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Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

economist.com

441–450 of 524 posts

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will not help by improving extremely smart people. AI will help dumb people and dumb processes with "free" expert-level intelligence. Anyone could still ignore intelligence and make ignorant decisions. But the default mode would be highly intelligent informed decision. Example with health - a patient can read blood test results with Opus and get very good results for "free". This is far away from helping extremely…

Why would they listen to an AI, when their favorite podcaster says something contrary? I am not trying to be funny btw, people take medical advice from podcasters over doctors. I have seen this first hand.

Yes, this is along the lines of what i have been thinking. Why would anybody listen to a smart machine when someone they feel emotional attachment to make a counter argument? This arguments always assume that people are very rational and will always take the action that will favor them but people routinely do stupid stuff all the time and will defend their right to do those.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#442

Like my grandfather used to say "They let anyone on TV now", They let anyone be called an expert now. Love talking about 'recursive self-improvement' of a prediction engine. What about 'recursive self-degradation'?

Yes - how exactly are you going to conjure new data to increase the model’s real world fidelity? The most common sense way will always need to have humans in the loop, because humans are being used as judges. If you try and entertain the idea of a human-less loop, I landed up with something like an AI creating real world products, selling them, then tracking the usage and popularity of the product. Essentially, creat…

Real world data obviously. When you have robots out and about everywhere there is going to be an endless stream of audio visual data. This is in addition to all the real world textual data constantly streaming out of our millions of systems. If an LLM gets “smart” enough to figure out how to filter out the massive amount of noise and use that to improve itself then we will have AGI. Not consciousness, just a self improving, very intelligent machine.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claude or something acting in self-preservation That was an Ad. An Ad in the same style of many before it. Not through an ad agency, but the AI companies hyping their product by making their product seem scary and dangerous.

Does the press being an ad constitute the same thing as the information being false? If I advertize that my gun is dangerous, does the medium impact the truth value?

Being an ad you need to consider the purpose behind the ad, and what exaggerations may be being made for the ad.

IE a Ram truck won't make you a manly cowboy with just the purchase.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It rules out various superficially attractive scenarios, particularly ones in popular science fiction, like Star Trek or Star Wars.

It doesn't though. The galaxy is ~100,000 light years across and likely to contain at least 100 billion planets, of which we've only just developed the ability to even detect the existence of ones substantially closer than 1000 light years without assistance from gravitational lensing, i.e. in less than a millionth of the volume of the galaxy. AFAIK (my knowledge is not encyclopedic), the most energetic event in the…

It actually does rule out those scenarios.

If intelligent life were that common, and interstellar travel that easy, colonization of the galaxy would have gone to completion billions of years ago. We would never have evolved; Earth and the solar system would long since have been converted to an urban area.

Those fictional places exist purely for the telling of stories, not because they're plausible or internally consistent.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#445

The economy isn't ready. Basically, all companies right now are sprinting toward increasing profit margins by trying to do more with fewer people. The problem is that, on this scale, they will lose income because unemployed people make terrible consumers, they will only buy what is strictly necessary. Consequently, society is in a race to the bottom, which could lead to extreme suffering and potential revolutions in…

Democracies will not have any easier time. The issue is the voting base is poorly informed by design so that it might be manipulated by outside forces. The US government does a poor job propagandizing its own citizens and defers that task to the free market. As such the people are never really voting in their own best interest, but in the interest of these free market propagandists who are also invested in this AI outcome.

People being poor is fine for these free market elites. Look at how billionaires live in India, probably even better than they live in the US.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#446
post #400

The economy isn't ready. Basically, all companies right now are sprinting toward increasing profit margins by trying to do more with fewer people. The problem is that, on this scale, they will lose income because unemployed people make terrible consumers, they will only buy what is strictly necessary. Consequently, society is in a race to the bottom, which could lead to extreme suffering and potential revolutions in…

Companies don't serve poor people; they have no money. Companies will pivot to serving the people who have money. If that means they only serve rich people, then that means we'll have more yacht makers and fewer dollar stores.

More likely is people are stripped entirely of any economic value and influence. Tribesmen struggling to survive in a mad max apocalyptic scenario while the world's money is spent and made in a business to business environment, in protected sites defended by autonomous loitering munitions that the uneducated masses attribute to god entities within a few generations of knowledge loss.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#448
post #96

Humanity hasn’t been ready for the current ignorance explosion.

There was always ignorance, just in recent decades and centuries we decided to give these people the reins. When you look at early democratic models it was never a case of literally anyone with a pulse given the right to vote. They all had their own heuristics that attempted to select for the better educated of the populace to be in control of the reins of power.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#449
post #166

Why should we assume AI can rapidly turn into super intelligence when physical and critical resources like energy and materials remain under human control?

You know zuck has been training his own AI replacement right? Humans rubber stamping control of resources will just be that and a temporary blip.

Re: Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion

#450
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they listen to an AI, when their favorite podcaster says something contrary? I am not trying to be funny btw, people take medical advice from podcasters over doctors. I have seen this first hand.

Yes, this is along the lines of what i have been thinking. Why would anybody listen to a smart machine when someone they feel emotional attachment to make a counter argument? This arguments always assume that people are very rational and will always take the action that will favor them but people routinely do stupid stuff all the time and will defend their right to do those.

Yeah, it's really bad out here man. There is a huge epidemic of even highly intelligent people being manipulated into doing completely irrational things.
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