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The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

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Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#81

Post by jeremydavid »

orasis wrote: post #64
jeremydavid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's more to conversation rate optimisation than randomly testing variations of a greeting. The price testing you mentioned looks interesting, but a good CRO consultant will do research and figure out the objections manually. Then, instead of having to test an infinite amount of variations with millions of visitors to reach statistical significance, they can test one or two. I call what your tool seems to…

Thanks for the feedback. The "Hello World" was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but obviously didn't come off that way. Oops! We initially built the tool for this app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-second-meditation-daily/id... From hundreds of different daily meditations it has learned precisely which order to show the content in to maximize retention. So it knows the best message for day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. Th…

That should be your headline :)

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#82

Post by philipkglass »

crazy2be wrote: post #60
philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

It does come up? In the case of pensions and royalties, it is wealth from prior work, so it's not really in the same category morally (for a culture that believes in the virtue of work). Social security and inherited wealth definately do have a sort of stigma attached to them though, precisely because of the lifestyles that "trust fund children" tend to live, and because the poor are already stigmatized in general. T…

Maybe I haven't been listening at the right times, but I've never heard someone suggesting that we should raise the retirement age or cut Social Security benefits because old people will be bored or lack dignity if they're not compelled to remain in waged labor. (I have heard other arguments for raising the retirement age or cutting benefits, but not the they-must-remain-busy argument).

A freestanding belief in the "virtue of work" is one of those pathologies that I hope we can leave behind as machines do more. Many good things in life can be accomplished only with hard work. It's good to be able to work hard, that you may accomplish good things. There is no virtue in doing hard, purposeless work[1] after you run out of hard, purposeful work. If a person wants to keep starting fires using flint and steel after the invention of the friction match, that's fine if they enjoy it. It's a little worrisome but not really my problem if they keep doing it the hard way because they feel guilty otherwise. It's a real problem if they want everyone else to keep behaving as if the friction match were never invented, because they've confused "a valuable outcome from difficult work" with "an inherent virtue found in difficult work."

[1] Of course you don't want to let your body atrophy from disuse, but there's no reason that exercising your muscles and your senses needs to resemble paid-labor-as-it-used-to-be. People hike and go rafting for fun. Nobody needs to dig ditches for fun. You can keep your body and mind well maintained without imitating obsolete jobs.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#83

Post by _rpd »

gukov wrote: post #75

Every living organism is designed by evolution to strive for survival and reproduction. It's the constant fight that gets you out of the bed every morning. Having nothing to do all day but paint will eventually result in premature death. Think animals in captivity. What if the end of humanity will be caused not by a nuclear war but by a peaceful AI that made us zoo animals?

At some point attention becomes the ultimate resource. Most people earn income by paying attention to somebody else's projects. But with a little introspection and basic goal setting training, many people identify projects to which they would prefer to give their attention if income were not an issue. I think a society in which a higher proportion of one's time can be spent on personal projects vs. other's projects is a goal worth working towards.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#85

Post by stevehiehn »

_rpd wrote: post #76
stevehiehn wrote: post #30

Each time this conversation comes up I notice people often like to suggest that history is just repeating and we have seen this before. I think its important to recognize patterns in cycles but its also important to be open to the possibility we've only seen local cycles and larger global cycles are still revealing themselves. In other words is AI really analogous to shifts we've seen before?

The "AI" being discussed is mainly competent data mining and machine learning. If we stay at that level, then there are easily bigger shifts that we've adjusted to in the past. But self-improving AI is truly on a different level, as is AI with human-level 'general intelligence'.

I hear ya on the data mining observation. I have been digging into 'applied' ML for the last two years or so and its painfully obvious how many articles are based on science fiction and not the current state of things (which appears to be mostly reinforcement learning)

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#86

Post by multinglets »

problems wrote: post #7

People have been saying this kind of thing forever. They said it about agriculture, they said it when the Luddites attacked factories, they said it about farm automation, they said it when computers were becoming popular. I'm not so sure that this time is different - despite all the insistence, I'm sure it seemed just as serious every other time before too.

Yeah, so describe how you think the middle class is doing these days.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#87

Post by fkchnmodpol »

philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

It's fundementally about control.

The people in power are afraid they will not remain in power if suddenly tens of millions of adults are given the opportunity and free time to scrutinize the decisions of the elite.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#88

Post by kmnc »

gukov wrote: post #75

Every living organism is designed by evolution to strive for survival and reproduction. It's the constant fight that gets you out of the bed every morning. Having nothing to do all day but paint will eventually result in premature death. Think animals in captivity. What if the end of humanity will be caused not by a nuclear war but by a peaceful AI that made us zoo animals?

If we have the technological prowess to replace human labor in full yet can't figure out what to then do with our lives other then paint then we truly are a doomed species. It seems like people lack imagination, everyone either thinks "don't worry we will still have jobs (appeals to social history)" or the "with nothing to do we will wither and die (appeals to evolutionary history)". I think both those camps are missing something which should be self evident if we ever get to this point: The freedom and ability to create meaning in ones own life.

I do agree with you though, if we are kept in captivity by political and social structures (ahem..religion) that fail to evolve with technology (which seems like human nature sadly) then the average human will go the way of the sloth or the people in idiocracy. I am hopeful though that the AI will save us from that captivity more so then reinforce it yet that may be a foolish hope.

Is being a zoo animal so bad if we have the full capabilities of very powerful AI? What if those AI's were specifically devoted to making it a better zoo? At that point what is the difference? What is inherently bad about being a zoo animal if you can't see the walls and the zoo keepers don't abuse you?

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#89

Post by waqf »

shams93 wrote: post #45
philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

Exactly we could have a society oriented around the arts and sciences, pure creativity and discovery instead of bullshit jobs we could put the pedal to the metal in human freedom and innovation.

People are already creating more art than we actually need (witness how hard it is to make a living as an artist). Now just wait till the AIs become serious competition at that too.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#90

Post by _rpd »

stevehiehn wrote: post #85
_rpd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "AI" being discussed is mainly competent data mining and machine learning. If we stay at that level, then there are easily bigger shifts that we've adjusted to in the past. But self-improving AI is truly on a different level, as is AI with human-level 'general intelligence'.

I hear ya on the data mining observation. I have been digging into 'applied' ML for the last two years or so and its painfully obvious how many articles are based on science fiction and not the current state of things (which appears to be mostly reinforcement learning)

So much tech journalism falls prey to the logical fallacy of generalization from fictional evidence ...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...

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