Re: The illusion of AI’s existential risk

#40

Post by [deleted] »

RC_ITR wrote: post #25
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a tinge of broken window fallacy there?

The broken window fallacy is a controversial axiom that implies demand generation isn't a meaningful way to increase GDP (it comes from the camp that believes output capacity is the only true measure of GDP). This concept became particularly controversial during the Cambridge Capital Controversy [0]. If you believe that GDP is an exogenous measure of what society can produce, you run into oddities like global GDP cha…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN