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StaleCanole t1_j6t5poo wrote

Reply to comment by mjm132 in The steam engine changed the world. Artificial intelligence could destroy it. - The Boston Globe by GlobeOpinion

Techno-optimism once seemed to have a compelling vision, when AI was a hypothetical. But now that infant AI is here, and we can interact with it, i’m getting the creeping feeling that my optimism was delusion.

I think it’s because society has not prepared itself for what comes next. If government’s were proactively making sure that everyone benefits from these innovations, i’d be more comfortable with them.

But corporations have only advanced their interests, and their power over peoples’s lives, over the past couple of decades. Without some change in that trend, it’s difficult to be optimistic

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SentientBread420 t1_j6tay23 wrote

Well-put.

The techno-optimists’ best arguments are plugging their fingers in their ears, replying to strawmanned versions of reasonable concerns, and calling everyone else “luddites” and “doomers.” It’s possible that things will go well, but I expect that not everything will, and we need to be prepared for that.

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jazzageguy t1_j6wggim wrote

No, our best argument is a couple of hundred years of history, filled with inventions that shortsighted people have feared and loathed because they lack imagination. Tech make us vastly better off. Only people with, I dunno, fingers in their ears can't learn this.

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SentientBread420 t1_j6xhd6a wrote

Tech optimists ignore that technological advancement has improved and destroyed lives along the way. You don’t get only positive or only negative. Technology brought us life-saving medicines, the internet, and the nuclear bomb. AI is going to have many powerful effects on society ranging from positive and negative. The potential positive effects are incredible. The potential negative effects are absolutely worth fearing.

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jazzageguy t1_j8k7532 wrote

OK, tech has had immediate bad effects in the sense of, cars replaced horses and what did all the carriage drivers do, or farm machinery made 80% of farmers obsolete, etc. But it turns out they find something else, usually safer, less tedious, and better compensated to do in short order. Partly because the economy grows as a result of the new tech. I didn't mean to imply that there was never displacement or inconvenience. But net net, as they say, the effects of tech are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. We live longer, healthier, freer, and richer with each advance in tech, and it's silly to pretend otherwise. I'd never be so foolish as to say potential negative effects should be ignored; they should be thought about and planned for and minimized, obv. But something new and magical shouldn't be thought of as "the thing that will take our jobs and immiserate us and out-evolve us and compete with us and take over" as one commenter or maybe the op pretty much said.

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SentientBread420 t1_j8no688 wrote

There’s no guarantee that we follow the same course as before. AI is its own thing. AI will bring us good and bad things at the same time.

“Magical” isn’t inherently positive. The nuclear bomb is about as “magical” as anything humans have ever created. It’s also terrifying.

OP’s fears are reasonable. Hopefully they don’t come true.

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jazzageguy t1_j8r7ioo wrote

Sure, I should have said something new shouldn't AUTOMATICALLY or reflexively be feared and loathed. I can respect informed, thoughtful opinions and concerns about potential problems of AI or really anything. But just to say, duh, it'lltakeourjobs based on nothing is to ignore the history of technology, in which every invention does someone's job, but increases wealth and development overall. To me it's like saying, socialism (or dictatorship etc) sounds like a swell idea, without accounting for the historical evidence that it's got a terrible track record everywhere and always.

"Magical" was a poor choice of words too for something that results from smart people working hard. I was thinking of the famous quote, "A sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Nuclear weapons are scary and we've come too close to using them by accident too often. But their very terror has almost certainly prevented various wars, It's unfortunate that the only way to keep us from killing each other seems to be scaring the shit out of us, more specifically ensuring that the attacker will perish just as surely as the defender if he/she attacks.

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jazzageguy t1_j6wh6k4 wrote

So in the centuries since the industrial revolution, life has radically transformed for the better. Everybody "benefits from these innovations." Who did more to make that happen, corporations or governments? Government is inherently reactive, seldom proactive and never inventive. It's a blunt instrument. Governments determined to proactively ensure equality turned out to be socialist hellscapes, and people hated them, and they're almost all gone now. It's pretty much down to Cuba and Berkeley.

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