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

Magnifica Humanitas

vatican.va

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 1001 posts

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#241

Post by mentalgear »

> “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon”

This is very on-point: capitalism-driven AI development as we have it today will always turn against the common good due to it's singular profit-motive.

What a time: the pope having a much clearer picture of the risks & dangers of 'AI' than most people, many 'tech leaders' and certainly most politicians.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#242

Post by [deleted] »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #213
Lerc wrote: post #178

I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"

so maybe we'll get to the right place by accident when all companies are effectively replaced by ai ha ha. (not putting a high %age likelihood on that one, obviously, just being cheeky)

[deleted]

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#243

Post by salawat »

moron4hire wrote: post #215
GoToRO wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo…

When he speaks of the builders needing to take responsibility, I think he is directing his comments at tech company leadership. The Sam Altmans of the world, not the poor slobs like us who need a job for health insurance because apparently unemployed people don't deserve to live.

No, he's talking to you too. The Sam Altman's can't be a threat without useful idiots to cooperate with and doing work for them. You don't get out of your own culpability because you locked on a set of golden handcuffs.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#244

Post by lo_zamoyski »

shawnhermans wrote: post #195
krzys wrote: post #112

[flagged]

Former Catholic. I left the church for a variety of reasons, one of which being the child abuse scandal. I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history. What I am trying to say is there is no love lost between me and the Catholic Church. With that out of the way, the Pope is right. Knowledge should be used for the benefit of humanity and I don't think any of the big AI companies have our best inter…

[flagged]

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#245

Post by bluesign »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #143
bluesign wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is why that this feels so good future is; it is a system with no constraints. A bit like Star Trek universe in Roddenberry's imagination. This kind of utopia can only be achieved with all honest actors, but in reality systems are usually designed around bad actors. Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination…

This sort of rationalization of evil is a core of technocratic support for Trumpism, I find, and has parallels to the evangelical prosperity gospel. Choice tenets: - Fuck you, got mine - If I don’t do it, someone else will - Might makes right - Greed is good It’s always cloaked in a veil of realism, but it’s just the classic 14-year-old-boy-just-got-introduced-to-the-prisoners-dilemma situation. There’s nothing philo…

This was not my point at all. Maybe I could explained better, but main criticism I have is: you can bundle together objectives ( which are inherently good ) and create an utopia. But those cannot always be achievable.

Everything in life in trade-offs. Simple example is speed/quality/cost. I can tell easily:

- services should be cheap - services should be fast - services should be high quality

Now I created an utopia. Obviously this is amazing to listener. They agree. But is it achievable?

It is not saying greed is good or might makes right. But system means you need to construct from this ideals best outcome ( which comes at some trade offs)

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#246

Post by bluefirebrand »

GoToRO wrote: post #153
sethbannon wrote: post #22

The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we buil…

hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo…

> I don't like putting the blame on the builders

Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit

You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#247

Post by adolph »

Lerc wrote: post #178

I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"

If one considers a firm to be a non-human entity that exhibits cognition, then yes. Various religions also exhibit those characteristics, which would fortify the Roman pope’s position with irony.

See Joscha Bach’s claim about religions not publishing their A|B testing at 51:47:

https://youtu.be/7bqdPHLIY8w

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#248

Post by jdw64 »

>“technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it,”

If critical decisions affecting human life—such as hiring, lending, crime prediction, and welfare—are processed in an opaque black box, people will lose their fundamental right to explain their context or appeal against the machine's algorithmic verdicts

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#249

Post by gchamonlive »

polotics wrote: post #138

What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly? Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect. Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?

Although your comment is acid, I think this bears truth

> Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions?

It's too weak of a rhetoric from the highest representative of the Catholic church to call for regulations, but the alternative is to call for a transition from capitalism itself. Nothing that grows inside economic doctrines that only value constant growth at all costs can be safely regulated, regulation being only a makeshift solution.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#250

Post by customguy »

hootz wrote: post #135
customguy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you asked all the LLM to find flaws in the arguments presented, and to come up with counter-arguments, I doubt many current models would be so bad as to come up with that , and even the ones that did would fold when asked "how is that even an argument?".

This was not an attempt at an argument, it was a sarcastic joke on how a lot of people are already dependent on AI, even on things that you weren't supposed to use LLMs for, but I guess I failed at it.

Fair enough, and kinda silly of me to assume so little of you.

Is that really true though, that so many people are "dependent" on "AI"? In what way? I'd say the only people who really depend on AI are those who want to make money off it, and that's only half sarcastic.

Would the people who now run it through an LLM (and who can read the output of an LLM but not the text itself?), have read it at all before? Would it not have, if anything, filtered down to them somehow, by them reading of it, or hearing of it in church etc?

Post reply on HN