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How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

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Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#51
post #14

> In May, hundreds of industry leaders endorsed a statement that equated the risk of runaway A.I. with that of nuclear war. Huang didn’t sign it. Some economists have observed that the Industrial Revolution led to a relative decline in the global population of horses, and have wondered if A.I. might do the same to humans. “Horses have limited career options,” Huang said. “For example, horses can’t type.” As he finish…

I want to stand up and applaud them. Wonderful… no, _ideal_ non-fiction prose.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to artificial robotic power it will go down

You think the government is going to create an ai military to kill millions of civilians without being overthrown by the other hundreds of millions of armed civilians in this country?

This is ironically a simple issue of demographics. Whether the biological humans like it or not there will be a larger demographic of artificial entities that do more of the economic and military work and therefore will have more weight in all things political.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#53
post #14

> In May, hundreds of industry leaders endorsed a statement that equated the risk of runaway A.I. with that of nuclear war. Huang didn’t sign it. Some economists have observed that the Industrial Revolution led to a relative decline in the global population of horses, and have wondered if A.I. might do the same to humans. “Horses have limited career options,” Huang said. “For example, horses can’t type.” As he finish…

The horse anecdote has always struck me as stupid as hell. Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses.

I can’t tell if you’re being very clever here.

At the risk of being whooshed, I’m going to say that the common man has a lot more in common with horses than billionaires.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To wrench the metaphor, if horses had banded together, they could have fought back against humans and seized some power and rights for themselves. Instead they were conditioned to accept their bad conditions. The same is true of humans. Most humans accept terrible indignities and injustices routinely through apathy.

No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.

What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#55
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The horse anecdote has always struck me as stupid as hell. Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses.

Horses were bread for that work as well, there was a direct 1-to-1 correlation between the two. Not so with humans.

By “bread” do you mean “bred”?

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.

What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.

Name some examples of large, militarily powerful groups accepting living conditions that were worse than the previous generation experienced, not due to natural disasters. People have never accepted that. Sure they've had shitty living conditions, but they started shitty, they didn't get worse. Sure they've been enslaved, but the civilians in this country are heavily armed enough to fight back against a government they see as allowing living conditions to slip.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To wrench the metaphor, if horses had banded together, they could have fought back against humans and seized some power and rights for themselves. Instead they were conditioned to accept their bad conditions. The same is true of humans. Most humans accept terrible indignities and injustices routinely through apathy.

No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.

Here's an example of a decline in living that persisted in the long-term, although it was a long time ago:

Britain experienced an economic collapse in the early 5th century AD after the Roman Empire left. Economic activity and urban life decided, and buildings were abandoned. Their supply chain was suddenly much more limited, and localized to specific areas, whereas before, the Roman Empire had allowed them to trade with other countries more. Their standard of living didn't really change for the next few centuries. I won't compare beyond that.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for one of their big competitors, and all my conversations with customers tend to follow the same string; "NVIDIA is milking us dry, we want an alternative, but all the alternatives require significant redesign in languages and tools people are unfamiliar with and we can't afford that overhead". It tends to be very cut and dry. Until university labs get people working in open frameworks and not CUDA, every stu…

Yeah - which is to say that that competitors and other competitors aren't actually going to create a CUDA replacement any time soon. And, correct me if I'm wrong, it would be quite possible to create such a thing - AMD had a system which had a tool to do conversion a while back but I recall them not supporting it seriously. The problem is that when a company has done serious capital investment to advance a market, an…

> AMD had a system which had a tool to do conversion a while back but I recall them not supporting it seriously.

They are supporting it seriously now. It is being actively developed and improved.

https://github.com/ROCm-Developer-Tools/HIPIFY

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to artificial robotic power it will go down

You think the government is going to create an ai military to kill millions of civilians without being overthrown by the other hundreds of millions of armed civilians in this country?

I think the question is more, will there be a country somewhere that emerges as an AI/robotic super power.

You shouldn't just be worried of your own government here.

And the other issue is, why would the post-revolt government/businesses abandon AI/robotics?

The truth is, this won't happen over night. People will have less work over time, be paid less and less, the gap between classes will grow bigger, etc.

I guess another way to put it, take a country like India with lots of unemployment and high corruption, I don't think if they had guns they'd all revolt. You have to believe there's a point to revolting, an alternative that's better and worth the risk.

Re: How Jensen Huang's Nvidia is powering the A.I. revolution

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.

Name some examples of large, militarily powerful groups accepting living conditions that were worse than the previous generation experienced, not due to natural disasters. People have never accepted that. Sure they've had shitty living conditions, but they started shitty, they didn't get worse. Sure they've been enslaved, but the civilians in this country are heavily armed enough to fight back against a government th…

In many societies, the rights of women have declined from one period to the next, although I guess "women" don't constitute a "large, militarily powerful" group.

For example, in Korea during the Joseon/Chosŏn period, the status of women gradually declined due to Neo-Confucianist ideology. Women stopped inheriting property in the seventeenth century. They lost the right to intiate divorce, while men could still intiate divorce under seven grounds (disobedience to parents-in-law, failure to bear a son, adultery, jealousy, hereditary disease, larceny, and talkativeness). Widows lost the right to remarry, and were seen as inconvenient for the family. Women were forbidden from playing games, partying outdoors, and riding horses.

The decline of women's rights happened in other societies, too; I just happened to have a book about Korean history on my desk.

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