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Comment by qgin | Hacker News Reader

> As a society we can reject this technology.

I don't see a lot of precedent for this. I actually can't think of one example where society has rejected a useful technology.

I believe that affluent people will pay more for artisinal/organic/human-created things. But the majority of the world without disposable income will choose cheaper over human. Even if human-made is better. Especially if AI-made is better.

It's true that AI will replace humans as the most powerful intelligence on earth. But it's a wave that there is no plausible way to stop. As long as there are groups that seek to gain economic or military advantage over each other, people will push this technology along. It's as much of an inevitability as any other stage of evolution.

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I think there are many precedents for this; you probably just discount them. Some religious communities explicitly reject certain technologies, for instance.

We do it as an aggregate society as well whether we actually realize it or not; they are just negative examples of pursuing one kind of technology over another. We started out with a decentralized web, but economic forces have pushed tech development towards building walled gardens and rent extraction.

I believe specific groups can reject it, but that won't stop it from progressing. You'd need everybody to reject it.

I work with these systems all day, every day, and these new systems are qualitatively different. These new transformer systems have crossed a line and its easy to see how they will threaten human dignity. This technology crosses a line. It's like atomic weapons. This is the commoditization of the human mind.

1. How did rejecting atomic weapons go?

2. In what way does it "threaten human dignity" that is different from the technologies that came before it? Automation took away the livelihoods of people in industries like manufacturing decades ago. Feels like what is truly "different" this time around is just that you feel your job is threatened, so now it's a problem for all of society.

Not the pp, but:

1. For many countries (e.g. Australia), quite successfully. We said no, and then we didn't.

2. We can replace physical activity (e.g. machinery instead of human motion), and that doesn't move human beings from the place of control and power. Likewise, we can replace certain kinds of thinking work (e.g. programming or medicine) and that in itself isn't a major problem (except for the out-of-work programmers or doctors).

But replacing all cognitive activity (which is what a hypothetical future AI would do), what are we --- as humans --- left with?

1. But the crux the issue here (and with atomic weapons) is that as long not everyone has rejected it, then end result is not meaningfully different. And it's impossible to get everyone to reject it.

2. Again, I don't think that argument carries a lot of weight with people whose lives have already been completely upended by technology. The fact that some people now feel that This Time Is Different and thus we must all band together to hold the line betrays a deep lack of empathy.

I think there's room for value even when you're not the best.

Pure hedonism?

You're 100% right. But I'm convinced there's realistically nothing we can do to stop it. Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus (and Sapiens to a lesser extent) are about the possible future paths for humanity and computers that increasingly surpass our abilities in more and more ways.

It will absolutely be hugely disruptive to culture, the structure of society, and our perception of ourselves. But I don't see how it can be avoided.

I actually can't think of one example where society has rejected a useful technology.

Nuclear energy, for one.

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