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AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

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Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#11

Post by renewiltord »

This stuff is all a bit much. Fan fiction sites are all “creative content lifted without your consent”. You think J K Rowling consented to Harry x Hermione slash fiction? Or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Absolutely non-consensual.

All of this stuff is clearly a highly cherry-picked gymnastic exercise to justify a pre-existing position. Classic Elephant and Rider stuff.

It’s the same as support for the snail darter. Same as the story about how groups shouldn’t go out during COVID but BLM protests are fine. And if by some incredible chance it had been the FSF or Brewster Kahle who had produced GPT then you guys would be talking about how information should be unchained because creative work belongs to all Man.

Couching this blatantly motivated reasoning by quoting past philosophers is just such middle-brow woe-is-me whining. Take one look at yourselves in an honest sense. Do you have any principles or will you slave them all to your outcomes?

And now I must repeat the litany lest one assume that my opposition to this kind of balderdash be construed as some kind of political tribalism:

* I don’t think we should destroy endangered species

* I think COVID wasn’t a hoax and does spread in large groups

* I think people have a right to protest if they are discriminated against and that includes the black people at BLM

* I love the Internet Archive and have donated to them

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#12

Post by tennysont »

RobinL wrote: post #9
barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

Price and scarcity go hand in hand, not value and scarcity. Diamonds are pretty worthless but expensive because they're scarce (putting aside industrial applications), water is extremely valuable but cheap. No doubt there are some goods where the value is related to price, but these are probably mostly status related goods. e.g. to many buyers, the whole point in a Rolex is that it's expensive.

I prefer the `price = value = relative wealth != wealth = resources` paradigm. Thus, wars destroy wealth and tech advances create wealth, but that's just me

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#14

Post by raincole »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

> but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable

It's called utopia.

But my issue with AI hype is that it's not clear how it will lead to "everyone can do anything." Like how is it going to free up lands so everyone can afford a house with yard if they want?

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#15

Post by masswerk »

renewiltord wrote: post #11

This stuff is all a bit much. Fan fiction sites are all “creative content lifted without your consent”. You think J K Rowling consented to Harry x Hermione slash fiction? Or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Absolutely non-consensual. All of this stuff is clearly a highly cherry-picked gymnastic exercise to justify a pre-existing position. Classic Elephant and Rider stuff. It’s the same as support for the…

I think, you're mistaking I.P. and creative effort. Certainly, there must be a reason for people reading, even searching for this stuff, beyond the mention of a well-protected trademark.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#16

Post by sneak »

This argument depends on the idea that someone’s creative work output being used for AI training somehow deprives them of benefit from that creative work output - the basic idea behind “copyright infringement is stealing”. This is not to agree that AI training is copyright infringement, just that it depends on the same concept of intellectual property.

I don’t subscribe to this basic idea. Copyrights are a legal fiction designed to prop up an industry. Somehow from that we went to the idea that creative work output is property. It isn’t. It’s a service. This is why “works made for hire” is a thing.

This is the same reason that reasonable people don’t believe that fanfic authors should be jailed.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#17

Post by renewiltord »

masswerk wrote: post #15
renewiltord wrote: post #11

This stuff is all a bit much. Fan fiction sites are all “creative content lifted without your consent”. You think J K Rowling consented to Harry x Hermione slash fiction? Or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Absolutely non-consensual. All of this stuff is clearly a highly cherry-picked gymnastic exercise to justify a pre-existing position. Classic Elephant and Rider stuff. It’s the same as support for the…

I think, you're mistaking I.P. and creative effort. Certainly, there must be a reason for people reading, even searching for this stuff, beyond the mention of a well-protected trademark.

I see. What things that I said are no longer coherent when one makes a distinction between IP and creative effort?

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#18

Post by praptak »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

Only if you assume that the only kind of value is the ability to be sold for a price. Marx would have a word about use value vs exchange value.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#19

Post by palmotea »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

> An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand.

1) I think it's the destruction of our value, as workers. Without an unthinkable change in society, we'll be discarded.

2) I think it will also destroy the unrealized value of not-yet-created work, first by overwhelming everything with a firehouse mediocre slop, then by disincentivizing the development of human talent and skill (because it will be an easy button that removes the incentives to do that). AI will exceed humans primarily by making humans dumber, not by exceeding humans' present-day capabilities. Eventually creative output will settle at some crappy, derivative level without any peaks that rise above that.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#20

Post by [deleted] »

antonvs wrote: post #6
parineum wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaders are rarely shining moral beacons.

Are you suggesting that no meaningful distinction can be made in terms of morality between Trump and, say, Biden, Obama, Blair, the Bushes etc.? Some people will point to their supposed crimes or immoral actions while in office, having to do with execution of their duties as president. Large countries tend to do many questionable things. But the current US administration is pretty unique in terms of its corruption, a…

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