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AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

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Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#51

Post by youoy »

> Right now, even people who reject meritocracy understand its logic. You develop rare skills, you work hard, you create value, and you capture some of that value.

The premise is that AI does not allow to do this any more, which is completely false. It may not allow to do it in the same way, so its true that some jobs may disappear, but others will be created.

The article is too alarmist by someone who has drank all of the corporate hype. AI is not AGI. AI is an automation tool, like any other that we have invented before. The cool thing is that now we can use natural language as a programming language which was not possible before. If you treat AI as something that can thin k, you will fail again and again. If you treat it as an automation tool, that cannot think you will get all of the benefits.

Here i am talking about work. Of course AI has introduced a new scale of AI slop, and that has other psycological impacts on society.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#52

Post by philistine »

zmgsabst wrote: post #26
jmathai wrote: post #10

I feel a lot less pride in my creative work knowing it can be done much too easily with modern AI. It makes me less eager to create which is quite unfortunate. I haven’t felt to bad about my creative works being fed into training models. Taken by itself, my creations are minuscule. But it’s very apparent when I look at AI as a whole, having taken from everyone in aggregate. I feel that.

Do you feel the same way about automatic looms displacing crafters, eg, the Luddites?

Someone needs to maintain and setup those efficient brand new looms. All I hear from AI is the promise that managers and owners will no longer need creative and managerial workers.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#53

Post by silisili »

antonvs wrote: post #6
parineum wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaders are rarely shining moral beacons.

Are you suggesting that no meaningful distinction can be made in terms of morality between Trump and, say, Biden, Obama, Blair, the Bushes etc.? Some people will point to their supposed crimes or immoral actions while in office, having to do with execution of their duties as president. Large countries tend to do many questionable things. But the current US administration is pretty unique in terms of its corruption, a…

> But the current US administration is pretty unique in terms of its corruption, avoidance of accountability, authoritarian and fascist tendencies, etc.

I've mostly been reading that since the Bush years. Definitely said against Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump. In fairness, I don't remember it about Clinton.

That you don't agree with a politician doesn't make him or her particularly worse than others.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#54

Post by zkmon »

Ownership of things by humans is never a settled question. There is no ideal or correct model for ownership, as ownership itself is unnatural. People went through many models over centuries - famliy/community owneship, monarchies, socialism, capitalism etc. Capitalism is the worst of all, allowing extreme exaggeration of talent differences between people. AI is like back to monarchies.

AI is exposing the myths of talent and erasing differences between humans making them all a uniform array of subjects. However this erasure comes at the cost of return to monarchy style of economic model, where wealth would be moved from common population to the owners of AI or the neo-monarchies.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#55

Post by NitpickLawyer »

jmathai wrote: post #10

I feel a lot less pride in my creative work knowing it can be done much too easily with modern AI. It makes me less eager to create which is quite unfortunate. I haven’t felt to bad about my creative works being fed into training models. Taken by itself, my creations are minuscule. But it’s very apparent when I look at AI as a whole, having taken from everyone in aggregate. I feel that.

> It makes me less eager to create which is quite unfortunate.

It's been the exact opposite for me. Coding assistance is a great boon towards productivity simply because otherwise I wouldn't work on any of my old ideas stashed in numerous note taking apps. It's way easier today to go from 0 to something like an MVP, and see if there's something there. If there isn't, not much is lost. But without these tools it would be 0 all across the board.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#56

Post by js8 »

praptak wrote: post #18
barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

Only if you assume that the only kind of value is the ability to be sold for a price. Marx would have a word about use value vs exchange value.

Interestingly OP's idea that "AI destroys value" seems to come at least partly from the labor theory value, which Marx accepted (as most classical economists).

Unfortunately, the labor theory of value is self-contradictory. If you invent a new machine that replaces human labor, it will clearly produce more value, yet human labour is reduced. So this follows that not all value can be attributed to human labor.

What this really breaks down is meritocracy. If you cannot unambiguously attribute "effort" of each individual (her labor) to produced "value", then such attribution cannot be used as a moral guidance anymore.

So this breaks the right-wing idea that the different incomes are somehow deserved. But this is not new, it's just more pronounced with AI, because the last bastion of meritocracy, human intelligence ("I make more because I'm smarter"), is now falling.

Addendum: Although accounts differ on this, Marx seemed to struggle with LTV, IIRC Steve Keen's Debunking Economics shows Marx contradicting himself on it.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#57

Post by danmaz74 »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

When something becomes abundant, we focus on something else which is still scarce. That's human nature. Salt used to be scarce and very valuable, but nowadays who thinks about it?

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#58

Post by renewiltord »

weaksauce wrote: post #24
renewiltord wrote: post #11

This stuff is all a bit much. Fan fiction sites are all “creative content lifted without your consent”. You think J K Rowling consented to Harry x Hermione slash fiction? Or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Absolutely non-consensual. All of this stuff is clearly a highly cherry-picked gymnastic exercise to justify a pre-existing position. Classic Elephant and Rider stuff. It’s the same as support for the…

> Same as the story about how groups shouldn’t go out during COVID but BLM protests are fine. i don't think you have a good grasp of why that it was ok for outdoor protests to happen but people should not go out into crowded buildings. the chance of you getting sick from a protest is much less than the chance of you getting sick from going to an indoor gathering at say a club. getting sick is not a binary on or off.…

I don't think you have a good grasp of modeling disease spread and are repeating things you read online without comprehension. Repeated exposure from multi-day protests in large groups of 3 person / sq. m. with multiple tent structures shared by people is not the same as 10,000 people climbing K2 one day at a time.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#59

Post by erikerikson »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

> Value and scarcity go hand in hand

Not really. The value to a thirsty soul of water in the desert is as high as they value their own life (to some there is little) and have a currency of value to the seller. Still, once thirst is quenched the value to that soul drops nearer to zero.

For an optional good the value only rises to the point that there is excess asset in the inventories of those that would like to add the option.

I would suggest what you are looking for is that some scarcities are shifted by each new technology. Things like the sincere attention of others or more exclusive emotional attachments become relatively more scarce in a goods abundant existence. Earlier, insights on where to apply the tool and to where one should attend become more scarce.

Something you would have to accept if you believe your statement is that you would never value (i.e. need) water again if we could produce far more than we ever could use. Your body's need and use would not cease even if the economics might collapse.

Financializing everything can lead one into foolish conclusions.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#60

Post by conartist6 »

anoncow wrote: post #49
barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

I think it is a step towards a money free world. Only if we could invent a food printer.

Without money what system would be used? Barter? Communism? Warlords?
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