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

The turbulent AI era is here

gatesnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 267 posts

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#161

Post by Mon0t0n »

heaney-555 wrote: post #99
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.

>end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? A significant percentage of the world's hungry live under warlords, militias and dictatorships that would simply kill anyone trying to peacefully give their subjects food. Unless you're proposing AI military interventionism, you cannot fix this. Homelessness on the other hand is mostly a mental health and drug addiction problem. Fixing it, in many case…

[flagged]

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#162

Post by brikym »

"Agriculture is where I see the fastest impact of AI in low-income countries."

As we've seen with Haber-Bosch (synthetic fertilizer) it will just allow the population to expand until we're up against the resource limit ceiling.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#163

Post by testdelacc1 »

seltzered_ wrote: post #154
tintor wrote: post #135

"... AI will avoid climate change." xAI's Colossus 1 and 2 data center mobile gas turbines beg to differ. AI data centers are driving electricity consumption in 100s of GW, and most of that energy is not clean renewable nor nuclear.

That doesn't seem like an actual quote in the original article, but this a fair point to bring up and a reminder that Gates has been problematic on his views on climate. First, in the essay he mentions "Using AI, low-income farmers will soon be able to get better advice about all these things than even the richest farmers get today and increase their output substantially.". There may be some truth in this, but it's w…

The Green Revolution most certainly did improve the lives of tens of millions of low income farmers in India. The high yield crops also permanently removed the spectre of famine from India, saving tens of millions from starvation.

To retcon this into “only rich farmers benefited” is weird. Certainly there are many rich farmers out there. Of course their incomes increased when they could plant more productive crops. But so what if they make money? They’re feeding everyone!

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#164

Post by bryan0 »

beloch wrote: post #155

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? " ---------------- One look…

> One look at who is in the driver's seat should give you the answer to this question.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the question Gates is asking here. He’s not asking “how this going to play out?”, he’s asking “how can we impact how this will play out?”

He makes specific proposals like AI token and robot taxes. I just wish people being cynical would at least comment on possible solutions.

I think AI taxes potentially make sense. His idea of Human Reserved is fascinating. It might not be his idea but I’ve never heard it described like that before

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#165

Post by brikym »

mcnichol wrote: post #83

I feel this is merely stating the obvious. It goes back to the industrial revolution and every revolution before and after. There was a point where they thought a majority of people would be working as switchboard operators and then telephone switching came along. Horses to cars, etc. Jobs transition, new space is created, people are caught in tbe crossfire of supply and demand curves. Incan agree the bullwhip of thi…

Industrial transitions pushed more people from leg-work to hand-work and then brain-work. What is left once AI is better at that?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#166

Post by _aavaa_ »

AuthAuth wrote: post #158
tintor wrote: post #135

"... AI will avoid climate change." xAI's Colossus 1 and 2 data center mobile gas turbines beg to differ. AI data centers are driving electricity consumption in 100s of GW, and most of that energy is not clean renewable nor nuclear.

Those emissions are nothing. Its a drop in the bucket compared with other industrial uses. A 50% reduction would change nothing, reduction to 0 would change nothing.

This is an absurd argument. Any one source is a drop in the bucket.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#167

Post by dyauspitr »

brikym wrote: post #162

"Agriculture is where I see the fastest impact of AI in low-income countries." As we've seen with Haber-Bosch (synthetic fertilizer) it will just allow the population to expand until we're up against the resource limit ceiling.

I don’t think so. I think we’re past the point of rapidly increasing population in most of the world at this point (aside from sub sharan Africa which will change soon as well). I don’t think the current low birth rate has anything to do with a resource cap.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#168

Post by beloch »

bryan0 wrote: post #164
beloch wrote: post #155

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? " ---------------- One look…

> One look at who is in the driver's seat should give you the answer to this question. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the question Gates is asking here. He’s not asking “how this going to play out?”, he’s asking “how can we impact how this will play out?” He makes specific proposals like AI token and robot taxes. I just wish people being cynical would at least comment on possible solutions. I think AI…

Is it cynical, or simply realistic, to recognize that AI CEO's won't ask for this kind of policy, and governments won't force anything upon the AI sector until things get very bad?

That, in my view, is a much bigger problem. We know what's coming but we won't do anything about it until after a lot of suffering occurs. Why can't we be more proactive?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#169

Post by vuurmot »

aperrien wrote: post #111
datakan wrote: post #14

I've tried to type this up a couple times, each time backing out because at the end of the day, I really don't give a rats fart about anything Gates has to say. I just wish he would disappear.

Ignoring Gates, what do you suggest as solutions to the problem at hand?

tax the rich else eat the rich

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#170

Post by mcnichol »

sltkr wrote: post #102
mcnichol wrote: post #83

I feel this is merely stating the obvious. It goes back to the industrial revolution and every revolution before and after. There was a point where they thought a majority of people would be working as switchboard operators and then telephone switching came along. Horses to cars, etc. Jobs transition, new space is created, people are caught in tbe crossfire of supply and demand curves. Incan agree the bullwhip of thi…

> When the data fed into an AI model is based on real data you can get predictability. When the AI inputs start coming from the AI outputs the wobble is introduced which results inevitably into delirium. This is asserted without evidence. There is absolutely no proof that AI requires humans in the loop to function or improve itself. Compare it with Deepmind's go-playing program, AlphaGo, which mainly involved trainin…

You are referring to gans which have complete understanding of the rules and an api interface to leverage interacting with the world.

While I think there could be an argument made here you are mixing apples and rocks if you believe ChatGPT is using gans.

I hate to be that person but you are showing that you are unable to differentiate between linear regressions, clustering, gradient descent, and generative adversarial networks. You are over your ski-tips and don't see itc

Post reply on HN