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The turbulent AI era is here

gatesnotes.com

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Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#221

Post by petesergeant »

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…

> I feel this is merely stating the obvious.

I think there is value in someone of Gates' stature stating the obvious, plainly.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#222

Post by steve1977 »

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…

So, dust off those guillotines?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#223

Post by petesergeant »

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.

I believe we are on autopilot towards essentially free renewable electricity, and so this doesn't feel like a big concern when held against the potential end-of-humanity potential that AI has.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#224

Post by HaloZero »

hypfer wrote: post #200

> But the reliability problem is being fixed quickly, as researchers create models that can check their own work and improve themselves. Soon they will be substantially better than humans at many tasks. Yes, no. They don't. They just push probabilities higher. The tech is non-deterministic.

Honestly, I think it will come down to liability. With humans in loop, the answer is obvious. It's the human who made a decision. When you have AI make a decision, who is responsible? The AI provider, the person implementing things?

I was debating about this with my cousin, he's a doctor. Doctors are already using AI, but they are still the judgement maker, If the AI makes a mistake, they and the entity they work for are held liable. But it might take a long time to realize that a mistake has been made, so it's going to take a while to work this out. He was arguing that humans are so fallible that it AI can replace them in his field.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#225

Post by vrganj »

ipdashc wrote: post #213
vrganj wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's first finish the critique, then we can use its conclusions to talk about what it would actually take to get us out of this mess. Capitalism has always been a tension between capitalists, who want maximum return on capital and workers, who want pesky things like a living wage, sick leave or safe work conditions. For the longest time, the only power labor has had to get those things was the power of collective ba…

Thank you, now this is a solid answer. I don't think I agree with everything in it entirely, but it's well written and certainly gives me a lot to think about.

I'm glad you found this articulation of my views useful! I hope you now understand why people can be opposed to getting bogged down in discussing what they see as band-aids on top of a much bigger structural problem.

I'd also be interested in seeing where you do and don't agree - if only to adjust my own mental model, none of us are infallible, critical feedback is always good :-)

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#226

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

>If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it. However, I don’t think that’s going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead.

It seems to me that "middle powers" such as Canada, Australia, EU nations, India, and South Korea have an incentive to slow things down. Since many don't trust either the US or China. Coincidentally, Canada has been working to assemble a coalition of middle powers. And an EU nation (the Netherlands) controls ASML, which is key to the AI supply chain.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#227

Post by oblio »

metek wrote: post #194
gigel82 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing says "social change" like building a Flock of predictive-surveillance cameras capable of spotting the revolt before the flock even knows it’s a flock.

The fascist leader needs to catch every single revolutionary group every single time. But a single revolutionary with a pistol only needs to catch the leader ONCE.

You should probably read the history of anarchism in Imperial Russia.

There were tons of assassination attempts against the tsars in the 1800s, and they even killed a tsar. Yet the empire fell due to an external war, roughly 100 years later.

Aristocracy became useless around 1600-1700, when gunpowder meant that peasant armies took over instead of knights, yet it took between 200 and 400 years for full legal equality to be introduced everywhere and some places still have nobility with special status, to this day, even in developed countries.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#228

Post by ACCount37 »

sghiassy wrote: post #127
numeri wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> new space is created That seems to be the crux here. You think it will be, I (and a lot of other people) aren't sure it will. If new space for jobs are created, I am certain we'll be fine long term. What do you think will happen if it isn't (I know you have strong evidence for and reasons to believe it will be, but just indulge the hypothetical)?

Yes that’s the crux of the risk - will new space be created On one hand. We’ve never had a technological revolution that didn’t yield more jobs On the other hand, Terminator

AI is different because "intelligence" is the last thing humans still do better than machines.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#229

Post by hypfer »

jaynetics wrote: post #219
hypfer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of discussion here is not up to the standards I would want it to be. What are you even saying there. "Humans are also not perfect, so anything is possible" but painted with a coat of fake intellectualism. What a waste of time.

So, do you have a counter-argument? Anything that humans can do that goes beyond "pushing probabilities higher"?

It is my belief that a prerequisite to a counter-argument is an argument.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#230

Post by oblio »

beloch wrote: post #168
bryan0 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because people don't work like that.

The Titanic was put to sea with life rafts for half its passengers and most people were ok with that kind of logic. It took a massive media campaign around the disaster and the many deaths for change to happen.

Slavery is still legal in some places despite toddlers instinctively knowing that freedom is important since the dawn of humans around the world.

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