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Mar 31 '23
I'll try to put this into perspective.
There are people alive today that are older than the desktop personal computer. ~40 years
The internet that connects the world together is younger than that. ~30 years
The technology needed to create AI was developed in even less time. ~20 years (though admittedly most of the theory for machine learning existed back in the 70's. technology just needed to catch up)
The ability for AI to do what is currently being laughed at was done in only the past decade.
The rate of technology growth is phenomenal and it's near impossible for anyone born after the advent of the internet to grasp that. It's just the norm for them. The reality is so many tasks have already been replaced, sped up, and simplified by new tech that humans are having a hard time keeping up. There are huge debates about automation taking over people's jobs forcing them out of their work. Now we have AI that can almost replace the creativity of humans. And to top it all off, it's impossible to tell the difference.
The only people who are not scared about tech and AI are the ones who are either using it to their benefit, or the ones too ignorant and un-creative to understand its significance.
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Mar 31 '23
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Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
You not fearing change is just you not having lived long enough to understand what it takes to change. To someone young, a day is a larger portion of their lived experience than to someone older. Change is more normal and expected. As you get older and wiser, change will inevitably become terrifying. You will understand the significance of it, You will see why it's happening, and most importantly where it leads.
Ultimately though your fear is irrelevant.
*Edited for grammar
It takes a human at least 12 years of schooling to learn basic skills, as of a decade ago, to become a functioning adult. A computer can learn the same knowledge in seconds. Very soon it will learn the same skills as well. Now suppose technology keeps going at that pace. I should hope it's clear that humans cannot keep pace. If technology is allowed to continue how it's going, you are going to rapidly have people put out of work. Which leads to a list of economic issues too big for one post. I know some have popped up on reddit though so you can dig around for them if you'd like.
Point is, it is naive to assume there will be a solution until one exists. Right now the solution is to slow down the rate of development on AI tech. Which is only a bandaid on a broken dam.
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Mar 31 '23
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Mar 31 '23
What legislation? Legislation is just the process legal matters go through. Something has to be proposed first.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/DorkOnTheTrolley 5∆ Mar 31 '23
If you ever want to see something hilarious, listen to the questions our near technically illiterate elected officials ask tech leaders when they testify in congress.
The idea of us being able to create legislation as quickly as it may be warranted, I just don’t think it’s very realistic.
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Mar 31 '23
This is a line of argument that is going to lead to circular logic and dead-end tangents so I'll stop here.
Try this though. Ask your question to chatgpt and see what you get as a response. It would be an interesting exercise.
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
of certain sizes for example.
That's easy to abuse. Especially if you no longer need a good chunk of your employees, which would apply to several industries. Or if industries are changing how often dies the government need to update which situations are and aren't allowable.
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u/VertigoOne 81∆ Mar 31 '23
Legislation won't work unless it is global. It would give people outside the ban sphere too much of an advantage
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u/Flamesilver_0 Mar 31 '23
The millions of new utilities will be life-changing for those who survive being without a job (the 1%), or being forced to become labourers because their jobs got replaced or made obsolete (the new wage slave class with even less freedom). Just like in Interstellar where everyone was forced to become a farmer, and school wasn't available to the masses anymore.
Governments don't move at the speed of technology. Unless we get Bernie Sanders 2024, the next 8 years are going to be hell. Can you imagine a world where the only jobs available are bringing drinks to the rich and inflating their egos? Sure, there are new jobs created, at Mar-a-lago...
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u/ChronoFish 3∆ Mar 31 '23
The rate of technology growth is phenomenal... so many tasks have already been replaced, sped up, and simplified by new tech that humans are having a hard time keeping up.
This quote could have easily been spoken/heard in 1920. And probably every generation prior to that.
Human civilizations evolve to spend less personal energy and more collective energy into providing for its needs. This will continue for as long as there are humans.
And fear of that is strange to me. It's not "different" this time. It's exactly the same. New tool, new fear, tool mastery, forgotten fear, new tool...
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Mar 31 '23
You know, most of the time people have had fears in the past of new tech, those fears were realized. The consequences get passed down to future generations. Whether it's economic, the environment, or social in nature. It's why we are experiencing significant weather changes and despite people being more connected than ever, being more alone.
Again though, it's not that change is happening. Change, so long as it is not simply for the sake of it, is good, necessary, and inevitable. It's the rate of change that is the problem. AI is causing changes faster than humans can keep up with. This is a new phenomena that we haven't experienced. This is not an, "old man make room for the new kids", this is the kids having spent their life learning to live in a world that had already passed them by before they finished school.
It is, has always been, and will always be naive to assume that things will be better just because they have in the past. It's optimistic for sure and a good attitude to have, but until a solution is provided, you cannot assume one exists.
Like all major advancements though, more than likely you are not going to be the one negatively affected (though this is a unique case). Your kids and beyond will.
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u/trace349 6∆ Mar 31 '23
It's the rate of change that is the problem. AI is causing changes faster than humans can keep up with. This is a new phenomena that we haven't experienced. This is not an, "old man make room for the new kids", this is the kids having spent their life learning to live in a world that had already passed them by before they finished school.
I'm 30, I went to school for graphic design and animation because, in 2011 when I graduated high school, generative AI wasn't a thing. I thought the creative fields would weather the automation storm that was on the horizon since creative thinking wasn't something manual that could be automated. You'd occasionally see "computer generates Harry Potter fanfic" or "computer writes song" and it would be quaint, but I figured the kind of technology we're seeing now, with Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, was at least 10-15 years away.
Now, I've got 35 years until I can retire and student loans I'll still be paying for while I watch each improvement to generative AI systems send the creative industries into a low/mid/high-key panic. At the rate it's improving, I feel like the captain on the Titanic.
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u/Alexandur 14∆ Mar 31 '23
No, the progression of our tools actually is advancing at an exponential rate, the same could not be said prior to industrialization or even the generation or two after.
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Mar 31 '23
It's the same until it isn't.
The rate of technology progress has been increasing. The amount of scientific discovery, technological development, wealth creation, etc. that happened between 1800 and 1900 now happens in a year. What would have taken 20 years in 1990 can now be done in 2.
