- joshtbradleyWill Kākāpō be riding bicycles soon?
- Dude what? This is incredible knowledge. I had been fearing this exact problem for so long, but there is an elegant out of the box solution. Thank you!!
- This sounds like the “t-shirt printers” of the 90s. While everyone was busy trying to invent the future, boring old manufacturing got ignored.
Turns out printing t-shirts isn’t that different from printing silicon. Now Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s advanced chips and NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world.
Boom’s founder, Blake, comes from a e-commerce background. What a legend for this innovation.
- The problem is there isn’t an alternative for people who want one. I’m self educated and self employed, and yet I’m forced to pay for healthcare I don’t need, and compete against those with the pedigree of an Ivy League.
My issue is these things boil down to class. There should be a legitimate, high quality alternative for those who can’t afford it.
- Many people are. Several of my immediate family members. And several prominent intellectuals including Yudkowsky and Hinton, both fathers of the field.
Yudkowsky wrote a 250 page book to say "we must limit all commercial GPU clusters to a maximum of 8." That is terrifyingly myopic, and look at the reviews on Amazon. 4.6 stars (574). That is what scares me.
- I think smart people across all domains fall for the trap of being overconfident in their ability to reason outside of their area of expertise. I admire those who don't, but alas we are human.
- I largely agree with what you’re saying. Certainly alignment should be improved to never encourage suicide.
But I also think we should consider the broader context. Suicide isn’t new, and it’s been on the rise. I’ve suffered from very dark moments myself. It’s a deep, complex issue, inherently tied to technology. But it’s more than that. For me, it was not having an emotionally supportive environment that led to feelings of deep isolation. And it’s very likely that part of why I expanded beyond my container was because I had access to ideas on the internet that my parents never did.
I never consulted AI in these dark moments, I didn’t have the option, and honestly that may have been for the best.
And you might be right. Pointed bans, for certain groups and certain use cases might make sense. But I hear a lot of people calling for a global ban, and that concerns me.
Considering how we improve the broad context, I genuinely see AI as having potential for creating more aware, thoughtful, and supportive people. That’s just based on how I use AI personally, it genuinely helps me refine my character and process trauma. But I had to earn that ability through a lot of suffering and maturing.
I don’t really have a point. Other than admitting my original comment used logical fallacies, but I didn’t intend to diminish the complexity of this conversation. But I did. And it is clearly a very complex issue.
- I have been lied to. Dammit.
- Damn. I really wanted to hate coconuts.
- I’m not so sure that’s true. There are many examples of OpenAI putting in aggressive guardrails after learning how their product had been misused.
But the problem you surface is real. Companies like porn AI don’t care, and are building the equivalent of sugar laced products. I haven’t considered that and need to think more about it.
- Many people are arguing for a ban. I did get reactive, because I’ve been hearing that perspective a lot lately.
But you’re right. This article specifically argues for consumer protections. I am fully in favor of that.
I just wish the NYT would also publish articles about the potential of AI. Everything I’ve seen from them (I haven’t looked hard) has been about risks, not about benefits.
- You’re not wrong. I got reactive, that was my bad.
- Mostly whataboutism, but I think my point about cars is valid. I think nuclear is another good comparison. Nuclear could power the world, or destroy it, and I’d say we’re on the positive path despite ourselves.
It’s not that we shouldn’t worry, we should. But humanity is also surprisingly good at cooperating even if it’s not apparent that we are.
I certainly believe that looking only at the good or bad side of the argument is dangerous. AI is coming, we should be serious about guiding it.
- I fully agree with you. I do think my argument came across as more hand wavy than I intended, I definitely did a “what about” and wish I hadn’t.
What I’m really after is thoughtful discourse, that acknowledges we accept risk in our society if there is an upside.
To your point about the internet making people more lonely, I’d say on balance that’s probably true, but it’s also nuanced. I know my mom personally benefits from staying in touch with her friends from her home country.
I think one of the most difficult things to predict is how human behavior adapts to novel stimulus. We will never have enough information. But I do think we adapt, learn, and become more resilient. That is the core of my optimism.
- Im not resisting that at all. I fully support AI safety research. The think mechanistic interoperability is a fascinating and fruitful field.
What I’m resisting are one sided views of AI being either pure evil, or on the verge of AGI. Neither are true and it obstructs thoughtful discussion.
I did get into what aboutism, I didn’t realize it at the time. I did use flawed logic.
To refine my point, I should have just focused on cars and other technology. AI amplifies humanity for both good and bad. It comes with risk and utility. And I never see articles presenting both.
- Fair point. I actually wish Altman/Amodei/Hassabis would stop overhyping the technology and also focus on the broader humanitarian mission.
Development coupled to DAUs… I’m not sure I agree that’s the problem. I would argue AI adoption is more due to utility than addictiveness. Unlike social media companies, they provide direct value to many consumers and professionals across many domains. Just today it helped me write 2k lines of code, think through how my family can negotiate a lawsuit, and plan for Christmas shopping. That’s not doom scrolling, that’s getting sh*t done.
- It is the only reasonable measure. Thank you for your support.
- Not guilty!
- Not fully preventable, of course not. But reducible, certainly. Better cars aided by AI. Better diagnoses and healthcare aided by AI. Less addiction to cigarettes and alcohol through AI facilitated therapy. Less obesity due to better diet plans created by AI. I could go on. And that’s just one frame, there are plenty of non-AI solutions we could, and should, be focused on.
Really my broader point is we accept the tradeoff between technology/freedom and risk in almost everything, but for some reason AI has become a real wedge for people.
And to your broader point, I agree our culture has distanced itself from death to an unhealthy degree. Ritual, grieving, and accepting the inevitable are important. We have done wrong to diminish that.
Coconut trees though, those are always going to cause trouble.
- It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year.
8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars.
Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year.
It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using this as an argument to ban AI have lost touch with reality. If anything, AI may help us reduce preventable deaths. Even a 1% improvement would save hundreds of thousands of lives every year.