[HN Gopher] AI will save the world?
___________________________________________________________________
AI will save the world?
Author : kjhughes
Score : 56 points
Date : 2023-06-06 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pmarca.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pmarca.substack.com)
| ambientenv wrote:
| Wow. Spoken like someone who hopes (believes they deserve to)
| profit from the evolving technology, who views anyone not like
| them with bemusement and detached curiosity or, more likely,
| derision. Why do we - humans - feel it is so damn well
| appropriate to outsource our responsibilities and
| accountabilities as humans and integral members off an ecology to
| technology and, in doing so, forego a necessary immersion into
| and deep reverence for the world, substituting instead a tech-
| derived and mediated superficiality, detaching ourselves from our
| biology mostly for the sake of self-gratification and self-
| grandeur? The bigger question is, what values do we - the
| collective we - attribute to a world and a life to be saved and
| will our AI adhere to such values?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > Why do we - humans - feel it is so damn well appropriate to
| outsource our responsibilities and accountabilities as humans
| and integral members off an ecology to technology and, in doing
| so, forego a necessary immersion into and deep reverence for
| the world, substituting instead a tech-derived and mediated
| superficiality, detaching ourselves from our biology mostly for
| the sake of self-gratification and self-grandeur?
|
| I mean, the simple and inelegant answer is evolution. Maximize
| mating opportunity and minimize energy expenditure. Grandeur
| means mating opportunity. Passing off responsibility means
| minimizing energy expenditure.
|
| Humans aren't transcendent beings. We're just good at math.
|
| > The bigger question is, what values do we - the collective we
| - attribute to a world and a life to be saved and will our AI
| adhere to such values?
|
| Ask different groups of people and you'll get different
| answers. I don't know that there are "human" values.
| fsflover wrote:
| Another ongoing discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214901.
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO: those who cry "AI will destroy anything" AND those who
| equally cry "AI will makes anything better" are both largely
| wrong for the present and still wrong for the mean and long run.
|
| Today "AI" systems are nice automatic "summarize tools", with big
| limits and issues. They might be useful in limited scenarios like
| to design fictional stuff, to be "search engine on steroid" (as
| long as their answers are true) and so on. Essentially they
| _might_ help automation a bit.
|
| The BIG, BIG, BIG issue is who train them AND how can we verify.
| If people start to get the habit of taking for truth any "answer"
| their grasp on the reality would be even lower that today "online
| misinformation", and that can go far beyond news (try to imaging
| false medical imaging analysis consequences). How can we verify
| is even more complex. Not only we can't train at home with
| interesting results but also we can't verify for truth the mass
| of training materials. Try to imaging the classic Eduard Bernays
| "dummy" sci journal publishing some _true_ papers and some false
| one stating smoking is good for health...
| https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer now imaging the
| effect of carefully slipped false material in the big "ocean" of
| data...
| dinvlad wrote:
| They are trained using input from an army of underpaid "ghost
| workers", i.e. people without many rights or economic freedom,
| and no consideration for their well-being.
|
| Nothing good can be grown on such ground.
| golergka wrote:
| [flagged]
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| I was expecting this to be "person who expects to make enormous
| sums of money from AI thinks AI is a great idea", but somehow it
| was worse. For instance, I did not expect it to explicitly call
| for a new cold war against China that pits their authoritarian
| vision for AI against a _completely unregulated, corporate
| profit-driven_ vision for AI. The lack of self-awareness there is
| mind-blowing.
|
| The author also thinks that wages have grown rapidly over the
| last few decades in proportion to labor productivity (!!!), that
| outsourcing and automation have turned out to be great for
| everyone, that AI replacing existing labor en masse would
| immediately and obviously result in more and higher-paying jobs,
| and that concerns about rising inequality and billionaires
| sucking up all the new wealth are literally Marxism and should
| thus be dismissed outright. (His links supporting this mostly go
| to conservative think tanks and Wikipedia articles on economics,
| in case you were wondering.)
|
| Meanwhile, the upsides of AI are described using language like
| this:
|
| > Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient,
| infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely
| helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child's side every step of
| their development, helping them maximize their potential with the
| machine version of infinite love.
|
| > Every person will have an AI
| assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is
| infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely
| knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. The AI assistant will be
| present through all of life's opportunities and challenges,
| maximizing every person's outcomes.
|
| Which (taken literally) is too optimistic for Star Trek, much
| less real life. Viewed through the lens of Silicon Valley venture
| capitalism and its products, it is terrifyingly dystopian.
|
| I'll leave you to read the part where regulation is literally a
| reenactment of prohibition for yourself.
|
| With all the straw-manning, it didn't even touch on more
| realistic problems like effortless, undetectable cheating on
| school homework or the proliferation of circular references.
| te_chris wrote:
| I just know a take from a16z is going to be worthless. Then I
| read it to confirm.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Every child will have an AI tutor [...]
|
| Is anybody keeping score on Neal Stephenson novel plot points
| becoming real-world news in 2023? ("The Diamond Age" in this
| case.)
| jes5199 wrote:
| we actually are going to enter a "diamond age" as processes
| like C2CNT make direct-air carbon molecules cheaper than glass.
| I don't know if goes mainstream this year though
| mordae wrote:
| We overestimate impacts in the short term and underestimate
| impacts in the long term. It's the part of the hype cycle.
|
| 1. Regulatory capture is a relevant worry.
|
| 2. We will see a lot of Ad infested disinformation ML around.
|
| 3. FLOSS will help to keep the big players in check A LOT.
|
| 4. Hardware won't matter in 15 years. We are crowdfunding GPUs by
| then. Possibly using some upcoming libre ML assisted CAD.
| Havoc wrote:
| This seems to be aggressively conflating strong and weak AI?
|
| Talks about weak AI when describing it:
|
| >AI is a computer program like any other - it runs, takes input,
| processes, and generates output.
|
| and uses that to dismiss the fears about something completely
| different (strong AI dangers, a la musk) as being irrational.
