Nice to see an artist who have a website and post readable messages there instead of posting images with text on Twitter or Instagram.
Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
121–130 of 167 posts
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
When AI Chess started kicking my @ss, I assumed that human competitive Chess was over. Quite the opposite happened. We appreciate human-vs-human Chess even more because Stockfish, and other AIs, demonstrated there are more challenging lines and strategies to pursue.
That is fine when it comes to competition. How does a graphic artist or programmer compete?
The best ones will stay. People are still buying hand made items because they are unique and of better quality than those mass produced.
I know a few graphical artists, they would tell you that half of their pay is for dealing with annoying customers, and I can't see AI is going to make the clients happy.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I really hate this line of argument as well. We obviously understand it can have a lot of beneficial effects in society. It's a strawman to say that people don't see that. The problem is nobody seems to be properly discussing the bad things that can and will occur.
We can of course also judge the track record on this kind of techno-optimist rhetoric. People expressed all the same lofty ideals about social media, almost all of which have been outweighed by what we really got: anger-driven addiction, micro-targeted propaganda, turn-key state surveillance, and teenagers attempting suicide at all time highs.
Now take that and 100x it.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If 50% of US jobs are replaced by AI in the next 20 years, and those jobs aren't replaced by other jobs, and people depend on income to survive, what happens? Which 50% are you seeing replaced? We can, and have, always imagined mass income eradication. I'm not arguing we do nothing. But zero problems surfaced so far are even remotely actionable, as they're all well within the realm of hypothesis versus evidence.
Potentially? Most artists, programmers, musicians, most teachers, huge amounts of finance, marketing, legal and especially paralegal, most journalism and technical writing positions, stock trading (most traders don't do anything that AI can't fully replace), and even more of customer service. The majority of those will probably be staffed at 10% what they are now at best. Some, like stock trading, will probably be al…
I'm not so worried about legal. Lawyers seem to be in a good position to gatekeep AI out (e.g. suing DoNotPay). Paralegals could go extinct though.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#125Well said, this thing is here to stay. When I first played around with gpt-4 I was filled with immense dread. I, as many others have, immediately understood what kind of enormous societal impact this would have. But I put the question to myself, if I could magically wish this thing away, would I? I wouldn't. I understand the many that would, this thing completely upends the status quo. Massive swathes of people will…
If you think AI is a disaster, think about the potential for medical breakthroughs that can emerge from this. The “think of the good” argument is over played. Same was true for combustion engines, they will probably send us extinct. I’d like it if people just stopped with it. People aren’t idiots, they know good things and very bad things can be achieved.
> Same was true for combustion engines, they will probably send us extinct.
Climate change is a serious issue, but you cheapen and discredit it by exaggerating its impact. There is zero chance climate change will cause humans to go extinct. If my stance is incorrect, please reply with some evidence.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely more. This takes very hard and challenging work and turns it into nearly nothing. This reduces decades of skilled labor and education into an algorithm. I'm not undervaluing industrialization, but the improvement in productivity wasn't on the same scale. We're talking reducing weeks of work to seconds in some cases, and that's not even being optimistic with what improvements we might still see in the comin…
> takes very hard and challenging work and turns it into nearly nothing. This reduces decades of skilled labor and education into an algorithm Read up on Luddism. These were multi-generational trades undone by the loom alone. The Industrial Revolution required millions of people to not only retrain, but also relocate. It changed political structures, often violently. Even in the 1980s, skilled spreadsheets were done…
>The Industrial Revolution required millions of people to not only retrain, but also relocate. It changed political structures, often violently
Can't wait for my political system to be violently up ended by AI. I can imagine it will only change for the better, right? Right??
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We obviously understand it can have a lot of beneficial effects in society Really? Because nobody seems to be talking about them. You talk about how bad things "will" occur. What about bad things that are literally happening right now?
Maybe think of the children. Why should they go to school at all? Why should they study? What should they study? What should I tell them? A person who works in tourism just told me that he wants to learn something safer, because he had no job during COVID, so he started studying web design. All I could tell him is that that job has peaked, and I believe tourism is safer at this point.
What will all the serfs and slaves do for a living, now that we have tractors and combine harvesters?
I mean, that's > 90% of all jobs! How will we cope with 90% unemployment?
(it should be obvious that this is not serious... humanity has survived "machines are taking all the jobs" many times before, and it will survive this one too)
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#128Peter Gabriel is fucking courageous. I love it. I'm a 50+ programmer. I can absolutely feel this shit pressing on me. Good. Are people right that there are ethical concerns, absolutely. We need to get busy realizing the potential and dealing with the issues.
I’m in your same demographic. However I see these technologies as career extenders, not career threats. I can learn things faster than ever and adapt to changes more easily.
As someone much younger (mid 20's), I have absolutely no idea what to do. I don't even think there _is_ anything I can do, aside from waiting to see what happens. What happens when programmers are no longer needed? That certainly (I hope) won't happen in 5 years, but given the exponential rate of improvement, I can see programming as a profession being gone in 20-30 years.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
More importantly, how do we keep everybody alive and cared for when all our systems are built around needing a job to survive when we then don't even have jobs to do for more than a quarter of our population?
Sadly nobody seems to be giving a fk. That until we find ourselves in crisis that leads to a lot of violence and a societal collapse. Hope I’m dead wrong, really do
I hear you man. Initially I was excited about this tech, and the more I game out what the actual effects might be, I just think it gets dark and the cognitive dissonance that kicks in prevents people from thinking about it too deeply, so they don't.
Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement
#130I think it's only natural to think of AI as the enemy no? Sure theoretically it means better healthcare, scientific improvement. However what nobody has really answered well is what happens to the artists, writers, programmers, scientists, maybe even doctors and lawyers. As we become potentially obsolete what happens to us. Saying that you can do art as a hobby or programming as a hobby really isn't an answer people…
> what happens to the artists, writers, programmers, scientists, maybe even doctors and lawyers They find better things. Maybe agitating for a different economic system. Some countries will fail horribly at this. In any case, LLMs aren't coming for most writers or coders or scientists or medical researchers. They will help with our credentialing fetish.
>They find better things
Better things that an AI can't do. To clarify.