What do you guys think ? How many people are actually against AI?
Sometimes it feels like the majority are starting to be skeptical, but maybe that's just the environment im surrounded by.
Perhaps more about the huge frontier models being developed at openai or antrophic.
Or perhaps the controversial stuff being associated with Palantir.
People are starting to ask questions, I mean a lot are just worried, I had so many people tell me they were pro-ai a few years back, but now they just have that worried face whenever you mention it.
On the contrary, I think that less capable models could be used for several, largely positive, applications.
I also think that narrow AI models developed for specific scientific applications (e.g., protein folding, weather predictions...) are in general beneficial for humanity.
I totally agree with the benefits of the smaller models, but it's the large frontier models, potentially or accidently removing the security barriers from those can cause things far worse than the "hugging face" incident..
Frontier models are, indeed, already too capable and too dangerous. I would have been more comfortable if a stop of the development occurred 12 months ago. However, the second best moment to press the "stop" button is now.
But why would they stop when they have a clear path up? They don't care about the people they just care about growing their wallets. I don't see them ever pressing the stop button aslong as results are there, also I do think that results will probably deteriorate, as I would like to believe transformers will hit a limit or rather a bottleneck, perhaps several bottlenecks. Where progress will massively slow down.
Of course they won't stop by themselves
Let's pretend US and EU agreed to slow down development, what would stop China or other countries outside "west" from continuing?
I think that international coordination would be very difficult when AI is a national competition.
I see negligence as I look past the fear mongering from our dysfunctional media ecosystem
I will not be, we engineered it, so it is an artificial type of intelligence, and given the dumb things they do with consistency, I find it quite the stretch to call it super or intelligent
I think the current generation more closely resembles a spaghetti throwing machine at the first point of difficulty, this is not how intelligent beings like ourselves approach these situations.
Below the fatalism though, I've been excited for this day ever since I saw "2001" in the matinee theater as a kid (and also as a kid: played against a Tic Tac Toe computer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago).
And that I can run some of these models locally? Heady times for my inner kid.
I've tried (and struggled) to understand how they work as well so that I am not ignorant on the subject—so that I can have an opinion a little better than a layman's.
You've been excited for the arrival of AI ever since you saw a movie about a murderous AI who tries (and mostly succeeds) to wipe out the entire human crew of its ship? Dr. Strangelove also got you psyched up for a nuclear war, I guess?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/712751/americans-cool-toward.as...
Are the "experts" being optimistic ? or is the general population being too concerned?
The general public see LLMs flailing at simple tasks, spam fake contents, and target civilians for military strikes all the while struggling to pay the bills. It also doesn't help that LLM companies PR think claiming their products to be extremely dangerous as selling point.
If I'm selling a car for civilians, I won't be touting how it would barrel through pedestrians even if technically all cars can do it.
I just think turning the blind eye will hit us like a big truck in a few years.. It really is about time..
The ai big boys are all seeking to be winners and the race was about supremacy. It is probably too late to draw the line now and that is what they wanted from the onset . They big boys are all hoping to collect rent for eternity from this technology. It will make a lot of people obsolete.
If say a tech could collect $ trillions from a dinky software, they think that they can up that for eternity given that ai has extracted all the knowledge that humanity has in technology, science and humanities.
Now the race among the big boys is about who can paint it better, claiming the each one is amore sensitive and caring. The PR and anti-PR firms work to paint the image that they seek for themselves and their competition before IPOs hit the street.
Asking who is for and against Ai at this point, does nothing. It is a done deal. It is here and will not disappear.
Your survival under capitalism depends on you being needed. And if right now AI helps you do things, tomorrow AI makes you unnecessary. The thing to worry about here isn't AI. The thing to worry about here is a society that has no plan to stop forcing everyone to labor to eat while simultaneously devaluing their labor.
There are three important analytic boundaries:
1) Some people are less employable right now because of AI.
2) The limit approaching everyone else will be less employable in the future because of AI if it keeps progressing (this includes even manual labor eventually), and we have no reason yet to believe that it won't keep progressing.
3) AI might suddenly stop progressing for unpredictable reasons, but right now that doesn't seem likely.
2. I don't think automating tasks necessarily means eliminating a profession, but what AI can do is unfortunately speaking more than just automation.
3. Do you really think so ? I mean what do you think about the AI companies losing billions and billions every year, don't you think at some point they will just not have it anymore?
The automating can/does/will expand faster than the needs can. Where those lines fully cross may be in the future for many professions, but it's not _infinitely_ in the future for any of them.
> "I mean what do you think about the AI companies losing billions and billions every year, don't you think at some point they will just not have it anymore?"