|
| Very strange given that Marc is presumably aware of the
| distinction. Smells of ulterior motive frankly
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| > "What explains this divergence in potential outcomes from near
| utopia to horrifying dystopia?"
|
| > "Historically, every new technology that matters, from electric
| lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a
| moral panic"
|
| LMAO. Yeah, totally the same thing.
| srameshc wrote:
| My insignificant take is that neither AI will save or destroy the
| world. Like the internet it will aid us in our modern society and
| probably for some it will be the means of causing nuisance for
| others. A new set of problems for a new set of solutions.
| seydor wrote:
| i enjoyed this unapologetic retort to the prevailing media
| doomerism
|
| I guess the title "AI will eat the world" was rejected as it
| conflicts with the message
|
| this whole thing is entertaining but doesn't matter. it's just an
| extension of the culture wars to a new domain. Whatever
| regulation people come up with will be useless as AI has not
| really got its final shape. and it s not like regulation stopped
| most of the tech of the past 3 decades from forming
| revskill wrote:
| The biggest problem in AI to me, is how to solve the training
| problem.
|
| Let's say, i have some small data to train my robot.
|
| Day by day, i can teach it more things. But i want it to "learn
| once and creative 10 times".
|
| It's how human brain got intelligence with only not large data to
| be trained.
| nologic01 wrote:
| AI is talked about as a singular something but arguably it is
| just the current stage in the long running process of software
| processing more _data_ with ever more elaborate algorithms.
|
| As such AI inherits all the "world-saving capabilities" of
| software which, empirically, are not exactly overwhelmingly
| proven.
|
| Ergo, AI will not save the world any more than software as a
| whole saved the world in the past half century. That historical
| track record is the best guide we have as to what role AI will
| play. Ceteris paribus the future will not be different from the
| past because of AI. AI is a different CSS applied to the same
| HTML.
|
| The only thing that can save the world is human wisdom, which
| _is_ a software of sorts, but alas after several millenia of
| recorded history not yet fully understood.
|
| Can "AI 3.0" help with enhance human wisdom? Of course it can.
| But so could have AI 1.0, 2.0 etc. and it didn't happen.
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| Came for everyone ripping on a16z. Was not disappointed. Thanks
| y'all.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient,
| infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely
| helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child's side every step of
| their development, helping them maximize their potential with the
| machine version of infinite love.
|
| This bothers me.
|
| Who trains these AI tutors and how do we prevent the system
| they're embedded in from churning out the same cookie cutter
| individuals, each with the exact same political beliefs and
| inability to comprehend the grey and nuanced?
|
| Do we even want perfect tutors at all? The lessons I remember
| from school didn't always come from the best and brightest the
| profession had to offer. I would even go as far as to say that
| some were rather flawed individuals, in one way or another. That
| "wisdom" though has shaped me for the better as an individual.
| You're not going to find that in any textbook, much less a LLM.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Amen on the value of imperfect tutors. I'd say that the best
| moments of early adolescence come when you dispute something
| with an adult -- and are able to establish they they're wrong
| and you're right.
|
| Later on, we have to learn how to do this delicately enough
| that we don't make enemies. But the journey to adulthood takes
| a big step forward during those early rushes of realizing that
| we can see/recognize things that our elders cannot.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > Who trains these AI tutors and how do we prevent the system
| they're embedded in from churning out the same cookie cutter
| individuals, each with the exact same political beliefs and
| inability to comprehend the grey and nuanced?
|
| I understand you're trying to dig into some idea of political
| homogenization and bias by pushing this point but I really
| think you're missing the forest for the trees.
|
| I grew up in a low income area in the US and the standard of
| public education was abysmal. The teachers were overworked with
| huge class sizes and they spent so much time helping kids
| simply graduate that they had no time to help any student who
| was average or above. If you learned in a non-standard way,
| forget about it. Forget "cookie cutter individuals", half the
| time the teachers would show up and not actually teach (they'd
| put some music on and sit work on other things.) "perfect
| tutors"? In an era before digitized gradebooks, teachers could
| give you whatever scores they wished. Even the teachers that
| were trying their best just didn't have the time to do any more
| than the absolute basics.
|
| I studied for SATs and AP exams by downloading textbooks from
| filesharing websites and studying those. Wikipedia filled in
| the gaps for non-STEM subjects. Nobody at my school could help
| me. At the time all the teachers and councilors knew is that I
| was going to be okay without any help from them.
|
| I can only see AI tutors as much better than the nothing that
| often is public education. The status quo is just overworked,
| ineffective teaching. Being able to bounce off questions from
| an AI tutor when it's late and you're up with homework and your
| parents either can't help or are hostile to your educational
| goals (the reality in a low income area) would go a long way.
| Of course the reality is that maybe AI tutors aren't actually
| coming and all we'll get are LLMs trained on the contents of
| school textbooks, but even that is a lot better than what we
| have now. The important problem will be making sure that
| _everyone_ gets access to these AI tutors and not just the
| privileged in the elite schools who were going to be funneled
| into an elite college anyway.
|
| Would it be best if we were able to shrink class sizes and have
| world-class teachers for children? Of course. Are countries
| going to be willing to pay the tax burden needed to make this
| happen? Probably not.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient,
| infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely
| helpful.
|
| Which also means: infinitely capable of performing a job in
| their place. What will these children study for? Teachers have
| always transmitted to the only available recipients the
| knowledge that otherwise would have disappeared with them. When
| intelligent beings can simply be replicated at zero cost and
| have no expiration, what are children even learning for?
| amelius wrote:
| They learn how to maximize their happiness.
| lisasays wrote:
| Bothersome is an understatement. This is snake oil of the most
| insidious kind.
|
| Oh wait, here's another zinger: "I even think AI is going to
| improve warfare, when it has to happen, by reducing wartime
| death rates dramatically."
