> Are you serious when you connect anti-AI sentiment to anti-science sentiment?
I don’t believe that the current state of things represents peak-AI problems. AI is for now weak both in its capability and its impact, and also just new. Speculatively, if things go really bad, in a couple of decades there will be a huge swath of population without jobs nor high-flying education. They, perhaps rightly, will blame AI for the situation, but they’ll also, perhaps rightly, blame capital and the “snobbish elite” that is today and in the near future propping AI. That “snobbish elite” is well-paid engineers and researchers. That’s because people tend to like to have somebody to blame for their problems. But even without making it about bad guys, the heart of the thing that is pouring billions into AI is a relentless ethos of profit deriving from progress and disruption. You can’t stop AI without stabbing that heart.
Calling current AI "weak in its capability" is very disconnected from the reality. Their capabilities in many areas and on many tasks are incredibly strong. The disconnect seems to come from completely unrealistic expectations, e.g. imagining the AI as a sort of omniscient oracle which should never make mistakes.
I don’t believe that the current state of things represents peak-AI problems. AI is for now weak both in its capability and its impact, and also just new. Speculatively, if things go really bad, in a couple of decades there will be a huge swath of population without jobs nor high-flying education. They, perhaps rightly, will blame AI for the situation, but they’ll also, perhaps rightly, blame capital and the “snobbish elite” that is today and in the near future propping AI. That “snobbish elite” is well-paid engineers and researchers. That’s because people tend to like to have somebody to blame for their problems. But even without making it about bad guys, the heart of the thing that is pouring billions into AI is a relentless ethos of profit deriving from progress and disruption. You can’t stop AI without stabbing that heart.