The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#2Nicely done Buzzfeed.
Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieves its goals because that’s the attitude they adopted.
Kind of reminds one of Ex Machina. If amoral profit maximizers design AI, it's very possibly gonna be an amoral profit maximizer.
It still irrationally bothers me after 30 years of shitty MS products and Gates literally preventing technological progress so he could make money, he's one of the good guys. It's like if you donate enough to the church you can earn penance. The new versions of Gates don't seem much different.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#3Just thought I'd drop by with this helpful link about Venezuela:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america...
There's a first time for everything. New kinds of disasters happen. However, we can identify a number of past and present civilizational collapses, going back to the 18th century, that appear to correlate strongly with what we might call "runaway socialism." It seems difficult to identify any historical cases of "runaway capitalism."
Given that "capitalism" is a word used by socialists to describe the absence of socialism ("capitalists" think of "capitalism" as just a thing that happens when property is respected and contract law works), it might be wise to take arguments like this with a little bit of skepticism.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#4Ted Chiang as always is a joy to read.
I hadn't made the 'mirror' connection before and it's a great image, but pretty much the first time I heard Bostrom, Musk et al talk about this I really wondered how absent any issues of political or social tension was that they are fuelling.
Andrew Ng talked about this too. Instead of talking about how technological change is impacting our social, cultural and political life the tech industry lets their machinations lose on the world and everybody else can deal with the fallout.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#5Why not both?
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#6This elegantly captures something I think I've always observed, but been unable to articulate, in all of the superintelligence literature and the AGI / AI safety line of thinking: There is an implicit set of unarticulated underlying assumptions, and biases, that form the foundation from which the rest of the argument is "logically" progressed or extrapolated/ inferred.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#7Just thought I'd drop by with this helpful link about Venezuela: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america... There's a first time for everything. New kinds of disasters happen. However, we can identify a number of past and present civilizational collapses, going back to the 18th century, that appear to correlate strongly with what we might call "runaway socialism." It seems difficult to identify a…
Unethical crony capitalism can destroy capitalism through the accumulation of wealth and centralization of power. What's the difference between 5 robber barons running the show and 5 members of the party vanguard?
I'd suggest if you are a serious fan of capitalism, you take the arguments seriously.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#8Why not both?
Why not neither?
The greatest danger to Civilization, in my not-so-humble opinion is tribalism. My country is better. My religion. My political philosophy. My color. My sex. My gender.
And I'll riot and kill if you don't agree.
Capitalism? Socialism? AI? Those won't overcome the stupidity of large populations of humans.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#9Nicely done Buzzfeed. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieves its goals because that’s the attitude they adopted. Kind of reminds one of Ex Machina . If amoral profit maximizers design AI, it's very possibly gonna be an amoral profit maximizer. It still irrationally bothers me after 30 years of shitty MS products and Gates literally preventing tech…
But he's not donating to the church for "penance". He's helping save lives from malaria, and working on other projects to help the developing world! You can't dismiss that, and he's giving away so much of his money that it can't be considered a "fee". He's gonna 90% of it away by the time he's done.
Re: The Real Danger to Civilization Isn't AI. It's Runaway Capitalism
#10This elegantly captures something I think I've always observed, but been unable to articulate, in all of the superintelligence literature and the AGI / AI safety line of thinking: There is an implicit set of unarticulated underlying assumptions, and biases, that form the foundation from which the rest of the argument is "logically" progressed or extrapolated/ inferred.
Could you elaborate what you think those underlying assumptions are?