Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

petergabriel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 167 posts

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#151

Post by ChatGTP »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58
ChatGTP wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. What? Because we weren't burning fossil fuels before cars? Besides forgetting about trains, steamships and the coal-powered Industrial Revolution, you're ignoring the billions of lives lifted out of poverty.

I guess one could argue this was also a pretty stupid thing to do ? I read Tesla’s auto-biography, he even knew back then we were messing up a lot.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#152

Post by ChatGTP »

nonbirithm wrote: post #146
ChatGTP wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to get upset about your ignorant statements, but you should be easily able to realize that we could've achieved similar results with electric systems a long time ago. We could've deployed nuclear a long time ago, wind etc. We could've used and invested further in electric tractors 50 years ago. You're conflating what I'm saying, I'm not saying technology wasn't helpful, I'm saying the internal combustio…

For our civilization the time to proliferate electric engines before ICEs is gone, though. I have to wonder if there's something inherit to the properties/efficiency of petroleum combustion that ensures that intelligent civilization will proliferate it first over electric engines. It sounds like the bottleneck is lack of foresight. Our ancestors were incapable of seeing the end result of ICEs everywhere when they wer…

It was lobbying, it had little to do with psychology or prehistoric urges or anything like that. Greed of a few mostly.

Read up about the world class tram system in Sydney, bicycle networks in LA and what killed all that. Take a look at all the coal lobbies in Australia. Wars for oil in the Middle East, it just goes on and on.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#153

Post by reportgunner »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #128
doug_durham wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What happens when programmers are no longer needed?

I can't imagine a situation like this. Who is doing all the actual programming work ? Who is receiving the products of the work ? Who is competing with the previous two groups ?

Writing code might be no longer needed at some point but programmers don't spend majority of their time writing code.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#154

Post by catchnear4321 »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #41
brigadier132 wrote: post #12

Well 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…

"Every underprivileged child could have a personalized tutor." Tutor for what, prompt engineering? The impact of this on the kids is hard to fathom and just because "similar" advancements in the past opened up doors does not mean this one will as well.

Tutor for whatever the kid has the curiosity to ask.

You don’t need to be a “prompt engineer” to get use out of a language model. You just have to recognize what it is, and what it isn’t.

If that can’t be taught to children, there’s no sense fretting over AI. We don’t need it to fail.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#155

Post by AlecSchueler »

autoexec wrote: post #150
AlecSchueler wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like school.

Thankfully teachers don't usually get their degrees by reading social media posts and whatever else they happened to find on the internet. That said, you should absolutely be paying attention to what your kids are (and more importantly aren't) being taught in schools too.

They don't get their degrees that way, but they absolutely do use social media and have their views shaped by it. ChatGPT is also trained on a lot more than social media, you can be sure it's read a lot of scientific literature as well.

But yes, you're final point is the one I'm getting at: You should be actively monitoring and explaining what your child is being told whether it comes from a human or an LLM.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#156

Post by throwoutway »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #154
ladzoppelin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every underprivileged child could have a personalized tutor." Tutor for what, prompt engineering? The impact of this on the kids is hard to fathom and just because "similar" advancements in the past opened up doors does not mean this one will as well.

Tutor for whatever the kid has the curiosity to ask. You don’t need to be a “prompt engineer” to get use out of a language model. You just have to recognize what it is, and what it isn’t. If that can’t be taught to children, there’s no sense fretting over AI. We don’t need it to fail.

I'd rather kids not be taught by something that hallucinates and spits out accurate-sounding lies. The education system is already struggling to teach kids to read and has been removing math from california schools (two front page news here this week). Adding a lying tutor should be classified as child neglect.

That said, I like the AI, but only as an adult who has enough training to question whether I'm being lied to by an auto regressive Turing machine.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#157

Post by catchnear4321 »

throwoutway wrote: post #156
catchnear4321 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tutor for whatever the kid has the curiosity to ask. You don’t need to be a “prompt engineer” to get use out of a language model. You just have to recognize what it is, and what it isn’t. If that can’t be taught to children, there’s no sense fretting over AI. We don’t need it to fail.

I'd rather kids not be taught by something that hallucinates and spits out accurate-sounding lies. The education system is already struggling to teach kids to read and has been removing math from california schools (two front page news here this week). Adding a lying tutor should be classified as child neglect. That said, I like the AI, but only as an adult who has enough training to question whether I'm being lied t…

it would make a poor tutor for you. even as an adult.

go find examples of the lying tutor you hypothesize - you might just find smart kids extracting value from chaos. your fears will not deny them that.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#158

Post by brigadier132 »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #33
gwoolhurme wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

> People expressed all the same lofty ideals about social media

Who (that wasn't a billionaire owner of a social media company)? Also, major strawman.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#159

Post by yellowapple »

ChatGTP wrote: post #138
birdyrooster wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they shouldn’t? Jesus what is with people shaming others for not attaining some arbitrary level of education and career?

Ok so what will they be doing instead ?

Playing? Actually enjoying their childhoods?

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#160

Post by stemlord »

jdkee wrote: post #112
huehehue wrote: post #100

There's a massive piece of the music scene that I can't imagine AI ever replacing. Some genres are formulaic by design, but the draw for so many others is the human experience and the inventiveness. Many people follow artists because they connect with material that could only have come from the artist. One reasonable concern is that tech supplementation will lead to a deluge of derivative work, nullifying the efforts…

I believe it can and ultimately will, given enough training data.

By the time it does, it's no longer a "computer" it's a form of life, and that's not "training data", that's "experience", thus by all intents and purposes it's a "person" and so it is still true that a "computer" cannot possess the free will required to express ones self creatively
Post reply on HN