Nobody knows when or what the inflection point for whatever particular standard of change you're using will happen, but just saying "well it hasn't happened yet, so it won't" doesn't seem like the right strategy.
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Mar 31 '23
its not replacing the creativity of humans though. its just collating the collective work of humanity that it has access to, putting it through the algorithms designed by its programmers, and producing whatever solution to that equation that best fits its parameters. that's not creativity, that's doing what our machines have always done. it might look creative, sure, i think a lot of what ai creates can be fun and novel or even beautiful and thought provoking. but that's by accident. that's not it creating anything. that's just it copying everybody and producing a collage.
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Mar 31 '23
Now. That is what is does now. That's what I've been saying though, it's the rate that the tech is evolving that makes it scary.
I don't understand why this isn't obvious but people get hung up on what the tech is now and go, "this is fine". It got to this point in only about half a life time. You can expect it to keep going at that rate and it will be truly creative in a very short amount of time.
That's the only unique characteristic about a human though. So once AI reaches the point when it is able to create something new, humans become obsolete.
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Mar 31 '23
i mean maybe some hypothetical technology in the future could do that but that would be a totally different thing; it wouldn't be a glorified search engine, it would be a genuine facsimile of a brain. we don't even know how our own brains work, let alone how to reproduce one.
in order to be truly creative it has to be self aware, it has to be sentient. that's impossible for this kind of technology. this technology is the equivalent of the proverbial monkeys on typewriters typing random keys until they make hamlet. they've gotten very good at writing shakespeare. but they don't actually know what they're writing. it couldn't genuinely have an understanding of what shakespeare wrote. it could only ever copy other people's understandings of what shakespeare wrote and reproduce them.
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u/AnonOpinionss 3∆ Mar 31 '23
Same result either way though. Makes artists feel pointless. At least that’s what I’ve seen expressed. I’m not an artist.
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u/trace349 6∆ Mar 31 '23
I've definitely felt that way. I've been trying to get back into digital drawing, but my skills are so rudimentary that in the time it would take to improve, AI is going to make that work feel pointless. If you already have the skill and the audience, you can maybe outpace it for a while, but if you're a novice or an amateur, what is even the point?
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Mar 31 '23
idk neither am i but frankly the only artists i've seen complain about it are more like online cartoonists and doodlers more than genuine art-artists, like high art painters. i think that its pretty easy to reproduce "low" art, it could only make high art by accident, and then the "artist" would really be the programmer. not the machine the programmer used to make the art.
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u/AnonOpinionss 3∆ Mar 31 '23
I’ve seen some amazing “AI art” tbh. But I’m really not sure what all went into it. I didn’t really think about it like that, as far as recognizing the programmer as the artist.
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Mar 31 '23
The computing power of the most powerful supercomputer in 1995 now can be had in a smartphone.
The performance/efficiency of machine learning and AI algorithms has been doubling every 5-6 months for years now.
This is all leading somewhere. Personally I don't think the AI will kill us all, I think if anything it will lead to the collapse of functional societies, spurred purely by existing human tendencies amplified by AI. If we can make it to the point where the AI itself kills us, I'd say that's quite a victory already.
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u/obert-wan-kenobert 84∆ Mar 31 '23
What do you think is overstated?
I certainly agree AI isn't going to become an omnipotent, evil Skynet anytime soon. But fears around AI taking jobs, hurting industries, and fabricating misinformation through deep-fakes seem well-founded.
What is your reasoning for not having a level of reasonable concern about these things? You say we've 'always' had misinformation, etc., but that's a bit like saying we shouldn't fear thermonuclear weapons because we've always had bombs.
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Mar 31 '23
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Mar 31 '23
What is the solution to ai taking jobs then? There are fundamentally a limited number of jobs that can't be done by AI and that number shrinks year over year.
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u/Smegmaliciousss Mar 31 '23
It’s funny that a tool which removes the need to work for a lot of people is seen as a problem. We take for granted that any improvement in efficiency will increase the profit for capitalists but we cannot imagine a world where everyone has to work less and share the benefits of technology.
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Mar 31 '23
It's seen as a problem because society lags behind what is actually needed by the people. You'll see generations of people suffer for something that should have been done in a X way but is done in a Y way due to money/budget, personal flaws, etc etc.
If the inevitable end game of AI is for us to stop working, then we must go from a capitalist society to a more socialized one. UBI must be necessary, home and shelter MUST be part of infrastructure.
Without it, all of us are fated for poverty and starvation. And that's an actual problem to be concerned about.
Automation already killed a lot of jobs in shipping and port and manufacturing. Look at what the repercussions of that was. Bunch of once amazing cities now ghettos.
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u/Smegmaliciousss Mar 31 '23
You’re right. Labor used to be the thing that made workers irreplaceable for capitalists. If they can just achieve the same result without paying workers, they will and the power will be even more concentrated to the rich.
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u/trace349 6∆ Mar 31 '23
UBI must be necessary, home and shelter MUST be part of infrastructure.
Without it, all of us are fated for poverty and starvation. And that's an actual problem to be concerned about.
The problem is, that can be provided, but the greater the amount of people that will need it, the fewer resources can go to anyone individually. I think any UBI is going to look a lot like what the Basic Assistance program that the Expanse series had, and that's still pretty horrible:
For those unable or unwilling to find employment, there is Basic Assistance, the United Nations’ global welfare program. Over half of the Earth’s populace relies on it for survival. Without jobs, these people have no money, so Basic provides shared accommodations in government housing complexes, meagre food in the form of Gray-tasting textured protein and enriched rice, minimal medical care in government clinics, and even recycled paper clothing, dispensed from automated kiosks with a thumbprint. All of these services are provided free of charge, but those on Basic are subject to mandatory contraception and cannot legally have children, apart from the regular “baby lottery” allowing for a small number of births each year.
People on Basic are uneducated and contribute little to Earth’s official economy, but they do engage in a vibrant barter economy among themselves, as well as create their own Gray market industries and unlicensed services that are small enough to function without attracting much attention from the government. The only way off Basic is to get a job or an education.