None of them lose money on inference though. The reason frontier AI labs lose money right now is because they're economically forced to keep pushing the frontier on their own, but that's a different problem than running a model that already exists. That conversation can become longer than I really want to type out, so I'm just going to point you to the profitable open weight hosts and hope you recognize the truth of it.
One of four futures awaits:
1) The government steps in and consolidates/nationalizes/subsidizes frontier AI development and allows it to be used to replace human labor.
2) The government steps in and consolidates/nationalizes/subsidizes frontier AI development but does not allow it to be used to replace human labor.
3) Frontier development moves into the open because the proprietary frontier labs have all died, and the only major businesses left are profitably running open model inference at some future capability level greater than today's that continues to be driven forward through public research and open models.
4) Frontier development ceases completely somehow, and the only businesses left are profitably running open model inference at some future capability level greater than today's.
1 and 3 are equally destructive. 2 and 4 are implausible (4 is still bad though).
For the many positive things A.I. can or could do, the negatives are bound up into many concerns or considerations;
Will the products be better or substantially better given the A.I's overall cost?
Down the track will it make things on average cheaper?
How soon before much of it's use is primarily monitoring people online and off ... and then just how long before everyone will be expected to have a 24 hr a day/ all year long A.I. buddy / minder / nanny / *cop* just like the tech tools presently expect everyone has to have a mobile phone?
But the smaller models are somewhat profitable as they require almost no comparable compute.
The surveillance concern is definitely justified and I think it is already happening before our own eyes..
Yes the other issue many would have, even with smaller low compute is it continues the path of subscription based services. I hear for example citing its use as a word processor, correcting grammar but surely this is a function that a decent A.I. could compute the definitive buy once ultimate guide program that can work offline and with less issue of leaking creative thoughts and ideas if a person was worried about such things.
Most western countries are surveilled by the likes of agencies similar to NSA - it happens and shouldn't be of much concern to the average punter, but A.I. is mostly likely going to be used by local, state and federal authorities to constantly monitor and with little overview, perhaps pandering to unknown interests or those with an axe to grind who wish that relevant interventions occur with those opposed to their grand plans. By interventions, it could be dire but even as benign as simply burying a perceived thorn under a heap of paperwork / legal wrangling / on time sensitive matters- never got a reply, if registered mail - oops oh your reply was lost ... etc.
And what about the BIAS we mentioned earlier in the thread? Wouldn't that influence the surveillance? isn't that a bad thing? there is just so many things to consider.
As for my own personal fears, is the possibility, however slight, popularising the adoption of a personal A.I. for all internet users by way of a scheme that it will be deemed essential, like a personal web guardian which acts as interactive security and key pass, no A.I. buddy, no or extremely limited net access - essentially a minder. If that doesn't transpire, I worry that in 20 years or so, there will be moves towards devices which are just enough to run a connection to their A.I. guardian which does everything that is deemed acceptable for the user / allowed to do.
What more interested in is if people are just against AI itself, or just worried about how it's being developed and deployed.
Besides, "the worried west" also probably takes up the majority of the AI usage.
The interesting aspect of The West is a large portion of people are using it, liking it, and fearing it all at the same time
I think people or rather especially Engineers are just afraid to fall back and not be able to catch up if they completely drop AI. Which is why they use it even though some of them might not be very willing to.
Im curious to know if people that fear it, also don't want to see the development go well, or if they are still for the development. Perhaps the former right?
1. adversaries will, ai catches human error in review, you put others at risk by not using it
2. companies are asking and not hiring ai negative people, it's changing our profession and they don't want luddites
2.But that's exactly my point, Engineers feel forced to adopt AI to remain competitive, but high adoption rates in engineering professions don't neccesarily mean positive attitue towards it. The companies just want shipping..shipping.. They don't even care if the engineers understand the concept of what they're building.
I feel like the use of these habits will be biting them in the butt a few years ahead.. people should really be worried about these new workflows more than what they currently are - do I make sense?
Sounds like you are not using them in a professional software setting?
Like any tool, it's how you wield it, there will be dumb people and people who show the real power. Where I'm working, Ai is improving code and documentation quality. It's not magic pixie dust, you have to be intentional and in-the-loop
The world of software development has fundamentally changed, there are new required tools, don't be a luddite if you want to keep your job. Like imagine if a potential hire said they were unwilling to use git, would you hire them? We use VCS for a reason, you cannot do your job without it.
But that is also the question I ask myself.. Is it really just a tool ? can we really use the same comparison as when the calculator came out ?
I am not opposed to using it, I am rather concerned about where this road will eventaully lead us.
I'm not arguing that AI can't improve productivity or code quality. I'm questioning what happens when developers become so reliant on it that their ability to reason through problems independently starts deteriorating.
Anything beyond that is highly questionable and potentially dangerous.
It's so much better,smarter,more effective and affects so many different parameters.
Artificial = Not Real
AI is Not Real Smart