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Comment by b3lvedere | Hacker News Reader

" However, while AI holds many possibilities for promoting the good, it can also hinder or even counter human development and the common good. Pope Francis has noted that “evidence to date suggests that digital technologies have increased inequality in our world. Not just differences in material wealth, which are also significant, but also differences in access to political and social influence.”[103] In this sense, AI could be used to perpetuate marginalization and discrimination, create new forms of poverty, widen the “digital divide,” and worsen existing social inequalities."

Well he's not wrong.

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> 73. However, if AI is used not to enhance but to replace the relationship between patients and healthcare providers—leaving patients to interact with a machine rather than a human being—it would reduce a crucially important human relational structure to a centralized, impersonal, and unequal framework. Instead of encouraging solidarity with the sick and suffering, such applications of AI would risk worsening the loneliness that often accompanies illness, especially in the context of a culture where “persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected.”[138] This misuse of AI would not align with respect for the dignity of the human person and solidarity with the suffering.

I liked this one too

I actually would rather interact with a "robot" doctor. Most doctors I've dealt with have been snide, judgmental, rushed and arrogant. I actually don't feel like I'm getting the best treatment possible, but I would trust AI to not have prejudices or meta-influences (like being "proud" to be an upper class doctor).

I can understand this sentiment as well.

On one hand I'm a bit hesitant trusting a GP because of a human factor. Doctors may be overwhelmed with patients and your fate kind of depends on their mood today and General Proficiency (couldn't miss this pun).

On the other hand, I feel scared about perspective talking to a chat bot instead of a real person when it comes to my health.

I think, my best bet would be to keep physical GPs but build some tools to make their job more efficient. How to avoid the situation that they are getting lazy and blindly accepting all the AI proposals? I don't know. I hope we will find the way!

It sounds like your issues with doctors is that they lack basic human compassion, yet you want to replace them with "robots" who are incapable of compassion whatsoever?

It's not that they lack compassion, it's that they have bias and other non-job related issues. They also are usually rushed and busy, often over confident in their own original assessments. I would think care from an AI would answer all of my questions without getting snippy and not jump to any conclusions.

Yeah, but that goes into the realm of personal preference right?

I suspect if you're giving people a choice in the future, they're going to flock to the human doctors. Especially human doctors receiving good recommendations.

There has to be something more than personal preference if you want to sway the masses on AI physicians. There has to be some way to measure outcomes in a valid, verifiable and public fashion. Even then, some human doctors will do worse than AIs, and some will do better. And again, at that point, you can expect people, given a choice, to flock to those humans who did better.

We'd need to get to the point where AIs do consistently better than, say, 60 to 70% of the human doctors for insurance companies to feel even semi-comfortable saying "we use AI doctors". An even higher percentage would be necessary for an insurance company to feel comfortable mandating AI doctors. And we'd need AIs to do consistently better than nearly all the humans for humans to choose AI doctors independently of their insurers forcing them to use AI doctors.

> We'd need to get to the point where AIs do consistently better than, say, 60 to 70% of the human doctors for insurance companies to feel even semi-comfortable saying "we use AI doctors".

I feel like at the rate AI is developing we will rapidly get to this point, then surpass it. Doctors will also probably be "enhanced" by AI. Imagine feeding all of your data (more than a human could digest, especially for every patient) into an LLM and letting it diagnose...

> digital technologies have increased inequality in our world.

that's not inevitable though - it's a conscious decision made by each and every person in power to let it get to that point.

Correct. Our present wasn't inevitable. People in power, both running big tech and in government, actively chose or allowed for the current state of digital technologies.

This implies that inequality is bad. I would rather argue that poverty is bad, and it is at an all-time low [1], consistently raising the HDI everywhere technology is introduced. Inequality in itself is only bad with regards to jealousy, which should be addressed through economics education.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

Inequality as we see today is bad, regardless of progress on poverty.

Some people today could endanger the lives of those they disagree with, simply by doxxing them. Yet, they'll face little to no opposition in the courts because they're uber-rich. No one should hold the power of life or death on a whim.

Unless you think centralization of power is a good thing, you're wrong. Things can too easily go wrong when the word of one man, however talented and wise, is louder than the voice of millions of people.

Hate this particular take. To say increasing inequality in that some people have better access to digital tech than others: sure. To say that it’s a net negative that many but not all humans can now video call their loved ones regardless of location, for instance, is conflating equality with benefit. I’m a hard no on this.

