I’ll be an early dissenter, but while I’m for unfettered capitalism to create growth, I don’t see AI as the saving grace the e/accers think it is. We should perhaps err on the side of a little more caution, especially if we are designing a system that has the capacity to outsmart us, and if married with quantum computing—all bets are off.
The rhythm of that Doricko kid mimics the other voices in the article. It’s not a death cult, but the idealism about AI and its ability to save us all, fix so many problems, etc., sounds like a lot of religious fervor to jump on the next big thing.
It does not surprise me that Washington has embraced the ignorant side of this debate. Not one bit.
Computers do exactly what they are programmed to do. If you program an AI to program itself, it will do so in exactly the way you tell it to program itself. Computers are not living beings. Unless they are programmed to preserve themselves and replicate (a rather silly notion for a machine that can have its parts replaced far more easily than a human can obtain an artificial heart) they will not operate in that manner.
It is the height of whatever hubris mankind embodied when it invented gods and made them man-like to forecast similar behavior from machines.
If we don't want computers killing people, then we should be careful about how we program them. We should be incredibly careful when we create war machines that run AI. Not out of worry that they will evolve like butterflies and sabre-toothed tigers, but that a software bug will have it use its weaponry in a manner the programmer didn't anticipate.
Instead, people seem to worry that their Ring doorbells will magically acquire machine guns (one-click shopping and all) and shoot up the neighborhood.
If the government tries to regulate AI, that will give countries like Russia, China and Iran access to software advances beyond our capabilities. We will be unable to defend ourselves. In time, all the brightest minds working on AI will start working for foreign companies.
It's people in government who act malevolently, not computers and AI.
The destruction of humanity via AI won't happen via violence. It'll happen via an over-abundance of luxury, such that humans will basically stop doing anything but interacting with their AI lovers, AI video games/worlds, AI friends. You'll have no desire to be in the real world -- every experience can be done virtually, at a fraction of the cost and effort required. Drones will bring food and medication directly to your pod. No one will be dating, since AI lovers will be more compassionate and interesting. No one will have kids. The world will slowly blink away into non-existence.
Meanwhile, dutiful computer systems will perform automated geological surveys, set up automated mines, automatically build new pods and other structures. AI surgery bots will do perfect surgeries and keep people alive until they're 150 -- but all the people will do is stay plugged into virtual worlds. No one will be interested in working, and no work will be available anyways. In ~300 years, the last few humans will die off, old and alone, addicted to dopamine rushes delivered directly from their neuro-links. And when the last human dies, the automated system will continue for thousands more years, repairing itself and tending to fields of crops, keeping a constant stockpile of food no one will ever eat.
In 500 years, a small boat will sail forth from North Sentinel Island to India and the people will wonder at this strange society that's fallen.
Thanks for this article. I think. Scary stuff. That 23 year old sounds mentally ill to me. Delusions of granduer and all that. And the talk about the stagnation of Apple, Meta, etc. while true fails to address that big old elephant of the damage done by those stagnant entities. Why should I believe these new "altruists" will do better? I heard no mention of ethics, just acceleration. As we should have learned from Sam Bankman-Fried identifying as an altruist does not make you one and in fact may be a sham to draw in the gullible. BTW I believe in technology and that our future is in the stars. I just want grown-ups in charge. Otherwise it is back to the stone age we go.
Effective Altruism is a grift. SBF and FTX stole billions while defrauding investors and customers, transferring the wealth to their democrat cronies. No discussion of EA is complete without mention of the theft and criminality at the core of our elites and their puppets in DC: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sequoia-ftx-214million-disaster
E/acc is about optimism and capitalistic growth that benefits all of mankind. Do we want that future or the dystopian decline found in SF, DC, and all of our demoralized cities?
The hubris of the e/accers is breath taking. Take a moment to read the short story “The Machine Stops,” by E.M. Forster. Originally published in 1909. A utopian dream where humans live alone and all needs are provided by The Machine until the inevitable collapse when The Machine slowly but surely stops functioning. Actually a story about e/acc causing the extermination of most of the human race; except for the few that escape the machine. Not by purposely killing them, but due to the ultimate failure of the technology. Prescient? Free PDF copy from UC Davis at https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
Interesting juxtaposition in FP between the idealistic altruists who want to do great things with AI and the masses marching in our streets shrieking paeans for murder and rapine, those lolling uselessly in their own feces and urine and the outright morlocks looting CVS stores and pummeling seniors into a pulp to steal a few crumpled dollars. Where will we end up?
