Tech Continues to Be Political | Hacker News Reader

Tech Continues to Be Political

miriamsuzanne.com

32 pointsSethMLarson15 comments

Seeing all these big tech companies walk lockstep with the current administration is quite upsetting. As a non-American, it's kinda terrifying to see how quickly everything has started falling apart.

I sure do hope all these big tech companies do the right, ethical thing with their AI products! ...

Y Combinator has the opportunity to ask those questions in four months time: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

I'm curious to see if they do.

Upsetting... but surely not surprising? Europe and the previous administration were making existential threats, and the new guy offered to either pile on or make it all go away... for a price.

* Facebook was offered the option of either cutting their EU profits to zero or facing equivalent fines.

* Very Serious People were having Very Serious Discussions about whether Google should be allowed to run auctions for ad space on their own home page. At the same time, the two sides of the Atlantic cannot agree whether to make the web a Chrome monopoly or to only allow Google offer its services through 3rd party platforms controlled by competitors.

* Apple's whole brand proposition is being actively undermined. Apparently their monopolistic 30% market share does not demonstrate that consumers want a choice of something different from the competition (and legislators know consumers better than they do themselves).

* Amazon is somehow subject to expensive-to-comply-with restrictions, yet none of their similar-size in-market competitors are. Because reasons.

Surely it was predictable that they would all support a politician who offers to deliver them from regulations that not just limit profit but actively erode ongoing viability of the business, no? I guess you could call it the "Brussels effect".

None of these are "existential" threats, just relatively minor inconveniences for companies their size. And it's not like regulation will go away in the EU just because Trump comes to power. In fact, given that the administration seems actively hostile towards European democracy, I suspect EU countries will want to assert their sovereignty by bringing down the regulatory hammer.

The article uses a mangled and incoherent version of the gun/printer meme (how would a printer, by itself, be useful?). Here’s what I believe to be the original (and actually understandable) form: <https://imgur.com/6wbgy2L>

I don't particularly love this submission, but the headline feels so weighty & so real.

So much if what's happening (and terrifying) in the world is wrapped up around the tech industry, and especially especially the infosphere. The one tech built, the infosphere that increasingly is used to shape & syndicate & spread the political.

It's all tech. But instead of being responsible helpers, instead of having discussions, there's so much hands off, just letting the machines go as they may. So many discussions we can't or won't have because it's "politics".

My English teacher made me write essays in 12pt font.

I wonder what she'd think of > 24pt font.

She'd probably think, "Gee whiz! I'm glad my browser has a zoom function and a reader mode!"

I couldn’t follow the line of thought between eugenics and AI.

Me neither. It shouldn't be surprising that the author of this article believes that there is "no way to measure intelligence".

Define “intelligence” without using any specific task to be solved.

I found this logical leap to be pretty straight-forward, but it is a leap (rather than a clearly-telegraphed step).

My understanding was that the author sees the following:

  - Lots of AI advocates don't just think an AI superintelligence is possible, but desirable
  - They reason that an AI superintelligence will guide humanity to become better, and more intelligent
  - There is no known, proven, objective measure of “intelligence,” all schools so far that espouse such a thing as being possible and coherent stem from eugenics, phrenology, and similar projects (VC, AI founders, and CEOs have significant overlap with these groups)
  - AIs reinforce the biases present in their training sets and tuning, meaning they will gladly spout rhetoric from those same sociopolitical projects
  - People believe AI output readily and blindly

Regardless of whether or not a Superintelligence emerges (I'm betting against), the outcome of this trajectory will be that the eugenics/phrenology ideological descendants will continue to guide any new AI to espouse their beliefs (whether intentionally or due to implicit bias), and that most people will just accept the resulting outputs as True™. AI then will reinforce eugenicist views (as it already is). ∎

All the best,

> We have no way to measure intelligence

Stopped reading there.

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