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Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

economist.com

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Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#51

Post by watwut »

mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

Thiel is literally and openly trying to create totalitarian goverment. It is in his manifesto.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#52

Post by xp84 »

mentalgear wrote: post #38
merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation. It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few. I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN -…

I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N.

But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#53

Post by krapp »

mike_hearn wrote: post #29
krapp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.

Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download.

"only two search engines exist in the west" and "only two search engines in the west are of usable quality to me" are contradictory statements.

The models free to download aren't the models used by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. You aren't going to get all of OpenAI downloaded to your desktop and running fully on just your hardware.

And in each case (search and AI) the potential to decentralize and maintain "usable quality" is limited by these technologies requiring physical infrastructure at a scale that isn't available to the home consumer.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#54

Post by sanderjd »

fidotron wrote: post #30
merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.

Where will you?

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#55

Post by booleandilemma »

fidotron wrote: post #30
merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.

Please tell us what we should be thinking.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#56

Post by dotcoma »

mentalgear wrote: post #36

Never would have thought that I would defer to matters of Tech, let alone 'AI' policies, to the pope, but here we are: I have to say the 'Magnifica Humanitas' are a pristine work of meditation on AI's power, impact and most importantly the people that control it, while showing how we can make it decoupled from the predatory capitalism that it spawn from, to make it beneficial for humanity in general. (downloaded the…

“Downloaded” is a good start ;)

(No, I have not read it, nor do I intend to read 42,000 words, thank you)

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#57

Post by watwut »

mike_hearn wrote: post #37
mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

I mean yes, if we twist meanings of words enough, Pope is progressive. Except he is not, he is conservative catholic pushing for old school conservative catholic doctrine. He is not far right, he is not prosperity gosphel guy, but catholic doctrine was never that.

Of course you can have multilateralism and regulations. And no, AML is not an antichrist.

And Thiel with his plan yo create totalitatian fascist word is one of the greater danger to most of us. Way greater then AML regulations.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#58

Post by xp84 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #43
knollimar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now. We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?

Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively screwing way more and larger companies who employ orders of magnitude more people here (and those jobs are better jobs too).

And we are very competitive in machines, already set up to win.

It’s also fantasy that even 4 years of tariffs will convince anyone to build brand-new smelting operations, as they’re very large, capital intensive, take a while to build. And again, mostly worse jobs.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#59

Post by conorbergin »

erelong wrote: post #48

...as well as Catholic teaching...

I found your previous comment chain on the matter, in which you conflated Catholicism and Conservatism, the second of which I'm sure you have your own personal definition, as there is no Conservative church that decides on doctrine.

Catholic social teaching, which this encyclical is grounded on, has it's roots in Rerum novarum (1891) by Leo XIII (the Pope's namesake) and it dealt with the changing conditions of people due to the industrial revolution. We are potentially in the midst of another revolution (I suspect it will be less significant the the IR), so it is prudent of the church to develop a house view.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#60

Post by Chinjut »

amelius wrote: post #17
Borg3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too. Dark times ahead...

The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.

What's stupid about the disclaimer?
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