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The turbulent AI era is here

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231–240 of 259 posts

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#231
post #135

"... AI will avoid climate change." xAI's Colossus 1 and 2 data center mobile gas turbines beg to differ. AI data centers are driving electricity consumption in 100s of GW, and most of that energy is not clean renewable nor nuclear.

I believe we are on autopilot towards essentially free renewable electricity, and so this doesn't feel like a big concern when held against the potential end-of-humanity potential that AI has.

Climate change in general has very little end-of-humanity potential. Unlike AI tech.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#232
"If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off."

When people are using the word "If" they should put a probability next to "If". Otherwise it is a fairytale.

P.S. Hardware also uses branch prediction, assigning probabilities to "if".

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s exactly the same set of questions and challenges as with nuclear power Nuclear power is one of the most amazing magical things on the planet but nuclear weapons present a massive challenge to social coordination. So maybe we should sit as a society and try to figure out how to manage that instead of just freak out and burn all of our own faces off because we can’t handle complex conversations. Why is that so har…

> It’s exactly the same set of questions and challenges as with nuclear power I'm not sure "provide cheap and plentiful power that may be risky if not managed correctly" is really on the same level as "replace all human labor we possibly can" I agree with you that ideally we would coordinate and cooperate better, but the sad problem (the prisoner's dilemma, really) is that some (many? most? all?) people will not coor…

Most people are reasonable. Most people will not screw you over if you just give them an inch. Living in society would be hell if this was not the case.[1] Living day-to-day is just fine in my experience. Because most people are not assholes.

But a lot of society is run by asshole sociopaths which (who) unfortunately lack some pretty fundamental wiring. And that creates some far-away problems, global even, that don’t really have anything to do with normal people that you meet daily. But you can notice how when these concrete problems are pointed out that someone will want to retreat back to generalities. Human nature. That’s IMO from a concerted effort to spread this talking point that asshole-caused problems are really human-caused problems. Because the asshole sociopaths (AHS) in charge are not AHS. They are not just human. And any human would do what they are doing. And in fact by going to war with X we are just stopping them from doing Y to us—

It is a coordination problem for normal, reasonable people. There’s too many key AHS personell disrupting the information flow. So those reasonable human beings have to make more of an effort.

[1] Some poorer societies (as have been told to me) have problems with vile opportunism of the sort where you help some apparently in need person get home and you get gutted and robbed by a gang of thugs. So I asked, okay so you can’t trust anyone then? No, they said. There’s a small and real chance that that could happen. But not to the point that you have to shun strangers. You can still choose to help.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#234

If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse I propose we tax the companies profiting from this at a rate of 95% so we can finance welfare and Universal Basic Income schemes. We need to be aware that said companies and the people behind them will do anything in their power, including bribing politicians, to prevent this and to keep the money they believe are they're entitled to. I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have lo…

> If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse

But then nobody will have money to buy anything anymore, then nobody will have money to pay the AI companies, and then they won't have any money. The jobless will starve to death and then those who have their food made by robots will reign over an empty world where money has become meaningless. LLMs and robots don't eat money, they eat electricity.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurd argument. Any one source is a drop in the bucket.

I think international shipping produces significantly more CO2 than any single other source

Yet the AI boom relies on global shipping to be produced , so “AI” is “additive”.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#236
post #234

If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse I propose we tax the companies profiting from this at a rate of 95% so we can finance welfare and Universal Basic Income schemes. We need to be aware that said companies and the people behind them will do anything in their power, including bribing politicians, to prevent this and to keep the money they believe are they're entitled to. I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have lo…

> If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse But then nobody will have money to buy anything anymore, then nobody will have money to pay the AI companies, and then they won't have any money. The jobless will starve to death and then those who have their food made by robots will reign over an empty world where money has become meaningless. LLMs and robots don't eat money, they eat electricity.

Paperclippers but in slow motion with the economy in the loop.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#237
post #155

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? " ---------------- One look…

This time will be different, because the oligarchs think that when the people finally come for them with pitchforks, they'll have an army of terminators to hide behind. That's why they're going YOLO full mask off.

Ah, this faceless blob of oligarchs that has no human qualities whatsoever. Marxism-pilled much?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#238
I'm more curious how cheap "good enough" LLMs will transform sectors which are traditionally limited by human attention or cost.

For example, taxes. E.g. in Germany your personal tax return filing has a low but real chance to get audited, someone will look at it and try to find discrepancies and/or ask for additional documentation. With LLMs this can conceivably be performed for every return, matching incomplete disparate information streams into one structured picture for every taxpayer.

Or even things like customs screening, where a CT scan provides a full reconstructable list of everything in your possession, down to every bill, and audited on the stop against your declaration.

For the governments, there's not much incentive to automate "jobs", for the companies as well this is a cost question, but for control, all bets are off...

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#239
Guys like Gates are extrapolating recent trends (ChatGPT onwards), but what if you defined the start of AI as the 1950s (when it actually started).

Perhaps I’m too distant from the inner circles of Silicon Valley but as an outsider… I suggest taking the longer term trend.

It’s an awesome tool. It will be used in war. People will lose jobs, and others will become more efficient.

It’s probably an extension of computers and the internet. These things take time.

I just have a hard time with folks predicting imminent doom. Maybe they have more information than me. Or maybe they are more caught up in the hype.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think international shipping produces significantly more CO2 than any single other source

Yet the AI boom relies on global shipping to be produced , so “AI” is “additive”.

So did your moms vibrator but don't worry, I'm helping reduce CO2 production there as well
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