I generally like Francis’ take on things, and I think the main framework of this doc is interesting: “AI is functional, not grounded in physical reality, and not spiritual, therefore it’s not a replacement for human intelligence, and we should be cautious” is fine. I’m not sure I agree on these definitions but until I started working with llms daily, I felt the same way.

But the bogeyman of inequality as a reason to mistrust technology, written in HTML, sent over the internet, to our phones, bothers me.

Nah I want to see the numbers on this. Before technology we lived in feudalism. There’s no more unequal system than that.

> Before technology we lived in feudalism.

There exists the possibility we have technology and feudalism.

It also depends on how you define "technology": was/is the plough "technology"? The bow and arrow? Blacksmithing forge? Anvil? Water wheels? The wheel? The stirrup?

> There exists the possibility we have technology and feudalism

There exists the possibility of many things. The Pope made an appeal to empiricism. In our timeline, industrialisation brought forth a burst in democracy and the downfall of feudalism.

> In our timeline, industrialisation brought forth a burst in democracy and the downfall of feudalism.

Not everywhere:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialization_in_the_Sovie...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

It should also be noted that the Industrial Revolution occurred in the early 1800s:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

Democracy was already around by then:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_the_United_Kingd...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

I think it is more accurate to say the the presence of democracy was part of the environment that allowed industrialization to occur. It was (e.g.) UK acts of Parliament that developed canals and later railroads:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_s...

> Democracy was already around by then

Democracy was around millennia ago. The frequency of democracy increased after industrialisation, in part due to its effects on the middle class. Britain and America’s democracies expanded because of it; Europe’s finally found purchase and, in the post-colonial era, so did other continents.

> the presence of democracy was part of the environment that allowed industrialization to occur

Probably not [1].

[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> I think it is more accurate to say the the presence of democracy was part of the environment that allowed industrialization to occur.

That capitalism causes democracy is so high-level that it’s just a propaganda line. People from Marxists to neoliberals could say the same thing (meaning different things when interrogated).

> That capitalism causes democracy is so high-level that it’s just a propaganda line. People from Marxists to neoliberals could say the same thing

We have no evidence capitalism causes democracy. But every democracy on the planet emerged from a context with private property and the rule of law.

Democracy is older than political liberalism and its accompanying capitalism.

> Democracy is older than political liberalism and its accompanying capitalism

The Athenians and Romans weren’t capitalist. But they were closer to it than Marxism or neoliberalism. (They both had private property, money in elections, trade, finance, et cetera.)

> The Athenians and Romans weren’t capitalist.

False premise.

> But they were closer to it than Marxism or neoliberalism. (They both had private property, money in elections, trade, finance, et cetera.)

Just false.

Ok, but the fact remains that in the past inequality was strictly enforced, while inequality in modern times has been systematically enforced. So I want numbers that show me that technology has increased wealth inequality.

"We" lived in feudalism? Do you speak for the entire world? Remember that there were peoples that were conquered by industrialist empires who had more equal systems than feudalism or than what we have right now. Communities in the Amazon or isolated Pacific or African islands (and deserts in Africa) have had more equal societies than the USA today and arguably were quite happy till their partway-utopia was wrecked by technologically advanced people. This gives me little hope for people pitching AI leading us into a better society unless the hearts of the people with the power are trustworthy and faithful to promoting good for people rather than profit for themselves.

> This gives me little hope for people pitching AI leading us into a better society unless the hearts of the people with the power are trustworthy and faithful to promoting good for people rather than profit for themselves.

Agree. I see parallels to communism: in theory it sounds alright - spread the wealth, everyone works for the collective etc. - but in practise it doesn’t work because people are greedy and leaders inevitably become dictators.

With AI it’s similar in that in theory it could be impartial and level playing fields, but in practise they will be run by companies and governments where the same old human fallibilities persist.

If you can’t trust the leaders then you can’t trust their machines either.

“Feudalism” is not data/numbers either.

"Technology" is a very broad term. The wheel is a type of technology. Pope Francis specifically said "digital technologies".

Why would he be, though?

He probably is wrong. Giving that statement a reality check, he's arguing that before the internet political and social influence was more spread out than it is now. In other words that social media, blogging, chat groups, websites ... all these things have actually increased the influence of pre-digital institutions and people.

That doesn't sound right at all. It's much easier now for random people to obtain social and political influence, regardless of affiliation. The left is experiencing global distress because they're so worried by the dispersal of social and political influence away from legacy institutions and towards anonymous "chaos actors", as they see it. This is a vast equalization of access to the means of social and political influence, but the Pope thinks it's the reverse. I don't understand that take at all.

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