[HN Gopher] Machines of loving grace: How AI could transform the...
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Machines of loving grace: How AI could transform the world for the
better
Author : jasondavies
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-10-11 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (darioamodei.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (darioamodei.com)
| thrance wrote:
| This is basically the tech CEO's version of the book of
| revelations: "AI will soon come and make everything right with
| the world, help us and you will be rewarded with a Millennium of
| bliss in It's presence".
|
| I won't comment on the plausibility of what is being said, but
| regardless, one should beware this type of reasoning. Any action
| can be justified, if it means bringing about an infinite good.
|
| Relevant read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularitarianism
| HocusLocus wrote:
| It won't bring about Infinite Good. It'll bring about infinite
| contentment by diddling the pleasure center in our brains.
| Because you know, eventually everything is awarded to and built
| by the lowest bidder.
| Muromec wrote:
| Miquella the kind, pure and radiant, he wields love to shrive
| clean the hearts of men. There is nothing more terrifying.
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| I beat Consort Radahn before the nerfs.
| talldayo wrote:
| But did you beat the original Radahn pre-nerf?
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| The day-1 version with broken hitboxes? Yeah
|
| Consort was harder haha
| KaiserPro wrote:
| One of the sad things about tech is that nobody really looks at
| history.
|
| The same kinds of essays were written about trains, planes and
| nuclear power.
|
| Before lindbergh went off the deepend, he was convinced that
| "airmen" were gentlemen and could sort out the world's ills.
|
| The essay contains a lot of coulds, but doesn't touch on the base
| problem: human nature.
|
| AI will be used to make things cheaper. That is, lots of job
| losses. must of us are up for the chop if/when competent AI
| agents become possible.
|
| Loads of service jobs too, along with a load of manual jobs when
| suitable large models are successfully applied to robotics (see
| ECCV for some idea of the progress for machine perception.)
|
| But those profits will not be shared. Human productivity has
| exploded in the last 120 years, yet we are working longer hours
| for less pay.
|
| Well AI is going to make that worse. It'll cause huge unrest (see
| luddite riots, peterloo, the birth of unionism in the USA, plus
| many more)
|
| This brings us to the next thing that AI will be applied to:
| Murdering people.
|
| Andril is already marrying basic machine perception with cheap
| drones and explosives. its not going to take long to get to
| personalised explosive drones.
|
| AI isn't the problem, we are.
|
| The sooner we realise that its not a technical problem to be
| solved, but a human one, we might stand a chance.
|
| But looking at the emotionally stunted, empathy vacuums that
| control either policy or purse strings, I think it'll take a
| catastrophe to change course.
| realce wrote:
| 3 links above this one is
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/08/exoskeleton...
| kranke155 wrote:
| We are entering a dystopia and people are still writing these
| wonderful essays about how AI will help us.
|
| Microtargeted psychometrics (Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ)
| have already made politics in the West an unending barrage of
| information warfare. Now we'll have millions of autonomous
| agents. At some point soon in the future, our entire feed will
| be AI content or upvoted by AI or AI manipulating the
| algorithm.
|
| It's like you said - this essay reads like peak AI. We will
| never have as much hope and optimism about the next 20 years as
| we seem to have now.
|
| Reminds me of a graffiti I saw in London, while the city's cost
| of living was exploding and making the place unaffordable to
| anyone but a few:
|
| "We live in a Utopia. It's just not ours."
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > The essay contains a lot of coulds, but doesn't touch on the
| base problem: human nature.
|
| > AI isn't the problem, we are.
|
| I think when we frame it as human _nature_, then yes, _we_ look
| like the problem.
|
| But what if we frame it as human _culture_? Then _we_ aren't
| the problem, but rather our _behaviors/beliefs/knowledge/etc_
| are.
|
| If we focus on the former, we might just be essentially
| screwed. If we focus on the latter, we might be able to change
| things that seem like nature but might be more nurture.
|
| Maybe that's a better framing: the base problem is human
| nurture?
| laurex wrote:
| I think this is an important distinction. Yes, humans have
| some inbuilt weaknesses and proclivities, but humans are not
| _required_ to live in or develop systems in which those
| weaknesses and proclivities are constantly exploited for the
| benefit /power of a few others. Throughout human history,
| there have been practices of contemplation, recognition of
| interdependence, and ways of increasing our capacity for
| compassion and thoughful response. We are currently in a
| biological runaway state with extraction, but it's not the
| only way humans have of behaving.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Throughout human history, there have been practices of
| contemplation, recognition of interdependence, and ways of
| increasing our capacity for compassion and thoughful
| response.
|
| has this ever been widespread in society? I think such
| people have always been few and far between?
| keyringlight wrote:
| The example that comes to mind is post-WW2 Germany, but
| that was apparently a hard slog to change the minds of
| the German people. I really doubt any organization could
| do something similar presenting an opposing viewpoint to
| the companies (and their resources) behind and using AI
| achrono wrote:
| Sure. But why do you think changing human nurture is any
| easier than changing human nature? I suspect that as your set
| of humans in consideration tends to include the set of _all_
| humans, the gap between changeability of human nature vs
| changeability of human nurture reduces to zero.
|
| Perhaps you are implying that we sign up for a global (
| _truly_ global, not global by the standards of Western
| journalists) campaign of complete and irrevocable reform in
| our behavior, beliefs and knowledge. At the very least, this
| implies simply killing off a huge number of human beings who
| for whatever reason stand in the way. This is not (just) a
| hypothesis -- some versions of this have been tried and
| tested. *
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _I think when we frame it as human _nature_, then yes, _we_
| look like the problem.
