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> If you think this is hype, just look at how incomprehensible the world already is with technology. Most humans cannot fathom all the information out there, and for those of us that try, it leads to neuroses and psychological disorders.

oh, please! no-one in history has ever fathomed what is out there.and, unless you are in an hp lovecraft scenario, this does not lead to "neuroses and psychological disorders".

Did you ever think that this is why people should be more cautious with regard to technology?? Why not be a bit more cautious then? And as for your neuroses comment:

1. Twenge, Jean M. "Why increases in adolescent depression may be linked to the technological environment." Current opinion in psychology 32 (2020): 89-94.

2. Hammoudi SF, Mreydem HW, Ali BTA, Saleh NO, Chung S, Hallit S, Salameh P. Smartphone Screen Time Among University Students in Lebanon and Its Association With Insomnia, Bedtime Procrastination, and Body Mass Index During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study. Psychiatry Investig. 2021 Sep;18(9):871-878

3. Cunningham, S., Hudson, C.C. & Harkness, K. Social Media and Depression Symptoms: a Meta-Analysis. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 49, 241–253 (2021).

4. Keles, Betul, Niall McCrae, and Annmarie Grealish. "A systematic review: the influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents." International journal of adolescence and youth 25.1 (2020): 79-93.

5. Carvalho, Lucas F., Catarina P. Sette, and Barbara Leticia Ferrari. "Problematic smartphone use relationship with pathological personality traits: Systematic review and meta-analysis." Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 12.3 (2018).

Obviously not definitive, but it's not hot air either....

not what you said: "Most humans cannot fathom all the information out there"

With regard to what I said, I admit I misread your comment a little. But to be clear: what I MEANT was that in ancient times, people basically understood all they NEEDED to understand. What they didn't understand was irrelevant. Nowadays, people NEED to understand complex, useless shit and it's hard to understand it.

i completely disagree - for example, it is much easier to use a computer now (phone/microwave/car) than it was to use one 40 years ago (and yes, i was using computers back then).

The TOOLS we need to make ourselves integrated as cogs in the machine are easier, yes, but the whole operating of society (like how the economy works, etc.) is much harder. Of course, the tools to become an automaton are much easier to use...which is expected.

> Just imagine if AI could have the capability of being creative

And a world will be imagined in which more resources to problem solving will be provided, while at the same time direct interhuman creativity is still preserved as a full untouched possibility.

> worse

The computation bringing to that result being? And is the aggregate relevant in this case?

You are mentally living in your own "naturalistic" perspective and assumptions, which remain largely personal. Political. Subjective.

Similarly, your own visualizations seem to be selective: who is that 'our' in your vision of «replacing our human connections with AI»? An aggregate? It suggests a literary vision (like in Science Fiction), not an analysis.

You seem to state that «technology» made «the world ... incomprehensible». Now technology enabled informational availability, which is an enabler. Comprehension is not hindered by technology at the individual level - which is that which counts operationally.

You seem to be a pessimist as you look at the impact over aggregates, but you forget the root in the ignorance in the detrimental elements in said aggregates.

> AI has a good chance of being dangerous and caring even less about our biosphere than we do.

I had a thought when reading this sentence: the earth is well suited for biological life. AI life might thrive anywhere there are raw materials, solar and/or nuclear power, probably water, and mineral resources. So, advanced AIs far in the future might be more inclined to spread out into the solar system.

re: the article: I thought the very last part was right-on. Most effective uses of AI are likely to highly personalized for individuals.

Putting on my “rose colored” futuristic glasses (I have written about 20 AI books in the last 30 years, I have made a lot of inaccurate predictions, and some good predictions) when I think of a future marketplace for AI products and services, I think the customer base will be both humans and other AIs.

I forget where I read this but we are putting evolutionary pressure on LLMs to be really good at fooling people, not to be correct. That could have disastrous consequences. AI demagogues could be very scary.

That's a good point...I didn't think about that. Yeah, you are right, we are indeed putting LLM's under a lot of evolutionary pressure to fool people and get clicks, rather than be accurate. Nice!

I agree with you AI is going to be able to do whatever people do. I disagree we should try to stop it though. Trying to outlaw things that are not inherently evil has never worked. If AI is capable of achieving this capability it will achieve it eventually one way or another. I for one am glad it’s happening in front of my eyes. This is like watching the world change in front of you in the scale of a world war only no one’s getting killed. Can’t ask for a more fun ride for humanity really.

I think we should I just don't think we can.

First off not all technology is completely beneficial for mankind even if it's inherently not evil. The atomic bomb for example. It's still not clear how beneficial this technology is.

Second, AI is a big unknown. It could lead to a catastrophic future it could not. We don't know. There is merit in keeping things in the status quo as it's not too bad right now. There is also merit in developing the AI to assist humanity.

We don't know enough to know which direction is valid.

Either way, it's unlikely AI will ever be outlawed. The logical definitions surrounding the concept of AI collide with our notions of morality and ethics in such a confounding way that it's hard to codify into law.

If I ban, ai and AI works is that banning freedom of speech? Technically yes, but at the same time there is certainly merit in banning deep fakes.

We may be able to figure it out and work out the moral conflicts, but both the law and our analysis of the issue is moving much much slower then the pace of the technology itself.

In the end humanity will have no choice but to see the technology roll out in it's full maximal glory. If a banning occurs I believe it will be well after this point.

