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Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

adlrocha.substack.com

111–114 of 114 posts

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#111
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI gonna need good physical embodiment (robots) to actually take control of the world Fortunately thats further off

Further, yes. How much I can't say. Watching how quickly robots are evolving right now is quite something. Every day something pretty cheap is coming out that would have taken millions of dollars and a massive lab full of scientists to create. Bi-pedal robots, drones, sensing capabilities, interpretive capabilities, all this is proceeding at a never before seen rate.

For several years now I've been pointing out to non-techies that Boston Dynamics built a robot that can do a backflip and is better at industrial environment parkour than you or I....

...and the first version of that robot came out in the previous decade.

When I saw one doing a perfectly creditable spinning hook kick not long ago I had a vision of our future, and it was just me re-watching The Animatrix.

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#112
post #7

>someone raised the question of “what would be the role of humans in an AI-first society”. Norbert Wiener, considered to be the father of Cybernetics, wrote a book back in the 1950's entitled "The Human Use of Human Beings" that brings up these questions in the early days of digital electronics and control systems. In it, he brings up things like: - 'Robots enslaving humans for doing jobs better suited by robots due…

I think its important to remember that humans are not that far removed from the native animals that we share the earth with. Civilization is just a thin layer of rules we use to try and keep the peace between us. Just being born doesn't entitle somebody to food and shelter, you have to go out and find it. You have to work. A magpie is not provided food and shelter, it has to hunt, fight for territory, and build its n…

>A magpie is not provided food and shelter, it has to hunt, fight for territory, and build its nest.

>Humans don't have some inalienable "worth". But if you can work, you might choose to trade it for some food and shelter.

A magpie is a slave to its environment (high entropy). Humans are capable of building systems that alter the environment (low entropy).

If we are apathetical to AI, we choose to ignore the benefits and improvements from technology. And ever since the plow, bows and arrows and sharpened rocks, we have always depended on technology to improve our condition. Which is why naturalists find it amazing when we find other species of life on this planet use tools to give them advantages that nature and evolution didn't supplement them with through genetics.

There is a difference between "survival" and "purpose". We have developed our ape-selves to become more than meat in the circle of life. With purpose, we can be more than the magpie.

AI is not an environment - it's a technology as much as the hammer or plow. If it is built to concentrate wealth or kill more people, that's an architectural choice and not a law of physics.

Human labor is more than product outputs. If we cannot change the social contract that defines worth to shift towards human participation and stewardship, then it's a death sentence for the majority of the world's human population.

While companies are not charities, they do depend on consumers. If you take away the income of consumers, do you have a market? If anything, AI should be treated like the telephone or electricity - a public utility - where it can be used to re-engineer how systems, like agriculture, can be done.

At some point we will reach a point of post-scarcity. Where energy is effectively little cost if not free and is able to create all our needs. What happens when things are no longer scarce?

We (humans) need to work on ourselves to overcome our base natures like greed.

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#113

> "what is the role of humans in a scenario where work is no longer necessary?" People have been fantasizing about this scenario throughout the industrial era--read William Morris' News from Nowhere (1890) for example--but it has failed to come to pass so many times, and the reasons are pretty obvious. The benefits of technology are spread unequally, and increasingly so over time, so only a wealthy few get the option…

>The real question is why would anyone want, or want to help build, such an obscenity.

Power Saws and CNC mills have no autonomy. They have to be guided every inch or instruction by hand. Autonomous AI agents remove the hand. So if we don't define the role of humans in the process of creation, we get AI building things we didn't ask for or need.

AI is coming regardless. There are advantages that we all accept it can do. But the machine is a 'slave' only if we refuse to be 'masters'.

There is a term called social ecology.

It is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. In effect, the way human beings deal with each other as social beings is crucial to addressing ecological crisis.

The point of social ecology emphasizes is not that moral and spiritual persuation and renewal are meaningless or unnecessary; they are necessary and can be educational. But modern capitalism is 'structually amoral' and hence impervious to moral appeals.

Power will always belong to the elite and commanding strata if it is not institutionalized in face-to-face democracies, among people who are fully empowered as social beings to make decisions in new communal assemblies. Power that does not belong to the people invariably belongs to the state and the exploitative interests it represents.

What is obscene is measuring outputs by 19th century standards. As long as we believe that "being born doesn't entitle you to food", we will stay on the hedonic treadmill until the planet or our psyches break.

Re: Intelligence is a commodity. Context is the real AI Moat

#114
post #54

For anyone worried about AGI coming soon. Today I asked Claude to stop using em dashes. That was his/her answer: Noted — I'II avoid em dashes going forward and use other punctuation or restructure sentences instead.

I know some very smart guys that don’tknow how to use a microwave. And what? Doesn’t mean much

Sure it does.

It means they’re not very smart.

Just experienced.

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