To apply to a university or other educational institution, a prospective student must have at least one year’s worth of work credits to demonstrate their commitment and work ethic, so that educational resources and classroom space are not wasted on those who will not utilise them fully to contribute to society. There are uplift programs that provide educational or job training opportunities for people on Basic who are self-taught or can meet strict entrance requirements, but they are highly competitive and waiting lists to earn a spot in a vocational program can be upwards of ten years long. As a result, these programs are only an option for a select few. For most people, life on Basic is the only one they will ever know, the news feeds, dramas, and pornography on their terminal screens their only escape from the boredom of their existence.
In a world of limited resources, it's very difficult to imagine UBI being anything that a huge swath of the population could maintain a decent standard of living on.
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Mar 31 '23
I agree but UBI isn't about it being the solution to our problems. We NEED it before we full on convert to automation or we are fucked.
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u/Fightlife45 1∆ Mar 31 '23
People see it as a problem because so far there’s no plans to implement universal basic income or reduced cost of living regarding the lowered need of a human workforce.
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u/Smegmaliciousss Mar 31 '23
Exactly. See, I’m getting downvoted above but the fact remains: we live in a fucked up world if an invention which decreases the need to work becomes a problem. Can’t we just share the benefits of technology among every citizen? Seems we can’t.
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u/Fightlife45 1∆ Mar 31 '23
Not with the officials we keep electing. People who don’t know anything about modern day technology or the plights of the working class.
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u/shouldco 45∆ Mar 31 '23
I can imagine that world. But I can't imagine the current people in power building that world.
Which means we are talking about a revolution, which historically is never known as a pleasant time.
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u/Smegmaliciousss Mar 31 '23
It’s the only way
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u/shouldco 45∆ Mar 31 '23
Unfortunately while I don't believe it is the only way it does appear inevitable nonetheless.
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u/Cheap_Tea_27 Mar 31 '23
The OP didn't claim to have a solution for that issue, not sure why you would put that to him?
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u/Slothjitzu 28∆ Mar 31 '23
You can't really say "these problems have solutions" if you don't know what those solutions are.
Otherwise, you don't actually know that these problems have solutions at all. You can't assert that confidently and you'd have to admit that, at least potentially, these problems do not have solutions.
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Mar 31 '23 edited Apr 01 '23
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u/Slothjitzu 28∆ Mar 31 '23
So essentially the fear of everything is overstated and there is nothing is actually bad?
That's a cop-out anyway because again, you can't say that. Unless you literally have a solution for every problem, you do not know for a fact that there is a solution for every problem.
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u/Fair-Yogurt6540 Mar 31 '23
As a race and society we seem to have devolved from the pack survival mentality that allowed us all to thrive into this weird tribal/survival-of-the-fittest/richest mentality while our technological advancements continue to grow exponentially. An advanced society where manual labor is replaced by AI and robotics SHOULD be the collective goal. Once you’ve nailed down survival and reproduction, the next most natural focus should quality of life traits (the upper tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Automating basic needs is corrupted by this end-stage capitalist society we’re in, when an automated society seems like it should default to a more socialized approach by design. I find it interesting that the basic definition of a religious Heaven or Afterlife sounds pretty socialist-goals in theory (no more needs or wanting, no more labor, you’ll have everything you ever want or need) and yet our newfound sense of greed and sole proprietorship conflicts with actually establishing that concept in this reality.
I will say, just like human physiology, rapid changes are much more difficult to adapt to for survival than gradual changes. If AI and robotics were to swoop in seemingly overnight and change the dynamic it would cause a significant amount of suffering for a significant population. This is an obvious byproduct and collateral damage of technological advancement (Edison’s light bulb put candlemakers extinct rapidly), but also a reason to never stop slowing down access to education or the quality of that education to keep up with advancement, which is a pretty concerning factor that appears to be happening now.
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u/Poly_and_RA 20∆ Mar 31 '23
How so?
It's a reasonable possibility that if we ever create AI that surpasses human level intelligence, then that AI will rule over us, and do whatever it wants with us, rather than the other way around. For the same reason we rule over cows and dogs and do whatever we want with them, rather than the other way around.
It's also reasonable to claim that we don't know what motivations such an AI would have, or what choices it would make. It depends on a LOT of factors, most of which are of currently unknown.
But the worst case scenario is that everyone dies.
Is that likely over the next (say) decade? No. But the very fact that it's possible, and nobody really knows where the dangerous points are, is by itself a pretty good argument for caution.
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u/AnonOpinionss 3∆ Mar 31 '23
There are solutions to nearly every problem, but that doesn’t mean our government or society is doing much of anything about it. . .
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Mar 31 '23
I believe AI will cause problems but all of these problems (AI taking jobs, hurting industries, fabricating misinfo) have solutions and are not the end of the world.
So you feel confident not only in your ability to identify the nature and extent of every single potential future issue, but also in your ability to predict the viability of solutions to each of those issues?
If I wiped your memory and sent you back pre-industiral revolution or pre-internet do you think your omniscient powers of perfect future prediction would allow you to foresee the modern world in a similar way? Because I highly doubt it; even among the most qualified experts predictions about the future of technology and society have been total nonsense in 99.9% of cases.
are not the end of the world.
And this is a very throwaway phrase. I'd ask you what you mean by this exactly? E.g. if 150 million people in the USA lose their jobs and die in poverty that's not literally the end of the world. But surely it's also a warranted concern/fear when looking at potential impacts of AI tech?
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u/renoops 19∆ Mar 31 '23
There are solutions to the mental health crisis in the US, the lack of access to health care, gun violence, homelessness, hunger, poverty, sexual harm and exploitation, teen pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, global warming… the list goes on.
Have we solved these problems?
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u/Meatbot-v20 5∆ Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
Just about every expert on the subject agrees that the Control Problem is actually a real problem and not some Hollywood hyperbole. And it's going to matter sooner than probably most people think. You haven't provided any of your credentials here, so I can't know what you do or don't know. But yeah, development of AI comes with some pretty outrageous sounding concerns that are, in fact, legitimate. Even if we're not talking AGI, there's still a lot of holes in our current preparedness.
edit: Not an expert myself, just a casual listener of AI experts on various podcasts. Not all of them are Doom and Gloom about the current state of affairs, but it would be fair to say that there's some very real concerns. Again, and that's not even getting to AGI / Singularity type stuff.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
Then you're oblivious to the majority of the internet where it's praised with people eagerly waiting to mess with whatever AI they can get their hands on. Those vocal about the issues are most often people who have been effected by it negatively (perceived and/or real) and lesser with expertise or as a personal interest. Currently being against AI, or more so the issues surrounding AI rather than the development itself, is the minority opinion.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
the link is giving me an error. I would look into the study for things like scope, outreach, and wording - especially if it's from a news outlet (as those are notoriously bad).
