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The turbulent AI era is here

gatesnotes.com

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Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#21

Post by lubujackson »

cheptsov wrote: post #11

Is it me or does it read like pure satire? An AI ministry, “human-reserved” jobs, and taxes on AI tokens.

Sandbags against a tsunami. When has "pump the brakes on progress" ever worked out?

What we need is deep thinking on the implications and make the default way forward one where we want to go. In other words, we build a channel for the flood waters, not a wall. Creating a role for "somebody to deal with AI issues" is one of those hand-wavvy upper management moves that looks defensible but simply passes the buck to someone who structurally lacks the agency to actual move the needle.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#23

Post by reasonableklout »

pullshark91 wrote: post #19

This is the person behind such products as Windows and Copilot. I honestly don't trust a single word he says.

But Bill stopped being involved in Microsoft’s day to day business over a decade ago. And he’s making valid arguments that don’t require us to trust him. Do you not think labor disruption, cyberattacks, and mass surveillance are big risks from powerful AI?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#24

Post by cheptsov »

lubujackson wrote: post #21
cheptsov wrote: post #11

Is it me or does it read like pure satire? An AI ministry, “human-reserved” jobs, and taxes on AI tokens.

Sandbags against a tsunami. When has "pump the brakes on progress" ever worked out? What we need is deep thinking on the implications and make the default way forward one where we want to go. In other words, we build a channel for the flood waters, not a wall. Creating a role for "somebody to deal with AI issues" is one of those hand-wavvy upper management moves that looks defensible but simply passes the buck to som…

What surprises me even more is why Bill Gates writes this kind of bizarre, low-quality nonsense in the first place. What purpose does it serve? It’s so obviously shallow that it influences nothing and adds nothing to the conversation.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#25

Post by pydry »

cheptsov wrote: post #11

Is it me or does it read like pure satire? An AI ministry, “human-reserved” jobs, and taxes on AI tokens.

It reads like somebody got AI psychosis.

"A lot of people are skeptical of AI because it makes mistakes. But what's going to happen when it stops making mistakes??? It'll change the world!"

Honestly I suspect he's probably just cynically talking his book. All of this "AI is scary good / it'll be even scarier gooder soon" is no less advertising than slapping a cigarette logo on a racing car.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#26

Post by warkdarrior »

lukeschlather wrote: post #15

If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.

Gates is worth about $100B, Elon Musk about $850B. Let's call it $1T altogether. That would be at most about $115 per human on Earth (~8.5B humans). Not sure that is sufficient to "end hunger and homelessness."

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#27

Post by partiallypro »

deadbabe wrote: post #13

Taxing AI tokens will only lead to the acceleration of local LLMs, to produce tax-free tokens. We must tax lines of code. Like property tax, but for code. Every year, companies (and individuals) must declare all repos. Have them appraised.

"Taxing AI tokens will only lead to the acceleration of local LLMs"

This part was a good point, so I couldn't tell if the second part is satire or not.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#28

Post by miltonlost »

All his good things (possibly help medicine! agriculture! government!) involve a belief in ever-increasing superintelligence and so much "hope" and optimimusm and may not ever exist.

All his negative things (increase of fraud, skill atrophy, cyberattacks, removing employment, consolidation of capital and wealth) exist currently now with AI as it is.

How long will negatives outweigh the positives? And will those positives ever actually come to fruition? How anyone (who is not a sociopath and expects to be one of those pyramid tops) can see a bright future is beyond my pessimism and sense of reality as it is now.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#30

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mbgerring wrote: post #9

If you’re one of the people wondering why there’s an enormous backlash to AI, here’s your answer: “this thing we’re building is going to he fucking terrible and ruin your life. Please give us all your money to build it.”

It’s exactly the same set of questions and challenges as with nuclear power

Nuclear power is one of the most amazing magical things on the planet but nuclear weapons present a massive challenge to social coordination. So maybe we should sit as a society and try to figure out how to manage that instead of just freak out and burn all of our own faces off because we can’t handle complex conversations.

Why is that so hard to grasp?

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