something as stupid as bitcoin consumed a vast amount of resources while producing nothing useful to humanity, simply because of economic incentives
it's not difficult to imagine something slightly smarter than bitcoin
I'm not saying there aren't risks from AI, or that they shouldn't be considered. But risks like the ones you're alluding to are not going to be affected by a 6-month moratorium.
The problem is that the people yelling loudest about risks are not talking about plausible problems like the one you mention, they're worrying that an AI will decide to take over the world and reuse the atoms that make up humans for its own purposes. The first reply to LeCun's tweet is a leader of one of those cults.
If people make the mistake of listening to them, we're more likely to end up with problems like the ones you're describing, because we'll be paying attention to the wrong, imagined problems.
Let's not short-circuit our critical thinking by labelling those concerns cult-ish.
That concern is a classic example of a cultish one because it can't be executed in the real world today, and most likely won't be possible to execute for decades at a minimum. There will be plenty of time to address such risks as they become more realistic. You can fantasize about them today, but be realistic that that's all you're doing.
You essentially admitted that this is a correct concern, and not a "cultish" belief. Now we're just debating when.
> Do you see some connection between the concern you've raised and the desire to shut down AI development for 6 months?
Perhaps? In general, living an additional 6 months is something I'd desire.
Getting angry to the point of clouding analysis and judgement is no way to rush into these things.
AI has real dangers completely dissimilar from what people describe. It is very good at creating clickbait, misinformation, and persuasive material the unsuspecting might not immediately see. Phenomenal for scammers and propagandists, the same way as the internet
the difference is freon did something useful
And, even though in many ways it fell short of that purpose in practice, the jury is still out on whether its failure is inherent to cryptocurrencies as a technology, or the limitations of being a first-generation implementation of it.