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AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

thealgorithmicbridge.com

581–590 of 694 posts

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#581
> AI has become the perfect scapegoat.

I really feel it isn't a 'narrative created by AI Companies' that's responsible for this. First of all, any business touts itself as one that will reduce labor. That's marketing. It existed long before AI Companies, and it is very often exaggerated in its capabilities. We as a society have accepted this as normal. We all accept a loop that goes like this: New Product has marketing that claims it can solve world hunger -> You pay and use the new product, only to find that it cannot deliver on its great promise in whole -> You still end up using and paying for the product because while it doesn't solve world hunger, it at least feeds a few mouths and that's better than nothing.

The true culprit -and one that I personally hold responsible for this outbreak of violence that we are seeing- is Journalism. Every Newspaper for the last 3 entire years has constantly flooded headlines with 'AI is dangerous and will take away your job'. That's because each time they do that more people pay attention out of fear, which increases profit for newspapers. The same goes for TV News, Online News. And this has a trickle-down effect on society where YouTubers, Podcasters, and your local seminar hall has people talking about how insane AI is and how it is the worst thing to happen since Pandora's Box.

We seriously need to change how we as a society interact with news if we are to see this end. We need to stop incentivizing sensational headlines for newspapers that overtime lead to violence. We need regulations in place to prevent content specifically designed to target fear in people's minds. And we need to see this change take place fast.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#582
post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, and I think we're slightly at cross purposes. I'm not disagreeing that AI will drive some major societal changes as you outline. My point is that the current narrative of "AI will take our jobs" is too simplistic, and that it might even be a smokescreen against the rising inequality that is already fueling anger across the world and which is totally unrelated to AI. If you're struggling to pay your bill…

I guess I just feel like your appeal to skilled manual workers is pointless. They’re not really the focal point. It’s the large masses of people being relegated to the bin labeled “effectively unskilled”.

Getting dumped from "upwardly mobile middle class" to "unemployable underclass" does seem likely to be radicalizing . It's not clear yet how much it'll actually be happening, but it does challenge a lot of the traditional focus on blue collar workers as being the most up in arms about automation and labor.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#583

I'm urging AI literacy and also self-hosting. These are the means of production. Probabilistic, sure. Sycophantic? Yep. But speeding up the boring parts is where LLMs excel at.

I'm very mad about the RAM shortage.

It was quite rude of them to not wait until I built a new LLM server.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#584
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swartz died in 2002, decades before LLMs. It is distasteful to put words in the mouths of the dead by invoking him here. Even local AI concentrates power in the hands of a few, the few who can afford the hardware to run it, and the few who have the luxury of enough time and energy to devote to engaging with the intricate, technical rabbit hole of local models.

You should read that comment again, they're not putting any words in Swartz's mouth, they are lauding his accomplishments.

It is lauding his accomplishments, yes. Why bring him up in specific if there is no relation intended? There are many broad shouldered giants in this space.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#585
post #332
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you hope for anything better if you consider it an us versus them situation? When they say "We don't want to increase inequality" and the response is "We don't believe you". Where do you go from there? It seems like a lot of people want a revolution so that they can rotate who will be able to take advantage of the vulnerable. What are the suggestions for something better? I don't see a lot. I'd like to see mo…

>How can you hope for anything better if you consider it an us versus them situation? Because it IS an us vs them situation. They're awfully good at turning it into an us vs us situation whether it's blaming our parents' (boomers), blaming immigrants, blaming muslims or (their favorite), blaming the unstoppable forward march of technological progress (e.g. AI). The media organizations they own are constantly telling…

Your arguments makes it impossible to prove that the wealthy are not bad.

You interpret every signal as saying the same thing. That makes an unfalsifiable claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I am a fan of logistical taxation, where the mean income (including capital gains) pays 50% in tax and every standard deviation σ above (or below) pays extra (or less) according to 1 / (1 + e^-σ). What will happen with this taxation is that if everybody makes the same income, then everybody pays 50% in tax. If some rich dude is making a lot more money then everybody else, they will lower the tax for everyb…

Suppose it's 1999, and I'm planning to expand my online bookstore into a worldwide network of distribution centers and logistics, that can deliver anything at all to anybody, very quickly, though a unified web interface. How can I carry out this major business enterprise without getting very poor? I guess the board would have to vote to keep my income at the optimum level, or just below, to prevent me from jumping sh…

I would rather you did not do that. You would create a shit tone more global transfer of goods accelerating global warming, and make societies dependant on unsustainable dirt cheap production practices.

Even if yourself could argue that you’ve done a good thing overall, I’d rather not take your word on that and would rather not have you decide something so extremely impactful.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose it's 1999, and I'm planning to expand my online bookstore into a worldwide network of distribution centers and logistics, that can deliver anything at all to anybody, very quickly, though a unified web interface. How can I carry out this major business enterprise without getting very poor? I guess the board would have to vote to keep my income at the optimum level, or just below, to prevent me from jumping sh…

I would rather you did not do that. You would create a shit tone more global transfer of goods accelerating global warming, and make societies dependant on unsustainable dirt cheap production practices. Even if yourself could argue that you’ve done a good thing overall, I’d rather not take your word on that and would rather not have you decide something so extremely impactful.

Tough, I'm gonna do it anyway, but through some kind of non-profit org. Because my vision is beautiful!

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#588
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sole reason the concept of "physical violence" exists is because violence without that qualifier is not necessarily physical, but still violence.

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Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with and encourage this kind of academic distinction. However... Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money to offset the financial hardship that they're knowingly - and gleefully - bringing to others... The distinction has no practical use. (And before someone says "that's the government's job!", consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and compa…

How much actual money do you think the “people with billions of dollars” have in comparison to the needs of the population as a whole? I think you’re very confused about where the actual income in the economy goes.

Really? Because GDP vs household income graphed over the last 40 years paints a rather clear picture.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#590
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you decouple it when the people who own it and are building it seem to be driven on increasing inequality?

AI is actually a mass decrease in inequality, as much as the Gutenberg printing press was. It takes something that used to be the foremost example of pure bourgeois and intellectual privilege - the culture contained within millions of books and other instances of human creativity - and provides it to everyone for the cost of a few thousand bucks in hardware and a few watts of electricity.

No.

Because success is individual, inequality is statistical.

It ia true that AI gives ordinary people a lot more chance to be successful.

But do not forget that success depends on lots of factors that are not in one’s control: knowing the right people, time being right for what you are doing, and lots of others. So while the mechanics of success is a lot different to lottery, it does not work much differently: 1 in 1M attempts are successful.

Yes, AI gives everyone more lottery tickets, but it gives rich people a lot more tickets.

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