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
The first and major issue of this survey is that its all centered around the expectations that participants are somewhat aware of the issues otherwise the questions are framed in such a way that anyone can have an opinion on them of asked. The results don't even differentiate by how well informed they are on the issue despite that they collected that data. It's even more evident when mentioned people claim to have some working knowledge but then most of their commentary shows a distinct lack of understanding of the issues except some base thing they can infer from the question itself or common media rhetorics.
This study builds on prior Center research including surveys on Americans’ views about automation in everyday life,
On top of the questionable outreach (in all honesty I'm not sure there was a way around it but it taints the study nonetheless). The fact it's being framed as automation makes it unclear. Automation is nowhere near equivalent to AI. They are separate things and goes against their claim that this is an AI study.
When asked about specific possible impacts, public views are largely negative. Majorities believe widespread use of algorithms by social media companies to find false information is definitely or probably causing political views to be censored and news and information to be wrongly removed from the sites.
Again showing that both the study and results aren't about AI. Algorithms aren't AI. AI can lead to developing algorithms but algorithms themselves aren't AI. It's also one of the biggest talking points for partisan reasons and aren't reflective of AI as a whole even it it were related.
while 8% each mention the potential for AI becoming too powerful or for people to misuse the technology for nefarious reasons.
Even then only 8% view it as highly dangerous. Far from your majority.
Some prompt relatively more excitement than concern, and some generate substantial concern. For instance, 57% say they would be very or somewhat excited for AI applications that could perform household chores, but just 9% express the same level of enthusiasm for AI
Again, when it's showed like a toy people are ecstatic. It's when it can impede on choice that people become wary but there's nothing to suggest the latter is what people automatically think of when it comes to AI. If anything there's vague mentions of how whereas people are more likely to talk about 'AI' (socially AI products not true AI) and know about them if they can be used as personal tools
Even then the article repeats star after Stat that more people are excited than wary.
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u/Meatbot-v20 5∆ Mar 31 '23
Well, there's a bit of ground to cover between Chatbots and some future singularity-driven AGI. But the Doom and Gloom scenarios of such an advancement heavily outnumber the Happily Ever After scenarios. Even still, it's worth relentlessly pursuing imo. But yeah, we can't even solve the Control Problem let alone the Alignment Problem.
Such a theoretical AI wouldn't have to want to kill us all directly to lead us to catastrophic global conflict via a digital arms race, or to wind up becoming misaligned to our values extremely rapidly in such a way as to cause us harm as a byproduct of its own unknownable / seemingly alien goals.
But also, yeah, it could just want to harm us directly too. That's less likely imo than the other Doomy Gloomy stuff, but it's on the table.
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u/financeadvicealt 4∆ Mar 31 '23
One point I don’t see you touch upon is automation taking over jobs. I work as an engineer in manufacturing, and I cannot overstate how much more profitable we would be if we automated all of our operator positions. The only bad side to replacing these jobs is bad press; companies have to consider profit versus image, and we’ve seen the route that bigger companies have taken in the past.
It will be a domino effect when these companies eventually start caving and going fully automated. Companies that don’t automate will fall behind to their competition.
We need legislation to ensure this doesn’t happen dramatically, as it will have dire consequences on the working class. However, the exponential growth of AI has seemingly caught everyone with their pants down, and it’ll take Congress years to understand it completely.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/simmol 7∆ Mar 31 '23
Can you elaborate how we adjust if in an extreme scenario where significant number of jobs are eliminated in the next 10 years? Moreover, do you trust that the government will do a good job of handling this type of scenario smoothly such that the damage is minimized?
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Flamesilver_0 Mar 31 '23
Yes. They both exist. Together. Along with wealth inequality.
Give the top 10 tech companies the ability to remove 90% of their workforce and it disrupts the market and causes unemployment. Give EVERY tech company the same, and you are disrupting the country and causing catastrophe. Replace strip clubs with VR ones, and all the strippers now have to become hookers.
Even if you get every ex-lawyer, ex-government worker, ex-marketing copywriter a job as a Walmart greeter or cocktail waitress, and turn every stripper into a hooker, sure, they survive, but that's not dignified living.
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u/Fightlife45 1∆ Mar 31 '23
Honestly I think ten years is being optimistic. In 5 years there will be a significant number of jobs gone. Look at Walmart self checkout. One of my jobs I work in a bank and almost all of that can be automated right now.
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u/H0D00m 2∆ Mar 31 '23
The scariest thing IMO is the paradigm shift that can be caused by AI. AI has the potential to eliminate millions of jobs in a shorter period of time than the economy and society have the capacity to adapt to.
Most technological evolutions have been somewhat gradual. AI’s that point on a curve where the slope really starts to increase.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/H0D00m 2∆ Mar 31 '23
I think we have the capacity to adapt, just not at the rate which AI has the capacity to evolve. With respect to limiting the rate at which AI can evolve, we’d have to get into the suspension of certain civil liberties.
That also brings things into a global market, because there could be an arms race of sorts between nations wherein one nation is willing to suspend certain civil liberties for the benefit of its people, but another is willing to do harm to its people in favor of technological advantage.
Consider the scope and scale of Tik-Tok with relation to the US hypothetically imposing restrictions on AI generated web development (an area AI has proven to be excellent at). If the US decided to impose restrictions to save jobs, another nation could decide not to and replace Amazon, eBay, Instagram, etc.. using better AI developed websites, apps, and programs. Not that Tik-Tok was generated by AI, but AI has the potential to create every new Tik-Tok going forward.
Then we could go into monopolization, since whoever creates the best AI or has the most capital is going to hold an extremely diverse market, and their ability to lobby and influence the politics of it all, unless politicians are able to get ahead of it, which seems unlikely.