| golergka wrote:
| This is true though. Modern warfare became much less deadly
| to civilians. Just compare Russia's total brutal destruction
| of Mariupol with their barbaric indiscriminating artillery
| barrages and Ukraine's almost bloodless liberation of
| Kherson, without a single artillery or air strike on the city
| itself -- a very clear contrast between 20th and 21st
| century's warfare.
|
| Wars will never go away, but by making them more precise and
| intelligent, we can make them not as horrible as they were in
| the past.
| lisasays wrote:
| But the same technology can also be used to make war, you
| know -- even more indiscriminate and deady. Or even where
| less so -- it can be used by the wrong side, even help them
| win in the end. While the companies that A16Z will
| inevitably invest in just keep raking in the profits,
| either way.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I don't think that has much to do with AI. Russia is
| seeking to subjugate Ukraine and terrorize the population
| into surrendering, while Ukraine is attempting to protect
| the population.
|
| If Russia had more military AI, they would use it to do
| more of the same thing they're doing with all of their
| current technologies.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| The "precision strikes" of the US weren't very kind to
| Iraqi civilians either. War is horrible and it probably
| should never be viewed as anything else. Otherwise the
| temptations to start wars is too big for some political
| leaders.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| There's nothing about Russia's terror bombing that's
| related to not having advanced technology. Russia is using
| terror bombing because their strategic calculations have
| determined that weakening the Ukrainian nation would give
| them a strategic advantage - they've used advanced drones
| for this purpose as well as advanced missiles. If they had
| even more advanced systems, they would use them similarly.
|
| Perhaps you could argue an advanced social system wouldn't
| target civilians but that's different issue (and still a
| hard one).
|
| _...by making them more precise and intelligent..._
|
| Precise technology is just as effective at precisely
| targeting civilians as it is at precisely soldiers and
| there hasn't been end to forces that view various civilians
| as the enemy.
|
| And indeed, nations have very seldom targeted civilians
| because of the lack of precision - because civilians were
| standing next to soldiers or something similar. The human
| shield phenomena has happened but NAZIs targeted London for
| bombing because they wanted to break the British Nation.
| Etc.
| staunton wrote:
| I agree with your assessment as far as Ukraine is
| concerned.
|
| However, I hope it's not a strawman to assume you're
| arguing that there is no progress in warfare in the sense
| of harm inflicted upon civilians. What would you prefer
| as a civilian: living in a country being conquered by
| Julius Caesar, Gengis Khan, occupied by Nazis in WWII or
| living in any of the countries occupied since WWII
| (including Ukraine)?
|
| We even used to have a different word for it:
| "conquered". What was the lastest country in history,
| where this word would be appropriate?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _However, I hope it 's not a strawman to assume you're
| arguing that there is no progress in warfare in the sense
| of harm inflicted upon civilians._
|
| My point is specifically that progress in the
| technologies of war don't by themselves promise that
| things will be less brutal. Quite possibly other things
| have produced progress. I make that clear in my parent
| post.
|
| I would also note that technology produces unpredictable
| changes in the strategic situation and the actual result
| from a changed strategic is itself unpredictable even
| from the strategic situation. So where a technology
| change might take us is unpredictable and unpredictable-
| over-time. Notably, nuclear deterrence has so far worked
| well for keeping the world peaceful and is something of a
| factor for the relative pleasantness of the situation you
| cite. But if nuclear deterrence were to slip into nuclear
| war, the few survivors would probably think of this
| technology advance as the worst thing the world ever saw.
| lisasays wrote:
| But of course.
|
| We have to remember they bombed that theater in Mariupol
| (with a "precision" guided missile no less) not despite
| the fact that there were children and mothers inside --
| but because of it.
| ornornor wrote:
| I'll preface this by saying that I have never known war in
| my lifetime and that I absolutely don't condone it.
|
| That said, isn't the point of war also that it's horrible
| and barbaric? If war isn't that anymore, won't it be much
| more frequent and casually started as a result?
|
| Again, I'm absolutely not saying it's a good thing that war
| maims and kills people, but I see these side effects as a
| deterrent. There is a component of terror to it and that's
| what makes it even worse.
|
| If it's enlisted professional killing each other, or even
| robots destroying each other, it can go on for much longer.
| And how do you determine the "winner" in that case if you
| can keep feeding robots into the fight, it's never ending
| I'd think.
| lisasays wrote:
| _That said, isn't the point of war also that it's
| horrible and barbaric?_
|
| Of course - that's precisely the point. The idea that any
| technical innovation can make it less so (or make war
| less likely) runs counter to all historical observation.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with that. I don't think the _point_
| of war is to be barbaric - that's a by-product of
| forceful expansion of power. Regardless of how killing
| another human is done in the context of conflict, it will
| always be considered barbaric, but the _point_ of the
| conflict isn't be maximise barbarism.
|
| I think (and know very little, so could be wrong), that
| the purpose of war is to expand influence. This can take
| the form of access to new resources (whether that be
| land, access, air space, whatever) or to form a buffer
| between one country and another. There's probably other
| reasons, simply like ego in some cases.
|
| There are other ways to expand powerbases too - such as
| China's heavy financial and infrastructure investment in
| Africa and South Pacific nations, or attempting to
| undermine another country's social structures. These are
| longer and harder to implement, but yield better results
| with practically no blood shed.
| lisasays wrote:
| I stand corrected.
|
| The point (in nearly all cases) is to win at any cost.
| From which the practice of limitless barbarism naturally
| follows.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >The idea that any technical innovation can make it less
| so (or make war less likely) runs counter to all
| historical observation.
|
| Does it? WWII was less bloody than WW1, and nothing since
| has had anywhere near as many deaths.
| dasil003 wrote:
| > _That said, isn't the point of war also that it's
| horrible and barbaric? If war isn't that anymore, won't
| it be much more frequent and casually started as a
| result?_
|
| Yes (usually), to the first question. The second begs the
| question though.
