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The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

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Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#391

Post by fluoridation »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #369
fluoridation wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as I mentioned, the Hoover dam is also not the typical example of the kinds of projects guaranteed job programs generate.

> the Hoover dam is also not the typical example of the kinds of projects guaranteed job programs generate NASA arguably ran its post-Apollo pre-Artemis period as a jobs program. Again, there will be waste. But there will also be waste with UBI. My suspicion is peoples’ tendency towards purposelessness will exceed bureaucrats’ tendency towards uselessness. That’s a loose hypothesis. But in its balance lies which syst…

>My suspicion is peoples’ tendency towards purposelessness will exceed bureaucrats’ tendency towards uselessness.

The question we need to answer is, given infinite labor (limited over time, but unlimited given unlimited time) is there infinite meaningful work that a government can allocate it to? Eventually you will have built all the dams, tunnels, and bridges that you can usefully build. Historically what tends to happen is that work that isn't strictly necessary gets allocated. Roads that are fine get repaved, etc. I don't see how needlessly wasting energy and resources is better than paying people to spend their time however they see fit.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#392

Post by tripzilch »

cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

There's also the part where a lot of AIs were trained on data people did not consent to be used.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#393

Post by Yizahi »

cortesoft wrote: post #234
happytoexplain wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're backwards. The first point is definitely the most important and most tricky. UBI is a dangerous distraction in this context. It's a mammoth cost to achieve an impoverished quality of life. It may be worth implementing in general, but it absolutely must stay out of the conversation about AI. It's like if the ruling class started announcing that they would like to imprison us all, and your "discussion" about…

What sort of regulation do you think is needed for this?

The easiest (and hardest) solution ever - fucking ban "offshores". So for example a UN session convenes and passes an extremely simple resolution - all members are instituting a minimum tax (say 15%, for example) for literally everyone and everything. And all countries non-complying must be completely sanctioned a-la Iran. This would take less space than a A4 page and super easy to draft. But of course absolutely impossible to ever pass, just a fantasy.

While this is counter-intuitive, since we are talking about taxing billionaires and megacorps etc. to the tune of >90%, but it would actually make those people and companies part with their gains, unlike 90% tax which will never work. Every single company in the world above certain size and every single millionaire and above, are employing criminal schemes to evade paying taxes, declare funds and participate in the economy in other ways. By enforcing a certain minimal tax and banning all "drains" the amount of accrued money would be astronomical. There would be no need for 90%, instead the crazy 50-60% taxes paid by the fools (actual middle class) could be meaningfully reduced to the levels half a century ago and there would still be money left.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#394

Post by guzfip »

dominotw wrote: post #184
Tyrubias wrote: post #41

This was evident everywhere except within the AI industry itself. The rhetoric from many of the industry’s top leaders has been “this technology will eliminate millions of jobs, fundamentally reshape countless other jobs, and automate the use of lethal force, but we’re going to develop it anyways”. Many of the current economic woes, including mass layoffs, have been blamed on AI by the very executives conducting said…

not to mention all the AI boosters seems to have the most hatable scammy personalities. why are they all so smug. magnet for scum like boosters on X, middle managment types, linkedin ai influences, ppl making fake videos on facebook.

[dead]

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#395

Post by hashmap »

troosevelt wrote: post #108
hashmap wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never see it how. Like in terms of raw resources or political will?

I mean the numbers. 12k per year is peanuts. You cannot live off that and to do it we'd be nearly doubling the budget (that's old data, it's probably not that portion of the budget anymore). That 12k doesn't include healthcare, it doesn't include a lot of things. It's basically ensuring that people live well below poverty level, and for what? I just don't get how the numbers work, even if it was politically feasible.…

Oh, yeah $12k would not do it. For a UBI to work we would have to shift a significant portion of the concentrated wealth. I too was laid off long enough ago that by now I would be in a bad spot without help, also no mortgage or anything, and I don't travel or go out much. UBI of any degree would do something, but it would have to be much higher than $12k to tread water just due to rent alone. Aside from UBI we would likely need to decouple housing from profit, it has the same problem as healthcare. Demand for it is inelastic to a certain degree, everyone needs somewhere to live.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#396

Post by happytoexplain »

cortesoft wrote: post #234
happytoexplain wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're backwards. The first point is definitely the most important and most tricky. UBI is a dangerous distraction in this context. It's a mammoth cost to achieve an impoverished quality of life. It may be worth implementing in general, but it absolutely must stay out of the conversation about AI. It's like if the ruling class started announcing that they would like to imprison us all, and your "discussion" about…

What sort of regulation do you think is needed for this?

How would I know what's best? Anything to protect people. There are infinite ways to write regulations/measures, with varying degrees of results, difficulty, and severity. Obviously, while UBI might be a good idea or not in general, in this context it is on the low-results, low-severity, high-difficulty side (probably every solution is on the high-difficulty side, though).

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#397

Post by suttontom »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #157
operatingthetan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be going too far, as in your critiques assume the tech is further along than it actually is. There are three fundamental problems for mass AI adoption/AGI: 1. Lack of memory/continuity 2. Lack of agency 3. Lack of self-awareness Based on my understanding of the basic 'loop' of an LLM, solutions for these may be decades off or not possible. Which leads me to the fourth problem: 4. Lack of compute To ge…

All three of these problems are thoroughly solved by widely available tools.

This is an absolute lie.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#398

Post by suttontom »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #248
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If AI becomes powerful enough to make human employment non-viable without being post-scarcity enough to make permanent unemployment viable, that's going to be an existential problem That's massively moving the goalposts on what counts as "an existential problem." The original framing was not economic dislocation but actual existence, i.e. existential. This new framing is a retreat to a way-of-life argument. And I'm…

I don't understand how you can consider the AI industry to be in any sense retreating from prior claims. The existential problem remains an active near-future risk; you're hearing a lot about the jobs problem because it's already here, now, today. Do you not remember how much less capable AI systems were in 2023, and how implausible it seemed that they could become as good as they are now without new theoretical brea…

You're hearing a lot about the jobs problem largely because the media's job is to scaremonger. There have been multiple studies that have concluded AI's impact on jobs/layoffs is negligible: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/evaluating-impact-ai-lab...

This has become some kind of truism that has little actual evidence. It was said it would happen in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and is still being said but it isn't true. The models got better this year but they've always gotten better. And none of the recent improvements have been as dramatic as say GPT3 to GPT4. I feel crazy. People are saying the sky is falling but every researcher or person who analyzes these issues professionally says the opposite.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#399

Post by happytoexplain »

simianwords wrote: post #333
happytoexplain wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usage != positive feelings.

why? I think both generally track. And I won't appreciate category errors such as calling it similar to smoking

>I think both generally track

Well, they simply don't. Everybody is forced to use it at my (>100k employee) company. They are tracking it - if you don't use it every single day, you get flagged. Tons of people hate this.

I use it constantly. Everybody I work with uses it constantly. We use it voluntarily (we are the software folks). And we would all give it up in a heartbeat if there was a way to destroy it.

I hear this sentiment constantly online and from friends at other large companies. You are not observing the general reality.

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