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

Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 152 posts

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#61

Post by danielmarkbruce »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #22
lacker wrote: post #2

I think most people who want to "opt out of AI" don't actually understand where AI is used. Every Google search uses AI, even the ones that don't show an "AI panel" at the top. Every iOS spellcheck uses AI. Every time you send an email or make a non-cryptocurrency electronic payment, you're relying on an AI that verifies that your transaction is legitimate. I imagine the author would respond, "That's not what I mean!…

I'm just not sure I see where AI has made my search results better or more reliable. And until it can be proven that those results are better, I'm going to remain skeptical. I'm not even sure what form that proof would take. I do know that I can tolerate non-deterministic behavior from a human, but having computers demonstrate non-deterministic behavior is, to me, a violation of the purpose for which we build compute…

[flagged]

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#62

Post by whilenot-dev »

kevmo314 wrote: post #8
userbinator wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans can be held accountable. Machines can't. AI dilutes responsibility.

AI didn't bring anything new to the table, this is a human problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YGZPycMEU

GenAI absolutely brings something new to the table! These models should be perceived as human-like intelligence when it's time to bring value to shareholders, but are designed to provide just enough non-determinism to avoid responsibilities.

All problems are human and nothing will ever change that. Just imagine the effects anyone is facing when being affected by something like the British Post Office scandal[0], only this time it's impossible to comprehend any faults in the software system.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#63

Post by Zoethink »

hedora wrote: post #46

Maybe people will finally realize that allowing companies to gather private information without permission is a bad idea, and should be banned. Such information is already used against everyone multiple times a day. On the other hand, blocking training on published information doesn’t make sense: If you don’t want your stuff to be read, don’t publish it! This tradeoff has basically nothing to do with recent advances…

[dead]

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#64

Post by jedbrown »

tkellogg wrote: post #5
lacker wrote: post #2

I think most people who want to "opt out of AI" don't actually understand where AI is used. Every Google search uses AI, even the ones that don't show an "AI panel" at the top. Every iOS spellcheck uses AI. Every time you send an email or make a non-cryptocurrency electronic payment, you're relying on an AI that verifies that your transaction is legitimate. I imagine the author would respond, "That's not what I mean!…

Somewhere in 2024 I noticed that "AI" shifted to no longer include "machine learning" and is now closer to "GenAI" but still bigger than that. It was never a strict definition, and was always shifting, but it made a big shift last year to no longer include classical ML. Even fairly technical people recognize the shift.

The colloquial definitions have always been more cultural than technical, but it's become more acute recently.

> I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact through and through. AI is an ideological project to shift authority and autonomy away from individuals, towards centralized structures of power. https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#65

Post by chii »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #60
GeorgeCurtis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also influences hiring decisions, rental applications, loans, credit scoring, social media feeds, government services and even what news or information we see when we search online. I think, more frighteningly, the potential for it to make decisions on insurance claims and medical care.

There is an underlying assumption there that is certainly incorrect. So many stupid comments about AI boil down to "humans are incredibly good at X, we can't risk having AI do it". Humans are bad at all manner of things. There are all kinds of bad human decisions being made in insurance, health care, construction, investing, everywhere. It's one big joke to suggest we are good at all this stuff.

The fear is that by delegating to an ai, there's no recourse if the outcome for the person is undesirable (correctly or not).

What is needed from the AI is a trace/line-of-reasoning to which a decision is derived. Like a court judgement, which has explanations attached. This should be available (or be made as part of the decision documentation).

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#67

Post by chii »

MoltenMan wrote: post #53
heavyset_go wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, blocking training on published information doesn’t make sense: If you don’t want your stuff to be read, don’t publish it! There's a difference between reading something and ripping it off, no matter how you launder it.

I think the line is actually much blurrier than it might seem. Realistically everything is a remix of things people have done before; almost nothing is truly brand new. So why specifically are people allowed to build on humanity's past achievements, but not AI?

> So why specifically are people allowed to build on humanity's past achievements, but not AI?

because those people seem to think that individuals building it will be too small a scale to be commercially profitable (and thus the publisher is OK to have them be a form of social credit/portfolio building).

As soon as it is made clear that these published data can be monetized (if only by large corporations with money), they want a piece of the pie that they think they deserve (and not getting).

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#68

Post by stephen_g »

chii wrote: post #65
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an underlying assumption there that is certainly incorrect. So many stupid comments about AI boil down to "humans are incredibly good at X, we can't risk having AI do it". Humans are bad at all manner of things. There are all kinds of bad human decisions being made in insurance, health care, construction, investing, everywhere. It's one big joke to suggest we are good at all this stuff.

The fear is that by delegating to an ai, there's no recourse if the outcome for the person is undesirable (correctly or not). What is needed from the AI is a trace/line-of-reasoning to which a decision is derived. Like a court judgement, which has explanations attached. This should be available (or be made as part of the decision documentation).

But also an appeals process where it can be escalated to a real person. There should be nothing where any kind of AI system can make a final decision.

I think the safest would be for a reviewer in an appeal process to even not have any access to any of the AI's decision or reasoning, since if the incorrect decision was based on hallucinated information, a reviewer might be biased to think it's true even if it was imagined.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#69

Post by chii »

yoko888 wrote: post #45

[dead]

> silence is interpreted as consent

silence is indeed concent (of the status quo). You need to vote with your wallet, personal choice and such - if you want to be comfortable, choosing the status quo is the way, and thus consent.

There's no possibility of a world where you get to remain comfortable, but still get to have a "choice" to dictate a choice contrary to the status quo.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#70

Post by danielmarkbruce »

chii wrote: post #65
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an underlying assumption there that is certainly incorrect. So many stupid comments about AI boil down to "humans are incredibly good at X, we can't risk having AI do it". Humans are bad at all manner of things. There are all kinds of bad human decisions being made in insurance, health care, construction, investing, everywhere. It's one big joke to suggest we are good at all this stuff.

The fear is that by delegating to an ai, there's no recourse if the outcome for the person is undesirable (correctly or not). What is needed from the AI is a trace/line-of-reasoning to which a decision is derived. Like a court judgement, which has explanations attached. This should be available (or be made as part of the decision documentation).

That's also a silly idea. Companies get sued all the time. There is recourse. If you run a bank that runs an AI model to make decisions on home loans and the effect is no black people get a loan, you are going to find yourself in court the exact same way as if you hire loan officers who are a bunch of racists. There is no difference.

It is available to the entity running inference. Every single token and all the probabilities of every choice. But every decision made at every company isn't subject to a court hearing. So no, that's also a silly idea.

Post reply on HN