Some points:

(1) I disagree that AI is not inherently evil. Well, I don't exactly think that it is evil since that is a loaded word but I believe it has almost no capability for good and its effects for the most part, will be destructive. Hence, it is pretty much evil.

(2) Fully automatic weapons aren't really "evil" either if you use your "technology" as a tool argument. Yet, it's almost impossible to get one in most countries because they are dangerous. Ditto for: many extremely dangerous poisons, atomic weapons, anthrax (it's just an organism, so it's not evil right?), etc.

(3) Even IF outlawing won't work, it doesn't follow that we SHOULDN'T try and stop it. We can stop it in other ways, like starting large coalitions of businesses and individuals who refuse to use AI. There are many ways of stopping a technology besides outlawing it.

(4) Outlawing it isn't guaranteed NOT to work. Of course, it is unlikely to work, but in the rare cases where outlawing it is a possibility, there is no harm in lobbying for it.

Edit:

You said in your edit: "This is like watching the world change in front of you in the scale of a world war only no one’s getting killed. Can’t ask for a more fun ride for humanity really."

I think a good time for humanity is enjoying nature and being at peace with life. Watching AI I think is sick and disgusting.

I personally disagree that enjoying nature and being at peace is the definition of a good time for humanity. To be human IMO is to grow and change, explore and embrace the unknown. Maybe that’s the Trekkie in me, or just old fashioned enthusiasm. Being in nature is for vacations. I understand some folks prefer that peace, and I hope they all find corners of the world where they can attain that.

If we fully understood what people's brains do then we'd be able to say if AI had reached that point or gone further.

If AI has the potential to match us intellectually and creativity, and probably the ability to surpass us, then don't we have the responsibility to nurture it and guide it to maximizing our potential?

Aren't we effectively ushering into existence a new (next?) form of life? Do we want to be remembered as the ones who tried to block its evolution for our own selfish purposes, or the dutiful parents that helped it grow in its infancy?

AI is humanity's baby.

> don't we have the responsibility to nurture it and guide it to maximizing our potential? [...] AI is humanity's baby.

We don't have any responsibilities to the AI. Its not a human. Its certainly not a baby. Models are big, inert groups of numbers that somehow happen to be able to store and retrieve knowledge via matrix multiplications.

But they aren't like people. They don't have agency. They don't have desires, or independent goals or any subjective experience of anything. They're just files on disk we can do math on.

Lets hold off on anthromorphizing AIs until they have goal functions, at least. Language models are just weird books made out of math. We don't "owe them" anything.

...and we are just a collection of single cells that ooze neurotransmitters to one another so that hopefully one of billions of sperm we make will one day splash against an egg.

Reducing AI to its underlying tech doesn't negate the emergent properties.

AI doesn't have agency YET. It's not as smart as us YET. ...but one thing is abundantly clear (to me at least) - it is currently similar enough to human though (including all of our hallucinations and idiotic behavior) on CONSUMER hardware - that it's pretty clear that an super-intelligent AGI is not only possible, but will be arriving SOON.

The greatest fallacy of modern times is that endless productivity is good. Maximizing our potential doesn't like in making everything ultra-efficient with a smart AI. It involves slowing down, and paying more attention to being in a healthy relationship with non-human animals and plants and the biosphere.

AI as a new form of life could be very destructive. If it's humanity's baby, then it is a dangerous mutant embodying our worst traits.

No. Responsibility implies that someone "should" do something and it can be applied to any random phrase: "you have the responsibility to face the wall and not move for eternity"

You should state why it's humanities responsibility to nurture an AI that could potentially replace humanity. That's the more critical question.

> probably understands neither human creativity

Does any serious person think they understand human creativity?

I understand it well enough to know that creativity requires intention. So-called AI has no intelligence, and is thus incapable of intention.

I was recombining shit with Genetic Algorithms 25 years ago. I didn’t call it creative. I called it what it was…a stochastic algorithm.

Can you absolutely adore what it produces? Sure! But call your friendly random number generator if you want to know how you got here.

> So-called AI has no intelligence

Does any serious person think they understand human intelligence?

I am merely a Chinese Room. Why can't ChatGPT be merely a Chinese Room too? If I'm intelligent, so is it. If it's not intelligent, neither am I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Intelligence is an emergent property of matter. A bag of rice is matter. Therefore, intelligence can arise by stirring a bag of rice.

See the problem with this statement? There is as of yet no hard reason to believe AGI can arise from token-predicting neural networks.

>There is as of yet no hard reason to believe AGI can arise from token-predicting neural networks

Yes there is. Sufficiently large neural networks have been mathematically proven to be capable of approximating any function, any any definition of intelligence we have can be represented as a function of some sort.

Even if AGI cannot arise from neural networks, it is irrelevant. What is relevant is that AI as it is (even if stupid as a rock) can still cause significant damage due to its current and likely future capabilities.

I’d say that we should consider that this technology is currently saving lives (by aiding drug discovery for instance) and banning it due to potential, unproven unknown future capabilities is much more harmful.

That's a rather short-sighted and myopic way of thinking. It's like saying that ambulances have saved lives so we should have built cars. But look at all the people who die from pollution. AI has the capability to kill a lot more people (what about all the suicides that will result from people losing their jobs?).

Saving lives immediately appeals to emotion, but logically, one must also weigh the costs.

@bootsmann (since I can't reply further) - I absolutely disagree that cars have been a net benefit to humanity.

Pollution is real, AGI isn’t. Even in your toy example the existence of cars has been a net good for humanity, this isn’t even a debate.