|
| But what if we frame it as human _culture_? Then _we_ aren't
| the problem, but rather our _behaviors/beliefs/knowledge/etc_
| are.
|
| If we focus on the former, we might just be essentially
| screwed. If we focus on the latter, we might be able to
| change things that seem like nature but might be more
| nurture.
|
| Maybe that's a better framing: the base problem is human
| nurture?_
|
| This is about the same as saying that leaders can get better
| outcomes by surrounding themselves with yes-men.
|
| Just because asserting a different set of facts makes the
| predicted outcomes more desirable, doesn't mean that those
| alternate facts are better for making predictions with. What
| matters is how congruent they are to reality.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > One of the sad things about tech is that nobody really looks
| at history.
|
| First, while I often write much of the same sentiment about
| techno-optimism and history, you should remember that you're
| literally in the den of Silicon Valley startup hackers. It's
| not going to be an easily heard message here, because the site
| specifically appeals to people who dream of inspiring exactly
| these essays.
|
| > The sooner we realise that its not a technical problem to be
| solved, but a human one, we might stand a chance.
|
| Second... you're falling victim to the same trap, but simply
| preferring some kind of social or political technology instead
| of a mechanical or digital one.
|
| What history mostly affirms is that prosperity and ruin come
| and go, and that nothing we engineer last for all that long,
| let alone forever. There's no point in dreading it, whatever
| kind of technology you favor or fear.
|
| The bigger concern is that some of the acheivements of
| modernity have made the human future _far_ more brittle than it
| has been in what may be hundreds of thousands of years. Global
| homogenization around elaborate technologies -- whether
| mechanical, digital, social, political or otherwise -- sets us
| up in a very "all or nothing" existential space, where ruin,
| when it eventually arrives, is just as global. Meanwhile, the
| purge of diverse, locally practiced, traditional wisdom about
| how to get by in un-modern environments steals the species of
| its essential fallback strategy.
| mythrwy wrote:
| But will AI be eventually used to change human nature itself?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| The more recent and consistent rule of technological development,
| " For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have
| an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they
| have will be taken away."
| kranke155 wrote:
| blindingly true.
| gyre007 wrote:
| I think Dario is trying to raise a new round because OpenAI has
| done and will continue to do so, nevertheless, the essay provides
| for some really great reading and even if the fraction comes
| true, it'll be wonderful.
| lewhoo wrote:
| So it's bs but for money and therefore totally fine ? I think
| it's not ok if only a fraction comes true because some people
| believe in those things and act on those beliefs right now.
| gyre007 wrote:
| I didn't say it was bs. I was alluding to the timing of this
| essay being published but, clearly, I didn't articulate it in
| my message well. I also don't think everything he says is bs.
| Some of it I find a bit naive -- but maybe that's ok -- some
| other things seem a bit like sci-fi, but who are we to say
| this is impossible? I'm optimistic but also learnt in life
| that things improve, sometimes drastically given the right
| ingredients.
| lewhoo wrote:
| Well I don't know. A bit naive, a bit like sci-fi and aimed
| at raising money fits my description of bs quite well.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Social media could have transformed the world for the better, and
| we can be forgiven for not having foreseen how it would
| eventually be used against us. It would be stupidity to fall for
| the same thing again.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I'm sure social media is what's broken politics. Look at
| peoples comments on a Trump YouTube video. You can't believe
| what people believe.
|
| I guess people feel for hitlers garbage too but algorithms just
| make lies spread with a lot less effort on the liars part.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Are Americans really so scared of Marx to admit that AI
| fundamentally proves his point?
|
| Dario here says "yeah likely the economic system won't work
| anymore" but he doesn't dare say what comes next: It's obvious
| some kind of socialist system is inevitable, at least for basic
| goods and housing. How can you deny that to a person in a post-
| AGI world where almost no one can produce economic value that
| beats the ever cheaper AI?
| gyre007 wrote:
| If, and it is an IF, this does turn out the way he is
| imagining, the transitional period to the AI from the economic
| PoV will be disastrous for people. That's the scariest part I
| think.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Absolutely it will. And it will be a pure plain dystopia, as
| clear as in the times of Dickens or Dostoyevsky.
|
| We need to start being honest. We live in Dickensian times.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| There are two possible end-states for AI once a threshold is
| crossed:
|
| The AIs take a look at the state of things and realize the KPIs
| will improve considerably if homo sapiens are removed from the
| picture. Cue "The Matrix" or "The Terminator" type future.
|
| OR:
|
| The AIs take a look and decide that keeping homo sapiens around
| makes things much more fun and interesting. They take over
| running things in a benevolent manner in collaboration with homo
| sapiens. At that point we end up with 'The Culture'.
|
| Either end-state is bad for the billionaire/investor/VC class.
|
| In the first you'll be a fed into the meat grinder just like
| everyone else. In the second the AIs, will do a much better job
| of resource allocation, will perform a decapitation strike on
| that demographic to capture the resources, and capitalism will
| largely be extinct from that point onwards.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace ~Richard Brautigan
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zlsCLukG9A
| cs702 wrote:
| I found the OP to be an earnest, well-written, thought-provoking
| essay. Thank you sharing it on HN, and thank you also to Dario
| Amodei for writing it.
|
| The essay does have one big blind spot, which becomes obvious
| with a simple exercise: If you copy the OP's contents into you
| word processing app and replace the words "AI" with "AI
| controlled by corporations and governments" everywhere in the
| document, many of the OP's predictions instantly come across as
| rather naive and overoptimistic.
|
| Throughout history, human organizations like corporations and
| governments haven't always behaved nicely.
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