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Experts pledge to rein in AI research

bbc.com

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Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#51

Post by CornishHen »

bsaunder wrote: post #9

"In the short term, this could mean research into the economic effects of AI to stop smart systems putting millions of people out of work." This seems unfortunate and somewhat challenging to do. Our current economic model encourages improving efficiency of systems. This seems like a good thing. Its really too bad that people "need" jobs. Jobs should be creating value or they shouldn't exist. Artificially "creating" j…

I agree that there's a benefit to making processes more efficient by replacing human labor with AI where possible, but I interpreted this to refer to systems that have wide economic effects, like robosigning foreclosures or selling company stocks.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#52

Post by walterbell »

> Research into AI, using a variety of approaches, had brought about great progress on speech recognition, image analysis, driverless cars, translation and robot motion, it said.

How much of this progress required training data generated by working humans? What would feed future statistical algorithms if this source of training data was greatly reduced?

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#53

Post by kylebrown »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #39
bsaunder wrote: post #9

"In the short term, this could mean research into the economic effects of AI to stop smart systems putting millions of people out of work." This seems unfortunate and somewhat challenging to do. Our current economic model encourages improving efficiency of systems. This seems like a good thing. Its really too bad that people "need" jobs. Jobs should be creating value or they shouldn't exist. Artificially "creating" j…

The idea of work, money and paying for things is obsolete and becoming dangerous. It needs replacing with a non-awful allocation economy.

What are the better alternatives for allocating resources? Any distribution mechanism will need a standard metric for measuring and dividing piles of resources. Money is that metric.

I do agree with you about work though. Assuming a future government structure similar to our current one, a humane economic policy will probably need to provide some form of universal basic income.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#54

Post by gonvaled »

rndn wrote: post #15
bulletsvshumans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a tax on AI that goes towards unemployment benefits of some kind?

I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the population is unemployable it will necessarily lead to social acceptance. People will simply have a lot of leisure time.

Or, more people (all those becoming unemployed because of advances in AI) will chase the little jobs remaining (those not taken over by AI), creating three classes:

A) the 1%: capitalists financing (and controlling) AI, will get phenomenal rewards once AI has taken over production of basic utilities, food, water distribution. Only political control will keep AI monopolies from appearing.

B) the 49.5%: those lucky enough to get a job in one of the areas not taken over by AI. They will have to be extremely competent, and lower their salary: they are competing in a very limited and not necessarily very complicated skill-sets (those skill-sets not taken over by AI) with 99% of the human population

C) the other 49.5%: those who are not making the cut to get a job.

(the sizes of the groups B & C obviously depend on the number of available jobs)

People will be able to move from B to C, but never to A (since building an AI empire from scratch is impossible, specially when capital has become extremely concentrated)

People in B are barely making ends meet, and people in C are in continuous existential danger. Political engagement drops to a minimum. Capitalists collude to create monopolies, raise prices and basically destroy democracy. The human race splits in two distinct classes, and the lower class is basically enslaved.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#55

Post by harperlee »

kylebrown wrote: post #53
JulianMorrison wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of work, money and paying for things is obsolete and becoming dangerous. It needs replacing with a non-awful allocation economy.

What are the better alternatives for allocating resources? Any distribution mechanism will need a standard metric for measuring and dividing piles of resources. Money is that metric. I do agree with you about work though. Assuming a future government structure similar to our current one, a humane economic policy will probably need to provide some form of universal basic income.

I'm still not convinced that work is obsolete or becoming dangerous... As long as humans have desires (whatever weird e.g. I want my hair to be the bluest and spikiest), and as long as these desires there are not the same for everyone, there will be incentives to exchange value, and while money is the unit of measure, work is the effort directed to get that value for you. Also, the side effect of all this is that me make things, so is work dangerous? Perhaps /we/ are, as work is a byproduct of our way of being.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#56

Post by marknutter »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #39
bsaunder wrote: post #9

"In the short term, this could mean research into the economic effects of AI to stop smart systems putting millions of people out of work." This seems unfortunate and somewhat challenging to do. Our current economic model encourages improving efficiency of systems. This seems like a good thing. Its really too bad that people "need" jobs. Jobs should be creating value or they shouldn't exist. Artificially "creating" j…

The idea of work, money and paying for things is obsolete and becoming dangerous. It needs replacing with a non-awful allocation economy.

How then do you propose we assign value to things?

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#57

Post by rndn »

nhaehnle wrote: post #44
rndn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the population is unemployable it will necessarily lead to social acceptance. People will simply have a lot of leisure time.

It is not just social acceptance, though. It is also the problem that one's livelihood is closely tied to one's employment. With both these things, the question is how the social acceptance and the detachment of livelihood from employment comes about. Will it require revolutions and civil war with accompanying bloodshed when the downtrodden unemployed rise up? Or will we be collectively smart enough to reform our eco…

Maybe I'm thinking in too simple terms, but I can't imagine that being a major problem because it will affect people from all classes in the same way and the change will probably be fairly quick (once the technology is available, everyone will want it immediately to remain competitive). Intelligence is distributed like a Gauss bell, so it will equally hit lower, upper and middle class, making the necessity for a basic income very quickly obvious. I don't think the lower class will be excluded from such a social system.

I personally think the bigger risks are AIs themselves, used as weapons or when they go out of control.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#58

Post by harperlee »

marknutter wrote: post #56
JulianMorrison wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of work, money and paying for things is obsolete and becoming dangerous. It needs replacing with a non-awful allocation economy.

How then do you propose we assign value to things?

If money is three things (unit of measure, holder of value, and method of exchange), perhaps there is a way of dividing these in two or more subsets. Measure and exchange seem difficult to separate; perhaps not being able to "hold" money could be interesting.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#59

Post by [deleted] »

walterbell wrote: post #49
drcomputer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't stop the bad guys from making those tools while the good guys don't, because they are afraid their tools will be used by the bad guys. Ignorance is not a good defense strategy.

Inadvertent bad guys (good intentions with unpredictable errors) can be more damaging than intentional attacks.

[deleted]

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#60

Post by gonvaled »

nhaehnle wrote: post #44
rndn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the population is unemployable it will necessarily lead to social acceptance. People will simply have a lot of leisure time.

It is not just social acceptance, though. It is also the problem that one's livelihood is closely tied to one's employment. With both these things, the question is how the social acceptance and the detachment of livelihood from employment comes about. Will it require revolutions and civil war with accompanying bloodshed when the downtrodden unemployed rise up? Or will we be collectively smart enough to reform our eco…

It will be difficult for a malnourished and disarmed majority, with little information about the structure of power, to raise against an AI army.

And until the AI army is ready, the AI capitalists can finance an elite of soldiers to keep the hungry masses at bay.

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