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Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

theguardian.com

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Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#41

Post by PartiallyTyped »

Frannyies wrote: post #22
jazzyjackson wrote: post #13

AI risk is a spectacularization of a new source of wealth When agriculture and then fossil fuels + supercharged agriculture with petro-fertilizer allowed humanity to become 100x more productive, the owners of the land & capital managed to capture the gains almost entirely, leaving the proletariat powerless except for their labor, and still struggling to survive despite the enormous windfall in energy Now that AI is o…

Let's see. Currently out poor have it better than kings 200 years ago. (At least in Germany) I don't say this is fair just that it's easier for a society to increase the base level for everyone

I recommend reading grandpa Kropotkin.

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#42

Post by joelfried »

Loughla wrote: post #28
bananapub wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does any of this have to do with my question? society as a whole is usually better off by such things, are mass-unemployed farriers in 1920? edit: I do also feel the zeitgeist on HN will be extremely different from this "people will adapt, it's good overall" vibe once it's very-well-paid SWEs that are being affected en masse by this stuff

Your last sentence - I 100% agree with you. The general theme here is that AI will impact other people in some fashion, but they can re-train and get better jobs! But it seems to me that software engineers should be very, very nervous about this. Creating things using novel means within well-established and documented/testable boundaries like programming languages seems like something that our current models will abs…

It may seem that way but I'd argue the hardest part is coming up with the specifications for what the output needs to look like. Even if the best LLMs could write full projects like that, the business side would need to specify far beyond their normal levels what that thing needs to be. Have you ever tried to collect requirements from stakeholders and generate a project plan that meets all of those needs? Even if we're not far from GPT-4 being able to build out a basic component library, that's a long way from being able to architect solutions at a high level.

If I had to pick an analogy it wouldn't yet be farriers going out of business, but instead be more like the advent of the pneumatic nail gun for roofers. Everyone will still need a roof (software) to be built. Every instance is a little different at the design level, but the actual grunt work just got easier and faster if you know what you want out of it.

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#43

Post by SanderNL »

Frannyies wrote: post #22
jazzyjackson wrote: post #13

AI risk is a spectacularization of a new source of wealth When agriculture and then fossil fuels + supercharged agriculture with petro-fertilizer allowed humanity to become 100x more productive, the owners of the land & capital managed to capture the gains almost entirely, leaving the proletariat powerless except for their labor, and still struggling to survive despite the enormous windfall in energy Now that AI is o…

Let's see. Currently out poor have it better than kings 200 years ago. (At least in Germany) I don't say this is fair just that it's easier for a society to increase the base level for everyone

Kings are a poor comparison. It’s a shit job and sucks in all kinds of surprising and non-surprising ways.

Are our poor better off than financially independent aristocrats of yesteryear? The kind that can be “an artist” or something their whole life. I guess in some ways it’s better now, more tech. But I’m not sure freedom and respect can be bought/replaced with tech alone.

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#44

Post by freefaler »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #35
Frannyies wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? You still have more food choices and proper entertainment. It's warm when you go to the toilet at night. We even have the trend of people transforming their garden into stone garden due to the effort. What's the benefit of those assets really?

>What's the benefit of those assets really? Not queuing with 100 people to visit a moldy overpriced Berlin apartment. Not worried about your retirement, if your pension will be enough to pay for your rent when you're 80. That's what assets are good for. Having Spotify doesn't make up for that.

If you're 15th century peasant in some of place in Germany you won't see retirement either you'd be dead by 45.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy

And your quality of life would be far worse than "in the queue with other 100 people"...

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#45

Post by FirmwareBurner »

freefaler wrote: post #44
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the benefit of those assets really? Not queuing with 100 people to visit a moldy overpriced Berlin apartment. Not worried about your retirement, if your pension will be enough to pay for your rent when you're 80. That's what assets are good for. Having Spotify doesn't make up for that.

If you're 15th century peasant in some of place in Germany you won't see retirement either you'd be dead by 45. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy And your quality of life would be far worse than "in the queue with other 100 people"...

Sure, it sucked being a peasant, but the original comparison was that the peasants of today have it better than kings of the past.

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#46

Post by darkclouds »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #13

AI risk is a spectacularization of a new source of wealth When agriculture and then fossil fuels + supercharged agriculture with petro-fertilizer allowed humanity to become 100x more productive, the owners of the land & capital managed to capture the gains almost entirely, leaving the proletariat powerless except for their labor, and still struggling to survive despite the enormous windfall in energy Now that AI is o…

Since the old stone age this planets population has been bumbling along at below 1 billion people until the 1800's. [1] And then by the 1970's they perfected the female contraceptive pill to bring the growth rate down from its peak of 2.1% to its current 1.2% and a projected 0.06% by 2100, which should see the peak population on the planet at 11 billion people.

But is AI a new source of wealth? That remains to be seen, it needs training on other peoples data which is invariably copyrighted, so it doesnt look like AI will be a new source of wealth imo.

[1] https://www.guibord.com/democracy/files-images/world-populat...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldindata_wo...

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#47

Post by Frannyies »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #41
Frannyies wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Currently out poor have it better than kings 200 years ago. (At least in Germany) I don't say this is fair just that it's easier for a society to increase the base level for everyone

I recommend reading grandpa Kropotkin.

I'm only finding some cartoon character.

What do you reference?

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#48

Post by sjkoelle »

skepticATX wrote: post #15

These fluff pieces are so predictable and uninspiring. There are tons of qualified and interesting people working in AI and they holds diverse range of viewpoints. Why is it one specific sub-group’s beliefs that are continuously forced on us without even an attempt at critical examination of said beliefs?

its insipid

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#49

Post by j7ake »

SanderNL wrote: post #43
Frannyies wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Currently out poor have it better than kings 200 years ago. (At least in Germany) I don't say this is fair just that it's easier for a society to increase the base level for everyone

Kings are a poor comparison. It’s a shit job and sucks in all kinds of surprising and non-surprising ways. Are our poor better off than financially independent aristocrats of yesteryear? The kind that can be “an artist” or something their whole life. I guess in some ways it’s better now, more tech. But I’m not sure freedom and respect can be bought/replaced with tech alone.

If you’re having kids, you would want them to be born in a poor family in modern day Germany than to aristocrats 300 years ago.

The infant mortality back then was brutal, even for the aristocrats.

Re: Co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it

#50

Post by Simulacra »

caoilte wrote: post #7
Simulacra wrote: post #4

I've read Daemon by Daniel Suarez, like many tech people. I get it. AI could take over and supplant a global government, threatening society, life, wealth etc etc. We've been having the same conversation since the dawn of science fiction. If at any point there is a general confusion between what is artificial, and what is human, it will cause such an alarmist backlash that AI will always be kept in check, or destroye…

> AI could take over and supplant a global government, threatening society, life, wealth etc etc. How would we tell the difference?

When humans no longer have the final decision in a given situation.
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