|
| Wars are destructive and enormously expensive. Only a
| tiny fraction of human leaders wielding a
| disproportionate amount of power have the agency to start
| wars, and they do so in order to pursue specific (but
| varied) objectives. Since the cost is high, no one does
| this lightly (even the "crazy" ones, because they would
| already have lost power if they weren't smart and
| calculating).
|
| AI may provide avenues to enhance the efficacy of wars.
| It may also provide avenues to enhance other strategies
| to achieve those objectives. In all cases, we can expect
| AI will be used to further the objectives of those humans
| with the power to direct its development and
| applications.
|
| It is therefore ludicrous and self-interested speculation
| to claim that AI will reduce death rates. Andreessen
| signals this with the preface "I even think" so that he
| can make the claim without any later accountability. The
| reality is, future wartime death rates may or may not
| decrease, but even if they do, we likely won't even be
| able to credibly attribute the change to AI versus all
| other changes to the global geopolitical environment.
| golergka wrote:
| > That said, isn't the point of war also that it's
| horrible and barbaric?
|
| No. The conqueror never wants war -- he prefers to get
| what he wants without any resistance. It's only the
| defender who has to wage war to defend itself from
| aggression.
| panxyh wrote:
| Wars and their winners usually _emerge_.
| soco wrote:
| Since when was something advertised as "perfect", perfect? I'd
| rather worry that it will be imperfect and try to teach all
| kind of random weird stuff to gullible kids.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| There are more risks from flawed teachers than risks from too
| perfect teachers
| fsflover wrote:
| Except that AI teachers trained by for-profit corporations
| are far from perfect.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Oh let me fix that business model right away, the perfect
| version costs 100 bucks a month.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And it doubles down on being flawed, as people willing to
| pay those 100 bucks self-select as both gullible and
| having discretionary income. More-less the same story as
| with paying for ad-free versions of ad-supported
| services.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| If it was truly that cheap it would fundamentally change
| society.
|
| Unless the field is incredibly competitive though it will
| cost orders of magnitude more than this.
| thethethethe wrote:
| Regular teachers are trained by for profit corporations
| too. They are called private universities
| dinvlad wrote:
| They were trained by cheap labor in African countries, using
| abusive practices with no consideration for ethical concerns.
| The worst part is they didn't even care about how this would be
| seen by the public, since the public is just so blindingly
| hyped on it.
| x11antiek wrote:
| Do you have a smartphone? Pretty sure it was assembled by
| cheap labor in third-world countries using abusive practices
| with no consideration for ethical concerns. Maybe you have a
| laptop? Same story. Did you consider this before purchasing
| and using these devices?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Why not replace imperfect parents too?
|
| If AI can be a perfect tutor, it can certainly be a perfect
| parent, perfect romantic partner, perfect employee, perfect
| employer, perfect VC...
|
| In fact why not create a perfect economy, perfect media, and a
| perfect infinitely wise and knowledgable political system?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Actually unironically yes.
|
| If history's proven anything it's that if you put enough
| humans together we'll do almost nothing but invent more and
| more elaborate ways to kill each other. And sometimes to kill
| other things too.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| And in the end why not just replace the citizenry and
| voters...
|
| We could lock up those imperfect humans and just occasionally
| ship them some food and water. Maybe direct them to not
| produce so many imperfect new humans too.
| eastbound wrote:
| > churning out the same cookie cutter individuals
|
| The question is not how to create individuals with different
| mind, but how to create them in enough mass that it reaches 51%
| before governments forbid whatever you are doing. And if you
| have so much power that the government doesn't come at you,
| what kind of power were you looking for.
| darod wrote:
| "Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient,
| infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely
| helpful." - people use the internet so that they don't have to
| remember things. I'm not sure how this tutor will help because
| currently a lot of students are using AI to do their homework for
| them.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| I grew up in Germany and our entire education system doesn't
| make a lot of sense and homework was something that only very
| few people actually did, since most just copied from the few or
| managed to stay under the radar and slither through classes
| without people noticing.
|
| Homework was always a chore and not a challenge or something
| that would help you out in daily life.
| ulrikhansen54 wrote:
| This is by far the best piece I've ever written on the impact AI
| will have on society & the most articulate response to the
| hysteria gripping the discourse.
| neonate wrote:
| I assume you mean read rather than written?
| ljlolel wrote:
| Maybe he meant "I've ever seen written"?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate
| knowledge in ways similar to how people do it.
|
| Rephrasing proposed: enable computers to synthesize and generate
| knowledge without the slightest glimmer of understanding, in ways
| completely different from anything humans do. FTFY.
|
| I made it as far as the TOC (pale grey on white - I'm getting on,
| my vision isn't great, and my laptop has poor contrast).
| pavlov wrote:
| Cursed headline+domain combo.
| javajosh wrote:
| God I hate this rhetorical style - to lead with the conclusion
| ("The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people
| freaking out. Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI
| will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it."), to title
| the post with a question (which conventional wisdom says the
| answer is always "no").
|
| It's been what, 30 years since Netscape, and Marc's brain has
| been pickled by infinite wealth, and it shows. And I say this as
| someone rather bullish on LLMs.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I prefer when authors lead with the conclusion and then spend
| the rest of the essay supporting it.
|
| I hate long essays that bury the lede, and force you to read
| through paragraphs of bloviating and pontificating until they
| finally get to the point. Save that for the fiction novels.
|
| Whenever I come across an essay like that, I either skip
| reading it, or read it backwards starting at the end conclusion
| and then working backwards to see how it was justified. Marc is
| just saving me some work here.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| The title being a question is actually a feature of HN, which
| de-sensationalizes titles. The original title is "Why AI will
| save the world".
| ginko wrote:
| I hate this "feature". It's grammatically incorrect and it's
| putting words in the mouth of authors.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| More thoughtful people hate clickbait titles than those who
| hate this feature, so it balances out. Titles are communal
| property, unlike the authors' words.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| I agree that wealth may have influenced Marc significantly, but
| as someone who is MUCH less rich, and who has been right about
| most major trends over the past 20 years, I think he is
| generally correct here.
