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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#491

Post by bsaul »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #479
PostOnce wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good, but it's not well and good to change what you say because the calculus of what will personally benefit you has changed. It's not the same as "new information coming to light", it is instead greed. We've already seen a charity robbed to no end other than Profit. Commercializing OpenAI was for one reason: to enrich the people commercializing it. Not to benefit society, and with nary a thought…

As an enterprise, they have absolutely no moat. Google, FB or anyone else can come up with a larger system in two-weeks time, and they can well open source it.

that was my intuition as well, but it seems pretty obvious by now that the tech is a little harder to reproduce thzn that.

otherwise wouldn't have they already done it by now ?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#492

Post by noduerme »

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place.

I'm so sick of our new style of wannabe rulers/overlords who use the promise of freeing humanity from labor as the appeal to grant them total power. It's an appeal, among other things, to the basest sloth and laziness. "Imagine what you would do if you never had to work" is a daytime talk show hook, and a way to lure people into gambling and playing the lottery and investing in crypto. It's not a revolutionary slogan, it's the oldest con in the book.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#493

Post by braindead_in »

cowl wrote: post #118
jeremyjh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then Russia invades Ukraine and people change their minds about what is important, and what is possible.

But that's my point. If their opposition was not on principle but based on the naive Idea that "we will live in peace and harmony", I really am afraid what other naive principles are in the bases of their work and what safeguards are being set in place for the AIs.

Live in peace and harmony is not a good principle for AI?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#494

Post by arrrg »

noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

Everyone (to a close approximation) is already reliant on their government for survival. Taking yourself out of society and its interdependencies is already basically impossible. (This is not an argument against all points you are making, I just wanted to say something to that aspect of your comment.)

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#495

Post by t-3 »

hluska wrote: post #466
whitemary wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karl Marx is not only the most influential economist of all time; he is many orders of magnitude more influential than Keynes. Only an American could be clueless enough to think this is up for discussion.

We don’t need this kind of garbage here.

They're not wrong though. Marx is so influential even the people who abhor him have adopted his terminology (where do you think the word "capitalism" comes from?). Meanwhile, Keynes' ideas are pretty much forgotten, only coming up in fringe conversations about CBDCs.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#496

Post by jimsimmons »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #420
stoniejohnson wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Claude from Anthropic?

They're doing very well too, but the company was founded by people from OpenAI, so it'd seem they took a lot of know-how with them.

Or brought that know how into OpenAI in the first place?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#497

Post by dools »

noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

We are a long, long way from the end of work.

Work is simply what we do for others.

All we need is a just transition and an end to involuntary unemployment which is best achieved through a federal job guarantee:

http://www.jobguarantee.org

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#498

Post by davidktr »

noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

Also great: These people never explain how exactly the profits made from automation will be redistributed. This is a political problem, not an economical or technological one.

Already, profits from productivity increases go mostly to capital owners. This is why most of us have so little money, compared with what people used to have 50 years ago. This is why you can't afford a house.

If productivity increases had been redistributed such that people could work considerably less while maintaining an acceptable standard of living, we all would work 3-4 days per week. Instead, those gains went to the capital owning class. AI will worsen the situation.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#499

Post by dataflow »

noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

I don't know what you mean by "work ethic" (why does that have anything to do with UBI?), but regarding UBI, I think you're either exaggerating or misunderstanding some things, and I say these without any regard to my position on the topic (which is complicated).

When you think UBI, don't think "everyone gets $300k/year for free so nobody needs to worry about working anymore". Think more like "everyone gets $30k/year for free so nobody's life is paycheck-to-paycheck". There are lots of people who literally don't have the opportunity to do anything (even better jobs!) other than their current jobs, which they need to put food on the table and have a roof over their heads. One of the envisioned benefits of UBI is that it would actually give them some opportunity & breathing room in their schedules to do something else - whether it's raising a kid, learning new skills, applying for other jobs, or anything else. Most people would still have quite a bit of an incentive to work for a more comfortable standard of living - it's just that they won't feel like they have a gun to their heads as the alternative.

Does this mean UBI is obviously practical and we should start it tomorrow? No, there are lots of challenges, most notably including the funding itself - not many economies today are able to hand out that much money in a sustainable way, so there's some very hard rethinking necessary to figure out how this could ever work. Does this mean everybody will give a 10x ROI on it in the long term? No, some people would probably not do anything useful with the money. Does this mean UBI solves all problems? No, even if you do your best you can still have bad luck (get hit by a bus, medical bills, etc.). Does this mean UBI would work well everywhere? No, results might vary across different societies.

But we're rapidly heading into a world where more and more people are being put out of work, and can't pick up new skills fast enough (if at all) to make ends meet. Expecting everyone to just adapt is incredibly unrealistic. UBI is one envisioned plausible way to address this problem and others systematically. Nobody knows for sure how it would play out in the long term, but to my knowledge nobody has obviously better solutions either.

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