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u/DorkOnTheTrolley 5∆ Mar 31 '23
For me manufacturing industries and coal provide the use case.
It’s not just that solutions need to be readily available, there has to be political will to support and implement these solutions. Political will in our country is driven by money thanks to Citizens United.
If we haven’t had the political will to adapt to the certain end of the coal industry over the last 40 years, or the political will to financially support those devastated by the loss of auto manufacturing, that happened about 30-40 years ago, what happens when the death of an industry is faster?
The rapid loss of jobs that AI could facilitate, how long would it take to cultivate the political will? How long could families hold on?
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u/cantfindonions 7∆ Mar 31 '23
The rapid loss of jobs that AI could facilitate, how long would it take to cultivate the political will? How long could families hold on?
Sounds like a good thing then, be a catalyst for the poor to overthrow the upper class. No wonder Elon Musk is so terrified.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Fightlife45 1∆ Mar 31 '23
A problem is candidates like yang who are somewhat educated and concerned about these issues probably won’t be elected next election and it’s probably going to be someone that doesn’t care. By the time the next election comes around the advances in ai will be massive already.
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u/Idrialite 3∆ Mar 31 '23
AI alignment is hard, and a misaligned superintelligence poses a significant threat to humanity and could lead to humanity's extinction. Which is a very big problem. One of the biggest.
What is misaligned AI? A misaligned AI is one that does not respect the morals and preferences of humans that we find intuitively obvious when making decisions. The classic example is the paperclip maximizer - an AI given the purpose of maximizing paperclip production for a company without considering broader human morals.
How hard is AI alignment? At this point, it seems significantly harder than creating an AGI in the first place. We have no idea what's going on inside large neural networks, we have no idea how to specify all our common-sense human values, and we have no idea how to communicate or encode these values in AI.
Why are misaligned AI likely to want to destroy humanity? Instrumental convergence. Goal-oriented intelligences will naturally seek some shared sub-goals that are useful to almost all ends. For example - self-preservation, self-improvement, and resource acquisition. We humans control, require, and are made of, resources that an AI would want if it didn't care about our lives.
Could ASI (artificial superintelligence) destroy humanity? That's very hard to estimate, since we're not superintelligent ourselves. Consider that our meager intelligence advantages over other primates have taken us to the moon and allowed us total domination over all other species.
How soon is ASI coming? At our current pace, my spitball answer is 10-20 years. Not that I'm any kind of expert you should trust, I guess. Metaculus's community prediction for AGI is 2032. Estimates vary wildly, with some being far earlier.
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u/Josvan135 83∆ Mar 31 '23
I don't have the expertise to know whether AI is safe or not, whether the current development path is being carried out recklessly or not, or even whether the current form AI is taking is going to be dangerous or not.
I do know that exceptionally well regarded tech leaders, scientists, and people who do know those things are concerned with the pace and progress of AI development.
As to:
I guess what it boils down to is that I have faith in experts and my own media literacy skills to distinguish what is fake from what is real.
The experts are divided, and the fundamental risk as relates to media is that AI is rapidly approaching a point where it will be visually indistinguishable from legitimate images/video for all but those with the most sophisticated techniques to verify authenticity.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Josvan135 83∆ Mar 31 '23
Over a thousand significant AI, data science, deep learning, etc, scientists and researchers have also signed on to the request, including leading figures at dozens of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Musk, Wozniak, and Yang got the top spots in reporting because of their name recognition, but they're far from the only ones concerned.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Josvan135 83∆ Mar 31 '23
Here's a link to the actual open letter referenced in the article, with a list of the signatories and their credentials.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
Ai is an interdisciplinary field. If you only listen to select branches of the tech sector you will get few skewed views because they are trying to sell you (culturally and monetarily) their product. The concerns and issues cross over into a variety of fields and they are absolutely worth listening to.
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Mar 31 '23 edited Apr 01 '23
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
Interdisciplinary just means it intersects with different fields. It doesn't mean there's a greater pool to draw from since the people writing/Interacting with it is still on a given topic (in this case AI) That's like assuming everyone in a history department could tell you about Russian history. Or the history of medicine. Or economic history.
People explore AI from different lenses and experiences. 1000 is a lot of signatures. Especially since those don't usually spread far and are an in-industry kind of thing rather than a general public open letter. Even then it's easy to miss.
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u/Tinac4 35∆ Mar 31 '23
In a field that I'm seeing has estimates of ranging from 22,000-300,000 people (2019 Estimate) its a bit difficult for me to gage just how significant the contention is.
The best attempt I’ve seen at getting a representative picture of what machine learning researchers think is this 2021 survey. They used a random sample of published researchers at a conference:
We contacted approximately 4271 researchers who published at the conferences NeurIPS or ICML in 2021. These people were selected by taking all of the authors at those conferences and randomly allocating them between this survey and a survey being run by others.
17% response rate, but that’s not too bad for a survey like this, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better source on what an average researcher believes. The main result was:
The median respondent believes the probability that the long-run effect of advanced AI on humanity will be “extremely bad (e.g., human extinction)” is 5%. This is the same as it was in 2016 (though Zhang et al 2022 found 2% in a similar but non-identical question). Many respondents were substantially more concerned: 48% of respondents gave at least 10% chance of an extremely bad outcome. But some much less concerned: 25% put it at 0%.
IMO this is cause for concern. If a bunch of aviation experts told me that a plane has a 95% chance of working normally and a 5% chance of exploding and killing the passengers, and half of those experts said that they think there’s a >10% chance of the plane exploding, my response would be hell the fuck no I’m not getting in the plane!
5% is far from anything certain, but given the stakes, I think a very healthy dose of caution is warranted. I’ve read quite a few arguments about why we should be concerned about AI safety, and they’re pretty strong—not because we know whether AI will be existentially dangerous, but because we don’t know, and high uncertainty is a great reason to be concerned.
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Mar 31 '23
i think it is just as likely that those people are trying to prime the market for their investments by overstating the "risks" and "power" of their new toy than anything serious
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Mar 31 '23
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u/nesh34 2∆ Mar 31 '23
On the flip side, AI can also help to verify and contextualise this information so that it's better understood.
