It's a strange thing that as humans, we sleepwalk into every crisis, never agreeing on anything, and then when we're there, we also never agree on the causes. When we ge too the point where we can no longer "engineer" or "science" anything we will spend the next decade arguing that the issue was not really AI, or that if it was, it was inevitable and no one (or everyone) was to blame. Rinse, repeat. Yet we're here, today, looking at the bleak future, and taking yet another step forward.
Do we assume society just self regulates. I think it does, but the cost of letting it self regulate is really really high, with lots of suffering. Is it that we find this acceptable when there is a chance we won't be the first to feel the pain?
People have been warning about AI coming for decades. For better or worse, it's embedded in popular culture, in science fiction books and movies. But that's different from figuring out practically what to do.
It's cultural evolution and it's how markets work, too. You were expecting central planning?
RN the market is not you. The amount of investment being pushed to AI dwarfs what you collectively spend. So the market now is driven by the IPO dream where you'll hold the bag, jobless.
> the goal seems to be to create as many things as fast as possible, throw them into the world and see which ones gain traction, whether or not they serve a real need
The goal was never to solve a real problem, like we evangelized for decades. That was how it was explained when resources (mainly time, but also money) were scarce and we could not just throw things at walls. Now we can, and you won't see anyone talk about "make something people need".
Things will be low quality until something sticks, and then money will be poured into it. It's not a bad strategy, but my takeaway from this is: there are multiple plausible explanations for the same thing. People have an incentive to not give you the correct one if it helps you compete with them. But they will give you a sensible one. AI won't protect you from this, experience and real knowledge will.
So because I think it will help us, others might do it first, don’t worry, open algos. Isn’t this everyone’s reason to do something controversial? Also looks like the OpenAI route no?
And it’s too soon to have these norms. Employers today are willing to part with them at the hint of the slimmest efficiency gains, you’ll waste time. So I think the correct response today is wait for it to settle. Norms will form on their own.
It threatens because we aren’t just talking about selling your art. Artists get hired at companies to produce all kinds of work that will now be replaced by AI.
Artists get hired at companies because companies have the technology that made the artists work profitable, starting from book printing (public performance -> book printing -> cinema -> tv -> internet, similar to drawing -> photo -> digital). At the Public Performance / Drawing Era artists were mostly poor low class rogues. The technology made them what they are now.
They are protesting against natural technology development. To me it looks similar to taxi drivers protesting against Uber (protecting their right to scam tourists).
Did drawing artists protest against photography? Do celebrities protest against photographers selling their photos taken by them in public places?
They are right to be afraid though. What's really happening here most probably is Anthorpic buys rights to collect user trajectory data. In order to replace Blender users later.
Do we assume society just self regulates. I think it does, but the cost of letting it self regulate is really really high, with lots of suffering. Is it that we find this acceptable when there is a chance we won't be the first to feel the pain?
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