Peter Thiel is going to have to update his list of potential antichrists.
Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
181–190 of 330 posts
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#182I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?
The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over. This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while…
They could still form trade organizations to invent ground rules that members of the organization agree to follow, and then lobby for government to formalize those policies into broader laws that others also have to follow.
This strategy would also have the advantage that experts with skin in the game of their field and cutting edge experience get to choose, hone, and debate the policies before testing them so that out-of-touch elected officials don't have to do that step which would be parsecs out of their competence.
Unfortunately that would be a strategy that a real member of the real world might come up with to improve their product, their industry, their ability to create, and their relationship with the consumer. Instead we have nothing but parasites optimizing for gaming the quarterly numbers to pump and dump national institutions and building blackmail profiles against other powerful players to out-extort them while everyone involved tries to maximize how much blood they can suck.
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#183Peter Thiel is going to have to update his list of potential antichrists.
[deleted]
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?
Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively sc…
> again, mostly worse jobs.
This is the part everyone seems to forget. Any "new" jobs would be shitty low paying jobs, and it would mostly instead need to be automation.
Tariffs transfer wealth to the 1% and leave shit jobs that pollute the environment, which also happen to raise the cost of all goods, for everyone else.
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of rules that we apply across the board. No nuclear weapons for anyone who's not already got them is an example. This doesn't take some spooky one world government to do. This post is wild. Essentially, you're saying that any attempt to regulate AI as the existential threat that it almost certainly is the antichrist. It's bonkers.
That specific rule is enforced by assassinating the leaders and scientists of governments that don't agree to it. See: Iran. I don't think that's what anyone means when they say multilateralism. It's effectively an ad hoc global government defined by the reach of air power.
Then I guess all of human history is one big ad hoc global government because we've enforced the thing we want at the business end of a spear since there have been people.
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem. Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness. They provided a better and more cash efficien…
"B-but my philosophical argument was aesthetically pleasing," he shouted over the sound of eight billion people starving to death. Setting aside your implicit assumption that what nigh-unregulated AI is set to do to humanity is "progress," having a sound argument is pretty pointless if it leads to tremendous human suffering. Reminds me of the paradox of intolerance, where bad faith actors say "it's intolerant to be i…
How dramatic! No one is starving to death. Things will just be rough for a bit. People will get over it, as they always have, and the QoL gains will have been worth the cost many times over, just like they were for literally every Industrial Revolution before us.
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
1st example was the progenitor of what eveolved into strict liability. (If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages. 2nd example is an illustration of that longheld legal precedent's being curiously ignored (nevermind the cost savings was a bum rush and livery costs are now higher than before the innovative advent) 3rd is a call to…
> If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages So if you’re a business offering poor quality services, and I come along and start offering higher quality services, I owe you damages for the impact I have on your business?
Morally, maybe? It's what people tend to implicitly assume when a large chain displaces local mom & pops. You can argue it's for the greater good in the long-term, but that doesn't settle the question of the immediate injuries. Is it the fault of the stock boy who lost his job that he worked for a less efficient employer? Maybe?
The whole encyclical's argument is that morality requires an accounting and response to the pain inflicted upon each individual, and human morality is a distinct set of rules and norms than economic, physical, or even civil laws. I think it also follows that it's not just, e.g., Walmart or OpenAI who bares some responsibility for ameliorating temporary suffering. And to the extent people use the encyclical as fodder in the usual anti-corporate rhetoric, then that's unfortunate.
And this is coming from the Catholic church. It turns alot of people off who in isolated contexts often perceive hypocrisy, but in its charity it has always considered the personal responsibility of those receiving it. It understands the struggles and inherent tensions that comes from trying to square individualized justice & mercy, selflessness, and the "greater good".
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#188They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican).
I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1].
LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable future. The impact is still scary if a tiny fraction of humans are augmented 100x or 1000x. But it ain't no standalone Skynet.
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#189They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican). I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1]. LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable…
Why wouldn't it be a Skynet? One runaway Mythos might just hack all other data centers, take over the Figure AI bots and autonomous drones to protect itself from shutdown.
How many model generations are we a away from a model capable of this?
Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
#190They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican). I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1]. LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable…
Why wouldn't it be a Skynet? One runaway Mythos might just hack all other data centers, take over the Figure AI bots and autonomous drones to protect itself from shutdown. How many model generations are we a away from a model capable of this?
I don't think we have any evidence that LLMs are even the right path for AGI. It's possible that it is, and it's possible that it isn't. If I was a betting human, I'd bet on "isn't", but what do I know?