Every new tech is a potential powerful dangerous tech, so it was fire and so it has been any new discovery.
I saddens me to see here these sort of posts.
I saddens me to see here these sort of posts.
We should actually be much more proactive about technology: it is not an unalloyed good, and an unwillingness to consider its downsides leads to naive designs. Even leaving bad actors aside (which I don't recommend doing), what works well in a group of 10,000 users may not scale to one billion users. Where one scale has no effect on social cohesion, another scale may have a tremendously deleterious effect.
We've been doing these experiments in search and social for years now. Taking lessons from that and applying it to the next great wave of AI innovations seems like a Good Idea to me.
Looking back, what technology would you have retroactively stopped? Tetraethyl lead? Perhaps. Nuclear? Cable TV? ANNs? The Internet? Drones?
Also, the financial incentives aren't aligned. Certainly it makes sense to hold back technology to avoid embarrassment if you're a trillion dollar company; you have more to lose than gain. However, if you're a scrappy startup, it makes way more sense to roll the dice.
This really isn't true. We regularly do cost-benefit analyses for business; we don't skip them because they're not perfect predictors. We do market analysis and all kinds of customer deep dives to perfect UI/UX and customer response. We've created targeted dopamine-delivery services that are continually refined to maximize impact.
All of this implies a certain kind of ability to evaluate. Looking at tradeoffs and potential uses of technology is well within our abilities, and we should do it. We should be more skeptical of human nature, look harder at the extremes and edge cases, and work towards mitigating the risks. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be helpful? Yes.
Because it means that finally, after decades of us being blinded by the wow-factor of technology, hackers and engineers - we who are responsible for creating the next wave of technology - are starting to ask grown-up questions about whether some things are such good ideas.
That healthy scepticism doesn't have to mean pessimism, or Luddite rejection of "progress". That's enormous progress of a different kind - a shift from purely technical progress to a better balance of spiritual and social progress.
Since then, "the victors write the history books", including formative influences on children's thinking.
It's encouraging if we manage to collectively scrape our way back from that, and have genuine concerns -- despite the noise of fashionable posturing, "influencer" conflicts of interest, etc.
> obliterated by the frenzied influx during the dotcom gold rush.
Something changed in mid 1990s, something that was more than just the commercialisation and Eternal September. Perhaps it was millenial angst but a certain darkness and nihilism crept in as if William Gibson stopped trying to imagine future dystopias because the future had "caught up" and we were living in it. I think that's when things actually stopped progressing. After that, everything that had been written as a warning became a blueprint.
> Since then, "the victors write the history books", including formative influences on children's thinking.
80s and 90s media moguls only owned the channels, and there was cursory regulation. When you own all the platforms, and devices that people use, and shape the content they see from school-age onwards it is no longer "media" but total mind control.
> It's encouraging if we manage to collectively scrape our way back from that
It may not be "back", but it may be somewhere better than here. Each generation finds it's own voice. I have some optimism in the kids since 2000 - it's like they're born knowing "The cake is a lie". They're just not quite sure yet what to do about it.
Yet the toothpick is a little bit less dangerous than the atomic bomb.
We shouldn't blindly accept every new "tech" as "progress", the fact that we can build it doesn't mean it'll be beneficial for us
I grew up with the prevailing idea of "never trust what you see online", yet today many have deep and misplaced trust in online media, influencers, and personalities.
I think a little more distrust is needed
Not quite. Deep fakes will undermine people's trust in anything digital they see or hear. It bodes ill for technology not for people per-se.
In other words, those who should be most terrified by the implications of deep-fake technologies and AI are those most heavily invested in digital technology. I sense that in some ironic way, suddenly the "boot is on the other foot".
This is inherent of our species. The idea that you should distrust anything you see or hear is an alien concept and simply not pragmatic.
"Misinformation has always existed and always will exist"
False equivalence. The online situation is brand new. Any citizen able to spread massive amounts of fake news to lots of people on the cheap is a brand new capability.
"the solution is education"
No, it isn't. Every study shows that highly educated people are also gullible enough to be manipulated with fake news. Which makes total sense, as absolutely nobody has the time to fact-check and do a deep background check on the 5 zillion pieces of information they see on a given day.
It's very valuable to discuss the potential dangers of new technologies and how we might mitigate them.
> AI might put false ideas in peoples minds
Like speech or writing or media?
> no no not the ideas, its the medium, the delivery method. you see the fakes will trick people into thinking the lies are real.
oh that's it? just deception + scale.
Who are you quoting in your arguments here? I did not make those arguments and I cannot find someone else in this thread who made those arguments. Perhaps you are creating a strawman to argue against?
Re: Fire: I wasn’t around for it, but it’s safe to assume people discovered fire was dangerous around the same time they discovered fire, wayyyy before cities existed and before humans decided to harness it.
Re: Social harms from AI: you should ask yourself about the harms that can come from automated decision making. We’re automating decisions for policing, for hiring, for delivering posts on social media, for delivering political advertisements on social media, etc. We’re using AI research for profiling, for improving bomb drones, for getting children to spend time and money on games and social media, etc. I’m sure you agree at least one of these are harmful.
Re: Social harm from ‘deepfakes’: It’s currently costly to create a convincing fake image, audio, or video. It’s easy to extrapolate that it will be easy to make convincing fakes in the near future. It’s easy to see that can cause harm, especially since people are already tricked by obvious photoshops and deep-fakes.
In the US at least, there are political attack ads rampant today that use altered media.
I find it difficult to find a generous interpretation of someone who thinks we should proactively shut-down any discussion about potential and current harms from AI.
If you meant "trust some things if they fit some kind of criteria" you mean something different than "can't trust anything."