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Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat – Yet

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Re: Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat – Yet

#6

In one respect, AI is already damaging the sense of self worth of swathes of humanity by making them economically redundant. This will be an accelerating threat for sometime.

That already happened, 140 years ago, with John Henry and the steam drill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29

Re: Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat – Yet

#7
New rule: if you have a PhD in "artificial intelligence" (aka mostly machine learning these days, although they like to say "artificial intelligence" as it sounds more futuristic to the layman) and you give interviews/write articles about the singularity/sentient AI/any of that other baloney, you lose your PhD. This is just mental masturbation for nerds, on par with drivel like Roko's basilisk (an example of the exact same logic being applied but to comedic ends is MIT's time traveler convention).

Anyone who knows how to program knows that statements like:

"Until we have some mechanism for guaranteeing that machines never try to replace us, or relegate us to zoos, we should take the problem of AI risk seriously."

are just complete sensationalist bullcrap that have a chance of happening in the next century of exactly 0%.

Many questions, mostly legal, come with things like driverless cars. But in all cases, those questions concern how human responsibility should be handled, not the risk of Battlestar Galactica becoming reality.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat – Yet

#8

In one respect, AI is already damaging the sense of self worth of swathes of humanity by making them economically redundant. This will be an accelerating threat for sometime.

While I can empathize with the emotions behind that argument, it's rather hard to be persuaded by it. Jobs can become redundant, but people can't insofar as they can be retrained. If we're talking about what harms people's self worth, I'd imagine that telling people they're redundant is a lot more dehumanizing than having them retrain for new positions.

In any case, human beings are remarkable adaptive. It's one of our most impressive traits; don't sell it short.

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