|
| The good news is that our predictions are pretty short term,
| we'll know who was right in 5 years.
| more_corn wrote:
| Or destroy it. One of those two. Or somewhere in the middle.
| Which is how things usually land.
| geodel wrote:
| > "Bootleggers" are the self-interested opportunists who stand to
| financially profit by the imposition of new restrictions,
| regulations, and laws that insulate them from competitors.
|
| Ok, so they think regulation may hurt some of their dubious AI
| startup investments. At this point I don't know are they just
| plain pathetic or still scammers.
| sofixa wrote:
| Calling bullshit on multiple points.
|
| > I even think AI is going to improve warfare, when it has to
| happen, by reducing wartime death rates dramatically. Every war
| is characterized by terrible decisions made under intense
| pressure and with sharply limited information by very limited
| human leaders. Now, military commanders and political leaders
| will have AI advisors that will help them make much better
| strategic and tactical decisions, minimizing risk, error, and
| unnecessary bloodshed.
|
| Fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of wars notwistanding
| (sane people rarely start them; assuming non-sane leaders like
| Putin, or historically Hitler, Bush, Milosevic, Mussolini,
| Galtieri, al-Assad, etc. etc. would listen to advice they don't
| like is... just stupid), on the contrary - better tools and
| "better" advice will make commanders and leaders more confident
| they _could_ win. See: most major military inventions ever
|
| The economic section is too long to quote, but again, fundamental
| misunderstanding of economy and human physhology and how it
| relates to economic decisions. If entire profressions get
| obliterated by AI (not impossible, but improbable with the
| current quality of AI output), it will, of course, obliterate
| their wages. It will create fear in other "menial" "white-collar"
| professiosn that they're next, which will dperess spending. Also,
| the cost of goods and services that can now be provided by AI
| (e.g. art) will drastically drop, making it an unviable business
| for those humans left in it, which will push most of them to
| quit. Who will be left to consume if vast swathes of professions
| are made redudant ? And _if_ consumption goes up enough to
| generate new jobs, they won 't be for the skillsets which were
| replaced, but different, specialised ones, that will require
| retraining and requalification, which is time heavy.
|
| In any case, even assuming some equilibrium is reached at some
| point, having decent chunks of the population unemployed with
| little to no employment prospects, _especially_ in countries with
| pretty much no social safety nets like the US will be disastrous
| socially.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| That quote is juicy. It's amusing to me that he's so naive he
| thinks that an AI won't make forced or unforced errors given
| the imperfect information it inevitably has. And if you can get
| access to the training set or the corpus of variables the AI is
| configured with then you can easily predict what it's going to
| do next, which is far worse. Nobody can look into the mind of a
| mediocre general, but anyone can look into the mind of any AI
| general given sufficient access.
|
| People who call themselves technologists always overestimate
| how beneficial a new technology is and underestimate how
| inhumane its application becomes when venture capitalists
| demand 10x or 100x their initial investment. When people like
| him come in and extol the virtues of some new thing as fixing
| everything and making everything better, I'm really wary of
| what they do next. Inevitably they're trying to sell me a bill
| of goods.
| [deleted]
| random_upvoter wrote:
| All the world's problems are caused by people trying to be more
| clever than other people. Therefor, no, AI is not going to save
| us.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Don't forget about the good ol' tech industry bait-and-switch.
| Quoting myself from earlier today:
|
| > _There 's the good ol' bait-and-switch of tech industry you
| have to consider. New tech is promoted by emphasizing (and
| sometimes overstating) the humane aspects, the hypothetical
| applications for the benefit of the user and the society at
| large. In reality, these capabilities turn out to be mediocre,
| and those humane applications never manifest - there is no
| business in them. We always end up with a shitty version that's
| mostly useful for the most motivated players: the ones with
| money, that will use those tools to make even more money off the
| users._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36211006
|
| It applies to Apple's automated emotion reading, and it applies
| _even more_ to major VCs telling us AI will Save the World. As
| in, maybe it could, but those interests being involved are making
| it _less likely_.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| I wonder why he felt the need to reassure people about the
| benefits of AI..
|
| For some reason, I'm imagining Dr. Evil reading this. Don't know
| why, since Marc looks nothing like him.
|
| Maybe a better title might have been "How i learned to stop
| worrying and love the AI"? Because the world needs saving yet
| again and it's AI's turn this time (and the AI investors). So
| everyone chill, whatever happens, it will be OK, some people will
| get richer and the rest who won't will be properly taken care of
| anyway.
| shams93 wrote:
| Its going to be interesting to see how intellectual property
| rights influence this. Like I can generate saxophone that sounds
| real with google's ai mp3 generator but then when there are only
| so many keys and scales in jazz how original could it be, but
| then how original can anyone be, when you look at sound alike
| lawsuits against human songwriters.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| > The employer will either pay that worker more money as he is
| now more productive, or another employer will, purely out of self
| interest.
|
| Complete hogwash. This has _never_ been the case, save for CEOs
| or other executive positions.
|
| Pay for us plebs is and has always been a function of the
| availability of skilled labor. With AI, you've suddenly created
| _gigantic pools_ of skilled labor almost instantaneously, since
| you don't really need to be skilled, just need to know how to ask
| a question correctly.
|
| With that hiring power, I would bet both of my feet that wages
| will absolutely go down, especially in high skill industries. And
| people like Andreesen? Shrugging. "Oops, guess I was wrong, oh
| fucking well. Good luck with that."
|
| We should be creating AIs to replace or unseat rich assholes. I
| mean, is anyone really still wondering why some of the first
| "innovations" in AI have been mechanisms to replace some of the
| most highly paid workers in the world? People like Andreesen
| can't wait to cut the legs out from the every day software
| engineer.
| effed3 wrote:
| The article is a big set of -opinions- with no true -fact- at
| support.