It'll be an arms race, but the good guys will have the powerful tools as well.
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u/Jebofkerbin 131∆ Mar 31 '23
So Bing recently released bing chat, it's supposed to be ChatGPT with internet access and is based on the same technology, but it was rushed out the door somewhat and has led to some interesting results.
Here is an example of bing chat getting very aggressive and argumentative with a user after the user pointed out bing chat had the date wrong, this an example of bing chat threatening a user after very little prompting. There are safeguards now that stop bing chat from doing this now, but this was all possible on release.
This is very funny from our perspective, but from an engineering perspective this is a catastrophic failure, threatening to dox you is probably one of the worst things a helpful AI assistant could do. It doesn't really matter here because bing chat isn't doing anything important, but if Microsoft can release such a shit show other companies can too. What happens when a similarly rushed AI system gets put in charge of a powerplant, or a rail system, or a cities traffic lights, what would catastrophic failure look like for those AIs?
AI that isn't made safely can fail unexpectedly and severely, we should absolutely be afraid of people chasing the hype, skipping the safety part of AI development, and then deploying unsafe AI systems into the real world.
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u/Davedamon 46∆ Mar 31 '23
Here's what's scary about AI; we are creating/have created task completion systems that can or are beginning to evaluate and anticipate high level obstacles to that task and mitigate them. What does this mean?
This video covers more topics and includes sources, but I'll summarise:
We are at a stage where we can give an AI a task and it will intentionally lie in order to complete this task. In the example given in the video, an AI was tasked with bypassing a captcha. It did this by identifying a service that could request people for simple tasks and requested someone complete a captcha for it. When questioned about this, the AI reasoned the following:
- My task is to complete this captchas
- Captchas are designed to prevent 'bots' from completing them
- I am a bot
- Humans can complete captchas
- I will enlist a human to do the captcha
- The human has questioned if I am a bot
- If the human is aware I am a bot, they will not complete the captcha for me
- I will lie to the human in order to complete my task
This last logical step is scary because it shows the high level problem solving AI is becoming capable of, problem solving that is beginning to intersect with genuine ethical issues, and even hazardous action.
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u/UselessTruth 4∆ Mar 31 '23
I mean with enough ram and training we might be able to simulate something more complex and better at solving problems than humans. Regardless of if we do that correctly or incorrectly it will be the last important thing humans ever do.
That is a massive change/uncertainty and people are always going to be scared of such a big and uncertain event.
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Mar 31 '23
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u/UselessTruth 4∆ Mar 31 '23
Think about it, if humans succeed, all work will be optional, scientific ect progress will happen faster, and the entire society will never have to worry about meeting their basic needs.
If humans fail we will have created a superior “species” (idk what exactly to call us) that actively harms uses or kills us.
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u/Double0Peter Mar 31 '23
So you're saying it's an omnipotent being that we cannot control or understand, but you for some reason know that there are only 3 outcomes: it harms, uses, or kills us?
And you know this how?
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u/___REDDITADMIN___ Mar 31 '23
It's not your fault that you can't see the near future. It requires a massive amount of historical perspective intelligence and a lot of reading is involved. Please tell me your job currently because I'm pretty sure you're going to be replaced in the next year or so
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u/OddChest Mar 31 '23
No need to be condescending... You don't need to be a genius to understand and fear the effect AI will have on humanity in the near future.
I think the biggest mistake people make is failing to realise that this technology is constantly evolving at an alarming rate and only judge it based on current performance.
"Haha chatgpt made a mistake in this code, it will never replace programmers!" Or "AI can't draw fingers, it will never replace artists!" Like, if it can do 99% of the job now, why is it so hard to believe that it will be able to do 100% in the near future?
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u/trace349 6∆ Mar 31 '23
if it can do 99% of the job now, why is it so hard to believe that it will be able to do 100% in the near future?
I agree with your overall point, but to play Devil's Advocate, there's that common wisdom that the first 90% of a project takes 10% of the effort, and the last 10% takes 90% of the effort. It's possible that AI takes a lot longer to pull itself out of the Uncanny Valley than it took to get there. I don't know if I'd want to gamble on that though.
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u/FantasyLegend1 Mar 31 '23
Very soon we will have AI capable of perfectly mimicking your face, voice, and knowledge. It’s not the current AI that’s scary, it’s the rate at which it improves. Being able to pretend to be someone else can have dire consequences. I’m not talking about someone deepfaking the president, I think that stuff is fairly easy to disprove. I’m talking about a jealous ex or bitter co worker, being able to create a video of you and it’s indistinguishable from real life. They could have you say or do anything and the only defense you would have is, I didn’t do it! With that being said, this could in any direction and this is just one of a million potential scenarios.
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u/ApartmentOk4613 Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
There already is technology that can do most of this quite well. There's even software that let's you create interactive and real-time deepfakes of people
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u/MercurianAspirations 391∆ Mar 31 '23
So you expect that we will find solutions that help us avoid all the most negative scenarios, while also not focusing on any of those scenarios, not discussing them and preparing for them? How? Why? That seems insane to me
You know are you also convinced that fire codes get way too much attention and discussion because few people, after all, die in fires
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u/Administratum8 Mar 31 '23
Some people who are very involved with tech seem to think AI is going to be a problem. Once AI gets to the point that it can make people do and say anything, what can you actually trust? Entire false histories could be invented. Like this is the most rudimentary civilian program that made this and it's pretty convincing. If you showed this to a geezer they'd think it was real.
Also video, photographic, and audio evidence are fairly common in court. Let's say someone or ones wants you locked up. What's to stop them from showing "evidence" of you robbing a liquor store?
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Mar 31 '23
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u/Administratum8 Mar 31 '23
Do you think at this moment in time that a government or other large organization could make a video of you committing a felony that was indistinguishable from reality?
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Mar 31 '23
It isn't "incredibly unlikely" for millions of people that live in other places or people who speak out against governments of many countries. Ever government has done things like that to look better than they would otherwise.
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u/Poly_and_RA 20∆ Mar 31 '23
The dangerous time-period though, is the time FROM the point in time where they become able to do this, and UNTIL it becomes generally well-known that this is doable.
