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Remarks on AI from NZ

nealstephenson.substack.com

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Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#51

Post by keybored »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #35

> Likewise today a graphic artist who is faced with the prospect of his or her career being obliterated under an AI mushroom cloud might take a dim view of such technologies, without perhaps being aware that AI can be used in less obvious but more beneficial ways. look, i'm sure there are very useful things you can use AI for as a designer to reduce some of the toil work (of which there's a LOT in photoshop et al). b…

> > being obliterated under an AI mushroom cloud might take a dim view of such technologies, without perhaps being aware that AI can be used in less obvious but more beneficial ways.

How vivid. Never mind the mushroom cloud in front of your face. Think about the less obvious... more beneficial ways?

Of course non-ideologues and people who have to survive in this world will look at the mushroom cloud of giant corporations controlling the technology. Artists don’t. And artists don’t control the companies they work for.

So artists are gonna take solace in the fact that they can rent AI to augment their craft for a few months before the mushroom cloud gets them? I mean juxtaposing a nuclear bomb with appreciating the little things in life is weird.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#52

Post by Lerc »

I found this a little frustrating. I liked the content of the talk, but I live in New Zealand, I have thoughts and opinions on this topic. I would like to think I offer a useful perspective. This post was how I found out that there are people in my vicinity talking about these issues in private.

I don't presume that I am important enough that it should be necessary to invite me to discussions with esteemed people, nor that my opinion is imported enough that everyone should hear it, but I would least like to know that such events are happening in my neighbourhood and who I can share ideas with.

This isn't really a criticism of this specific event or even topic, but the overall feeling that things in the world are being discussed in places where I and presumably many other people with valuable input in their individual domains have no voice. Maybe in this particular event it was just a group of individuals who wanted to learn more about the topic, on the other hand, maybe some of those people will end up drafting policy.

There's a small part of me that's just feeling like I'm not one of the cool kids. The greater and more rational concern isn't so much about me as a person but me as a data point. If I am interested in a field, have a viewpoint I'd like to share and yet remain unaware of opportunities to talk to others, how many others does this happen to? If these are conversations that are important to humanity, are they being discussed in a collection of non overlapping bubbles?

I think the fact that this was in New Zealand is kind of irrelevant anyway, given how easy it is to communicate globally. It just served to for the title capture my attention.

(I hope, at least, that Simon or Jack attended)

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#53

Post by keybored »

ddq wrote: post #12
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

> Maybe a useful way to think about what it would be like to coexist in a world that includes intelligences that aren’t human is to consider the fact that we’ve been doing exactly that for long as we’ve existed, because we live among animals. Another analogy that I like is about large institutions / corporations. They are, right now, kind of like AIs. Like Harari says in one of his books, Peugeot co. is an entity tha…

Metal Gear Solid 2 makes this point about how "over the past 200 years, a kind of consciousness formed layer by layer in the crucible of the White House" through memetic evolution. The whole conversation was markedly prescient for 2001 but not appreciated at the time. https://youtu.be/eKl6WjfDqYA

I don’t think it was “prescient” for 2001 because it was based on already-existing ideas. The same author that inspired The Matrix.

But the “art” of MGS might be the memetic powerhouse of Hideo Kojima as the inventor of everything. A boss to surpass Big Boss himself.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#54

Post by keybored »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

> Maybe a useful way to think about what it would be like to coexist in a world that includes intelligences that aren’t human is to consider the fact that we’ve been doing exactly that for long as we’ve existed, because we live among animals. Another analogy that I like is about large institutions / corporations. They are, right now, kind of like AIs. Like Harari says in one of his books, Peugeot co. is an entity tha…

If there was anywhere to get the needs-wants-intelligence take on corporations, it would be this site.

> We survived those kinds of entities, I think we'll be fine

We just have climate change to worry about and massive inequality (we didn’t “survive” it, the fuzzy little corporations with their precious goals-needs-wants are still there).