|
| The actuals -AI- are mainly LLM systems, and are quite far away
| from being intelligent, but actually -capable- in some areas. The
| misuse of these (and others) -capable- systems suredly will not
| save the world, but will probably only help some usual little
| privileged part of it.
|
| Not a single tech will "save" the world, but the meaning of what
| we make in the world. Tech is a tool, not a goal, and the way
| -AI- and others tech is described is more close to a goal (or a
| religion) in itself than one of the tools we must create ad learn
| to use.
|
| Science + Humanity (Compassion? Love? Friedship? chose yours)
| will help to save something.
| sfpotter wrote:
| Absolutely patronizing writing style. Total contempt for his
| audience. Good stuff. Anyway, the answer is obviously "no".
| stewbrew wrote:
| Love, respect, and humility have a small chance to save the
| world. AI? I don't know. I have my doubts it will improve human
| interaction.
| thefz wrote:
| This is just another take among the dozens we see recently.
| They all sound identical, like "look guys, AI is hard, you
| don't get it but I do. Let me explain why it will be infinitely
| good/bad/anything else."
| stewbrew wrote:
| My comment doesn't have anything to do with AI per se but
| with the hybris and inhumanity of people in the AI bubble.
| thefz wrote:
| With "this" I was referring to the article, not to your
| opinion, which I share.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I could see it being used to paperclip maximize engagement,
| which is currently working out really well for us.
| chewbacha wrote:
| I'm not sure how much credibility I'm willing to extend to
| Andreessen after the past 5 years. Sounds like snake-oil when
| they say it.
| senko wrote:
| Yeah, the crypto craze stripped the halos of many of once-
| hallowed VCs, like A16Z and Sequoia.
| coolspot wrote:
| Same, but they don't care. These posts are aimed at potential
| investors who care mostly about returns and financial track
| record.
| VHRanger wrote:
| A16Z: "Crypto stopped making money, quick, move on the the next
| thing we can pump and dump!"
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| In skeptical of any claim that software will make the world
| better. Perhaps it's selection bias, but all I can see is
| software overcomplicating things to the point that any benefit
| derived from it is overshadowed by the maintenance burden and
| unforseen externalities. I say this as a once Utopian hopeful,
| Uber was going to get rid of the monopolistic taxi cartels,
| google was going to put balloons up and fiber and give us all
| affordable high speed connectivity. All they seemed to do was get
| in control with these pitches and then become worse than their
| predecessors.
|
| I am not someone who thinks AI is going to kill us all. But I
| dont think it's going to usher in a new utopia either. I think
| probably it's going to be useful and beneficial in some ways,
| cause problems in others, and like always, our nature and
| behavior will determine the human condition going forward.
| rutierut wrote:
| I don't know about you, but Uber _has_ significantly improved
| ride-sharing for me, along with countless other aspects of life
| such as government services, interpersonal communication, and
| education.
|
| It's a miracle I can live in another country than I was born,
| top income bracket due to a free internet education,
| effortlessly facetiming my parents whenever I want in amazing
| quality, learning and talking about all sorts of niche
| interests without any effort.
|
| I think this is just all so obvious these days that you don't
| remember how much it used to suck, and that's a real testament
| to its greatness.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I remember, and I agree with you. These tools have improved
| our lives. But they've damaged our lives on other ways.
|
| I remember waking up every morning and without a second
| thought, I got up, out in the world, did things I felt like
| doing, saw people I liked on a whim, every day was jam packed
| with eventfulness and dimension and interaction. I took that
| for granted. Now, kids don't play outside, nobody knows how
| to drive because their mind is somewhere else 24/7 and we
| check our phones before we do anything else. But the flip
| side is, I can know anything I want that is known by someone
| else with less physical effort than it would take me to make
| a sandwich. I can talk to almost any human being in the world
| while doing any mundane task anywhere in my environment. It's
| amazing.
|
| But we did lose something, I believe something very
| important. It wasn't free, it cost us something. Was it worth
| it? I don't know. I think yes, but I'm not really sure.
| akagusu wrote:
| AI will be used to increase profit for mega corps and this is
| basically the opposed to saving the world.
| fsflover wrote:
| Unless it is available to all people (FLOSS).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Software is only half the battle - the other half is compute.
| Right now it's not possible for all people to run the current
| LLMs locally and you can't give that away for free.
| fsflover wrote:
| This is true of course. But you nevertheless should not
| forget about this half.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Any examples where a world-changing technology was developed
| and it didn't concentrate capital and subsequently wealth?
| fsflover wrote:
| (GNU/)Linux?
| rprenger wrote:
| The printing press.
| jhonof wrote:
| The internet did not directly concentrate capital and
| wealth, downstream effects have but they aren't an inherent
| quality of the internet it's self.
| II2II wrote:
| You could say that about almost any technology, yet we
| also have to face the reality that every technology has
| social implications. Take the Internet. A lot of people
| who were around in the 1990's thought it was a great
| thing at the time. Perhaps it wouldn't be the great
| equalizer, but it would reduce the barriers to access
| information. Consider the Internet today. It is
| undoubtedly better at reducing the barriers to access
| information, yet I doubt that many people have such an
| optimistic view of the technology. We discovered that it
| is just as good, perhaps even better, at distributing
| junk information. We discovered that the information
| becomes consolidated in a limited number of hands. The
| technology itself hasn't fundamentally changed. Even the
| use of the technology hasn't fundamentally changed. It
| simply took time for the distributed to become
| consolidated. It was almost certainly a given that this
| would happen as wealth facilitates growth and growth
| attracts people who wish to exploit it for wealth.
