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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

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Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#411

Post by slg »

ben_w wrote: post #319
slg wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just to summarize, it seems like the most optimistic outcome that the collective of HN could come up with in the hour since my original comment was that medical care would improve and you might be able to pay for it if you retrain yourself for some yet unknown new career that might suddenly appear at some point in the future. That's the optimistic vision we're asking society to buy into? No wonder it's only 16%.

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap. Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how t…

>Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum.

Does Germany have a large enough share of these companies to be on the winning side of this or is the country effectively in the same position as the average American? Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#412

Post by watwut »

hparadiz wrote: post #349
watwut wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never done any of those things. And I was there, I was old enough. I was not desperately waiting for phone calls or paid a lot of money to borrow movies. Somehow, I occupied myself just fine, was meeting friends regularly and did activities regularly. There was no societally wide lack of entertainment.

I think you are probably an outlier if you've never rented a movie in the 90s and shouldn't generally be used as a good example of how life was. It's frankly absurd that you would even bring it up as a virtue.

I did not brought it up as virtue. Virtue is entirely your framing. I just was not renting movies nor were my friends nor family. Meeting friends and occupying yourself was completely normal, any average person did it. In fact, healthy people will create fun and entertainment for themselves no matter the technological level of the society.

Frankly, it is super weird that you see doing fun stuff as some kind of virtue.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#413

Post by ben_w »

Perseids wrote: post #408
ben_w wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap. Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how t…

You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine . With bio engineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology. Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything. How much is possib…

> You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology.

Sure, sure, but upthread said "biological and medical" so I was taking it that way.

> Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

I'd avoiding considering this one for now, simply because there's too many open questions. I don't expect it to be a physics problem, but I can't rule that out.

> All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

Yup.

Unfortunately, the human alignment problem is hard, let alone the AI alignment problem.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#414

Post by ben_w »

slg wrote: post #411
ben_w wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap. Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how t…

>Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum. Does Germany have a large enough share of these companies to be on the winning side of this or is the country effectively in the same position as the average American? Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price es…

> Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

The time-limited and jurisdiction-limited nature of patents aside, one of the great things about being a country is you can do things like pass laws saying "we have decided to force you to sell to us at the price we specify, and if you refuse we will shoot you".

How taxes work when labour shifts to AI is anybody's guess.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#415

Post by fl4regun »

carlosjobim wrote: post #284
fl4regun wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are naive, you don't seriously expect people to "seek out the good ingredients" do you? When the shit ingredients are addictive, cheaper than the good ones and more available? The entire premise of these platforms is use whatever edges possible to get more ad money, they do that by getting people addicted to their phones and using psychological tricks that have been refined through over a decade of A/B testing to…

I'm speaking to whoever wants to listen. Advice is a gift that you are free to refuse.

you miss my point entirely. People are a product of their environment. Just because YOU or I don't fall down this trap doesn't mean our friends or family or people in our communities won't.

In my country we charge sales tax on processed foods but not on fresh foods. It's because we can make the good choice easier and the bad choice harder. We shouldn't be doing the opposite, then laying all the responsibility on individuals (many of which will still be children who aren't aware of the consequences of their actions)

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#416

Post by watwut »

olalonde wrote: post #347

Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. People say they don't like it but they still use it.

People say it will have negative impact on society. That does not mean they think they can avoid using it in work. That does not have to imply they will jump hoops to avoid it in google search.

This has absolutely nothing with stated vs revealed preference.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#417

Post by fluoridation »

slg wrote: post #409
fluoridation wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm skeptical of the idea that the financial wellbeing of the average American has been improved by computers. Really? Even with all the new avenues of education and communication that they opened up? You think the positives and negatives balance out to close to zero?

The stats I linked above show that those “new avenues of education and communication” didn’t actually benefit the average American financially in at least the relative sense. Do you have something to counter that evidence?

Those are just time series of wealth over time, they don't purport to establish any causal links. You can't conclude that computers didn't "actually benefit the average American financially" from these numbers, because these are measuring the total wealth of the household with all factors combined. We can't say with any certainty what effect computers had on these values; maybe without them people would have been better off or worse off.

It is interesting how the wealth concentration started in the '80s. It could be computers that caused it, though I would be more likely to blame it on Reagan's economic policies.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#418

Post by pixl97 »

jms703 wrote: post #72
everdrive wrote: post #35

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneli…

> tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.

We call this system Moloch.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#419

Post by alwa »

ctoth wrote: post #246
slg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you think will be answering these questions in a future in which these AI companies visions become a reality? Because they already have a huge influence on society and that will only increase as the tech improves. The most optimistic answer I can think of is that they will eventually agree to share their wealth under credible threats of violent revolution. That's the most optimistic outcome I see, they concede…

> Who do you think will be answering these questions Yes, this is the conversation we should probably be having! Thoughts? Given that this is what is happening, given that we aren't going to stop physics, getting a handle on this indeed seems like one of the more important things we can do. If it will have any chance of working at all. If we don't get paperclipped. But this is at least a much ... (forgive me) less wr…

Need work involve money? By far the most important work I do involves volunteer leadership roles above and beyond the things I do for money. Indeed, the whole edifice of modern tech rests on elements of FOSS that are, to within a rounding error, “volunteer”-built and -led. Elon’s an idol, but so is Linus.

The Biggest And Richest have Mythos. But does that diminish the utility, to me personally, of my open-weights model? Or even my humble-individual-grade Opus subscription? Relative to what I could do three years ago, computationally speaking?

Does a pretty good life have to involve controlling more material relative to members of a specific class, rather than just… deciding what’s enough, materially speaking; and stopping there?

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#420

Post by bix6 »

hparadiz wrote: post #177
bix6 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does not printing directions save hundreds of millions of lives?

Oh man I can tell you're young. Those directions weren't always right. You couldn't just pull out your phone and find the nearest hospital if something happened during your trip. Or call 911 and have them find you by GPS. And that's just one casual convenience you take for granted. People used to drive around asking random people to use their phone in emergencies. Not exactly fast when seconds matter.

Honestly legit response. I didn’t really think about the 911 tracking which is so precise now. It is a bummer though how that location privilege has been abused.
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