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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

#51

Post by 8note »

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

The poor 100 years ago certainly had it worse than the kings 300 years ago.

Dying in a coal mine to enrich a capitalist wasn't a great time.

If it's the wealth centralization that made things great, you'd expect that the poor to be at their best when the robber barons were in charge

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

#52

Post by Frannyies »

nico wrote: post #40
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

The issue is that well-being is relative and subjective You can’t “objectively” look back and say people “have it better” now Sure, you can look at all sorts of data and metrics, but that doesn’t mean people feel like they are better off now, which is what matters in the end So the real question we should be trying to answer is: are people feeling better now than how they felt 200 years ago? We could talk about it fo…

I can make reasonable guesses.

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

#53

Post by slaw »

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 don't so. I would rather be a king 200 years ago than a poor today.

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

#54

Post by macrolocal »

slaw wrote: post #53
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 don't so. I would rather be a king 200 years ago than a poor today.

Right, that's 1823, about the time of Frederick William III. Beethoven might have dedicated a symphony to you.

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

#55

Post by flangola7 »

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"...

The comparison was to kings, not peasants.

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

#56

Post by flangola7 »

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…

Incredible username

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

#57

Post by Simulacra »

flangola7 wrote: post #56
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…

Incredible username

It was part of the title of a book on Neo's shelf..

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

#58

Post by weaverheavy »

nico wrote: post #40
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

The issue is that well-being is relative and subjective You can’t “objectively” look back and say people “have it better” now Sure, you can look at all sorts of data and metrics, but that doesn’t mean people feel like they are better off now, which is what matters in the end So the real question we should be trying to answer is: are people feeling better now than how they felt 200 years ago? We could talk about it fo…

Medieval peasants worked about 1080 hours a year or an average of 20 hours a week. I wont speculate on how happy they were, but they were probably able to spend more time at home with their family/friends and local spiritual community and probably got more sleep than most people do today.

We may have better hygiene and live longer on average compared to then, but most of our lives are spent away from most of the people we care about/take care of.

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

#59

Post by SkyMarshal »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #24
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

>Currently out poor have it better than kings 200 years ago. (At least in Germany) Only if you look at medical and technical advancements, but objectively, kings in Germany had the amount of land and real estate that the modern German can only dream of. Sure, we have iPhones and Netflix which kings didn't have, but they had the valuable apprecaible assets the we don't have.

Modern poor people don’t even have iPhones and Netflix. The word “poor” gets thrown around in these discussions in place of what is really being referred to, lower middle class to middle class.

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

#60

Post by wruza »

j7ake wrote: post #49
SanderNL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if you asked aristocrats to swap infant mortality with modern poor life, they might have a spectrum of opinions not necessarily leaning towards being poor. The point is that modern worries are also, well, modern.
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