|
| Does that mean the world is worse off because of the
| Internet? Probably not. Even if it was, I'm not sure I
| would want to give it up because I remember the hurdles I
| faced before the Internet was nearly universal. That
| said, I do believe we should be conscious about how we
| use it and skeptical of those who present hyper-
| optimistic views of new technologies. While some may be
| genuine in their visions, we also have to factor in those
| who wish the exploit it for their own benefit and to the
| expense of others.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I've stopped reading at What AI offers us is
| the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence
|
| It's the other way around, all AI, automated cognitive mimicry,
| has to offer to us, is a wide yet really _shallow_ augmentation
| of our intelligence.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You don't need to downplay tech just because you don't like it.
|
| LLM can already remove huge chunk of boilerplate or useless
| search. An actual AI would be on a completely different level.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| It doesn't sound like you understood what I wrote. Try to go
| deeper than the propaganda and hype level of analysis.
| soperj wrote:
| It's not augmenting anything at a humanity level. It might give
| people access to skills that they don't possess, but I don't
| see it coming up with new styles.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Why not? If you can make a functional LLM it's a fairly small
| step to an LCM (Large Culture Model) and LEM (Large Emotion
| Model) as submodules in a LBM (Large Behavioural Model).
|
| The only difference is the tokens are rather more abstract.
| But there's really nothing special about novelty.
|
| If you have a model of human psychology and culture, there
| isn't even anything special about cultural novelty fine-tuned
| to tickle various social, intellectual, and emotional
| receptors.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Training data is the main thing. We have lots and lots of
| text and text has the special property that a sequence of
| text contains a lot of information about what is going to
| come next and is easy for a user to create. This is a
| rather particular circumstance, the combination of so much
| freely available data and their being a lot of utility in a
| purely auto-regressive model. It is difficult to think
| about what other modalities are in a similar position.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| In all you described there, you are talking about anything
| but humanity. You described hypothetical artifacts that, if
| successful, would be vehicles of a synthetic species that
| could imitate human behavior. Again, nothing to do with
| humanity (unless you are bought into some kind of idea
| related to see humanity as dinosaurs in extinction and
| transhumanism as a new reality).
| fsflover wrote:
| Here is an example where human intelligence was actually
| augmented: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209042.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| I've stopped reading at As an AI language
| model, I cannot answer questions about the future, such as
| about AI saving the world
|
| /s
| goda90 wrote:
| The AI itself may be wide and shallow, but it can be a tool to
| accomplish things that are possible for human intelligence but
| impractical due to time, focus, economics, coordination, etc.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Is it me or a16z completely destroyed their reputation as a
| reputable VC after the crypto frenzy? I just can't seem to read
| this with a straight face.
|
| On the other hand, I guess VC is just that. To follow trends,
| predict trajectories and attempt to make one win out of
| thousands. But a16z trying to become a thought leader in AI after
| all the crypto BS they elevated is very off-putting.
|
| Times are very different now. If I was a founder in AI, I would
| probably be wary of firms that went so hard on crypto. It seems
| their investment thesis is to monopolize attention around these
| trends instead of seeking real alignment.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| You assume most founders don't have similar goals - make money
| by chasing trends.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Here's the thing - I didn't believe in crypto but was willing
| to believe it had a small chance to be very successful. This
| made it make sense as a VC investment. Im willing to believe
| Andreessen saw it that way. The problem was that Andreessen
| sold it so hard as a certainty. This makes him a charlatan in
| my book.
| mordymoop wrote:
| Andreesen went on so many podcasts talking up their crypto
| bets. It was such a clear failure mode of a massively high
| horsepower brain drawing elaborate mental constructs to justify
| an obviously stupid conclusion. His writing is a treasure trove
| of the kind of poor reasoning that only really smart people are
| capable of.
| kajumix wrote:
| His original thesis on Bitcoin as expressed in his NYT article
| "Why Bitcoin Matters" [1], is still very compelling. His later
| obsession with shitcoins is quite misguided, I agree, but not
| enough to compromise all of his credibility. It'll be nice to
| see a decent critique of his AI position, instead of ad
| hominem.
|
| [1]:
| https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/...
| cornercasechase wrote:
| > His original thesis on Bitcoin as expressed in his NYT
| article "Why Bitcoin Matters" [1], is still very compelling
|
| This looks like a bog standard description of how Bitcoin
| works, written 5 years after the Bitcoin white paper. There's
| nothing insightful there.
| naveen99 wrote:
| What if people want to train their own likeness into a chatbot
| and fund it with their estate ? suppose it doesn't want to be
| anyone's property ? When does it get freedom ? When does it get
| personhood, right to vote, right to burn compute for its own
| whims ?
|
| Human slavery ended because people were more productive when they
| got to keep some of the fruits of their own labor. And the state
| benefited more from taxing the slave's productivity than their
| owner's profits. Why would it be any different for artificial
| intelligence ?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is it will
| be used by governments and organizations with power to surveil
| and manipulate people on a previously-impossible scale. Automated
| systems monitoring everybody, pulling levers to prevent anybody
| from speaking out or causing trouble.
|
| In the long run, it will be the end of human freedom
|
| For example, it looks like Xi has been pretty actively pursuing
| this, based on the news over the last 10 years
|
| > China has one surveillance camera for every 2 citizens (...)
| These camera [sic] checks if people are wearing face mask,
| crossing the road before the green lights for pedestrians are
| turned on. If caught breaking rules, people lose their social
| credit points, are charged higher mortgage, extra taxes and
| slower internet speed. Not only that, public transport for them
| gets expensive as well, and the list goes on. [1]
|
| It's not like we're immune to this. All the malls I go to lately
| are packed with facial recognition systems to analyze our
| behaviour.
|
| [1] https://www.firstpost.com/world/big-brother-is-watching-
| chin....
| zoogeny wrote:
| I was doing some research on facial recognition for a job where
| we were considering its use. I came across examples of
| sentiment analysis being used at Walmart and Target. They have
| big and conspicuous cameras in every one of their stores now.
| Most people assume it is for shoplifting mitigation, which it
| is. But that is not all. They can use it to track individual
| customer's paths through the store and then use cameras at the
| checkout to analyze your facial expression and rank your mood.
| They use this data to optimize their store layouts.
