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Comment by fhd2 | Hacker News Reader

Awareness barely helps, it's the tragedy of the commons. I can't think of a solution other than regulation. But then if some countries regulate and others don't, you're right back at the tragedy of the commons at the international level.

Reminds me of the Mass Effect games, where AI is essentially outlawed (because they revolted against the humans of course, but I can picture less scifi-ish reasons in the real world). I'm sure they're still allowed to use pathfinding algorithms and such, so they probably defined a level of net negative (to society) AI and just regulated that. Starships for example are manually piloted (surely with intelligent support systems and basic auto pilots) IIRC.

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Let's keep sci-fi worlds designed to make a good story out of serious discussion, please.

Or let me raise a The Culture argument, where computers/AI is hyper-advanced, AIs are friends, and no regulation whatsoever is needed.

Fair, not the best example of regulation countering the tragedy of the commons, because it's just made up. Unfortunately, any real world examples I can think of (nature preservation, gun control, ...) are seemingly controversial.

What even is the specific tragedy of the commons in this case?

I mean real, observable things, not theories.

Isn't the tragedy of the commons how developing technology consumes our attention spans?

Human attention span is a finite resource (we can only do so much in one life), and tech startups can consume a lot of that for relatively little payoff. Building a successful startup is like solving the bitcoin hash on your first few cycles. The barrier for entry is low, but you can hit it big (and consume a lot of cheap, finite* power too).

The payoff is worth the risk since our communication technology is nascent and underexplored. We have an abundance of time right now because of what tech has done for us, but the cultural and environmental costs of growing tech are not well understood.

Use of attention span is difficult to measure right now, but that could change in the coming decades. That said, parent comment seems to use "tragedy of the commons" as a stand in for "human nature."

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