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Comment by _qbjt | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, Chollet links a whole series of essays worth reading:

Appeal to authority. You're not presenting any substantive rebuttals, just assuming it's not a concern because someone else with credentials said so. It's identical to alleging that I'm only worried because Elon Musk says so.

> The frustrating thing is that people with insane amounts of resources and disposable income get swallowed up by these Basilisk-ian non-concerns, while very real pressing issues like Police Brutality, Wealth Inequality, Lack of HealthCare, etc. are deemed too boring for enthusiastic action.

Nice strawman. It's also pretty disrespectful for you to assume my socioeconomic background. I live in the United States and have to deal with the issues you pointed out on a visceral basis. That has nothing to do with AI though so I'm not sure why you're even bringing it up.

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That's not an appeal to authority. The essays themselves are substantive; he didn't say, "Chollet says so, thus it is so."

More importantly there is an element of misuse going on here: the "fallacy fallacy" if you will. Fallacies like ad hominem and appeal to authority are very often mis-cited without substantive refutations. But in the absence of other qualifying data it is absolutely relevant to a dialectic session that you mention authorities in a subject matter. When we talk about things like consensus in sciences (like climate change, for example), that is a valid appeal to authority.

You don't have enough time or expertise to verify specialized information or even qualify its context. At some point you absolutely need to appeal to authority just to be productive. If you can assess data yourself then that's obviously better, but in the absence of that capacity the assertion of various authorities is a valid first heuristic.

He wasn't talking about you, he was talking about Musk.

That's fair. Regardless of Musk's talking points, I'm still worried and I don't care how many people here think I'm paranoid. Engineers during the Industrial Revolution had no idea they were sowing the seeds of global warming [1]. We're putting a lot of money into AI under the assumption that it's all going to be a smooth ride. There's this notion that even if neural networks become more sophisticated than those of human brains, that AI will be completely subservient to us and we can just pull the plug whenever we want. If there's one thing humans are good at, it's self-destructive hubris.

[1] http://theconversation.com/the-industrial-revolution-kick-st...

> Appeal to authority.

??? I just gave you a ton of arguments you can read through.

You want me to copy-paste them here?

Ultimately, your "arguments" are refuted with a simple "There's zero reason to be afraid of what you're afraid of".

I would have appreciated at least an abstract or synopsis but okay. When I have time I'll read through these articles.

> Ultimately, your "arguments" are refuted with a simple "There's zero reason to be afraid of what you're afraid of".

Yes, I'm sure it's that black and white.

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