Surely, if we are decommodifying basic needs, our first priority should be food, not housing, right? How has nationalization of agriculture worked in the past?
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I wouldn’t trust this argument by analogy enough to risk the fate of the world on it, but it doesn’t seem obvious to me that a super intelligence would be totally disinclined to care about the interests of lesser intelligences
Except for something like housing, the supply of which has been artificially constrained by policy since before the internet arrived on the scene, I can’t think of anything which is harder to produce or distribute since the advent of the internet. Particularly on distribution, I have far more access to goods and services than my parents did.
Agreed that this hasn’t changed the structure of society in any meaningful way. We’re still social animals with all the same strengths and weaknesses as before.
Hasn’t homology modeling essentially been abandoned by researchers at this point? Maybe their livelihood wasn’t completely ruined but if you had specialized in that technology, you were probably materially harmed by the introduction of AlphaFold. That harm doesn’t outweigh the obvious benefits, but I would be very surprised if the harm doesn’t exist.
>Even the humble startup shipping yet another calendar tool isn’t harming anyone or being the direct cause of layoffs of other workers.
If they’re undercutting and outcompeting an existing calendar tool, they very well could be contributing to layoffs at their competitors.
> On November 2, 2017, the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the New York Times: "They found nothing...This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero." Later, once the North Face Corridor was inspected with an Endoscope, Hawass conversely commented that ScanPyramids's work had provided a "major discovery" that would "enter houses and homes of people all over the world for the first time".
Where does this feeling come from? Is it just because the work is complex? We’re all (excepting maybe the amish) comfortable with using at least some automation, be it mechanical or digital, elsewhere in our lives
What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.
Kevin Mitnick? Marcus Hutchins? Robert Tappan Morris?
I don’t doubt that we could come up with new crypto algorithms equally as fast, but how do you trust that they are resilient (or even just implemented correctly) without an extended vetting period?
What your previous comment appeared to assert was that these systems had no independent agency to make decisions, which I think is clearly disproven by actual events. But perhaps I misread you
Whether or not you want to describe this as thinking, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that these systems are capable of creating intermediary goals that the people tasking them did not articulate and did not want to be achieved.
Not really relevant to the broader discussion, but this simply isn’t an accurate description of China. Starting with the gaokao, admission quotas are set by province and admits to Peking university and Tsinghua are disproportionately from the urban professional class. Candidate party members must be politically vetted, which means that people whose families have expressed anti-communist views, are members of banned organizations (e.g. falun gong), or have substantial criminal records will not be permitted to advance. And once you make it into the party and enter political service, your advancement relies upon opaque patronage networks that someone without connections is unlikely to be able to navigate, even if they successfully satisfy the economic metrics the state assigns them.
I don’t want to overstate this, the Chinese system does filter out a lot of chaff and the current Chinese leadership has a lot of very capable people in positions of power. But I do not think it is substantially more meritocratic than Western political institutions
It does pose a bigger problem if the task is long term and open ended and the agent is provided access to substantial amounts of resources. But even in the worst case scenario, the destruction of a data center is hardly the end of the world.
The Aletta autonomously handles each step of the blood draw, while a trained phlebotomist initiates each session and remains available to respond to any issues throughout. The device guides the patient to position their arm, after which the patient or supervisor presses a button to start the blood draw. The Aletta then uses near-infrared light and Doppler ultrasound to locate a suitable vein and tell it apart from arteries. If no appropriate vein is found, the device will not attempt the procedure.
Once a vein is identified, the Aletta proceeds through the remaining steps on its own: applying a tourniquet, preparing the skin, inserting and disposing of the needle, changing collection tubes and placing a bandage. The supervising phlebotomist confirms that collection tubes are filled in the correct order and verifies that all tubes are adequately full following the procedure.