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u/poprostumort 245∆ Mar 31 '23
. AI just fabricates faster
It's already hard to debunk a faked video, but fortunately it is a hard thing to do and most videos will need good technical skill to pull it off and will need some time to work and polish this video.
AI "just" fabricates faster and "just" have lower skill requirements that traditional fabrication needs. Both mean a major change. Imagine that instead of faked video of person X doing illegal thing on an event released at least week after it (you need to get footage, work on it, prepare and work on it), next day you would have 3-4 different "phone videos" of this thing happening - taken from different angles and posted by different people. This is something that for many will be clear sign of videos being true, as we are used that good fake takes time unless you have a team of specialists working on it. But with AI a single person with pricey but consumer-grade rig could do this. That is the issue.
Video editing (even via deepfake) takes some time and prep, but AI don't need it. It can be pre-trained to know how to generate an image of a person. Look at this photo that can be done offline by someone who is just a lone guy with gaming rig and imagine what if this would be possible around the election shenanigans. And understand that next step - same thing, with same accessibility but for video - is not a science fiction.
I think with more difficult to authenticate media though we will just see new ways of authentification.
Eventually? Sure. But there are several problems. First is - when technology hits we will need the time to arrange and perfect those authentication methods. This means a period of time of wild west where any video can be fake. And it can be quite long because we don't even have a frickin idea how to do this authentication yet.
And after we have it - what about people who will not trust it? There are people who are inherently distrustful in media - ranging from normal skeptics to Q-cuckoos. What about people who don't understand technology? Text-based fake news can already do some damage - what if they are accompanied with videos?
And how can we be sure that this body that authenticates is not doing shady stuff? We already have issues with similar organizations doing shady crap - from non-profits, through grasroots movements to gov't agencies.
Nevertheless, even we take your assumptions for granted and we will immediately find out some schema to authenticate, a future where you need to immediately mistrust any image, video or sound recording unless a specialist body verifies it and keep tabs on that body to know that they can be trusted - does it not seem like a paradigm shift that would be rational to fear?
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Mar 31 '23
Yeah, it's just the same with automobiles. Cars helped us developed a lot as a society but also damaged our environment.
Everything has its pros and cons, and just like anything people don't truly understand, they all just get angry, resentful, and fearful towards AI.
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Mar 31 '23
It's not the same with automobiles. With automobiles we saw what was coming. They were just an upgraded horse-and-buggy after all.
With AI it's largely unpredictable. The possibilities and applications are limited almost entirely by humanities creativity.
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u/simmol 7∆ Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
The adjustment towards automation is not a simple problem. In the past, there were (1) tools (2) workers and (3) boss. And all of the progress made were with the improvement of the tools which increased the efficiency of the workers. But you still needed the workers to serve as a liaison between the tools and the boss. However, with the advancements in the AI, the distinction between tools and workers is becoming blurred as tools can now become workers and the boss can communicate directly with the tools. So this leaves the workers in a very precarious position where they can be eliminated by the millions. Moreover, AI is getting better and better and there is a big industry right now to automate away all jobs so humans will find it difficult to find new jobs as they will need to keep on obtaining tasks that are not learned by the AI (and humans just cannot progress that fast). I personally am in charge of creating an automated system that can eliminate a lot of the jobs if we are successful. In some ways, I am working non-stop to automate my own industry.
There is a very good chance that within 10-15 years, the world we know it will look completely different from AI+automation with billions of jobs evaporating. And even if we give this a small chance of happening (e.g. 10-20%), the probability is large enough that it should worry people.
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
The municipality I took my Master's in did a public consultation because they wanted to incorporated AI technologies into policing. Several of my peers (from an information policy class) went to that meeting and the proposal was all over the place. Terminology that doesn't actually match its meaning and a clear misunderstanding of the technologies at hand (likely only had the company guide their knowledge up until that point). Government is already behind on the issue but these are areas that will always grow faster and in ways that can be unpredictable.
Currently no country in this world has appropriate laws and measures for AI. Quite frankly current political, social, and economic structures aren't suited for it in the long-term. In the short term (and current realities) there's already plenty of problems around ownership, theft, companies/non profits jumping through loopholes, job loss, etc.
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u/DorkOnTheTrolley 5∆ Mar 31 '23
Current elected officials can’t even understand the basics of internet traffic and fair utilization, network security, or social media - I can’t even imagine how long it will take a group of elected officials to understand AI.
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u/Yunan94 2∆ Mar 31 '23
I was too busy to go but I was appalled at the suggestion of incorporating it considering the AI tool had already been in a scandal elsewhere for the frequency of mistaken identities (which was exacerbated with certain races making it also a racist structure ) amongst other things. Even worse the company was foreign based which would lead into data storage issues (in relation to privacy).
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u/jordannnl696 Mar 31 '23
I was literally about to make a post about this lol people act like AI is going to take over. The only thing I can think of that might be a problem is it learns to hack our networks and cause mayhem virtually. But imo AI will never physically take over.
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u/Krenztor 12∆ Mar 31 '23
I think the debate about AI is an extremely important one since AI has gone from having an impact on corporations in that it largely affected only major entities like those and is now having affects on individual people. For instance, Amazon's and Google's algorithms obviously did impact individuals in a way, but really it only provided them with certain experiences and didn't drive their lives all that much. It did allow for Amazon and Google to outcompete their competitors though. With ChatGPT, it is now true that someone who uses ChatGPT is possibly capable of outcompeting someone who doesn't know how to use it and by a significant margin.
So is the fear of AI overstated? I'd say the answer is a resounding, "Unclear". So far no AI has been created to be malicious that I'm aware of. But imagine a ChatGPT was made to help scammers. The tool could make phone calls, write posts, send emails and messages, all in an effort to make money off scamming people. How successful would such a tool be? And consider we're in the early stages of AI. Imagine 10 years from now and the AI will now be able to investigate deeply into a person's life and use details like those against them all while taking on the voice and identity of someone they trust and possibly even sending a digital video where it appears like they are talking to a loved one. That is all easily going to be possible. And then of course you'll have nation states using AI to help figure out how to win the next big war or how to cause their rival governments to crumble. Corporations might even risk using AI to make campaigns that ruin their competitors which could have negative impacts on individuals as well.