Here is the achilles heel for the SF reformers. They are Democrats and will seek to reform inside the system keeping a lot of it, and not totally tossing it out. They are for the free market when it comes to their own enterprises, but not for it when it comes to limiting government.
Well, with all DUE respect, the e/accers in this piece sound like a collection of heavily breathing late adolescents. Concerning the "Thermodynamic Will of the Universe", Misters Jezos and Bayeslord might consider the 2nd Law from which we learn that entropy increases with all spontaneous processes. If ever there was a "Thermodynamic Will of the Universe" (which there wasn't and isn't) this is it.
I’m really glad that I am old! As uplifting and honest as The Free Press generally is, this horror story complete with virtual friends makes me want to pull up the covers and drift back to sleep.
AI is just another tool, like the airplane, the personal computer and the internet. It, like everything, can be used to enhance life or to destroy life. But the important verb there is 'used'. It is not alive. It is not self-aware, and it doesn't have any goals beyond what humans give it. Your story today on your writer's experiences with her AI 'boyfriend' demonstrates exactly why that is. It has been a long time since I have heard the younger generations (I'm 69) actually want to improve our lives instead of whining about our looming destruction, so I say GO, GO, GO to the e/acc's. May you take over the world and leave the doomsayers behind.
Why must our grand ideas be followed by manifestos, flags, and god complexes? As my favorite niece always says, “Humans are so silly.”
While it would suck to witness Doom, if that’s what the end result is… ultimately, I would prefer that in my old age I’m living in a world where we at least tried to live in a futuristic world like we see in movies. Sorry guys, but it’s simply too cool to pass up. If I’m old and we still have low bandwidth, (LA) summer power outages, and packages delivered at wrong addresses—lame.
Plus, it’s moving so quickly that the winning prediction will be nothing more than a lucky guess.
I lived in Silicon Valley for 25 years, and Silicon Valley no more has a soul than Wall Street. Silicon Valley is Wall Street with the pretense of having a soul.
I once jokingly told a Gen Z friend that I would trust her generation when they stopped eating Tide Pods. Now I feel like I will trust them when they go back to eating Tide Pods.
I’ll be an early dissenter, but while I’m for unfettered capitalism to create growth, I don’t see AI as the saving grace the e/accers think it is. We should perhaps err on the side of a little more caution, especially if we are designing a system that has the capacity to outsmart us, and if married with quantum computing—all bets are off.
The rhythm of that Doricko kid mimics the other voices in the article. It’s not a death cult, but the idealism about AI and its ability to save us all, fix so many problems, etc., sounds like a lot of religious fervor to jump on the next big thing.
It does not surprise me that Washington has embraced the ignorant side of this debate. Not one bit.
Computers do exactly what they are programmed to do. If you program an AI to program itself, it will do so in exactly the way you tell it to program itself. Computers are not living beings. Unless they are programmed to preserve themselves and replicate (a rather silly notion for a machine that can have its parts replaced far more easily than a human can obtain an artificial heart) they will not operate in that manner.
It is the height of whatever hubris mankind embodied when it invented gods and made them man-like to forecast similar behavior from machines.
If we don't want computers killing people, then we should be careful about how we program them. We should be incredibly careful when we create war machines that run AI. Not out of worry that they will evolve like butterflies and sabre-toothed tigers, but that a software bug will have it use its weaponry in a manner the programmer didn't anticipate.
Instead, people seem to worry that their Ring doorbells will magically acquire machine guns (one-click shopping and all) and shoot up the neighborhood.
If the government tries to regulate AI, that will give countries like Russia, China and Iran access to software advances beyond our capabilities. We will be unable to defend ourselves. In time, all the brightest minds working on AI will start working for foreign companies.
It's people in government who act malevolently, not computers and AI.
The destruction of humanity via AI won't happen via violence. It'll happen via an over-abundance of luxury, such that humans will basically stop doing anything but interacting with their AI lovers, AI video games/worlds, AI friends. You'll have no desire to be in the real world -- every experience can be done virtually, at a fraction of the cost and effort required. Drones will bring food and medication directly to your pod. No one will be dating, since AI lovers will be more compassionate and interesting. No one will have kids. The world will slowly blink away into non-existence.
