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AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

gabrielweinberg.com

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Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#71

Post by FollowingTheDao »

yegg wrote: post #9
iambateman wrote: post #2

If the author sees this…could you go one step further, what policy specifically do you recommend? It seems like having LLM providers not train on user data is a big part of it. But is using traditional ML models to do keyword analysis considered “AI” or “surveillance”? The author…and this community in general…are much more prepared to make full recommendations about what AI surveillance policy should be. We should be…

Thanks (author here). I am working on a follow-up post (and likely posts) with specific recommendations.

While I agree with your take on the harms or AI surveillance, I will never agree that AI is beneficial, and there is a net negative outcome using AI. For example electricity prices, carbon release, hallucinations, cognitive decay...they all outweigh what benefit AI brings, which still is not clear.

Like nuclear fission, AI should never have been developed.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#72

Post by kogasa240p »

citizenpaul wrote: post #63

Lets not forget that Gabereial Weinburg is a two faced ghoul or wolf in sheep clothing. He has literally said he does not believe people need privacy yet that supposedly is the duckduckgo's main selling point. He has made all kinds of tracking deals with other companies so duckduckgo "is not tracking you" just their partners are. Most of the controversial stuff he has done is being whitewashed from the internet and i…

Interesting find, wasn't he selling info to Microsoft?

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#73

Post by bubblebeard »

While I cannot see a way to effectively stop companies from collecting data from you (aside from avoiding practically everything), that doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

DuckDuckGo aren’t perfect, but I think they do a lot to all our benefit. Theirs have been my search engine of choice for many years and will continue being so.

Shout outs to their amazing team!

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#74

Post by mmaunder »

philipallstar wrote: post #64
giancarlostoro wrote: post #49

I stopped using Facebook because I saw a video of a little Australian girl maybe 7 years old age wise holding a spider bigger than her face in her hand. I wrote the most internet meme comment I could think of “girl let go of that spider, we gotta set the house on fire” hit the button to post, only it did not post, it gave me an account strike. At the time I was the only developer at my employer who managed our Facebo…

Maybe it banned you because you used a comma splice[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice

Burn the witch.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#75

Post by fragmede »

sacul wrote: post #62
mejutoco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if society were trained to treat AI as NOT human, things would be better. Could you elaborate on why? I am curious but there is no argument.

Yeah, thanks for asking. My reasoning is this: That chatbot you're interacting with is not your friend. I take it as a fact (assumption? axiom?) that it can never be your friend. A friend is a human - animals, in some sense, can be friends - who has your best interests at heart. But in fact, that chatbot "is" a megacorp whose interests certainly aren't your interests - often, their interests are at odds with your int…

But why not? If we look past the trappings of "we hate corporations", why not treat it as a friend? Let's say you acquire a free-trade organic GPU and run an ethically trained LLM on it. Why is an expensive funny-shaped rock not allowed to become a friend when a stuffed animal can?

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#76

Post by fragmede »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #71
yegg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks (author here). I am working on a follow-up post (and likely posts) with specific recommendations.

While I agree with your take on the harms or AI surveillance, I will never agree that AI is beneficial, and there is a net negative outcome using AI. For example electricity prices, carbon release, hallucinations, cognitive decay...they all outweigh what benefit AI brings, which still is not clear. Like nuclear fission, AI should never have been developed.

As well as crypto.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#77

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

sacul wrote: post #41

I think the biggest problem with chatbots is the constant effort to anthropomorphize them. Even seasoned software developers who know better fall into acting like they are interacting with a human. But a llm is not a human, and I think OpenAI and all the others should make it clear that you are NOT talking to a human. Repeatedly. I think if society were trained to treat AI as NOT human, things would be better.

Yeah I’ve loved seeing people call them clankers and stuff for that reason.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#78

Post by fragmede »

martin-t wrote: post #46
throwaway106382 wrote: post #31

Unless it’s banned worldwide by every country by binding treaty this this will never work. Banning it just in USA leaves you wide open to be defeated by China, Russia, etc…. Like it or not it’s a mutually assured destruction arms race. AI is the new nuclear bomb.

While real nukes still work. What bad thing exactly happens if China wins? What does winning even mean? They can't invade because nukes. Can they manipulate elections? Yes, so we'll do the opposite of the great firewall and block them from the internet. Block their citizens from entering physically, too. We should be doing this anyway, given China is known to force them to spy for them.

If China gets to ASI first, the nukes won't matter.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#79

Post by mycall »

hkon wrote: post #29
cousin_it wrote: post #14

This is a great point. Everyone who has talked with chatbots at all: please note that all contents of your past conversations with chatbots (that already exist now, and that you can't meaningfully delete!) could be used in the future to target ads to you, manipulate you financially and politically, and sell "personalized influence on you specifically" as a service to the highest bidder. Just wanted to make sure y'all…

For me, what is most scary about ai-chatbot is the interface to an exploiter. They can just prompt "given all your chats with this person, how can we manipulate him to do x" Not really any expertise needed at all, let the AI to all the lifting.

Turn that around and think of the AI itself as the exploiter. In the world of agent driven daily tasks, AI will indeed want to look at your historical chats to find a way to "strongly suggest" you do task 1..[n] for whatever master plan it has for it's user base.

Re: AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time

#80

Post by username332211 »

cousin_it wrote: post #60
pwython wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, retargeting/personalized ads have never bothered me. If I'm gonna see ads anyway, I'd much rather get ads that might actually interest me, versus wildly irrelevant pharmaceutical drugs and other nonsense.

The ads won't be for the product which will bring you maximum value. They will be for the product that will bring the advertiser maximum profit (for example, by manipulating you into buying something overpriced). The products which are really good and cheap, giving all their surplus value to you and just a little bit to the maker, will lose the bidding for the ad slot.

Not necessary. If economies of scale exist, that means that a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one. Companies that advertise effectively can offer a better product precisely because they advertise and have large market share. (Whether they do it or not is a question of market conditions, business strategy, public policy and ultimately their own decisions.)

Surplus value isn't really that useful of a concept when it comes to understanding the world.

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