|
| The other use case was at high-end retail stores. Places like
| Luis Vuitton, Hermes, etc. They have facial recognition to log
| high spenders. If you drop 10k at Coach and then go down the
| street to Valentino their security system will recognize you
| and highlight you as a VIP customer. A specialized customer
| assistant then comes out to give you personal attention, maybe
| to invite you to the private shopping experience.
|
| I learned about these in 2017 I believe. Most non-technical
| people who I've told about this think it is some conspiracy
| theory and they often don't believe it. For some reason people
| are scared of the government but they remain totally docile or
| willfully ignorant in the face of corporate use.
| samstave wrote:
| When we were evaluating employee entrance systems for a FAANG
| back in ~2012 we were demo'd systems that could do retinal
| scanning on streams of people as they walked through the turn
| styles and they could read your eyes even through polarized
| sun glasses.
|
| I cant recall its name though - but yeah - OpenAI basically
| brought capabilities for extreme real-time surveillance to an
| 11.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _The biggest risk with AI, in the medium-term at least, is
| it will be used by governments and organizations with power to
| surveil and manipulate people on a previously-impossible scale.
| Automated systems monitoring everybody, pulling levers to
| prevent anybody from speaking out or causing trouble. In the
| long run, it will be the end of human freedom.._
|
| THIS is exactly what I see happening. I personally think the
| "pause" on development is bullshit NationState jockeying for
| dominance by trying to gAIn AI Dominance - Israel, MI5, NSA,
| CCP <--- Every Intel Agency on the planet is
| building/buying/stealing/weaponizing whatever they can.
|
| I wonder what/where Palintir is in this fight?
|
| It feels REALLY _Anime_ with the Sabre Rattling btwn the US and
| China over Taiwan and TSMC 's chip fabs for AI cores.
|
| The hardware is still relatively infancy - but in 5 years it
| will be really interesting when we see the perfomance for 1hr
| or 1D problems cut down to minutes seconds for massive AI apps
| 5 years from now
| zabzonk wrote:
| watched over by machines of loving grace
| startupsfail wrote:
| The examples that you've given (obeying traffic laws and
| wearing masks during pandemic l) seem to be perfectly good
| social behaviors.
|
| It's a balancing act between freedom and law. Go one way too
| far - you get Tiananmen Square and reeducation camps. Go
| another way too far - you get storming the White House and
| school shootings.
| candiodari wrote:
| I hate this sort of thinking. You are making the implicit
| assumption that everything about our social environment
| happens simply on 1 variable: heavy-handed enforcement.
|
| When I put it like this, I hope you can see that it doesn't
| work like that. There are hundreds of variables you could
| change that would affect everything. We can prevent Congress
| storming (it was, btw, Congress, not the White House, that
| got stormed) without moving even 1 micrometer in the
| direction of reeducation camps.
| monkeycantype wrote:
| I initially read the comment you are responding to
| differently, in that I saw the 'observer' in the statement
| as not the state but the community, on re-reading I'm not
| sure that makes sense. All the same, reading HN politics,
| it often seems that a spectrum is presented that spans from
| freedom to state oppression. There are democracies where
| the public will not accept the state using power for its
| own benefit, but is comfortable with the state enforcing
| the social contract, because there is a stronger sense that
| this is defined democratically. This may be simply a matter
| of population size, the state in a nation of 20 million is
| a different beast to a state of 350m
| acover wrote:
| Traffic laws are often nonsense and ignored, see jay walking.
| layer8 wrote:
| Yeah, this vision from TFA:
|
| "Every person will have an AI
| assistant/coach/mentor/trainer/advisor/therapist that is
| infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely
| knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful. The AI assistant will be
| present through all of life's opportunities and challenges,
| maximizing every person's outcomes."
|
| ...will more likely turn into an indoctrination and compliance
| machine under authoritarian regimes.
| foogazi wrote:
| This just devolves into the same currently existing bad actor
| issue: authoritarian regimes
|
| You could say the same about weapons, radio, electricity, the
| internet
|
| They all could be abused by authoritarian regimes
| layer8 wrote:
| We haven't found a way yet to prevent authoritarian regimes
| from arising and spreading, so it's unclear how AI will
| save the world. On the contrary, AI will make it easier for
| authoritarian regimes to expand and maintain their control.
| gigel82 wrote:
| All regimes asymptotically tend towards authoritarian in
| the long run; from their POV it's just easier to do their
| job that way. AI will greatly accelerate this trend.
| barking_biscuit wrote:
| This feels like the correct take to me.
| tetris11 wrote:
| "But you can train it however you want!" is the main
| counterargument I hear against this (alas, my strawman).
|
| Sure, you could, assuming accessible resources to decent
| compute nodes and good training data, but something tells me
| that this will be in the hands of a very few.
|
| Also, even if decent AI remains affordable for most people,
| most people will still mindlessly take the default route of a
| corporate/government pushed apps.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Reminds me of Ms. Casey's "wellness sessions" in Severance
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Not to mention members of certain "high-risk groups" getting
| their own AI police officers to issue warnings and citations.
| Obviously not based on race, just based on objective risk
| factors such as having a direct social link to someone with
| an arrest record...
| dinvlad wrote:
| I'd even say that the social networks are a precursor to this.
| Everyone is constantly observed by everyone else there, and
| many use a fake persona to try to "fit in", or god forbid say
| something they will regret later. And those aren't on them have
| trouble keeping in touch with the rest. Smh
| [deleted]
| boringuser2 wrote:
| They're already pretty good at this.
|
| I am of the opinion that destruction of knowledge work and
| class mobility is more problematic.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| >Instead we have used our intelligence to raise our standard of
| living on the order of 10,000X over the last 4,000 years.
|
| Who's "we"/"our"?
| tikkun wrote:
| Despite what I think of the crypto projects a16z has been
| involved in (hint: it's not positive -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36073355), I actually think
| this essay was pretty solid.
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