But ultimately corporations are human inventions, they aren’t an Other that has taken on a life of its own.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#55

Post by smfjaw »

Lerc wrote: post #52

I found this a little frustrating. I liked the content of the talk, but I live in New Zealand, I have thoughts and opinions on this topic. I would like to think I offer a useful perspective. This post was how I found out that there are people in my vicinity talking about these issues in private. I don't presume that I am important enough that it should be necessary to invite me to discussions with esteemed people, no…

Don't feel left out, big data architect in NZ and didn't even hear of this.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#56

Post by crystal_revenge »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

> Maybe a useful way to think about what it would be like to coexist in a world that includes intelligences that aren’t human is to consider the fact that we’ve been doing exactly that for long as we’ve existed, because we live among animals. Another analogy that I like is about large institutions / corporations. They are, right now, kind of like AIs. Like Harari says in one of his books, Peugeot co. is an entity tha…

> We survived those kinds of entities

Might want to wait just a bit longer before confidently making this call.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#57

Post by Reason077 »

> "the United States and the USSR spent billions trying to out-do each other in the obliteration of South Pacific atolls"

Fact correction here: that would be the United States and France. The USSR never tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific.

Also, pedantically, the US Pacific Proving Grounds are located in the Marshall Islands, in the North - not South - Pacific.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#58

Post by hweller »

swyx wrote: post #5

> If AIs are all they’re cracked up to be by their most fervent believers, this seems like a possible model for where humans might end up: not just subsisting, but thriving, on byproducts produced and discarded in microscopic quantities as part of the routine operations of infinitely smarter and more powerful AIs. i think this kind of future is closer to 500 years out than 50 years. the eye mites are self sufficient.…

Could be wrong but i think here Neal is saying we are the eye mites subsisting off of AI in the long future, not the other way around.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#59

Post by rmah »

pona-a wrote: post #17
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

> Maybe a useful way to think about what it would be like to coexist in a world that includes intelligences that aren’t human is to consider the fact that we’ve been doing exactly that for long as we’ve existed, because we live among animals. Another analogy that I like is about large institutions / corporations. They are, right now, kind of like AIs. Like Harari says in one of his books, Peugeot co. is an entity tha…

Did we survive these entities? By current projections, between 13.9% and 27.6% of all species would be likely to be extinct by 2070 [0]. The USA suffers an estimated 200,000 annual deaths associated with lacking health insurance [1]. Thanks to intense lobbying by private prisons, the US incarceration rate is 6 times that of Canada, despite similar economic development [2]. Sure, the human species is not yet on the br…

We (humans) have not only survived but thrived. 200,000 annual deaths is just 7% of the 3mil that die each year. More (as a percentage) probably died from access to the best health care 100 or 200 years ago. The fall in birth rates is, IMO, a good thing as the alternative, overpopulation seems like a far scarier specter to me. And to bring it back to AI's, an AI "with a pathological drive to maximize an arbitrary metric" is a hypothetical without any basis in reality. While fictional literature -- where I assume you got that concept -- is great for inspiration, it rarely has any predictive power. One probably shouldn't look to it as a guideline.

Re: Remarks on AI from NZ

#60

Post by vermilingua »

> What people worry about is that we’ll somehow end up with AIs that can hurt us, perhaps inadvertently like horses, or deliberately like bears, or without even knowing we exist, like hornets driven by pheromones into a stinging frenzy.

What endlessly frustrates me in virtually every discussion of the risks of AI proliferation is that there is this fixation on Skynet-style doomsday scenarios, and not the much more mundane (and boundlessly more likely IMO) scenario that we become far too reliant on it and simply forget how to operate society. Yes, I'm sure people said the exact same thing about the loom and the book, but unlike prior tools for automating things, there still had to be _someone_ in the loop to produce work.

Anecdotally, I have seen (in only the last year) people's skills rapidly degrade in a number of areas once they deeply drink the kool-aid; once we have a whole generation of people reliant on AI tooling I don't think we have a way back.

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