Hacker News Reader

Comment by UtopiaPunk | Hacker News Reader

You're starting with an assumption that AI is, on the whole, a net positive for society. A lot of people would disagree.

View on HN

Nuclear bombs and ICBMs aren’t a net positive for society either, but not pursuing them is bad geopolitical strategy.

Maybe I'm a big idiot, but I think nuclear disarmament is a good geopolitical strategy. The USA has treaties in place pursuing that end on a global scale.

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

There is currently a war (largest since WW2) in europe that is a direct result of nuclear disarmament.

I understand that the war between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran and Israel/USA has set back the slow progress that was being made on nuclear disarmament. I don't understand your claim that nuclear disarmament caused a war, though.

I guess the argument is that if Ukraine hadn't willingly handed over the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world after its independence, Russia would have not started a war against them.

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

It’s great for society. It may not be working for you, but don’t project that on the rest of the world.

That’s so far from obvious. The most concerning possibilities for me — like kids not learning how to struggle or problem solve on their own — won’t be resolved for many years.

Of course and a lot of people disagree that vaccines work, why does this negate any hard evidence?

I am unsure what you mean by hard evidence in the context of AI then, what is the evidence we are negating in your view?

Is the hard evidence of AI being a net improvement for society in the room with us now?

If I'm in the room, yes. For me, AI is one, is the best handicap accessibility tool I've ever had. At a minimum, speech recognition is a higher quality, and second, it lets me write code again. I'm working on the third benefit, which is it helps me organize, helps my ADHD mind organize large chunks of random information.

If you look around, you'll find the AI has made some significant improvements to medicine and engineering. These improvements get drowned out by the AI Cheerleaders, but they're there.

> helps my ADHD mind organize large chunks of random information.

I keep seeing this and I'm pretty envious! You must have a different form of ADHD than I do. For me, trying to use AI to build anything is terrible for my attention, it turns everything into a miserable slog because it's so hands off.

I miss getting into flow.

I hear you.

AI helps me get into flow state because I can have a rambling conversation with a chatbot and work through ideas and what abouts. eventually it helps me forget to a place where flow is easier to maintain.

I like this argument/reasoning more than any I've encountered so far. Thank you! Enabling the disabled is definitely a positive and this is a strong argument for the "pro AI" column.

I think another argument for AI is that it can help pull out patterns and information that are normally hidden from human cognition because we can't encompass that information and keep it in mind.

I think one place we should apply this is to the financial system. Use it to detect fraud, tax manipulation games and Other b**** pulled by the 1%ers.

With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power.

"With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power."

If it started to look like that might happen, the ones with influence and power would adjust the AI behavior. They own and control them.

Maybe.. off grid local llms from multiple sources could be a bullwark against that.

Two points on that: 1. This would require hardware to be affordable by mere mortals. That hardware is not financially beyond our reach yet, but AI is making the cost of buying good computer parts very expensive. The big corporations are working against the goal of local LLMs in a major way just by soaking up most of the hardware on the market. And I don't even think that's intentional - they're just too hungry to consider otherwise. They can pay high prices where normal people cannot.

2.Local LLMs would have to be designed to be very convenient to use. As it stands, the big players are making their online models very convenient instead, and that let's them charge a subscription. It's a proven business model that our society has gotten used to (even if we grumble a bit). Even if the hardware were cheap, local LLMs are mostly for businesses, with a few hobbyists running it in their basement because they can.

It's extremely hard for me to imagine local LLMs being a threat to the powerful in any way.

Depends, is the net improvement of the internet, electricity, agriculture, steam engine also in the room?

Asbestos is the miracle material it is advertised as. It really is great insulation, and really is absolutely fireproof. Thousands of industrial uses are readily apparent.

Despite this, because of its other effects, the cost to clean up and stop using asbestos is greater than the sum total of any benefit from all mined asbestos worldwide.

Even a miracle technology can still be a net disaster.

It's a good point I have to say

I don't understand that this argument. Why does the net improvement of the technologies listed imply that AI will also have a net improvement? Are you just arguing that there's no such thing as technology that is harmful on net?

You presume there is hard evidence that AI is good for society. In reality, the inverse is true.

Now you understand why anti-vaxxers ignore evidence. Because it doesn't fit with your worldview and you're too narrow-minded and selfish to consider that your viewpoint might actually be wrong and bad for others.

We could have had this same argument about social media 15 years ago before hard evidence showed it's not quite the net benefit to society it was touted as.

Are you really comparing LLMs to vaccines? Jesus

What is the hard evidence that you speak of?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com