Our success in having the ability to generate sonnets in seconds will be seen in our future similar to the emperor commissioning golden statues whilst his people starved.
That's not an argument, since the same thing can be said about anything else that does not solve world hunger, for example. Authors put energy into writing entertainment products while people starve.
As opposed to the metaverse [0], marvel movies [1], video games [2], soccer [3], or NFL [4]?
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...
[1] https://bgr.com/entertainment/marvel-spent-over-1-billion-on...
[2] https://www.eurogamer.net/star-citizen-has-now-raised-more-t...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/henryflynn/2022/11/27/qatar-has...
[4] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/2022/...
But protein folding with ai might be really helpful for the medical field. (Alpha fold). We also use it to score (rate basically) prospective crispr designs, which along with some other parameters
So it might not be a net negative.
Also, this phrase: <<medical system which administers these innovations remains so dysfunctional>> feel like someone writing from a US(-tainted) persepctive. Have you experienced well-functioning public health systems in other highly advanced countries? They are impressive.
I am not from the US but I think the US is a great case study in the disconnect between technological progress and improved general conditions (in particular for but not exclusively relating to healthcare). I think cynicism is the correct response to this trend.
AI research seems to have hit a lode that yields solutions to recognition and generation of texts and images. Good thing, but not something what could have been predicted, let alone planned, 20 years ago.
One of the solutions for world hunger, synthetic fertilizers, have been discovered by the same chemical research that produced explosives and poisons.
1. Fewer people working so fewer incomes
2. More ads to sell products to the fewer people who have incomes
3. A few people only getting rich (and buying all the stuff in the ads I guess?)
This makes no coherent sense.
Ads as a business model only make sense if there is a mass consumer market to sell stuff too. But if there are less people working and earning, ads by definition cannot be as effective.
No, we are going to see bigger changes and more radical changes than poorly thought-out dystopia scifi plots.
Perhaps there is a tipping point of unemployed people in the areas affected by AI where people outlaw some usage, funnel the funding, etc...
Perhaps the disappearing of "free" energy puts people back in the fields to ensure subsistence, and the few remaining intellectual tasks are automated to hell.
Perhaps this AI is astonishing us today before becoming boring and failing at the next hard task, buying us some time.
I think it's still very much in our power not to blindly follow decisions written automatically on a computer screen.
Don't give it a gun anytime soon, though.
Yes? What is incoherent about this?
Especially when you consider that while some products are commodities you can just produce more of, a couple of important ones aren't: real estate, influence, power. Unless we change course, the latter will get concentrated on fewer and fewer hands, and maybe we get more of the former in return.
At the same time more people will be able to build on their ideas than ever. A few things that seem obvious to me would be:
- Private AI tutors that can go at a student's pace will revolutionise schooling (say goodbye to a teacher shortage anywhere)
- Helpdesk work will vanish
- Art will explode like nothing we've seen before. I'm already experimenting with writing stories in collaboration with AI and this is only the beginning.
- Numerous improvements in a huge number of machines and data analysis in particular will likely get much better.
- Due to widespread white collar work unemployment almost certain to be UBI's springing up all over the developed world.
- Far more workers will end up back in physical jobs of various types. Environmental clean up, farm work, construction, etc.
- Vastly more software will be built as the effective price of building will go way down.
- Robots is another area I'm interested in seeing what happens. My understanding is that building robot hardware that is useful is much easier than the software. So if this allows for much more rapid software development we couod see an explosion on robotics too.
I'm more certain of some of these than others but those are the ones off the top of my head. Out atm but you could also ask the Chatbot haha.
Did digital art tools, compared to something like oil painting, destroy art as a field? No, there's more art and artists than ever.[1]
I believe the same thing is true for music.
I don't see AI replacing the artist or the author or the musician. I see AI enabling more artists and authors and musicians to produce even greater art.
[1] https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2019/new-report-rev...
I think it makes perfect sense to get our act together before creating something that can be so potentially devastating, to reduce the likelihood of bad outcomes.
The development of AI requires careful consideration and planning, particularly in regards to potential negative outcomes. In contrast, the invention of the wheel was a relatively straightforward decision that did not carry the same level of risk.