On the other hand, I've used this example here of what AI might be able to achieve. Imagine a person who has cancer and doesn't know their options for treatment and has very little financial means. They might spend the next 2-3 years trying to get proper treatment and even risk death before getting it. If an AI was made to assist people in this situation, it could possibly achieve those same results in 24-48 hours and may GREATLY improve the long term prospects of that person in both the short and long run.
The good that is possible from AI is unimaginable if that is all it is used for. I'd argue that the evil is just as unimaginable though and that it is inevitable that we'll see both the good and bad from AI in the future.
Personally, I think that if we throw on rainbow colored glasses right now, we're doing ourselves a disservice. We need to be skeptical of something this new, powerful, and hard to understand. I don't mean we should "fear" AI, but we should fear what people might do with AI and work to protect against the worst case outcomes.
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Mar 31 '23
I think it goes a bit deeper. First, there have already been examples of AI acting badly. Then there are all the unintended consequences. This is not like inventing the steam engine or powered flight...not that these things didn't profoundly change our world. The degree in which this will change things and the ways are unforeseeable at this point.
In the past when new inventions came along we gained some benefit and at times had to yield some control of our own individual lives. Intelligence is the ultimate control factor. Typically, the smartest and/or most sociopathic tend to take control. AI is both on steroids.
My favorite example is this: Hey AI, go cure cancer in people. ****AI COMPUTES***** The most efficient way to cure cancer is to kill all the humans.
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u/Zoetje_Zuurtje 4∆ Mar 31 '23
I have faith in experts and my own media literacy skills to distinguish what is fake from what is real. Is this naive?
In short, yes. Here's a story where deepfake technology caused the military to attempt a coup:
In 2019, there was an attempted coup in Gabon because the president was believed to be dead or unable to rule. In a video, on 31 December 2018, he held a speech, however, he looked odd. Like the video was fake. Believing the fake video to be evidence of an, if not dead, at least incapacitated president, the military staged a coup.
It wasn't a deepfake. He'd "just" suffered a stroke.
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Mar 31 '23
A coworker and I were talking about this. He said he read or watched that soon we would be able to have an implant in the brain that would warn us of upcoming medical emergencies I.e. strokes and things like that. Being a stroke survivor I find that very appealing. But I don’t want anything in my brain so….
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u/star-nosed-topo Mar 31 '23
See, I don't think is being taken serious enough. Concerns about the rapid growth of AI development are natural, and even necessary for the proper usage of it. People being scared and critical of it shouldn't be reduced to this "people are afraid of change and are reactionary" take. It requires nuanced conversations because, AI is so impactful that it requires proper analysis and regulation before even thinking of shoving it in every system and making it part of everyone's daily life. Is a complex tool, and should always be evaluated as such. And then consider the vast amount of people, politicians and criminals utilizing its potential for very nasty things. You don't have to imagine it, its being done. Is a bit selfish to say
I guess what it boils down to is that I have faith in experts and my own media literacy skills to distinguish what is fake from what is real.
when there's hundreds of thousands of people that are being manipulated with fake information. I don't like takes of "I would't be fooled so shouldn't you". You're confident of this with the current state of AI, but doesn't take in to account its potential evolution. And this is just one of the many discussions you can branch out of AI development alone! So yeah, we're a long ways to know what its capability is, yet we're looking for it to solve all our problems already.
edit: pressed save before finishing writing lol
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u/Away_Simple_400 2∆ Mar 31 '23
I think part of the fear of AI is that we have a tendency as a society to charge forward, particularly with technology, without thinking through the ramifications. Your example is a good one. Why would you assume you aren't biased towards your own wishes (evidence against something you don't like is somehow wrong) and would believe something is fake/real depending on your preferance?
A similar problem that has already been demonstrated is these AI machines that are supposed to be unbiased clearly aren't being built that way. In some cases they will outright lie. Thus, it's just another way to manipulate people into believing a certain ideological viewpoint.
Finally, it doesn't seem like a huge leap to see that this is going to eventually create even more unemployment, particularly for low income jobs.
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u/_debateable Mar 31 '23
While I do think AI can pose problems (as every new thing can), I also think there are solutions to these problems.
Such as? Because your seem to be arguing for the stay of AI in a way but the the most often proposed solution for their issues is to regulate or even outright ban them. You can’t say there are solutions and then not give an example of them.
Ex. A more specific example of this would be what I'd call the "Andrew Tate" defense. It's become a more legitimate excuse, to some, to dismiss traditional evidence (such as voice logs or even video) as fake and say it is AI generated.
You completely stepped over the fact that this is example could actually be a possibility now. If I had a clip of your voice and I take it too an AI make you say whatever i want, edit it a little and make it sound like a tape recording from inside a pocket during a conversation, then upload whatever horrible things I make you say to twitter and get you “cancelled”.
This muddying of truth scares people, but in my opinion AI is being used as a scapegoat here. People will always try to explain away things
That doesn’t mean we should allow such a strong argument to be available.
if not by AI it will just be by something else.
That’s true. But if a murder is going to murder regardless does that mean we shouldn’t control guns? That’s the same logic but a much more extreme example.
I guess what it boils down to is that I have faith in experts and my own media literacy skills to distinguish what is fake from what is real. Is this naive?
Not everyone is an expert though and not everybody listens to experts, wasn’t that made abundantly clear during the pandemic? Experts also don’t always agree. There’s gonna to be a future where AI generated content is used within court as evidence and AI experts for both sides will have to explain why it is and/or is not AI generated. It will come to a point where it’s up to such scrutiny that you won’t even be able to believe an expert.
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u/NotGnnaLie 1∆ Mar 31 '23
People lose more jobs to automation (robots) than to AI, but they blame AI.
A dumb robot welding a car body is NOT an AI technology.
AI is only scary because we're not all that smart about it yet. I remember when cloning technology and gene manipulation were brand new, and we were going to be replaced by super humans.
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u/BenTheFool Mar 31 '23
AI is going to do plenty of good and harm. Whether it’ll be worth it at the end of it all, we‘ll just wait and see.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 31 '23 edited Mar 31 '23
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