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AI as Normal Technology

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Re: AI as Normal Technology

#61

Post by pineaux »

LiquidSky wrote: post #51
cootsnuck wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a "middle" road rather a "nuanced" road (or even a "grounded" road IMO). If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? And how so? I'm not trying to be pedantic. I think our tendency to call nuanced, principled positions as "middle" encourages an inherent "hierarchy of ideas" which often leads to applying some sort of...valence to opinions and discourse. And I worry that m…

>If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? That's pretty clear. We already have two "sides": AI is the latest useless tech boondoggle that consumes vast quantities of money and energy while not actually doing anything of value vs. AI is the dawn of a new era of human existence that will fundamentally change all aspects of our world (possibly with the additional "and lead to the AGI Singu…

No this is not the middle that should be considered.

Nobody really thinks that AI is useless anymore. We disagree on timelines, we disagree on how useful it will be, but the extremes are not between useful and useless (although some people believe it will not change anything, but pretty fringe). The real extremes here are "evil god AGI" and "benevolent god AGI". This piece takes the road where they say: it's pretty powerful/useful, but it's not a godlike something because it's not everywhere, all the time, at once. It will change the world, but over a pretty long timespan and it will feel like normal technology. It will be used for evil and good.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#62

Post by randomwalker »

xpe wrote: post #36

> The statement “AI is normal technology” is three things: a description of current AI, a prediction about the foreseeable future of AI, and a prescription about how we should treat it. A question for the author(s), at least one of whom is participating in the discussion (thanks!): Why try to lump together description, prediction, and prescription under the "normal" adjective? Discussing AI is fraught. My claim: conf…

Thanks for the comment! I agree — it's important to remain fluid. We've taken steps to make sure that predictively speaking, the normal technology worldview is empirically testable. Some of those empirical claims are in this paper and others in coming in follow-ups. We are committed to revising our thinking if it turns out that our framework doesn't generate good predictions and effective prescriptions.

We do try to admit it when we get things wrong. One example is our past view (that we have since repudiated) that worrying about superintelligence distracts from more immediate harms.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#63

Post by loeber »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #58

Burning the planet for a ponzi scheme isn't normal. The healthiest thing for /actual/ AI to develop is for the current addiction to LLMs to die off. For the current bets by OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc to lose steam. Prompts are a distraction, and every single company trying to commodify this are facing an impossible problem in /paying for the electricity/. Currently they're just insisting on building more power pla…

Virtually all of this is false. AI is neither burning the planet nor a ponzi scheme. If you're concerned about energy costs, consider for just a second that increased demand for computation directly incentivizes the construction of datacenters, co-located with renewable (read: free) energy sources at scale. ChatGPT isn't going to be powered by diesel.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#64

Post by klik99 »

pineaux wrote: post #61
LiquidSky wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? That's pretty clear. We already have two "sides": AI is the latest useless tech boondoggle that consumes vast quantities of money and energy while not actually doing anything of value vs. AI is the dawn of a new era of human existence that will fundamentally change all aspects of our world (possibly with the additional "and lead to the AGI Singu…

No this is not the middle that should be considered. Nobody really thinks that AI is useless anymore. We disagree on timelines, we disagree on how useful it will be, but the extremes are not between useful and useless (although some people believe it will not change anything, but pretty fringe). The real extremes here are "evil god AGI" and "benevolent god AGI". This piece takes the road where they say: it's pretty p…

You might be in a bubble, there are a lot of people who consider AI to be useless. It seems you do not take them seriously writing it off as fringe, which is why you consider the discussion to be between evil vs benevolent. And to be clear, my personal view on current LLM is closer to this article. But “all AI is useless” is still part of the discussion, not that it’s literally useless but that its use cases are so minor and/or inferior to existing techniques compared to its resource usage that it’s functionally useless.

Edit: I guess I see the discussion along two axes: Impact magnitude (useless vs just a tool vs god-like) and Impact valence (evil/negative vs neutral vs benevolent/positive) - this article is middle ground for the former axis, magnitude

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#66

Post by sanderjd »

pineaux wrote: post #61
LiquidSky wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? That's pretty clear. We already have two "sides": AI is the latest useless tech boondoggle that consumes vast quantities of money and energy while not actually doing anything of value vs. AI is the dawn of a new era of human existence that will fundamentally change all aspects of our world (possibly with the additional "and lead to the AGI Singu…

No this is not the middle that should be considered. Nobody really thinks that AI is useless anymore. We disagree on timelines, we disagree on how useful it will be, but the extremes are not between useful and useless (although some people believe it will not change anything, but pretty fringe). The real extremes here are "evil god AGI" and "benevolent god AGI". This piece takes the road where they say: it's pretty p…

I'll echo the other reply: This seems like a bubble.

I come across the AI-skeptical perspective in my real life frequently.

I only really run into the "god AI" perspective here / among other people working in software.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#67

Post by dayvigo »

pineaux wrote: post #61
LiquidSky wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? That's pretty clear. We already have two "sides": AI is the latest useless tech boondoggle that consumes vast quantities of money and energy while not actually doing anything of value vs. AI is the dawn of a new era of human existence that will fundamentally change all aspects of our world (possibly with the additional "and lead to the AGI Singu…

No this is not the middle that should be considered. Nobody really thinks that AI is useless anymore. We disagree on timelines, we disagree on how useful it will be, but the extremes are not between useful and useless (although some people believe it will not change anything, but pretty fringe). The real extremes here are "evil god AGI" and "benevolent god AGI". This piece takes the road where they say: it's pretty p…

My social groups are almost exclusively non-techie. I am regularly exposed to networks that are very, very far away from HN. I assure you, there are people think AI is useless and purely harmful (in the sense of creating "slop," wasting electricity and water, etc. not evil AI). And there are a lot of them.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#69

Post by sanderjd »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #21
roxolotl wrote: post #12

This is a rare piece on AI which takes a coherent middle of the road viewpoint. Saying both that AI is “normal” and that it will be transformative is a radical statement in today’s discussions about AI. Looking back on other normal but transformative technologies: steam power, electricity, nuclear physics, the transistor, etc you do actually see similarly stratified opinions. Most of those are surrounded by an initia…

AI will transform everything, and after that life will continue as normal, so except for the details, it's not a big deal. Going to be a simultaneously wild and boring ride.

I think this is my take as well. Like, the web and smart phones and social media have transformed everything ... and also life goes on.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#70

Post by woah »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #58

Burning the planet for a ponzi scheme isn't normal. The healthiest thing for /actual/ AI to develop is for the current addiction to LLMs to die off. For the current bets by OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc to lose steam. Prompts are a distraction, and every single company trying to commodify this are facing an impossible problem in /paying for the electricity/. Currently they're just insisting on building more power pla…

If only Chomsky and Lisp received this level of investment, we would have pure philosophical symbolic logic proving the answer to the universe by now
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