Meanwhile, dutiful computer systems will perform automated geological surveys, set up automated mines, automatically build new pods and other structures. AI surgery bots will do perfect surgeries and keep people alive until they're 150 -- but all the people will do is stay plugged into virtual worlds. No one will be interested in working, and no work will be available anyways. In ~300 years, the last few humans will die off, old and alone, addicted to dopamine rushes delivered directly from their neuro-links. And when the last human dies, the automated system will continue for thousands more years, repairing itself and tending to fields of crops, keeping a constant stockpile of food no one will ever eat.
In 500 years, a small boat will sail forth from North Sentinel Island to India and the people will wonder at this strange society that's fallen.
". . . so sick of because we spent our whole life in it." From a 23 year old. Lord help us restore humility to this world.
Thanks for this article. I think. Scary stuff. That 23 year old sounds mentally ill to me. Delusions of granduer and all that. And the talk about the stagnation of Apple, Meta, etc. while true fails to address that big old elephant of the damage done by those stagnant entities. Why should I believe these new "altruists" will do better? I heard no mention of ethics, just acceleration. As we should have learned from Sam Bankman-Fried identifying as an altruist does not make you one and in fact may be a sham to draw in the gullible. BTW I believe in technology and that our future is in the stars. I just want grown-ups in charge. Otherwise it is back to the stone age we go.
Effective Altruism is a grift. SBF and FTX stole billions while defrauding investors and customers, transferring the wealth to their democrat cronies. No discussion of EA is complete without mention of the theft and criminality at the core of our elites and their puppets in DC: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sequoia-ftx-214million-disaster
E/acc is about optimism and capitalistic growth that benefits all of mankind. Do we want that future or the dystopian decline found in SF, DC, and all of our demoralized cities?
The hubris of the e/accers is breath taking. Take a moment to read the short story “The Machine Stops,” by E.M. Forster. Originally published in 1909. A utopian dream where humans live alone and all needs are provided by The Machine until the inevitable collapse when The Machine slowly but surely stops functioning. Actually a story about e/acc causing the extermination of most of the human race; except for the few that escape the machine. Not by purposely killing them, but due to the ultimate failure of the technology. Prescient? Free PDF copy from UC Davis at https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
A sure way to guarantee that an idea will spread is for government to oppose it!
Interesting juxtaposition in FP between the idealistic altruists who want to do great things with AI and the masses marching in our streets shrieking paeans for murder and rapine, those lolling uselessly in their own feces and urine and the outright morlocks looting CVS stores and pummeling seniors into a pulp to steal a few crumpled dollars. Where will we end up?
Here is the achilles heel for the SF reformers. They are Democrats and will seek to reform inside the system keeping a lot of it, and not totally tossing it out. They are for the free market when it comes to their own enterprises, but not for it when it comes to limiting government.
Well, with all DUE respect, the e/accers in this piece sound like a collection of heavily breathing late adolescents. Concerning the "Thermodynamic Will of the Universe", Misters Jezos and Bayeslord might consider the 2nd Law from which we learn that entropy increases with all spontaneous processes. If ever there was a "Thermodynamic Will of the Universe" (which there wasn't and isn't) this is it.
I’m really glad that I am old! As uplifting and honest as The Free Press generally is, this horror story complete with virtual friends makes me want to pull up the covers and drift back to sleep.
AI is just another tool, like the airplane, the personal computer and the internet. It, like everything, can be used to enhance life or to destroy life. But the important verb there is 'used'. It is not alive. It is not self-aware, and it doesn't have any goals beyond what humans give it. Your story today on your writer's experiences with her AI 'boyfriend' demonstrates exactly why that is. It has been a long time since I have heard the younger generations (I'm 69) actually want to improve our lives instead of whining about our looming destruction, so I say GO, GO, GO to the e/acc's. May you take over the world and leave the doomsayers behind.
Why must our grand ideas be followed by manifestos, flags, and god complexes? As my favorite niece always says, “Humans are so silly.”
While it would suck to witness Doom, if that’s what the end result is… ultimately, I would prefer that in my old age I’m living in a world where we at least tried to live in a futuristic world like we see in movies. Sorry guys, but it’s simply too cool to pass up. If I’m old and we still have low bandwidth, (LA) summer power outages, and packages delivered at wrong addresses—lame.
Plus, it’s moving so quickly that the winning prediction will be nothing more than a lucky guess.
I lived in Silicon Valley for 25 years, and Silicon Valley no more has a soul than Wall Street. Silicon Valley is Wall Street with the pretense of having a soul.
I once jokingly told a Gen Z friend that I would trust her generation when they stopped eating Tide Pods. Now I feel like I will trust them when they go back to eating Tide Pods.